Sleep, Plans, Thoughts and Deeds
Karen Grant
Deeds of the Day
Deeds of the Day
preexistence
Karen Grant
Unbornness
Unbornness
Balance
Karen Grant
Harmony
Harmony
Open Mindedness
Karen Grant
Embracing the New
Embracing the New
Positive Attitude
Karen Grant
The Bright Side of Life
The Bright Side of Life

Karma

Karma Is an Active Law

In Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he outlines his idea that the human being’s will to find meaning is the driving force of our lives. In Frankl’s logotherapy, he has three tenets: 1) Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones; 2) Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life; 3) We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience. Central to his theory is that we must find ways to endure hardship.

Rudolf Steiner tells us that understanding the principles of karma is the key to understanding the meaning of life. We can see that underlying Frankl’s theory is the law of karma. Why is this happening to me or to them is understandable on a deeper level when we begin to grasp the idea of karma and reincarnation. The suffering we see in the world and in our own lives, the disparity of one human life compared to another, seems random, senseless, and cruel without this key.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

The law of Karma does not throw light upon abstract riddles of the universe, but upon problems which we actually encounter in life at every step. Is it not a real life-riddle when we see that one human being is born in misery and poverty, apparently without any fault of his own, and that the finest gifts which lie concealed within him must atrophy owing to the social condition into which life has placed him? We must often ask ourselves in life: How can we explain the fact that an apparently innocent man is born in the midst of misery and pain, whereas another man is born without his merit in overabundance and wealth, surrounded at the cradle by those who tenderly love him? These are problems which modern superficiality alone can ignore.

The deeper we look into the law of karma; the more we find that the hard injustice apparently presenting itself to a superficial observation of this law disappears. We then realize more and more why one person must live in one condition of life and another person in another. Injustice and hardness in one or other life-situation can only be seen if we limit ourselves to the observation of one life; but if we know that this one life is the absolute result of former deeds, the injustice completely vanishes, for we perceive that the human being prepares his own life.

Someone might now object: It is terrible to think that all the blows of destiny which a human being encounters in this life are brought about through his own fault! We must realize, however, that the law of karma is not something for sentimental people to brood over, but that it is an active law, rendering us strong and giving us courage and hope. For even though we ourselves have molded our present life with all its hardships, we know at the same time that karma is a law the chief significance of which must be looked for, not in the past, but in the future. No matter how deeply oppressed we may be in the present owing to the result of past deeds, our insight into the law of karma will bear fruit in our subsequent lives. Our attitude determines what fruit our deeds will bear, for no action is without consequence. It is far more anthroposophical to look upon karma as an active law! For no matter what we do, we cannot escape the consequences of our deeds. The more we suffer in this life and the better we bear our sufferings, the more shall we profit by this in future lives. Karma is a law which solves the riddles of life which we encounter at every step.

Excerpt from: Theosophy and Rosicrucianism, Lecture 7: The Law of Karma by Rudolf Steiner. June 22, 1907 Kassel, Germany

Applying the law of karma to our own lives means that we are better able to accept and move on through life’s tribulations; we are meant to grow and become stronger because of them.

Applying the law of karma to the woes of the world includes the knowledge that we cannot idly watch evil run riot. We must help wherever we can; we can choose to have a positive effect on another person’s karma. To see an example of this, watch the short documentary, The Barber of Little Rock, on YouTube. Arlo Washington’s work in Little Rock, Arkansas is an inspiring example of what Steiner calls making a new entry in the book of someone else’s karma.

Truly understanding the law of karma is not to focus on the past, but to embrace the future knowing that nothing we do is in vain.

#TheBarberofLittleRock #ArloWashington #ViktorFrankl #karma #meaning of life #Man’sSearchforMeaning

Our Karma, Ourselves

We all make mistakes, and we more than likely learn something from them. Even if no one else is aware of what we did, we suffer a bit; we hope to put it behind us; we hope no one ever finds out; we hope to avoid punishment. We cannot imagine that we would ever need to answer for every single little thing we do wrong.

Justice, both personal and cultural, often fails to manifest during our lifetimes. Sometimes, people who have done horrible things avoid punishment and people who hurt no one suffer the most. Life, examined even superficially, makes no sense in this regard; the seemingly haphazard dispensation of justice is one of the appalling aspects of being human. But an understanding of karma and reincarnation shows that no one “gets away with” anything.

