New Dreams Or Old Karma: What Will You Create In 2008?

In one of my earlier posts, I wrote about my initial encounter with a revered Indian Swami who offered to teach me the yogic secrets of conscious creation.

"You will learn to create many, many things with perfect ease," said Dattatreya Siva Baba, "but you won't do it through willpower and struggle. Perfect rest is when you are creating consciously. When you are neither efforting, nor idle. The yogi knows how to create the entire universe within his own consciousness."

What does it mean to create consciously? How do we create our lives? As we begin the new year, I'd like to circle back to this topic.

Many of you would claim that we don't create our lives at all - we are simply victims of random circumstance, navigating as best we can through the unpredictable events of a chaotic universe. Others would say we are fully in charge of our lives and can create whatever we want - any of us could become millionaires tomorrow. Which is actually true?

The yogis would say the following: As long as you identify with the individual human experience, you will continue to live a limited karmic reality. However, once you recognize your true identity as the Supreme Self, you can manifest anything you desire simply through the movement of your own consciousness. You will understand there is no separation between subject (perceiver) and object (perceived), hence you are non-different from that which you desire, as everything exists inside your own consciousness.

Unfortunately, until you realize your true nature, you are bound to live a karmic reality. Many people associate karma with the law of cause and effect. What comes around goes around, right? But the concept of karma is actually a more subtle and profound concept. Karma is literally translated as "action." It is a set of very fine, subtle impulses within the mind - the sum total of your thoughts, memories, and desires - that cause you to think and act in certain ways.

These karmic imprints (your subtle desires, attachments, beliefs, perceptions) are like seeds that carry your future. The thoughts and actions you initiated in the past created your present, and your present actions will produce a set of effects that will manifest in the future. Just as the acorn carries a full oak tree within it, your karmas will mature in time into full-grown experiences. According to the yogis, your thoughts create your physical experience whether your realize it or not. Everything you are going through today is an expression of past aspirations either at a conscious or unconscious level.

You might think of this phenomenon as a bit like flying a plane on karmic autopilot - all the coordinates are dialed in for your most probable destiny based on your habits or predispositions of mind. Someone has a predisposition to become a stock broker, another a gardener. Someone else has a predisposition for loving relationships, another for drama. These are not random arrangements, according to the yogis. Every movement, every idea, every obstacle, every breakthrough is a result of your inherent predilections.

If you're creating experiences you don't like you might say, "Well, I'll just think different thoughts...," and that would be a likely solution to the problem. The challenge is that the mind is habituated in its patterns. Bill Gates has different thought patterns than you do. And you have different thought patterns than a violent criminal. If the criminal could sustain the same thoughts as Bill Gates over an extended period of time, he would indeed create a similar reality. But we all suffer from attention deficit disorder. Your predisposed patterns of thinking pull you back to the same reality time and again.

So what if you don't like your autopilot destiny? Can you change it? Yes.

Powerful creation is your untapped birthright, but it requires two fundamental commitments: One, it requires a willingness to loosen your attachment to your existing habits and patterns of thought. And, two, it requires surrendering your individual identity in order to open to the unlimited creativity of the supreme Self.

Liberation is not only the recognition of one's true nature, but also the freedom to create your experience without predisposition, unencumbered by limitation of any kind. Over the coming weeks, I'd like to explore a process for cultivating this creative freedom with you. I'll be offering 7 Principles for Creating a Conscious Life. Stay tuned.