Karma and the Meaning of Life

Good morning.

This morning, I would like to talk about a very interesting subject, a subject which is usually very misunderstood here in the West. I would like to talk about karma.

This word karma comes from the East, and it's not part of the Western culture, so, we don't really know what it means, but usually, it has a negative connotation. We talk about "bad karma", when we want to explain why somebody has a hard time, and there is some truth to it, as you will see during this video.

The reason why I want to talk about this word karma is, that I find it very helpful to understand what it means. Karma is not a thing. Karma is not something which exists. Karma is more like an explanation of how your soul functions.

It explains to us humans why we experience the life we have, and it shows us what's helpful for us as souls in order to use this life that we have. Basically, when you understand what karma means, you start understanding your own life, and why you are here, and what is the purpose of all of this.

I find it very helpful to understand this for myself in my life, for my path, and that's why I want to share a little bit about it. I must add that I am not an expert in Eastern culture or in karma. I I'm not a spiritual scholar or anything like this. I'm just sharing my own insights. I'm just sharing what I find helpful for myself in my life. I'm by no means an expert, but maybe what I share is also helpful to you. That would be a joy for me. So, karma describes how life functions for us.

It is like this: usually, when we live, we do certain things, we experience certain things, and all of this, we do with as with an 'I' sense. We have the feeling: 'I' am doing something. And when we experience any experience, any feeling, any situation, we have the feeling: this happens to 'me'. 'I' am suffering. 'I' have joy. Basically, we take everything personal. We have this 'I' sense in us. We think: I'm this body, I'm my thoughts, my feelings, my wishes, my past, and my future.

And out of this 'I' sense, we do things, and this creates even more 'I' sense. I do something, and maybe it has negative results, then I feel bad about it, or I feel guilty, and this increases the strength of this identity, of this feeling of 'I'. And if I do something good, I'm proud of it, I expect rewards for it, I expect to be loved or admired for it, and also this increases this 'I' sense in me.

So, when we experience life out of this 'I' sense, it's reinforcing itself continuously, all the time.

And what karma describes is now the following. When we live life like this, when we come to the end of this life, many things have left traces in us. 'I' did something good, but nobody noticed. We still expect a reward. Or 'I' did something bad.

'I' am guilty, I will be punished for this. It's not that there is judging God in this universe which will punish us. It's not that karma means that something bad will happen to us because we did something bad. This is not the case. What karma describes is our own inner functioning, how we as souls function.

You can see this when you observe children: when a young child does something where the child thinks that this is wrong, then the child will not be at peace with itself until it dissolved this wrongdoing in some way. Either the child punishes itself for it, or the child has to admit it to the parents, or it will be punished for it. Something will happen so the child can forget what it did, so it leaves no trace.

Or, when the child does something good, it needs to tell other people, because it wants to be admired for it or rewarded or loved. You can see this with little children so beautifully.

And then, when the child does not get a reward, the reward it expects because it believes it did something good, then there's trouble. The child gets angry or disappointed or sad. Again, traces. All of this comes out of this 'I' sense.

So, when we live our life, we accumulate things which are not finished in us. It's not an external God judging. It's not the other people judging. It's that our own psyche, our own soul knows: I did something bad, I will be punished, or I deserve punishment, or something bad will happen to me. It's this own inner conviction. Your own judgment, that's what creates karma in both ways, about the good things and also about the bad things. In reality, there's no good and no bad. That's why, in reality, there is no judging God, but this 'I' sense we carry is based on our own judgment.

This ability of our brain to judge, to distinguish, that is the basis of this 'I' sense. We judge our actions. We, only ourselves, judge our experiences, and this creates the 'I' sense. So, you live your life, and then, there are many things accumulating which are not finished, things where you believe you did something really terrible, but it's not dissolved. You haven't suffered the consequences for it yet, and that's why you can forget them. You know, something will happen because of this.

It's not that in reality it is like this. I'm describing how we feel. I'm describing our convictions we have in our psyche, and this is what karma describes. And the same is true with the good things. You accumulate things. Maybe you tried to be a really good person and tried to behave very holy, but when this happens with an 'I' sense, 'I' do something good, then there will be some sort of hope, expectation, some demand towards God or other people.

