Get a Lifetime Dot Com

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 dream into my private diary on the seventh day of the month of September in the year 1993 CE. May it benefit all beings who are trying to understand their karmic package.

Am with some members of a royal family….We are at supper. Then move into another room. The room is beautifully decorated. One of the princesses is known for being a good bridge player. The princess and I play two-handed bridge. She wins the contract — diamonds are trumps.

I think I have very little of value in my hand. But after playing a few rounds, I notice that I have all four aces! Something I hadn’t noticed before. I knew I could get four sure tricks with the aces. I have a two of diamonds as well. I expect to lose that trick.

But the princess begins to play sloppily.  So I win all five tricks.

My Notes on the interpretation of the dream:

• bridge = getting from one place to another
• hand = what resources are available to me in my life
• beat the princess — a royal, a person in a “superior” position, at her own game — by (1) recognizing that I have winners and (2) by her playing sloppily, without attention to detail or focus – I am focused.
• playing my hand = living my life
• four aces = I’ve got the best resources! I didn’t I know I had them when I first started playing my hand. Even my lowest card, the two of diamonds, takes a trick because the other player plays sloppily.
• two of diamonds = even though it is a low card, diamonds are trump here.
• diamond = clear mind; primordial intelligence.
• I am focused = what is the focus here? I am carrying the karma of my “ancestors” (my past). But, once I purify the negative karmic consequences of past actions, there is also great positive potential in terms of the abilities, talents, skills etc. Read the rest of this entry »

(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!)

We’ve heard the term carbon footprint. I have adapted that term and created a new one: karmic footprint.

(Our) actions…make imprints…whether we are acting physically, verbally or mentally.  <source: 12links chapter 2, pages 11-12 >

We’ve all seen children’s colouring books where, if the dots are connected, they form a picture.

Same thing with our lives, or even one action.

The “dots” (factors) in this case are the 12 interlinked factors that create and maintain our karma, which, when “joined,” in the sense of cause and effect, paint a picture of our karmic footprint. In other words, this “dot” leads to this “dot” leads to this “dot” and so on.

Each of the “imprints” below, if put together, might form at least a good, workable — if not necessarily complete — picture of the nature of karma.

In terms of our own lives, we could contemplate these imprints from the perspective of our own personal experience and see as much as possible what the karmic package of our life looks like and how the habitual patterns that are created leave our own karmic footprint.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

The popular view is that the placement of our planets in our natal chart “causes” our behaviour.  I have long believed that it’s the other way around: our actions from past lives create the placement of our planets. In other words, our natal chart in this lifetime reveals our “karmic package” brought from the past.

John Heisler, a physician with a practice in Schubenacadie, Nova Scotia, expressed this view in an article called “A Comparison of Western and Vedic Astrology, ” in a newsletter called Banner, Vol VII, No. 2, April 1994.

The position of the stars and planets do not cause illness in our body or changes in our state of mind, rather they reflect our own karmic patterning, whether it is group or individual karma.

Read the rest of this entry »

(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!)

When we don’t like what someone is saying about our behaviour, we may say, in defensive tones, “Oh you’re just projecting.”

They’re right! But it goes well beyond mere defensiveness. What’s more important is that what we call “reality” is made up of our projections.

What exactly does this mean?

First, what are projections? They are our thoughts about things. We see a dog and immediately project “nasty” onto the dog.

Second, what’s the problem with projections? Nothing really, until we confuse our thoughts about things with the things themselves! In other words, when projections become our reality. And it happens so quickly that we are not aware of it. Put another way, we believe that what we perceive is inherently “real.” So we fail to realize that what we call “reality” is actually our own projections coming back to us.

“It is not getting rid of our projections, but copping to the fact that we are projecting. Then we can leave space for things to be as they are.” (source: Jim Lindsey, student, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche)

For me, the episodes from the old television series called The Twilight Zone, now out on DVD, represent projections in their extreme form.

Example: take the episode called “Nothing in the Dark.” An elderly woman has, she thinks, kept Mr. Death at bay by refusing to open her front door for years!

How do we get out of the Twilight Zone of our daily lives and live directly in the sun? Another way to put this is: what can help us see projections as projections? Click here.

If you found this post helpful, please tell a friend. Then consider subscribing to my weblog. Just click the Subscribe button in the navigation bar and then follow one of three sets of simple, step-by-step instructions. Thank you.

(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!)

There are probably millions of “recipes” for happiness. Based on a dream I had and His Holiness The Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s explanation, I personally find the following recipe the most accurate. And certainly the easiest because it has only two ingredients!

Part One: The Dream

Wrote down the following dream I had on September 15’07:

We were driving in a small car. We felt safe in this small car. You [a friend called Pat] were in the passenger seat.

Young girl in back seat behind you. She was hovering over a cut-up, bloody chicken. Protecting it.

Then everything fades, except you.

You turn to me – your eyes very clear. You say “I now am beginning to understand transformation.”

