You are Here to Enrich the World | Behram Ghista

What is supportive karma? These are the habits or imprints that influence our present and subsequent rebirths. There are plenty of instances of plant seeds dug up by anthropologists that have been dormant for more than two millennia, yet when given the right conditions have come alive. The residual karma we are born with, also known as imprints or supportive karma, is based on the habits we have formed in the past that continue to influence how we perceive, approach and respond to the world when the right conditions present themselves, which then determines what is reflected back to us in the form of our experiences. Two people can be facing the exact same reality but respond to it in entirely different ways. When tempted by friends towards drugs and alcohol, one will lean towards these terrible choices, while the other remains indifferent to them. One will end up living a wasted life, while the other will flourish in this world. Unless we see the necessity for personal refinement, we cannot acquire the skills needed for mitigating past unwholesome karma that continue to influence our present rebirth adversely. The tragedy is that most people invest more time in family and work obligations than in bettering themselves. After a lifetime of being bitter about the world around us for our suffering, when we come of age and start thinking deeply, we realize that the only person who has been in all the difficulties we have encountered, is us, and only we can change things around for the better, nobody else can do it for us. The great news is that we can modify our supportive karma for the better within certain parameters. How? By putting in the required effort for positive counteractive karma, to aid us in doing so. Some things, however, can’t be changed if our supportive karma is really powerful. To extract the wealth of possibilities that are latent in us, for acquiring shiploads of merit, we need to embrace two important facts. First, regardless of how unwisely we may have been living, we are always free to choose, free to become great by choice, for we are not bound to our past unless we allow it. Second, we cannot see, experience or find what we’re not aware of and therefore we don’t look for it because it does not exist for us. Unless we are taught to believe in our spectacular resources, we are not going to look for them. And if we don’t look for them, we obviously cannot see, notice, or utilize the tremendous forces to improve the quality of our life in outstanding ways. The painful consequence of this self-neglect is that we live in victim mode our entire lives, facing one difficulty after another. Music: No Way Out by Philipp Weigl – Free Music Archive CC BY