And again: it's our own feelings, our own convictions that create these traces in us, these expectations, karma. And at the end of life, many of these things are unresolved, many of these things where this 'I' sense carries memories, carries memories of "I did something bad" or "I did something great". And these unresolved things, which only consist of our own convictions, of our own psyche, so to speak... The word psyche is not the correct expression for this, but I don't know any other better word, that's why I'm using it.

But it's these things in us which remain at the end of our life. We die with this 'I' sense, with this set of convictions, and with these leftovers, with these traces from this life. And when we die in this way, I could say "we die as somebody". We die not as a clean plate, not in peace, but we die with an 'I' sense and with guilt left over, with hopes and demands left over, and then, the soul we are, the soul which is completely independent of this body, which doesn't die with the body, this soul will come back into a new life, into a new body, to finish what's left over.

We come into this new life to come to peace with what we carried with us from the last life. If we did something bad, maybe we have to experience certain things in this life, certain difficult things, bad things, so we can feel: "Okay, now we are even. Now I got my punishment." As I said, there is nobody punishing. It's all the function of the soul, the function of ourselves, but this helps us to let go of this old.

Or we come into this new life with this old belief "I deserve something great because I did only good and holy things my whole life, and I have not got rewarded for this". And then, we come into this life and experience good things so we can feel: "Okay, now, everything is fine. Now I can forget this old thing." The bill is even, so to speak.

And, again, I want to stress, this is the wiring of the soul; how we function. It has nothing to do with anybody, any God, or anything from the outside judging us to be bad or good. It's our own doing.

So, to summarize: we lived a life with this 'I' sense, and because we did good and bad things, we experienced good and bad things, we expect something for it, be it punishment or reward. And because of this, many things remain left over when we die, and for this, we come back, so we get the opportunity that these things are being balanced out, being finished, being cleaned. But the thing is that in this new life, in this life you are in now, again, you experience everything with an 'I' sense.

You don't know anything about your last life. All you know is that certain things happen to you in this life. For some people, it's good things, for other people, it's bad things, or both mixed. And because you experienced everything in this life again with this 'I' sense... also, in this life, again you take everything personal... because of this, new things are being created in you.

You experience difficult things, and then you feel bad about it and you get upset, or maybe you feel guilty, but in any case, this 'I' sense is reinforced again. Or you experience a good life and beautiful things, and then you are proud of it, and you feel better than other people. And, again, this 'I' sense is being increased. And out of this, new actions and new experiences happen, and the whole thing continues again and again.

Because of our 'I' feeling, these traces are being created in our psyche, and when these traces are still there when we die, we come back to resolve them. But we are still having this 'I' sense, and the experiences which should help us to dissolve this old stuff create new 'I' sense and new experiences and new traces. And so, it goes on and on and on, life after life after life.

So, karma describes how this happens, and the beautiful thing is that karma explains to you the root cause of this whole circus. And the root cause is that we take everything personal. The root cause is this 'I' sense. The root cause is our judgment: "Something good happens to 'me', something bad happens to 'me'"... and the judgments of our actions: "'I' did something good, 'I' did something bad."

If there are no judgments, if you can experience everything which happens in this life without any judgment: it's not good for you, it's not bad for you, you just experience it... then: who is there? Then, there is no 'I'. The 'I' depends on the judgment of "Ah, this is good, this is bad". And if, through your body, certain actions happen, if there's no judgment involved: "Ah, this is good what 'I' did. Ah, this is bad what 'I' did"... If things just happen and there's no judgment about it whatsoever, there is no 'I' sense created.

And this is the essence of karma. If you have judgments about things, 'I' is created, and if 'I' is created, you will have to come back, until you discover that there's no 'I'; until you discover to live without judgment. In the Christian world, it's being described a little bit different. In the Bible, we have this beautiful story of the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve... these two stand for "mankind before judgment".

And mankind before the ability to judge... there was no 'I'. There was no good, no bad, and there was no problem. And in the Bible, it is being said that then, humans became able of judgment. The humans "ate from the tree of the fruit of Good and Evil", meaning: humans became capable of judging things. And in that moment, when humans became capable of judgment, 'I' was created, and the Bible describes it beautifully.