Rudolf Steiner, a modern initiate, tells us that in the life after death, we face the good and bad, the wise and foolish of everything we’ve done in our lives. Ultimately, as we begin to prepare for the next life to come, we help to create the circumstances which can lead us toward our purest self. It turns out that we will embrace any suffering gladly because it helps us reach that goal. Knowing this now allows us to accept our fates with deeper understanding and equanimity.

Steiner spoke often about karma and reincarnation. We can study the things he has said while we work on ourselves to gain access to the spiritual world for ourselves. Today we will discuss one of the basic principles of karma referenced above: that we answer for absolutely everything in our lives.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

In earthly life… we do not like to suffer from our own foolish mistakes. We wish we had not made the foolish decision. But this really only applies to the one earthly life, because in effect, between the foolishness of the decision and the punishment we suffer in experiencing its consequences, only the self-same earthly life is intervening. It all remains continuous.

But between one earthly life and another it is not so. For the lives between death and a new birth are always intervening, and they change many things which would not change if earthly life continued uniformly. Suppose that you look back into a former life on earth. You did something good or ill to another person. Between that earthly life and this one, there was the life between death and a new birth. In that life, you cannot help realizing that you have become imperfect by doing wrong to another human being. It takes away from your own human value. It cripples you in soul. You must make good again this maiming of your soul and you resolve to achieve in a new earthly life what will make good the fault. Thus, between death and new birth you take up, by your own will, that which will balance and make good the fault.

Or if you did good to another person… you see it clearly in the life between death and new birth. If you have helped another person, you realize that he has thereby attained certain things which, without you, he could not have attained…

… It will never happen, under any circumstances, that a real insight into your karma will lead you to be dissatisfied with it… for, in the last resort, we ourselves are our karma. What is it that comes over, karmically, from our former lives on earth? It is actually we ourselves.

Excerpt from: Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies. Volume I, Lecture 3 by Rudolf Steiner. Dornach 1924.

We are eternal beings that keep evolving throughout our many incarnations as well as the time we spend in the spiritual world between our incarnations. Learning about karma gives us an impetus to keep working on ourselves in earnest long before death takes us across the threshold. With humility and gratitude, it is possible for us to learn to accept responsibility for ourselves while we are still living in this lifetime. We cannot erase the past, but we can create a better future for ourselves and everyone we know.

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What the World Needs Now…

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Let’s start a bit differently by enjoying Andra Day’s cover of the song bearing the title of this month’s post.

When romance appears in our lives, it changes us. The whole world becomes more beautiful, more harmonious, more livable. Our lives have new meaning as we anticipate today, tomorrow and the next day filled with joy. Love is a force that elevates us—that moves us to turn our attention away from ourselves and toward another. We also can see ourselves reflected with glorious light in the eyes of the person who loves us; we ourselves are more beautiful.

It is this aspect, however, that entangles romantic love with a good measure of self-love. As long as the love we give is returned, the glow remains. When love isn’t returned, or it withdraws, we suffer; we may even hope the other will suffer, too. Romantic love can be selfish.

What the world needs now is more unselfish love; love reaching beyond our personal relationships. Love that becomes an actual force in the world. This won’t be easy. In the excerpt below, Dr. Steiner discusses why our subconscious awareness of our own karma makes this kind of love so difficult to give.

In our previous studies of karma and reincarnation, we discovered that everything we think, say and do in this life matters forever. We are born with karmic debt from previous lives that we will work out in this or a future life, and we accrue karmic debt in this life that we will work out in subsequent lives. Deeds of unselfish love, however, do not follow this formula. Deeds of love given freely can only mitigate our past-life debts; they do not benefit us in our own future karma. Yet these free deeds of love are enormously important because they become a world-changing force.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

If we grasp the meaning of the law of reincarnation, we recognize the significance of love in the world, both in a particular and in a general sense. When we speak of karma, we mean that which as cause in the one life has its effect in the next. In terms of cause and effect we cannot, however, speak truly of love; we cannot speak of a deed of love and its eventual compensation. Deeds of love do not look for compensation in the next life…

By everything we do out of love we pay off debts. From an occult point of view, what is done out of love brings no reward but makes amends for profit already expended. The only actions from which we have nothing in the future are those we perform out of true, genuine love. This truth may well be disquieting and men are lucky in that they know nothing of it in their upper consciousness. But in their subconscious all of them know it, and that is why deeds of love are done so unwillingly, why there is so little love in the world. Men feel instinctively that they may expect nothing for their “I” in the future from deeds of love. An advanced stage of development must have been reached before the soul can experience joy in performing deeds of love from which there is nothing to be gained for itself. The impulse for this is not strong in humanity. But spiritual science can be a source of powerful incentives to deeds of love.

