Ask The Council

What is Karma and How Does it Work?

This post is inspired by a question from Oksana who was confused about the subject of karma and wanted to know what The Council has to say about it.

Karma’s Elusive Meaning

“For many centuries this idea of karma has been elusive. In the beginning it was thought that the deeds you do in this life, you would pay for in the afterlife, such as heaven if you did many good deeds, and hell if you did many bad, hurtful, horrible things – you would pay for it in the afterlife.

“And then it evolved that if you were truly bad enough in many of your lifetimes, you not only had to wait until you went back to non-physical, but you would begin to pay for it in the physical body.

“So again, you would experience many challenging situations in your life. And many people who, not understanding where this came from, would begin to think: This is my karma. I know I’m not a bad person now. I must be paying for it from another lifetime.

“And we can only tell you that you create your own reality. And by believing there is a judgmental God that will cast these horrible situations onto you – we are here to tell you this is not how it works.”
¾ The Council

Popular beliefs about what karma is and how it works seem to vary considerably and The Council observes that the concept of karma has been difficult to understand for a long time. When difficult to explain events occur (or don’t occur) in people’s lives, some will think this must have been caused by their actions in a previous life and think it their karma. The Council’s comments also suggest this kind of belief in karma may also include a belief in a God that passes judgment on our actions and causes either bad or good things to happen in our lives based on these judgments.

You Create Your Own Reality

The Council’s opening remarks state that our reality (events in our lives) is created by our thoughts, and this is what karma means to them. This concept has been around for a while, but it can be difficult to understand and accept if we’re used to thinking that others, including ourselves in a past life or God, are responsible for most of what happens in our life. The rest of this post will attempt to bring more clarity to this concept.

Each of Us is Non-Physical Spirit in a Physical Body

To understand this idea that we create our reality with our thoughts, it helps to understand that from The Council’s point of view, each of us is primarily non-physical spirit that continually experiences love, joy, and happiness. For reasons that will be elaborated on shortly, a small part of our spirit may choose to be born into a human body to experience physical reality. If this idea doesn’t seem so easy to understand either, this post includes some interesting new insights from The Council that have provided us with new clarity on these ideas.

Who We Really Are, From a Broader Perspective

When The Council says that each of us creates our own reality, they’re referring to who we are from their broader perspective. They’re referring to who we are as spirit, which they don’t see as disconnected from who we are as human beings in our physical body.

Thinking of spirit as being something other than or different from who we are as human beings tends to limit our experience of our spirit’s creative potential. When this happens, it’s easy for us to imagine that someone or something other than ourselves has more control over our life than we do.

The idea that human beings are spiritual beings is not a new idea; it’s probably older than recorded history. But what does this have to do with karma and creating our own reality? When I asked The Council to help clear up some confusion I had about this, their initial answer wasn’t as satisfying as I hoped.

Spirit Chooses Difficult Life Experiences

“When many people go through experiences: there is sickness, there are accidents, there are deaths; if these things you are experiencing, it is only because there is a want to experience it. Where, say in one lifetime you were rich, maybe again you would like to – out of pure curiosity and just experience – would like to go through a lifetime of being poor.”
–- The Council

I’ve read explanations like this and I’ve heard The Council offer similar explanations in other sessions, but I never found this kind of explanation very satisfying. I was experiencing a powerful desire for a better understanding of why spirit might want to experience physical sickness, accidents, death, poverty, and other types of human experiences most of us would rather avoid. The idea that spirit might do this out of pure curiosity just to have these experiences didn’t make much sense.

Wouldn’t Difficulties Be More Satisfying if Spirit Deliberately Chooses Them?

I had given this subject some thought prior to our session and one of the things that occurred to me was that if my spirit wanted to be born in a human body and out of curiosity experience sickness, etc., it seemed that I would get more satisfaction from having these types of experiences than I do. And other people would seem to get more satisfaction from painful experiences than they seem to.

