In an end of year reflection on my personal milestones, growth, challenges and circumstances of the previous year and beyond I found a very interesting perspective of living with purpose and in mindfulness, shared by the legendary Thom Knoles. Here are some of my personal observations from the lecture which I found to be useful, and hopefully it brings value to your life too.
Karma and Kriya are ways of understanding the effect of action and activity. Action that is conceived and constructed by the individual or responding to action of an evolutionary nature brought about by nature’s own intelligence.
Karma comes from the Sanskrit root Kr-ma. Kr has to do with activity or action. Ma has to do with boundaries andlimitations. Krma: activity or actions which has boundaries on it; it is binding in some way.
Kriya means Frictionless activity.
Dharma refers to your personal role in the evolution of the universe. What is that which right now (not tomorrow or yesterday) that by doing you are fulfilling your personal role in the evolution of the universe? The answer to that is your dharma. This changes every few seconds. Every time it changes in Sanskrit it is referred to as a rashi. This means a transition has occurred. It may have been dharma for you to eat eagerly when you were hungry. When you are not hungry it is no longer dharma for you to eat like that. And so, when we are living in dharma and in a state of consciousness where we are in attunement with what is needed at the time and which can only be served by you, uniquely. You have a unique offering at every different moment. If everyone in the world tried to do the same one thing right now, only a select few would be doing dharma - everyone else would be doing adharma. This means not dharma.
When we are living our life in dharma then all action becomes frictionless and effortless. A basketball player that is extremely well trained, leaps into the air and drops the ball into the ring effortlessly. If anyone else tried this, it would be totally failure. He says “I was in the zone”. What does this mean? He was in kriya, engaging in frictionless activity. Anyone else struggles because they are in adharma. When there is no dharma there is no kriya. There is karma instead. Action that binds you. It binds you to something.
When we are living our dharma our activity is Kriya or spontaneous right action. Spontaneously you are in the right place at the right time and it is easy for you, even though to another it looks very difficult. Kriya is frictionless, effortless activity which is in complete accordance with all the laws of nature.
When you start moving out of kriya you encounter curbs, like those on a road. That’s the ‘karma zone’, where you move out of kriya and into karma – action that binds you, that has attached to it a corrective force. It is important to remember that we don’t live in a universe that is punitive but one that is always guiding us toward dharma with its unique and simple language. We just need to go back to stillness and our least excited state to really listen to it.
The issue is that a majority of the population are in karma, or the ever repeating known – that which you already know but you have to repeat again and again because we are not alert to the very obvious signs that we are receiving from the universe. We repeat the karmic action again and again with the idea that ‘I know there must be something right about this, I just have to get this right. Maybe if I practice doing it, I’ll change karma into kriya’
In contrast, when you are in alignment with your dharma you live Kriya which is spontaneous right action without effort, doubt or wondering. There is no wondering. In kriya there is a sense of knowing what is right; the intellect is not required.
We move closer to dharma by going into the field of no assumptions about anything. When you are in quiet meditation and arrive at your least excited state you are highly receptive to the signals of nature. Those signals are of two kinds – they are binary. Charm says MOVE. Go to that which is appealing and attractive. Aversion says STAY where you are, rest sometime and see when the charm arises. This is how nature talks to you. Human instinct is very simple – from your least excited state (i.e. not from a highly excited state) be open to that which is charming and don’t fail to attend to that which is not charming (aversion). This is how nature speaks to you. Charm says begin moving in that direction or adopt this preference. Non charm says if you go there even if it makes sense intellectually you are going to get karma.
Be receptive to your need to be courageous. Your failure to courageously embrace that which you find charming is going to require of you an even greater courage to face all the problems you will create. It is not dangerous to move towards charm; it is dangerous not to move and embrace the unknown. The ever repeating known is not the safe place. The adventure is safe – you have to be willing to embrace that which is not inside your existing comfort zone. If you don’t you are going to get really uncomfortable through karma. If we live our lives in this way and we meditate this allows us the opportunity to go into that quiet inner state to discover your dharma.
Consider these ideas in context of your own life. There maybe some areas where you are in ‘kriya’, moving in flow without thought or obstacles and others where you are bound by the karmic lesson until you have moved closer to dharma in that area.
Please feel free to share thoughts or examples of this in your life, or contact me to discuss and debate or explore a quiet meditation practice.
