We do not have to believe in reincarnation to benefit from this post or weblog. We only have to agree that present actions have effects in the future. What we call our past history was once the future that was caused by previous “present” actions.

Prologue: We are told that karma is carried from one lifetime to another and from one situation to another in this present lifetime. It’s much like passing the torch in a relay race. But what does karma actually look like “on the ground” in our daily lives? Put another way, what are the consequences of our past volitional actions when certain causes and conditions meet and certain seeds ripen in the present?

Based on my weblog page called Actual face of karma, what would the life of someone who is the present (fictional) incarnation of Queen Tiye (mother of Akhenaten), Queen of Sparta (aka Helen of Troy), Queen Jezebel, Cleopatra, St. Teresa of Avila and Sigmund Freud actually look like? In other words, what is the fruition of the karma of this portrait gallery of six historical figures in areas like money, sex, friendships, career, family etc.? To try to answer this question, I use diary entries like the one below.

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I, Rainbow Desert Flower, enter this into my private diary on the 28th day of the month of April in the year 1999 CE. May it benefit all those who are trying to understand their own karmic footprint.

All my desires around relationships, career, money, friendships etc. are thwarted. I spend a considerable amount of time during my life asking “Why?” No matter what I do, it is unsuccessful. I try many methods. They fail. About the only thing I understand is that it is some karma I have brought with me from my past. Results coming due from seeds planted long ago. But what kind of seeds? What kind of karma? My desires in past lives were ego-based. In those lifetimes “I” was used to being famous and powerful and had abused that power. Actually, it’s not so much “bad” karma as it is frustration with not getting what I want now. Karma is a balancing act: “I” was powerful at the expense of the well-being of others. Now I feel powerless.

Update: Sunday, October 04, 2009:

• Today is the anniversary of the death of the Spanish St. Teresa of Avila, one of the historical figures in our Portrait Gallery — as described in the Prologue above — who died at the age of 67 in 1582.
• Karma from my past actions has now ripened because my desires in the past were ego-based. The antidote to this habitual pattern is to put others’ first rather than wallowing in self-absorption.
  

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