We have often heard that whatever we do in this life, we get the results accordingly in the next life. This is called the law of Karma. Probably we do not need to wait for the next life and psychologically, whatever we do, we get the results the very next moment. For example, if we like appreciation, we become happy as and when appreciation is received. That means whenever somebody criticizes us, we will become sad or angry. Thus, our future sadness or anger is the creation of the pleasure we took in appreciation.
Whenever we divide the world between good and bad, right and wrong, we try to associate with the good and what we like or what we consider to be right. That naturally means that we resist what we consider to be wrong or what we dislike. However, all these divisions between right and wrong, like and dislike, etc exist in our mind and most of the time are just a result of our vantage point. The moment we look at things from a different perspective, their meaning undergoes a significant change. Russians may consider Ukrainians to be wrong and vice versa.
Probably all the divisions are just creations of the limitation of awareness. When we have been confined to a village, the customs and traditions of the village appear to be the gospel truth. However, as we grow and move around, we get exposed to different customs and traditions across different geographical places and become more aware and wiser. We become wiser in terms of the awareness of the customs and rituals of different places, but as we grow, we usually become narrower since we select our friends and colleagues having similar views and interact mostly with such people. We keep conforming to the worldviews of each other and slowly and gradually, our worldview gets confined to that. For example, we all will make fun of the boss behind his back and since it is a topic of interest to all our colleagues, that would soon become a gospel truth to us. We would all share the rebellious attitude of the kids, which becomes a reality in our minds.
That is how we keep making meanings in our mind about the world and in most cases, these meanings may be quite distant from reality. We read about the instances of war, rape, and corruption in the newspapers every day and our mind makes meaning of the world as if the entire world is doomed and we are living in Kaliyuga. Since the newspapers do not highlight the charitable activities being carried out by so many people, our brain conveniently ignores that side of the world. The selective perception of the world, makes us feel that we are suffering and actually we start feeling a sense of suffocation and exploitation. That is how we keep locking ourselves inside the prison of our worldview and thoughts. The fundamental problem here is that we look at different things from a perspective and form our worldview ignoring the relativity of the perspective. The Sun revolves around the Earth from the perspective of a person living on the Earth. That is no doubt a reality but the reality changes the moment we look at the movement from a distance and we soon realize that it is the Earth that revolves around the Sun. It is not easy to understand the relativity of our own perspective.
We do not realize the relativity of our own perspective since that requires a certain amount of wisdom. Further accepting the relativity of our perspective makes us uncertain and for somebody who is disconnected from his true self, handling this uncertainty is not easy. It fills us with very fundamental questions about existence such as the purpose of life. We do not want to waste our time on these fundamental questions and choose to run in the race of life (or race towards death) and in the process become more and more certain (ignorantly) about our worldview. That identification with our worldview creates a very strong karma. We get triggered by any and everything. If we identify with the age, we get triggered if somebody does not respect us being elders. If we identify with the organization, we get triggered when we see the organization falling. If we identify with the body, we get triggered by any negative medical report. If we identify with the family, we get triggered by any setback for our kids. If we identify with the social validation, we get triggered by any criticism. Thus, our inability to appreciate the relativity of our worldview makes us fixated on the worldview and that makes us vulnerable to emotional triggers and a slave of the circumstances. I feel that is how the law of Karma operates. An aware person does not get fixated on any worldview and therefore remains free of the law of Karma.
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