FROM MY CRYSTAL BOWL 3:

Past actions determine present.
Present’s saying what the future will be!


Let’s start with a simple analogy: your friend just bought a car. During the long time he was saving for it, you had a lot of fun partying, going out, spending money etc. Now you cannot but envy him a little and cannot but say something derogatory to ease your sense of envy. So you ridicule him about the slow way of accomplishing it, you make him feel slow and narrow minded, implementing he is not an ‘up to date’ guy at all, but rather an old-fashioned kind of a guy. He is hurt but says nothing in return, of course. After a week something happens and you need a transport urgently. You remember him buying a car and you ask him for a ride. Save to assume he will say no.
Everything works this way and we know it. We know it and despite the knowledge we perform wrong actions. Whether we do it out of envy or hurt is not important. Important is to know that we do it because we are in the mercy of our egos which we aren’t able to control. We have no self – knowledge to do it better.

It is true; most of us like to exploit others, but we don’t like it when we feel exploited ourselves. Wanting to hurt or annoy others is a very thoughtless state. It comes from the self-centeredness and has no positive response. In fact, it always falls back at us because others too are a world to themselves and they must protect themselves – just like us, they live by the first and the most basic instinct which is surviving. At the end, hurting others will fall back at us like a boomerang.

In order to act today in a way to have better responses tomorrow, we need self-knowledge. But we cannot get it by buying it and we cannot get it through some effort or practice. Self-knowledge will be achieved only when one observes himself in his relationship with others, with his friend, work colleagues and with his family – with all the people around.
When you look into the mirror you see your face, and whether you like it or not, it is you and you’ll accept it and know about the way you look. When you observe others, their manners, their gestures, the way they wear clothes, the way they talk and when you then start to see yourself and your responses to people while socializing, the self-knowledge will come. If you can look into the mirror of relationships as you look into the mirror, then the self-knowledge will come and then only you will be able to act today in a way the tomorrow responses will be to your liking.

Reincarnation works this way as well, like most of us know. It is the law of cause and effect and the most sane and logical explanation of divine powers and purpose – which is learning. You weren’t good, fair and just to your wife, next time you will get to know how that felt like yourself. You abandoned your child? Lets see how it feels next time you are born! We learn about everything with having many lessons repeated, but learn we will. There is no escape to that. What is the reason we don’t know about the final tests? What will be our destination after we have learned it all? I don’t know, like I don’t understand the higher mathematics and physics which I have never learned. However, our lives are not about mathematics and physics, but about human growth in relationship to others.