{"id":111381,"date":"2023-03-07T14:38:05","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T22:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/?p=111381"},"modified":"2023-03-08T15:23:44","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T23:23:44","slug":"the-karmic-baseball-bat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/archives\/111381-the-karmic-baseball-bat","title":{"rendered":"The Karmic Baseball Bat"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve often defined karma as action.\u00a0 And it is sort of an action.\u00a0 But karma as a “negative” process might be more accurately defined as the inability to act.\u00a0 Often it is your karma that is upon you when you don’t know which way to turn or where to go.<\/em> – John-Roger<\/p>\n

This article by John-Roger was first published in the Movement Newspaper, May 1977.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve often defined karma as action.\u00a0 And it is sort of an action.\u00a0 But karma as a “negative” process might be more accurately defined as the inability to act.\u00a0 Often it is your karma that is upon you when you don’t know which way to turn or where to go.\u00a0 You say, “Which way do I go?\u00a0 Do I go here or do I go there?\u00a0 Do I choose this or do I choose that?\u00a0 I don’t know what to do!”\u00a0 That’s your karma.\u00a0 You feel like you should move one way, but something inside says, “Don’t” or “I can’t.”\u00a0 And you don’t know what to do, which direction to take.\u00a0 You can’t even “cop out” and make a decision by default; your karma has completely bound you.\u00a0 You’re caught.\u00a0 And sometimes you don’t even know it – and that’s when ignorance may seem like a blessing.<\/p>\n

Sometimes you have karma and don’t know it, so you go trudging right along, encountering one karmic thing after another until you feel like a big wheel going in circles.\u00a0 You may be.\u00a0 That feeling may be accurate.\u00a0 Sometimes you keep circling over and over the same karmic situation until one day you “wake up” and say, “Haven’t I done this before?\u00a0 I remember the last time.\u00a0 I didn’t like it much and now it seems like it’s happening again.”\u00a0 Pay attention this time.\u00a0 Focus on what is going on.\u00a0 Discipline yourself into action.\u00a0 If you can focus and become aware, then you can act.\u00a0 “I don’t have to do that anymore.\u00a0 I’ll do this instead.”\u00a0 And in that moment of action, your karma has been confronted and dissolved by your intellect – by seeing what it is and making the choice.<\/p>\n

Your habits, your greed, your lust, etc. will attempt to pull you back into the old patterns because they are familiar.\u00a0 And that’s spelled S.T.U.P.I.D.\u00a0 But those negative aspects are so strong within you that, when the intellect says, “Watch it!” they say, “But I got through this before.\u00a0 It’s okay.”\u00a0 Some of these karmic things are like arsenic.\u00a0 You can drink a little bit and it won’t kill you, and you can drink a little bit more and it won’t kill you.\u00a0 But one day you drink a little more, and you’re dead.\u00a0 It accumulates in the system, and you can’t get rid of it.\u00a0 You don’t even have to drink it on consecutive days.\u00a0 You can space it out over a long period of time, and it still accumulates and eventually it will kill you.<\/p>\n

Ignorance and the inability to act kills also.\u00a0 But it tortures first.\u00a0 Stupidity tortures, too.\u00a0 You get into the same “mess” over and over.\u00a0 Maybe it’s the same scene with your parents.\u00a0 Maybe it’s the same affair with different women.\u00a0 Maybe it’s the same surrender to alcohol.\u00a0 And you say, “I just keep doing it to myself.\u00a0 I don’t know why.\u00a0 I can’t seem to get out of it.\u00a0 It hurts.”\u00a0 You’re hitting yourself in the head; of course it hurts.\u00a0 Stop that and maybe your headache will clear up.\u00a0 And if you can’t stop yourself, find somebody who can help you stop.\u00a0 Have somebody sit on your hand.\u00a0 Or cut it off.\u00a0 Sure, that’s a ridiculous point of view, but sometimes it takes a drastic change to force you into a new direction, a positive action.<\/p>\n

One night I heard a comedian do his routine, and he was talking about people in Las Vegas who are really into gambling.\u00a0 The way he related it, it was extremely appropriate to the idea of karmic indebtedness.\u00a0 He was commenting on how gamblers keep putting their money out and keep losing.\u00a0 He said, “The guy’s sitting there gambling, and it’s like some other guy comes along with a baseball bat and clips him on the side of the head.\u00a0 The gambler says, ‘Wow! Some guy hit me on the side of the head with a baseball bat.’ And he goes on gambling.\u00a0 Pretty soon, the guy with the bat comes back, and the gambler says, ‘Look at that guy with the baseball bat; he’s going to hit me on the side of the head again.’ And he does, and the gambler says, ‘Did you see what he did?\u00a0 He hit me on the side of the head with a baseball bat.’ And he goes back to gambling.\u00a0 And the guy comes and hits him again, and the gambler says, ‘Can you believe that?\u00a0 He hit me again.’ And he goes back to gambling.\u00a0 And the next time the guy comes around and hits him in the side of the head, he says, ‘I think I’ll get out of here!’ and he leaves.”<\/p>\n