Adam, meaning humans, had eaten from the fruit. Suddenly, he was able to judge. He said: "God, I'm naked", and he was hiding, because he thought this is bad. And this was a symbol, just describing: the moment a human judges, 'I' sense is created: "Oh, I am naked. Naked is something bad. I have to be ashamed." And there is the 'I'. Before the ability of judgment, there was no 'I'. There was just paradise.

So, what the Easterns describe with karma, in the Christian culture is described by this fruit of good and evil, the ability to judge, and then, 'I' was created, then, sin was created. The original sin is judgment, 'I'. Without the judgment, there is no 'I'.

So, we have this concept also in our Christian culture, but karma describes it much more elaborate for me. Only when my Guru started describing to me how karma works, then it clicked for me; then I started understanding also our Christian religion better. So, the beautiful thing about understanding all this is that now you know what the problem actually is. The problem is not that you do good or bad things.

As I said: in reality, there is no good, there is no bad. In reality, in the Garden Eden, before we ate from the fruit, there was no judgment. Everything just happened, and everything was perfect. But we are in the situation that we have this 'I' sense, and because we have this 'I' sense, we take everything personal. We judge everything what happens to us, and this increases the 'I' sense.

So, once you are in this cycle, once you started judging, once you have this feeling of 'I', you can't get out, because you take everything personal what happens to you. That's the game we are playing: how to get out of this. Now, if you do anything to get rid of this 'I' sense, it only increases the 'I' sense: "'I' am working on myself. 'I' am losing my 'I'." You can hear this; it really sounds funny. So, if you feel like "I am somebody", and we all do, there's nothing you can do, because you take everything personal.

Anything what happens in your life is either good or bad for you. You can't accept and forget.

Now, in the East, they say: "Accept everything, say 'yes' to everything", and they say this because they know that the judgment is the basis of the 'I' sense. The judgment is the basis of this whole karma game, and the advice is: when you accept everything, meaning, when you experience everything which happens in your life without judging it either being bad or good... you just accept it as it is, the beautiful things and the difficult things... then, the 'I' will dissolve.

In the Christian world, the translation for this is this: "Thy will be done. I stop judging what happens. I give up my preferences. I give up wanting certain things or not wanting other things, but instead, I say: God, thy will be done." This is accepting everything. It's the same in the Christian world, just with completely different words, but this describes the same solution: experiencing life, experiencing my feelings, experiencing my actions, without any judgment.

"God, this happens through you. If I do something good, it's not my responsibility. I have nothing to do with it. I don't deserve a reward. I don't deserve to be admired for this. If something bad happens through me, it's not my doing. I don't deserve punishment"... just accepting everything, and then, the 'I' dissolves. That's reversing what happened in the Garden Eden. When you stop judging, then the 'I' starts falling apart, slowly, slowly.

So, now you understand why we are in this life, and you understand the problem, and you know what the solution is. You know: the solution is accepting everything, not taking anything personal. But you find out: "I can't do this. I can't do this." You hear this, and maybe you read this before, it's not new information. Jesus talked about it 2000 years ago. This is not new, but we are unable to do it, because we take everything personal.

Something happens to you, and everything in you says: "I have to take this personal. This is serious." Not judging things, just accepting everything feels totally insane to us. So, although you know the solution, you can't do it. You can act as if you can do it. You say: "Okay. I heard this. Now I accept everything." You can try this. But then, you live your life, and you find out that in reality, it doesn't work. You just judge everything. You just take everything personal.

And now you discover: "By myself, I can't do it. I just can't. I want to, I want to accept everything. I want to say 'yes' to everything, but I'm unable. Again and again, I start doing this again and again and again." And this is not because you're stupid, this is our human challenge. All of us have this.

And the way out of this I know... Maybe there are other ways, I don't know, but the only way I ever heard of which really works is: somehow, a human being comes into your life who has already lost this 'I' sense, a human being, an alive human being who accepts everything. And when you experience such a human being, even for a brief moment, then you know: "Wow, this is possible." Then, that what felt totally insane, totally unreasonable before... Suddenly, you know: "Wow. This works!"

You haven't experienced it yourself, but you know somebody, even if he touched you only briefly. Maybe you only saw him once or her, but you felt: "Somebody is... this person is completely different. I don't know what it is"... but it's contagious. You can't see it. You can't understand it, but, nevertheless, it does something with you. And suddenly, you become capable of accepting, suddenly. You don't even notice that a revolution is happening in you. All your life, you took everything personal. All your life, you judged everything, either being good or bad.