Spirit Makes These Choices for the Purpose of Growth

When I mentioned this to The Council, their response began to provide some of the clarity I’d been looking for. They explained spirit makes these choices:

“…for their growth purposes…”

“And going through this, when you realize this is not pleasant, this is not what I really want, the question that we hope, and you in non-physical hope, that it would bring you back into: ‘what is it that I do want,’ so that you can focus; turn your attention and focus to what is wanted and begin to create that.”
–The Council

They continued by explaining that spirit’s deliberate choosing of unpleasant physical experiences:

“…is part of evolvement. It is part of bringing forward the mind, the thoughts, and feelings so that you begin to realize you are truly in control of your life and you are the creator.”
–The Council

Experience and Move Forward into What is Wanted More

“It is very powerful to be going through a sickness, or a poverty, or a breaking up of families and to, instead of staying in that mindset, but to start focusing on what we want. And as you do this, you begin to see your life change. It is so, so powerful to the person. It is so – we see here – bringing you in alignment with love, and joy, and happiness. The lesson – if we believe we have lessons – is to experience and to move forward into what is wanted instead of what is being taught as the contrast.”
–The Council

A Desire for Increased Love and Joy and Happiness

I was familiar from Esther and Jerry Hicks’s teachings of Abraham with the concept of letting our undesirable experiences inspire us to want more desirable experiences, and the importance of turning our attention toward the new, more wanted, more desirable experiences rather than staying focused on what we don’t want. This made a lot of sense to me and I feel I’ve benefited considerably from this advice.

But until this session it didn’t occur to me in such a meaningful way that spirit might deliberately choose to experience painful experiences in physical reality because these experiences provide unique opportunities for spirit to expand into an increased experience of the love and joy and happiness that non-physical spirit is always looking for. This idea reminded me of stories of people who’ve lived through tragic circumstances they bitterly regretted at the time, only to end up feeling they wouldn’t trade these experiences for anything because they transformed their lives in such unexpected and beneficial ways.

So when The Council says we create our reality with our thoughts, it’s not just the thoughts we’re aware of as human beings that create our reality. It’s also our thoughts as non-physical spirit that create our reality.

At this point you may be thinking: what difference does it make whether things in your life are caused by your actions in a past life or by thoughts your non-physical spirit is thinking and you’re not aware of? In both cases what’s going on in your life can seem equally unexplainable and beyond your control. The difference, as The Council explains it, is that we can always count on our spirit to be focused on ways to expand us into an experience of increased love. We can’t always say the same about the intention of our past life actions?

Karma and the Law of Attraction

When I mentioned to The Council that what they’re saying about creating our reality with our thoughts reminds me of what we’re learning about the law of attraction, they replied:

“Exactly. If you substitute the words when someone is saying, ‘Oh my God, I am experiencing this lack of work. It is a karma that I have to pay.’ So if you change it: ‘I am experiencing this lack of work. It is the law of attraction because I am thinking that way.’ The law of attraction and karma, it’s the same. If you believe you will be paying karma, if there is this karmic law to pay back, you create it. If you have these thoughts, the law of attraction will bring it to you.”

Guidance for Oksana

When I asked if The Council had any comments specifically for Oksana they replied:

“We feel that in Oksana’s case what we see to be the most benefit for her is to find more to be grateful for right now. It is very easy for Oksana, as well as others, to think of all the things that have not worked out in their life; all of the hurtful situations they have come through.

And we are saying now that if you will take your thoughts off of what has not worked in the past, what is not working out right now, and change it to being grateful for the littlest things that you experience day by day, the more you can do this the quicker you will see the events of your life changing. That is what we would like Oksana to know: to go into a state of gratitude. After that it would be nice to picture her life the way she would like it, but we believe the attitude of gratefulness will help this move along quickly.”

“Because it is hard for her to stay in the positive force of what she would like and not seeing it come about quickly, that being grateful for where she is now and what she is experiencing now, will help this.”
–The Council

The Bottom Line

“And we want to say the bottom line: all experiences, positive and negative, are to bring you into alignment so that you can experience who you really are, be in line with who you really are, and to learn to that you are the creator.”
–The Council

More than anything else, our session with The Council on karma and creating our reality has impressed upon Cynthia and me the relationship between being in a human body, experiencing painful life situations, and the potential for these situations to help us realize more of our potential to be who we really are and that we are the creator of our experience.