My Notes on the Dream:
• chicken in this dream thought to be a delicacy, thus young girl protecting it.
• chicken = ego; we prize it
o therefore, cut-up, bloody chicken is very good news!
• Blood = life blood of ego cut off
• Chicken in back seat = ego now relegated to back seat
• Small (car) = hinayana path; 1 ½ fold egolessness = egolessness of self
• Small car was safe = no life-threatening accidents on the hinayana path
• Young girl = the “youthful” student in us still wants to protect ego but as “adult” student it is no longer possible
• Transformation = metaphor: turning water into wine (to serve with the cut-up chicken!): two “ingredients” in transformation, viz.
(1) wisdom: we realize that we all share the same basic nature, i.e. basic nature is universal – that universal nature is the vast, unbiased essence of mind; out of wisdom comes the second “ingredient” of transformation, compassion;
(2) compassion: just as sugar helps to transform water into wine, compassion [or bodhicitta, awakened heart] is the active agent of transformation and enables us to go beyond ego and “translate” ultimate, universal, basic nature into helping others

The Dalai Lama says it much better than I.

Read the rest of this entry »

(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 Friday November 06 Iras and I drive to the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto to participate in the Light Exchange. Bring in old Christmas tree lights and get the new, energy-saving led ones.

About six months ago, Iras has a change for-the-better in her financial situation. So as we drive back home, I asked her how that affects her life. She makes an interesting statement:

I can’t change my life. So I just made it better. Not in any big way though. I just paid off my debts.

The big question we all have is: How can I change my life (karmic stream\patterning)?

Read the rest of this entry »

(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!)

A few years ago I noticed that certain music evoked a kind of bittersweet longing, a particularly difficult emotion for me. It was causing me suffering.

I discovered that this particular music — a kind of Top Ten on my own personal hit parade — turned out to actually trigger deep-seated habitual desires, cravings….and it was mainly the negative ones that were triggered. So everytime I listened to these songs, it strengthened negative habitual tendencies.

• Roy Orbison: You Got it
• Bonny Raitt: Something to Talk About
• Huey Lewis and the News: Power Of Love
• Elton John: I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues
• Climax: Prescious (sic) and Few
• Melissa Manchester: You Should Hear How She Talks About You
• G. Rafferty: Right Down the Line
• Glass Tiger: Don’t Forget Me (when I’m gone)
  
• Sister Sledge: We Are Family
• Barry Manilow: Read ‘Em and Weep
• Whitney Houston: How Will I Know If He Really Loves Me
  

Read the rest of this entry »

(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!)

You have access to two homes that you can’t sell, take out mortgage on, trade, give away, change the structure of ….

What do these homes look like? What is their location? Actually, there’s no shortage of explanations, descriptions, analyses — both ancient and modern — of these homes. I’d like to share a description I read two days ago. For me, it’s moved into first place!

(The emphasis is mine.)

Scientific research reveals that the universe is a wonderful and mysterious place. Indeed, modern physicists sound more and more like ancient mystics as they describe its nature. The seeming vacuum of “empty space” is now portrayed as being filled with immense amounts of energy; our vast cosmos is viewed as profoundly interconnected in ways that transcend all apparent separation in space and time; despite its monumental size, our cosmos is thought to have emerged from an area smaller than a pinpoint; matter is no longer viewed as being “solid” but, instead, is thought to be composed of whirlwinds of energy that flow together with such precision that they give the appearance  of solidity…. <click here for source>

For me, the good news is that there is no separation between this fabulous universe and our own minds.

In short, our mind shares the same nature as the universe. And the universe shares the same nature as our mind. And they are both our homes.

If you found this post helpful, please tell a friend. Then consider subscribing to this weblog by clicking on the Subscribe button and following one of the three sets of simple, step-by-step instructions. Thank you.

(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!)

Dharamsala, India, July 1971, audience with HH The Fourteenth Dalai Lama

Amidst all the suffering — which I knew was somehow connected to my karma, but didn’t understand much more than that at this point — in the 1970s, there were a few beams of light in my life. One of them was meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV at Brock University in the Fall of 1967 and my pilgrimage with 108 others to India to see His Holiness, among other teachers. The trip took place from mid May to mid August, 1971.

India and Pakistan were preparing for war. Before reaching India, we disembarked from the ship and took a sight-seeing trip to Tata to see some historial ruins.  My friend Mary and I were almost kidnapped by the taxi-cab driver and his friend.

It was not uncommon to see tanks rolling along the roads in Northern India, where we spent most of our time. We arrived in Bombay in mid July. The transit system was on strike.

The trip was like a fiction story because the cultural differences appeared so vast between Canada and India: black market money exchanges; railroad stations that bring Dante’s Inferno to mind; babies purposely deformed so someone will have pity and give the mother some money; and a bureaucracy that made Canada’s look like a “love-in” scene…

I kept wondering how India could go on existing one more day — the continuing, grinding poverty; the 7,000,000 refugees; the monsoon floods; the eastern tidal wave; people who never leave the floor of the train stations. At some point the aware traveller is going to raise some questions, the type that never seem to have any answers as we conventionally think of them, despite all our sophisticated social scientific explanations.

Why does one country have so much suffering?….Actually, it can be difficult to compare the Indian experience with any other. In order to compare and contrast there at least must be a shared human experience.

There is: human suffering.

The following account is from a diary entry circa August 05, 1971 from my Trip Journal.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

* * * * *

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.
  

If you found this post helpful, please tell a friend. Then consider subscribing to my weblog. Just click the Subscribe button in the navigation bar and then follow one of three sets of simple, step-by-step instructions. Thank you.