Our egoism gains nothing from deeds of love—but the world all the more. Love is for the world what the sun is for external life. No soul could thrive if love departed from the world. Love is the “moral” sun of the world… Our deep concern must be that an impulse for sound, healthy development shall find its way into the affairs of humanity. To disseminate love over the earth in the greatest measure possible, to promote love on the earth—that and that alone is wisdom.

Excerpt from: Love and Its Meaning in the World. Lecture 10 by the same name given in Zurich, December 17, 1912.

The very definition of selfishness is that we keep for ourselves that which we might give to another for their benefit, a sobering thought. But Steiner’s explanation of why “there is so little love in the world” is sobering on a deeper level because so very many of us in modern humanity think that the idea of changing the world with love is one of pure folly, the height of naivety.

Dr. Steiner says the belief that love can change the world is wisdom.

Elsewhere in this same lecture, he says that “when we practice love, cultivate love, creative forces pour into the world.” We see the truth of this when our own world changes because of love. We see the truth of this when we feel inspired by others’ deeds of love in the world; random acts of kindness that creatively work on our own forces of goodwill.

We all have moments when we do something selflessly for those close to us. We all have done things for which we expected no reward just to make someone happy or comfortable or safe. Thus, we are already on the path. This is the beginning of our own impulse toward a “sound, healthy development in the affairs of humanity.” The more we can expand our love to embrace the world of people outside our personal circles, the more we can offer free deeds of love, the more we actually change the world.

Photo “The Heart Nebula” ©Alan Erickson

Future Karma

In a tradition that some believe dates back to the Babylonians 4000 years ago, many of us make New Year’s resolutions. In fact, if we don’t make a resolution at this time, we more than likely had to make that decision consciously.  Resolutions are personal; we feel vulnerable about whatever we hope to change about ourselves.

We may worry that we will not be able to keep our resolutions. Yet each year we face this issue. Rudolf Steiner says, “On New Year’s Eve it is always fitting to remember how past and future are linked together in life and in the existence of the world…”

When we do make a New Year’s resolution, we usually make one that we believe will improve us. This striving toward a better self is an important decision for our future karma. On the one hand, we understand through karma that we likely deserve our present trials and suffering; that we have a karmic debt from our previous lives that seeks resolution in this one. We can feel trapped by our own karma because the past is written; its consequences are inevitable. But that’s not the only way to look at karma. Though we must accept our present karma as it unfolds, our future karma is ours to master. How do we do this?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

It is often imagined that the human being is subject to the irrevocable law of karma in which nothing can be changed. Let us take a simile from everyday life to explain the working of this law.

A merchant makes entries of debits and credits in his account books; taken together, these entries tell him the state of his business. The financial state of his business is subject to the inexorable law governing the calculation of debit and credit. If he carries through new transactions, he can make additional entries and he would be a fool if he were unwilling to embark on other business because a balance was once drawn up. In respect of karma, everything good, intelligent and true that has been done by a man stands on the credit side; evil or foolish deeds stand on the debit side. At every moment he is free to make new entries in the karmic book of life. It must never be imagined that life is under the sway of an immutable law of destiny; freedom is not impaired by the law of karma. In studying the law of karma, therefore, the future must be borne in mind as strongly as the past. Bearing within us the effects of past deeds, we are the slaves of the past, but the masters of the future. If we are to have a favorable future, we must make as many good entries as possible in the book of life.

It is a great and potent thought to know that nothing we do is in vain, that everything has its effect in the future. The law of karma is the reverse of depressing; it fills us with splendid hope and knowledge of it is the most precious gift of Spiritual Science. It brings happiness inasmuch as it opens out a vista into the future. It charges us to be active for its sake; there is nothing in it whatever to make us sad, nothing which could give the world a pessimistic coloring; it lends wings to our will to co-operate in the evolution of the earth. Such are the feelings into which knowledge of the law of karma must be translated.

