Karma Yoga involves selfless service to others with those around us and for the world at large. It is the path of offering our heart, mind and soul to some dutiful service that benefits others, while we release any selfish or self-centered motives behind our work via our ego. It is designed to purify our heart and mind so that we can experience greater and greater enlightenment and expanded, innovative thinking.
Karma Yoga exists upon all paths of Light. It is called love in action. Electricity can be static but made dynamic through transformers, generators, circuitry, wires, and so on. It is the same with Karma Yoga when love is put into action--it becomes manifest through our service. Another word for karma yoga in Sanskrit is called Seva.
We can sit and meditate for hours, stand on our head for days, or do breathing practices until the earth runs out of oxygen. We can also do nothing and continue to suffer and focus on our own problems--- but until we really begin to think and do for others, then we miss the entire point of our evolution upon this planet and that is to realize our Oneness through others by connecting to others in a way that is meaningful and inspiring to us.
We can never advance or expand without getting out of our own Self-absorption, selfishness, and self-centeredness of our ego. No matter what the source of our selfishness, even abuse and pain---until we start doing and thinking of others despite what we have gone through we will never completely heal. Selfless service actually heals the wounds of the heart in a very mysterious way. We somehow exchange our pain for the gain of helping others in their pain and other issues.
Karma Yoga is called karma yoga because we lessen and dissolve our karma--through service.
In karma yoga we perform a "karmic energy exchange---" Over so many lifetimes and of course this one, we have accumulated so many toxins, burdens, sorrows, negative actions and thoughts that have affected us and are buried inside us, especially our hearts. When we perform selfless actions for others, we begin to cancel out and nullify our own negative karma. We then feel more and more joy and we feel lighter and lighter if we practice this regularly.
Karma yoga can be anything from stopping to help an elderly lady, tithing or offering money for good causes, tying a shoe for a toddler or broader work of any kind that helps global humanity. The type, magnitude and scope of service does not matter, it is the feeling behind and the energy of heart that burns up the negative karma. Even meditating and praying for others, offering our good wishes to others is a form of service.
If we continue down a selfish path we become a burden to Mother Earth: always taking, taking taking. We do not care about others' feelings and how we are affecting others' lives. It is always all about us and our own drama and trauma. We are obcessed and concerned about our own money name and fame. We stop at nothing sometimes to get ahead no matter what the cost is: even if it means sacrificing our principles and our Self esteem. If we remain Self-absorbed we can play into the wrong hands and think that we are going to gain material wealth only to find that we have been exploited on any level we can think of and we end up exploiting others. We then begin to harm the planet and the innocent people upon it. It is then that Mother Earth and thus the Divine feminine "turns against us" through our own negativity our own choices and decisions to go negative rather than into Light and we begin to suffer and create disease within our mind and body. This is not judgment but rather the result of our own choices through cause and effect.
We perform actions that harm society rather than help because we have not learned to keep our ego in check. Our heart is closed, jaded, indifferent or numb so we either refuse to see what we are doing or we live in denial about what we are doing or not doing for this world that so much needs our love and light in whatever form possible.
Or we are so focused on what we want that we forget to see the forest from the trees--we get lost in the jungle of our dreams that sometimes become nothing but dead ends.
Karma yoga teaches us through experience. One cannot really talk about or write about karma yoga that much. It has to be experienced. So many blocks, issues, and difficulties and disagreements can come up while doing service. This internal dialogue is part of the ego trying to fight to stop us from expanding our hearts.
You see, the clean-up and clearing of our selfishness in a way means the death of the ego--- and it does try to die a hard death by remaining self-righteous, stubborn, resistant, and being a "know it all." It knows that if the heart wins then it will dissolve into love.
However, sooner or later our Soul has to express itself through the vast, vast infinite portal of love and not through the small donut hole of the ego.
The more selfless service we perform, the greater our clearing and the better and better we feel. It has to be experienced over time.
We can then step out of our fear, narrowness, pettiness, haughtiness and so on (all elements of the ego) to realize that the world does not revolve around us. We are not Apollo and Venus to be worshipped and adored. We are not the center of attention always. And remember even if we are Apollo there are trillions of bright suns all equally beautiful but different and countless planets so Venus does not stand alone, folks.
We realize that we grow and do not need to be the center of attention, admiration and worship to hold up our Self esteem. In this real humility is born. Not low Self esteem but the realization that our role in life is just as vital as anyone else. We are great because of all the right reasons, not from thinking we are great because of exaggerations or distortions based in our pain that we use as a defense and an excuse.
Our Self-esteem grows stronger and broader and our ego expands to understand that we are good people without such external, constant attention and praise.
We fill our emptiness with good works so that we realize and open up to just how much we can offer the world and what real talents are truly within us. This is truly what Self-esteem is about---realizing that we are good just by being who we are.
That is the beauty and mystery of karma yoga--one of the limbs of Yoga.
Dr. Rama
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