You never could just accept everything. Suddenly, maybe in only one thing, maybe in a little thing, you suddenly can do it. And for the first time in your life, you experience yourself how this is: just accepting, just being here. And then you know: it is possible. And that's the beginning of a new life.

How this happens is different in every for everybody. I'm not saying that you need a Guru or anything like this. That was the function of Jesus for the people who met Jesus 2000 years ago. And it happens in your life in some way. You don't have to worry about it. It just happens by itself.

When you are in this life thinking about spiritual things, when you are in this life watching a video like this, this means that you came into this life already knowing all of this. You know it deep down. The only thing you need now is this one touch, this first step into acceptance, so you can unlearn what humans learned 10000, 20, 30, 40000 years ago in the garden, when we ate the fruit of judgment.

And then you get in touch with another human being who is like this, who is like Adam, who is like Eve before they ate the fruit, a human being who is free of judgment, who is just here. No 'I'.

And then suddenly, you can start learning this.

And that's what's happening right now.

And it's not enough to just hear this. Then, you learn to accept, and that's why I like to talk so much about the Samarpan Meditation in most of my videos, because this is a simple tool for normal people like you, like me, who live in society, who have a normal life, to learn just this: this acceptance. The Samarpan Meditation is being done every morning for 30 minutes, and all we do there is rest with our attention in the crown chakra and letting go of all the thoughts again and again.

It's not that you sit there for half an hour without thoughts. This is not possible for most human beings. It's normal that it's not possible for most human beings, but you practice this letting go, this accepting everything. And then, when you do this, slowly, slowly, you start doing the same thing in other areas of the day, not only in the meditation, first in little things, then in bigger things. And slowly, slowly, the way you experience life, how you experience your actions, your feelings, changes.

And by accepting more and more, this 'I' sense crumbles more and more.

That's the way. And then, as I said in the beginning, you came into this life because there are many of these old traces from your past life left over, where you still have a lot of 'I' attached to, and this determines how your life now looks like. Many people ask me: "Is life predetermined? Is there a life script, or do I have a choice?" And I say: no, you don't have a choice. There is a life script, and this is your life script.

And that's why it's different for every person. Every person comes into this life with a different set of leftovers from the previous life, things where he or she has to come into balance with, into peace with, and that's why your life is the way it is. And when you, now, in this life... when you start to accept all these things which are happening in this life, then, for the first time, you use this life correctly.

You use this life to dissolve these old leftovers from that life where you took everything personal, but now you experience it without taking it personal, without judging it. You just say 'yes'. And you experience everything which comes to you without creating new 'I' sense, without creating new karma, new leftovers, which have to be balanced somewhere else in a future life.

That's why you came into this life in the first place: to even out these leftovers which are stuck in you, in your soul, in that which you carry with you from life to life.

And when you become able to do this, the old dissolves, but nothing new is being created.

And then, if this becomes possible for you, something interesting happens: the old dissolves rather quickly, and life just becomes light, easy. But this is not the important thing. Much, much better is that then, at the end of this life, you stay in that 'nobody-ness', in this beingness without an 'I' sense, in this beingness without any attachments to good or bad things which you carry with you.

You are just free, free from karma. Or the Christians would say: free from sins. "Sins" is not something good or bad. Sins is what you carry with you that you can't let go, which creates this 'I' and which prevents you from just enjoying being.

And then, you come to the end of this life, and there's no reason to start the whole circles again. You remain this pure and holy, clean soul, and you are back to where you started a long time ago.

I like this karma explanation, because it shows so clearly what's needed in this life, and it shows how easy it is. Let's say it this way. It's not easy. We have to learn it, but it's not complicated. The whole game we're playing is very simple, but to learn it requires that we accept. Acceptance is the only thing we can do without doing anything, without creating new 'I' sense, without creating new karma, new identity.

Nothing else we can do. That's the end of the 'I', the end of the ego.

And then things happen, but we don't judge them anymore, and life just happens.

And then, everything becomes simple and easy for yourself and for everybody else around you too.