Excerpt from: Theosophy of the Rosicrucian. Lecture VII: The Technique of Karma. Munich. May 31, 1907

The human soul’s evolution ultimately flows forward toward perfection, but in any one life, a person can veer from this path in manifold ways; a person can stall or even move backward in the course of one lifetime. We see this happening to our brothers and sisters when they choose to lie, cheat, steal, etc. We see them going in the wrong direction in their current lives, against their own evolution’s flow, often dragging others with them, thus incurring more karmic debt. When we focus on other people’s destructive choices, we may feel disheartened or frozen by a sense of helplessness to generate positive change in the world.

But we’re never really helpless. Even if all we can do in this moment is improve our own selves, no matter how trivial our resolution may seem to the world at large, we actually succeed in making the whole world better. Eating healthier, going for walks, watching less tv, learning a new language, reading more, whatever our resolution is, changing ourselves for the better benefits us, the people we know, and even the people we don’t know. Whether we inspire others or not is beside the point. In every moment that we master ourselves, we are actively working for humankind’s evolution.

May we succeed in keeping our new resolutions.

Happy New Year!

Not So Very Instant Karma

When somebody has done something that hurts another person, it has a certain effect on his whole life. Any action of man that hurts another being or creature or the world in general, hinders the doer in his development. This is what the pilgrimage of life means for me, that the primary force of the soul, as it goes from incarnation to incarnation, is set for further development. – Rudolf Steiner

What comes next in our journey after we’ve crossed the threshold? In the last two posts we discussed the moment of death in Our Last Moment, and the retrospective of our life in Panorama of Life. Now we come to the next phase: Kamaloca. We may remember discussing karma and reincarnation previously; now we will find how we recognize the need for karmic justice in our lives. During Kamaloca, a term Dr. Steiner uses from the Sanskrit meaning Place of Desire, we review our lives going backwards from our last moment before death to our first moment at birth. This process occurs over a period of time that lasts roughly 1/3 of our lifetime, so that a person who dies at age 60 would experience Kamaloca for approximately 20 years. (You may have noticed how this corresponds with the period of time we spend asleep during our lives.)

We can imagine that this thorough life review will show us the effect we had on the people we encountered while we lived. However, we do not merely observe our effect on others, we actually feel exactly what they felt from their encounter with us. The good and the bad, all of it. As we go backward through our entire life and finally arrive at our birth, we will have experienced objectively our entire life on earth. How, then, do all these feelings resolve themselves into karmic action?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

You experience objectively in the spiritual world everything you yourself did in the external world, and in the process, you acquire the strength and the inclination to compensate for the pain in one of your future incarnations. Your own astral body tells you what it felt like, and you realize you have laid an obstacle in the way of your further development. This has to be cleared away, otherwise you cannot get beyond it. This is the moment you form the intention of getting rid of the obstacle. So when you have lived through the Kamaloca period, you arrive back in your childhood filled with the intention of getting rid of all the hindrances you created in life. You are full of intentions, and it is the force of these intentions that brings about the special character of your future lives on earth.

Let us suppose that in his twentieth year B hurt A. He now has to feel the pain himself, and resolves to recompense A in a future life, that is, in the physical world, where the injury was done. The force of this good resolution forms a bond of attraction between B and A and brings them together in the next life. That mysterious force of attraction that brings people together in life springs from what they have acquired in Kamaloca. Our experiences there lead us to those people in life whom we have to recompense or with whom we have any kind of connection.

Now you will realize that the Kamaloca forces we have taken into ourselves for the righting of wrongs in life can by no means always be worked out in a single life. It can then happen that we form connections with a great number of people in one life, and that next time we are in Kamaloca we have the possibility of meeting them again. Now this depends, too, on the other people, whether we meet them again in the following life. That spreads itself over many lives. In one life we correct this, in another life that, and so on. You must certainly not imagine that we can immediately put everything right in one life. It depends entirely on whether the other person also develops in his soul the corresponding bond of attraction.

