(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

On December 26, 2004, a earthquake surged under the Indian Ocean in what the National Geographic claims is probably the world’s most destructive tsunami in history. It is an example of cause and effect, but not the karmic kind.

(CAUSE:) Giant forces that had been building up deep in the Earth for hundreds of years were released suddenly on December 26…..

(EFFECT:) ….shaking the ground violently and unleashing a series of killer waves that sped across the Indian Ocean at the speed of a jet airliner.The earthquake that generated the great Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 is estimated to have released the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

By the end of the day more than 150,000 people were dead or missing and millions more were homeless in 11 countries, making it perhaps the most destructive tsunami in history.

There are times in our lives when we feel we’ve experienced “killer waves” or what I’m calling tsunamis of the karmic kind.

• Our spouse\significant other isn’t who we thought they were.
  
• We’ve lost our job.
  
• A child is diagnosed as “psychotic” and has dropped out of school.
• etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
  

We rush to put our lives back together.

That’s understandable. We just want our “old lives” — which rest on old habits — back.

Nothing is stronger than habit ~ Ovid

I’d like to tweak that to say “Nothing is easier to fall back on than habits.”

Having experienced a number of karmic\psychosomatic tsunamis of different sizes and various degrees of destruction, I finally came to the point where I stopped trying to put my life back together again.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I grieved. But rather than fall into the usual habitual patterns and rush to glue everything back together, I instead tried to simply look at the ego-mind’s tendency to fixate on, obsess about, and cling to, my expectations.

Another way to put this is that when the gap occured between the tsunami and the next moment of my life, I didn’t jump back quite so blindly onto the treadmill of fixation that would have simply maintained the same karma that produced the psychological tsunami in the first place!

Instead of rebuilding, I tried to re-direct my life.

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