Tipperary Live Column: Balance is hard to find, even harder to recognise

Karma doesn't come to you. It isn't something that you give out or draw in. Your karma reveals itself through your actions and reactions, for better or worse. In life your karma is the result of how you act but that result was always there waiting to be uncovered as the truth of what you did to yourself. It’s tied up in your personality, in how you view the world, yourself and others.

If you are egocentric, if you are uncaring about the effects of your actions on others or on the world around you, don't be surprised if those same feelings are reflected back at you. You caused them directly by your way of being.
All too often we wonder why certain patterns happen or certain results are repeated in our lives and also on the greater stage throughout history. It’s because of a simple flaw. We don’t look for why the patterns happen in order to change them and so they don’t. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.

To understand this half of the puzzle is to put onself in the position of waking up to the possibility of changing the outcome of one’s life, situation by situation. We get to see the patterns of repeating behaviours and decide to make other choices. It’s a scary and uncomfortable proposition because it makes us vulnerable to the unknown, but then again there is no growth in the comfort zone.

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My own karma in life is to want the unattainable. I have a particular set of behaviours that were created in my very early childhood through situations that left indelible marks on my soul. My struggle is to see these patterns and to make choices that negate them rather than perpetuate and amplify them. It means saying sorry a lot when I behave in ways that repeat old patterns and then catch myself being certain ways, primarily defensive and angry.

I have trained myself to behave in ways which don’t feed that karma and it works most of the time. The hard part is knowing that unconsciously I still have traits, scraps of old ways of thinking that can rear up every now and again.
I still want things I can’t have but now I have the tools to realise that it’s the want of those things and not the things themselves that I perpetuate. To paraphrase Mrs. Doyle from Father Ted, ‘Maybe I like the misery’! It's a simple truth that if I think or act a certain way I set myself up for a miserable outcome. I have the power to taint relationships by thinking of myself and my needs above those of others and also above what’s right.

It’s a balance game. I have to realise that wanting the unattainable isn’t healthy and then laugh at myself for my self sabotage. I’m my own worst enemy! Both because I want and because I know how to thwart my inclinations.
I know the satisaction of want is temporary and that no matter what it will never be enough. The hard truth in that is that the want isn’t real, it’s an illusion brought about by my childhood lack of affection, security and feeling worthless and unvalued. Knowing this allows me to balance karma in my favour.

I have balance for the most part (because no one’s perfect) and I am contented. There are regular tests to make sure I’m still in the right frame of mind which also serve as reminders to course correct when I need to.
The world is the same. Balance is hard to find, hard even to recognise and harder still to maintain. It’s almost exclusively because of egocentrism that the world is reactive and self serving. It lacks a human face when it cares more about the individual than it does the needs of the human family. That’s the worst of human nature, isn’t it, to care about oneself before anyone else all the time. I mean, if I’m doing very well, making pots of money and living a lavish lifestyle why the heck would I want to give it up? I really wouldn’t, but that is predicated on not seeing the bigger picture of the suffering of others or my own.

You might ask how someone like a billionaire suffers when they have everyrhing but they do because they can’t ever feel at ease in their souls. There is the relentless pursuit of more for fear they will have less and on their death beds it all gets taken from them anyway. Their karma is to want everything only to lose it all in the end. How tragic a life they lead, only quantifying their passage through it by what they leave behind.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s more comfortable to cry in a BMW that it is on a bicycle. Having a life of comfort and plenty is great but being attached to what one has means that being separated from it leaves a hole.
The realisation in this situation, that it’s not yours to want, that you’re just borrowing it for a lifetime and then it will be somebody else’s, is a karma worth pursuing.

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The alternative is a very comfortable prison of never being free of want and by the time you realise (if you ever do) it will be too late and the door will have slammed shut and you’ll be all alone, with nothing but regret and the want of one more day to change your karma.

Be content with only borrowing life so that when you give it back there’s nothing to cling to. That karma will set you free.