Excerpt from: The Being of Man and His Future Evolution, Lecture 6: Illness and Karma, by Rudolf Steiner. Berlin. January 26, 1909,

If we just step back a bit, we can see what a miracle we are contemplating now: the true justice, the harmony, of the universe and our place within it. We are always making progress, moving forward, becoming better human beings. We aren’t punished in the afterlife for the wrong we’ve done by some external and imperious judgment; we ourselves—our highest selves, our spiritual selves—are consciously resolving to right our wrongs by fully realizing them. As a result of our time in Kamaloca, we are filled with good intentions that bring us back into our next lives. These good intentions brought us back into the life we’re living now. All of us.

Recognizing that everything done has karmic consequences, however, does not mean that we get to sit idly by while injustice or pollution or hunger or poverty or any of the evils still exist in the world. We must resolve to change all these things for the better within our power to do so. Every gift of love and service we give to the world is a movement in the positive evolution of us all.

If you would like to know more about Steiner’s work as it is applied today, please take a look at this site:
https://appliedanthroposophy.org/overview, especially the Introductory Course. The faculty members are inspiring; it is exciting to see them all in one place.



Time After Time

We’ve discussed sleep, death, and even life after death in previous posts, but as we explore the law of karma further, we need to take a look at the other side of our life—our birth. We all know that who we are when we’re born is a result of genetics and enumerable other things: where we are born, our culture, education, religion, race, sexual orientation, economic status, whether or not we’re healthy or beautiful or intelligent, etc.

Already at birth—or conception—we are given some opportunities and denied others. Then, with these birthrights, we step-by-step go out into the world and build our biographies—we become who we become. The inherent advantages and disadvantages of our birth, though, appear to be arbitrary—the luck of the draw.

Believing the circumstances of our birth and our ensuing life’s advantages (or lack thereof) to be the result of random chance is not a satisfactory explanation for many of us. It doesn’t make sense because it isn’t fair—from conception and birth on we enjoy benefits or suffer deficiencies for which we seem to have no control. Karma can be the key to understanding the causes of things that seem beyond our control.

To understand karma, however, we need a larger view of life and death. Steiner’s view is larger. He shows us that not only do we continue to exist after death, but we exist before conception and birth. Our “I” is eternal. Karma works out because we were alive before this current life and we will live again after it. Yes, we are talking about reincarnation. In an effort to keep an open mind—

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

What a man did yesterday is today still present in its effects. A picture of the connection between cause and effect is given in the simile of sleep and death. Sleep has often been called the younger brother of death. I get up in the morning. My consecutive activity has been interrupted by the night. Now, under ordinary circumstances it is not possible for me to begin my activity again just as I please. I must connect it with my doings of yesterday if there is to be order and coherence in my life. My actions of yesterday are the conditions predetermining those actions that fall to me today. I have created my destiny of today by what I did yesterday. I have separated myself for a while from my activity, but this activity belongs to me and draws me again to itself after I have withdrawn myself from it for a while. My past remains bound up with me; it lives on in my present and will follow me into my future. If the effects of my deeds of yesterday were not to be my destiny of today, I should not have had to awake this morning, but to be newly created out of nothing.

The human spirit is no more created anew when it begins its earthly life than a man is newly created every morning. Let us try to make clear to ourselves what happens when entrance into this life takes place. A physical body, receiving its form through the laws of heredity, makes its appearance. This body becomes the bearer of a spirit that repeats a previous life in a new form. Between the two stands the soul that leads a self-contained life of its own. Its inclinations and disinclinations, wishes and desires, minister to it. It presses thought into its service. (It) receives the impressions of the outer world and carries them to the spirit in order that the spirit may extract from them the fruits that are permanent.

It plays, as it were, the part of intermediary.... The soul is really that part of a man through which he belongs to his earthly life. Through his body he belongs to the physical human species; through it he is a member of this species. With his spirit he lives in a higher world. The soul binds the two worlds together for a time.

Excerpt from: Theosophy by Rudolf Steiner, 1910 (1986 edition.)

Because we think logically, because we reason, we try to create order out of chaos, we want the answers to the larger questions of life and death to make logical sense. When we contemplate the unjust and apparent randomness of life and fail to find order, we can choose either to accept that answers are impossible or look for answers in new directions. If we are able to open our minds to the idea of returning again and again to work out karma, to become better and better at being a human being throughout several lifetimes, the inequities of life begin to make more sense.