And this is the reason why I talk so much about the Samarpan Meditation, because that which seems to be so impossible... It's so easy to say: "just accept everything". It's so easy to say: "just say yes to everything".

And this meditation, this is the only tool I ever met in this life, and I tried a lot of things in this life, which directly does this for you. It teaches you this directly. And it is as if by meditating this particular meditation where you rest in the crown chakra, it's like you're connected through this... I can't explain this to you, you have to experience this for yourself... It's like in that way, you are connected to an army of other souls who already know this, and that's the support we need. You don't have to travel to India and sit at the feet of a Guru.

You get the support through this meditation, the support of other souls for whom acceptance and "no identity" is normal. And for you, it's unthinkable. But through this subtle connection which you cannot see and you cannot understand, you get this encouragement, and then, it becomes easy and possible for you. And then, you just meditate every morning for half an hour, and all of this dissolves and all of this becomes possible. And you don't even know how this is possible, but more and more you are able to accept just everything, and your life changes completely.

And then you know all this, then you understand your life. Then you know that everything which happens in this life is only for you, only to help you to become balanced, to become clean. It helps you to forget all this old stuff which you brought with you into this life, and then it's easier.

Everything in this life is an opportunity to practice acceptance and to practice not taking it personal, and you have these opportunities countless times every day. As long as there's an 'I' sense in you, you will take things personal.

And every little thing happening to you where you take something personal either in a good way or you're proud or you feel better than others, for instance, or in a bad way where you suffer or you feel mistreated or you feel something is unfair... all of these incidences, all of these experiences are opportunities to practice acceptance, to practice not taking it personal, not experiencing it as an 'I', just to say 'yes' to it. And these opportunities happen all the time, also for me. I want to give you a personal example.

I get a lot of feedback and questions for the videos. People write to me, and they mostly, they tell me how beautiful this is for them, how supportive. And then, this is an opportunity for me to not take it personal, to remember: "Ah, this has nothing to do with me." It's just happening. How this is happening, I honestly don't know. I don't know how it is possible that I speak these things. I'm just resting in my crown chakra, and I'm just as astonished as you are. So, it's for me an opportunity to accept it without taking it personal.

And sometimes... I mean, most of the feedback I get is totally positive, 99%. But once in a while, somebody writes something critical, negative. Just yesterday, I read a comment on YouTube, it was negative, and then, immediately, I can feel my 'I' sense coming up, the feelings connected with it, because I take it personal, as if I have something to do with what's happening here.

And this, again, is an opportunity for me: "Ah, accept my feelings, accept the other people, not take anything personal, not my feelings and not what's happening here, not that what other people say or think or write." So, everything happening is an opportunity for this one thing you have to learn, to practice that. And when you experience something in your life that is really difficult for you to accept, where you think: "Oh, I can't accept this", then you can know: this is particularly valuable for you. This is like a diamond, a golden opportunity to learn this one thing we have to learn.

That's all there is to say about karma.

If you have questions about this, write to me. I'm totally happy to receive your questions, and I answer in a video, so everybody can listen to the answer, everybody who wants. And if you find my videos helpful, I'm grateful if you consider supporting me financially. This is totally easy. On my website, you find information about this on the "Membership" page, and there it is possible that you can support me with very small amounts every month, and that's a tremendous help for me.

You know, everything I do, I do free of charge simply because it has nothing to do with me. I don't sell anything here. It's not my doing. It's not my gift to you. I enjoy it just as much as you enjoy it. I have no reason to receive anything for this. That's why it's free. But, of course, it requires a lot of time to do videos, it requires money, it requires all kinds of things and technical stuff and resources, and that's why I'm very happy if I get support from people.

And if you feel like it, if you feel joy, then you can do this, and the information you find on my website. And, usually, I don't speak about this, I completely forget this, but in some way, just out of practical reasons, of course, it's also important, and that's why I want to mention it from time to time.

So, this is all I can say about karma today. Karma is not something bad. Karma is a helpful explanation so we, as human beings, understand what's going on in this funny life. And the Christian culture has the same knowledge, has the same explanations, just as completely different words, but it describes to us what's our challenge. What are we actually facing here in this funny life? And I tried to shed a little bit of light on this subject.

I'm so happy that you are here.

I love you.