Seeing it coming isn’t enough.\u00a0 Sure you’re a good prophet; your prophecies are accurate.\u00a0 Here it comes!\u00a0 Whack!\u00a0 Right in the head!\u00a0 Knowing it’s coming doesn’t make it any nicer.\u00a0 And it doesn’t make the hurt any less painful because you’re aware it’s coming.\u00a0 After the first hit, you should be getting up and vacating the chair or getting prepared to duck or negotiating a bit.\u00a0 When a karmic field comes your way, get up and move.\u00a0 Often that karmic field comes to you to get you to move, to get you up off that chair and moving into new things that will be to your advantage.\u00a0 Change is a necessary part of life.\u00a0 Resisting change often brings pain.<\/p>\n

Some people are terrific at resisting change.\u00a0 They say, “Not me. \u00a0I’ve been sitting in this spot for 20 years.\u00a0 And I’m not moving for any old karmic thing that hits me in the head.”\u00a0 All right, get hit in the head.\u00a0 “No, I don’t want to get hit in the head.”\u00a0 Then move! “I ain’t movin’.”\u00a0 Here it comes!\u00a0 “Darn, right in the head.\u00a0 That hurt!\u00a0 But I won’t let it get to me.\u00a0 I ain’t movin’.”\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 “Cause I’m proud!”\u00a0 Your head is starting to look like a sack of doorknobs.\u00a0 You’d better get rid of that pride in a hurry!\u00a0 “No, sir, I’m going to sit here in this spot until kingdom come.”\u00a0 Here it comes again!\u00a0 “Ouch! Right in the head!”<\/p>\n

How often do you have to get hit in the head and knocked down before you say, “This isn’t working!”?\u00a0 Sometimes, before you reach this point, you start getting numb.\u00a0 You get hit in the head, and you think, “That didn’t hurt so much.”\u00a0 Maybe your scalp is black and blue and crusted over and numb.\u00a0 Maybe you get so used to it that you think it’s getting better.\u00a0 Here it comes again!\u00a0 “That didn’t hurt too bad.”\u00a0 Maybe not, but that time your jaw was knocked out of place.\u00a0 It’s starting to affect all sorts of things.\u00a0 The repercussions of one karmic action do go through the body and through the consciousness and affect many areas.\u00a0 A couple of brief examples: the pattern of stubbornness and resistance (to any action) in a woman can cause disease in the reproductive system and necessitate a hysterectomy.\u00a0 That karmic baseball bat comes around.\u00a0 You get hit.\u00a0 You resist the pain.\u00a0 You clamp down and push down on the energy, and you push that negative energy down into the reproductive area of the body.\u00a0 You do this enough and that energy blocks the flow there and will eventually manifest as disease.\u00a0 It’s a blockage of energy.<\/p>\n

The same pattern in men may cause them to be constipated or may eventually cause a hernia.\u00a0 True, the immediate cause may be that they picked up something too heavy, but that pattern of resistance and stubbornness was in there creating a weakness that made the injury possible.<\/p>\n

If you’re really honest with yourself and living in truth, you can write on a piece of paper everything that’s happened to you and how you caused it.\u00a0 And it really gets interesting to find out that you not only created it, but allowed it, and sometimes even promoted it.\u00a0 Then you want to blame somebody else for your creation – “Darn! Here it comes again.\u00a0 He hit me on the head again!\u00a0 When is that going to stop?”\u00a0 Get out of the way.\u00a0 Sitting there promotes it.\u00a0 “No, it doesn’t.\u00a0 I’m just sitting here minding my own business.”\u00a0 Okay, but the guy with the bat runs on a track, and he runs through here every two hours.\u00a0 Why are you sitting on the track?\u00a0 “I didn’t know; it was dark when I sat down.”\u00a0 It’s light now, and in a few minutes, he’s coming around again.\u00a0 Get up!\u00a0 Move! “No, sir, I’m not moving.”\u00a0 They’re building another track.\u00a0 There’s going to be two guys with bats, one on each side.\u00a0 “I don’t think I can take that.\u00a0 I’ll move.\u00a0 But it isn’t my fault.\u00a0 I shouldn’t have to move.”\u00a0 Yes, you do; it is your head.<\/p>\n

The first time you get hit with that bat, the first time you see it coming, the first time you hear its approach – that’s the time to move.\u00a0 Don’t wait for it to hit you 15 plus times.\u00a0 Don’t hang on to the old patterns.\u00a0 Let them go.\u00a0 Just drop them and move on to what’s next.\u00a0 It’s called intelligence.<\/p>\n

Baruch Bashan<\/p>\n

Watch a Short John-Roger Video: How to Transform Karma<\/h4>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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