Each of us has lived in other times, in other places, in other bodies. When we think of all the qualities mentioned at the beginning of the post and imagine ourselves within circumstances entirely different than those of our current life, we can perhaps imagine how the law of karma creates the ultimate fairness. We can think about how much of the life we lead now is contingent on the qualities given to us at birth and imagine that, in the spiritual realm between death and a new birth, we chose these circumstances of life in order to best work out our karma.

Karma stretches out behind us and in front of us; we are resolving old karma and making new karma every day. Owen Barfield, a friend to C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, wrote in an article entitled, Why Reincarnation?, “If the majority of people were to become convinced of reincarnation, as I have just outlined it as a fact (see attached article), what an enormous difference it must make to many of the discords that are at present threatening to tear our civilization to pieces!”

A short bio of Owen Barfield:
https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/wadecenter/authors/owen-barfield/

Why Reincarnation? by Owen Barfield.
https://owenbarfield.org/why-reincarnation/


Cause—or—Effect

What if we “deserve” everything we get? What if we’re neither lucky nor unlucky, imagined states that seem random and unfair, but are actually living within a law—the law of karma? When we are trying to attach some kind of meaning to the course of our lives, learning more about karma enhances our efforts.

Although the suffering we experience in life comes from many causes, some of it comes directly from our own decisions. Most of us will try to accept the suffering that results from a bad decision because it makes sense—we clearly deserve it. Because doing so will affect future decisions, connecting suffering to the bad decision preceding it is an important step in gaining mastery of our lives. In fact, people who are unable to do this are considered unhealthy. The cause and effect nature of karmic law is easy to comprehend because we naturally look for the reasons why things happen in our lives.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

“… Only methodical observation will lead us to the recognition of the law of karma; and therefore, if we want to study the law of karma, we must make these methodical observations in the right way.

Let us start, then, with the study of the karma of one special person. Fate deals a man in his twenty-fifth year a heavy blow, which causes him pain and suffering. Now, if our observations are of such a nature that we merely say, ‘This heavy blow has just broken into his life and has filled it with pain and suffering,’ we shall never arrive at an understanding of karmic connections. But if we go a little further and observe the life of this person in his fiftieth year… we shall perhaps come to a different conclusion which we might be able to express thus: ‘The man whom we are now observing has become industrious and active, leading an excellent life.’

Now, let us look further back into his life. At 25, this trouble came upon him, and had he not met with this blow we may now say that he would have remained a good-for-nothing. In this case, the severe blow of fate was the cause that at the age of 50 we now find him an industrious and excellent man.

Such a fact teaches us that we should be mistaken if we considered the blow of fate at the age of 25 was merely an effect. We cannot just ask what caused it and stop at that. But if we consider the blow not as an effect at the end of the phenomena which preceded it, but place it rather at the beginning of the subsequent events, and consider it as a cause, then we learn that we must entirely and essentially change the judgments we have formed by our feelings and perceptions with regard to this blow of fate. We shall very likely be grieved if we think of it only as an effect, but if we think of it as the cause of what happens later on, we shall probably be glad and feel pleasure over it.

So we see that our attitude is essentially different in so far as we consider an event in life as cause or as effect… Thus the law of karma itself may be a source of consolation if we accustom ourselves to set an event not only at the end, but at the beginning of a series of events.”

Excerpt from: Manifestations of Karma. Lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Hamburg, May 16, 1910.

Not all suffering comes as a direct result of a decision we make, but with a little imagination, we can look at this simple example of karma and extend it outwards toward suffering that comes to us seemingly unbidden. Eckhart Tolle says, “Every person on Earth will experience some difficulty that they cannot change. This fact can either imprison you or enlighten you. When you encounter difficulty, accept it as if you had chosen it, experience it and figure out what you can learn from it.” Accept it as if you had chosen it. Suffering can be a starting point and a teacher.

This first idea of karma is just scratching the surface. For example, it does not address why we make the decisions that lead to suffering in the first place. Nor does it address the suffering that comes from without, from the death of a loved one to that from natural disasters, war, accidents, etc. Steiner gave more than 100 lectures about karma, so we can anticipate explorations of these questions and many more as we delve deeper into the study of karmic law next month.