* - and how to get flung off that particular merry-go-round
“Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues
And you know it don't come easy…”
- Ringo
OK, picking up somehow, where we left off in “The Virus Is Us”… ok now… where to begin…
My premise there is that the virus is a consequence of our collective consciousness. Humanity “Group-Think” then, as it were, generates our collective experience. Even the Buddha said, “You are what you think.” Right? Didn’t he?
So now in this particular little chat I’d like to continue to discuss collective (un)consciousness, maybe throw in a dash of a more detailed understanding of karma, talk about circles and ellipses, muse on manifestation, and finally once we have a better grasp of manifesting circles, try to understand how we break out of whatever it was that instantiated the loop to begin with. Phew.
And since we quoted Ringo above, how about John here:
“Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face”
- John
Not a random quote, but to a point I’d like to make. And that is that Consciousness IS Karma. You could say it’s “instant”, as John did. But you could also say either it’s “out of time altogether” or also that it’s simply “extant”. I like that one. Let’s stick with that for now – karma exists because consciousness exists, and the two are inextricably linked, if not really almost the very same unified thing.
People often seem to think that karma is when you have done something (good or bad), and then later something results from that initial seed. OK, fair enough. I think that’s largely true, too. That might be a legitimate understanding of karma as well. But in that case, unlike the case I’d like to discuss here, it’s not instant, it’s not out of time, and it’s not the same as consciousness. It’s just a cause and a later effect or condition. These things happen. And, that’s a big part of some of Buddhist thought. But let’s hold off on discussions about cause and effect, causal conditions, and interdependent origination for later.
What I’m talking about here is something a little different, something a little less coarse, or less physical, than action and reaction. It’s more subtle, more at an energetic level. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but It’s like taking one specific frequency, as opposed to any other, and then understanding, de-constructing, or even ultimately shifting that frequency.
OK, buckle up. So, now we’ve decided (or I have) that consciousness is karma, both of which are extant, somehow exist (whatever that means), and somehow do that outside of the construct of time. Yet karma can and does have cycles which appear to exist within time (or over time), in some kind of serial cause and effect process. All of that makes zeroing in on defining karma, or understanding what karma is, a bit more challenging – since it appears to be a couple of different things. Therefore, I’m going to cheat, and not ask the obvious question of, “What Is Karma?”, but rather I’m going to ask, “Why is Karma?”
OK, so here goes nothing:
Question: “Why is karma?”
Answer: “Karma exists to reflect itself.”
(Note: Don’t forget, karma is consciousness…)
Karma (consciousness) is the initial causal condition (most people might not think of it this way at all); karma is the activity carrying out the consequence; karma is the resultant condition.
D – All Of The Above.
Imagine an ellipse, like a comet’s path around the sun. Now imagine yourself at the farthest point of that narrow ellipse, way out somewhere in space. Karma is not just the thing that cycles back around and provides some form of lesson or feedback to you, after it’s made its trip around the sun. Karma is every point (of consciousness) along that path.
Karma is the consciousness that set the comet in motion. Karma is the comet on its journey at each point. And karma is what returns to where it started. But in this case, karma is not a comet, it’s either a state of mind, or the consequences of a state of mind. Or ok, both.
Every part of that journey is the journey of consciousness – existing, being reflected, morphing, ultimately returning. Extant. Self-aware, self-reflective, instantiating its own resultant conditions, which it also is, based on what it was that caused them.
Karma then, i.e. Consciousness, is just a giant feedback loop, telling itself what it is, and where it’s at.
It’s Alice’s Looking Glass, where the object and its causes, the looking glass itself, the object reflected in the looking glass, and the object as ultimately impacted by the looking glass and the original causes, are all the same.
Karma, as we’ve said, is a process of a particular cause and effect, but really, as consciousness, it’s really also simultaneously (can you say ‘simultaneously’ about something that exists outside of time??) extant, both causing and reflecting itself.
So, what was that question again? Oh yeah, “Why is karma?”
Why? Because we need something, generated by our state of consciousness, to reflect back to us our state of consciousness, so that if we choose to, we can shift our state of consciousness. We peer into the looking glass of our own awareness. And just as our image is instantly there when we step in front of the mirror, our consciousness is instantly reflected in the consequences of our self-reflective attention, our level of awareness, Indra’s Net, or, Hall of Mirrors (your choice).
But what does any of this have to do with pandemics?
Let’s review, generically:
Consciousness is Karma (and vice versa).
The cause itself is also the reflection (generation), which in turn is also the resultant condition.
All of this co-existing instantly, like the reflection of an object in a mirror, all outside of time.
What appears to be the resultant condition (which it also is), is also the causal condition, which generated its own (easier-to-deconstruct) consequence. Essentially, all that means is that if you end up with a global pandemic, with certain characteristics, then those conditions existed initially in order to ultimately generate themselves in a more concrete, manifest way.
Saying it another way: The inherent characteristics (including of course problems) contained in the initial causal condition, are represented in the manifesting condition.
Everything germane is fully contained at each step of the cycle – from cause, to effect, all of it reflected along the entire cycle, at each stage.
The acorn contains within it the ability to become the oak; the oak contains the ability to produce the acorn. They are the same, except over time. The causal condition (the acorn) produces a resultant condition (the oak), which inherently contains the evidence of its own origins. That is, if you observe that you have an oak tree, then you know that you had to have at some point had an acorn.
The result displays (or betrays??) its origins.
So ok, back to the discussion at hand…
Here ya go: COVID-19 (not unlike the oak tree) is a function of, a reflection of, a result of, and the same as the consciousness that manifested it. What does this disease show us, what does it manifest? And maybe can we figure out what mind states generated it?
But that seems like a lot to bite off, for now anyway. Maybe this is a good place to stop. We can think about cause and effect, about acorns and oaks, about similarity manifesting as difference over time, about how things can be extant outside of time, about the seed of Yin within Yang (and vice versa), and about the interdependence, the interdependent origination of it all.
Maybe at some later point we might dive into what the causes, conditions, or qualities that manifest as COVID-19 are, tracing our way along that asteroid loop, what might have set it in motion. We’ll see.
For now… consciousness and karma are each and every point of that elliptical loop, seeding and being seeded. It’s an endless cycle. Like Ringo said, ya gotta pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues, which is again paying your dues, rinse and repeat. Where does it start and where does it end? And can that cyclic process be escaped, or otherwise altered?
Well, I think that’s the essence of mysticism and spiritual practice… isn’t it?