Karma, Manifestation and Privilege
Manifesting is a buzzword, found all over the interwebs and spiritual circles, that describes a practice of focusing on something and having it effortlessly come, whether it be a relationship, job, parking space, or the perfect sweater. The idea behind it being that we are in an abundant universe and whatever you want is yours for the taking as long as you have the right attitude. I wouldn’t even disagree. I may just add a caveat.
I’ve been contemplating the line that exists between “manifestation” and privilege, which naturally brings me to look at the connection between manifestation and karma. Karma, as I understand it, is an inexorable law of the universe, which in practice is a lot like gardening. Every time we do a thing, or even think a thing, we plant a seed of the nature of that thought or deed. If we act selflishly, we plant a selfish seed, if we act compassionately, we plant a seed of compassion. Of the seeds planted, those which have the proper conditions to grow become the fruits and poisons that we consume for the duration of our occupation of the garden (or, you know, body). Not every seed can grow in every garden. Sometimes we are planting desert blossoms in a rainforest, or pineapples in the arctic. The thing is, every seed we plant remains with us until we move gardens and can offer it the right conditions to bloom. And oh, the terrain. And oh, the wait. So, our compassion seeds will need to wait for us to be in a situation that asks compassion of us, our unconditional love seeds will need to wait for us to be in a situation where we have no tangible reason to give love, but the will to do so anyway. The more intricate seeds, the more sublime, but harder to tend, like aspiration, acceptance, or forgiveness often grow in rocky, barren crags where nothing else does.
The idea of karma is impossible to understand without accepting the idea that when we leave this body, we get another one. If we skip over this crucial piece bad things would happen to bad people. Our actions would immediately come back and be connected with their repercussions. When asked, wiser folks than I have said that karma’s reflex is delayed because if it weren’t it would affect our free will. That if we knew our actions were tracked, that they would all eventually become the experiences we receive, we might suppress what we really want to do out of fear of retribution.
It makes sense that with all these seeds accrued over bazillions of lifetimes, we’ll need endlessly varied terrain to allow them all to germinate.
The light irony is that the main aim of Yoga, Tantra, Buddhism, and various other traditions has nothing to do with creating beautiful gardens for us to luxuriate in; it is in ceasing to plant all together. It’s in freeing ourselves of the need for a personal garden, and allowing us to move without being tied to past actions that we can’t even remember authoring. The idea is that when we stop only trying to cultivate our own garden, we acquire the capacity to bend to life’s will, to show up and do our part even if we don’t see the personal gain in it. We take down our little fence, and start instead to plant in life’s garden, to contribute to its ecosystem with our own merit and lessons. This allows us to occupy our proper place in the cosmic order of things. To be a cog in the machine. Yoga roughly translates as “to yoke” which implies joining myself with something greater, and Tantra “web” or to weave, which implies interconnectedness.
In order for our personal seed reserve to get used up, and free us from debt, we will need to eat a lot of pineapple, and thorns, and poison, and pumpkins, and whatever else it is we have planted. Translated, we will have to have a lot of experiences, ones that we enjoy, ones that we deeply don’t enjoy. Experience after experience, resorbing the boomeranging back of all the actions that we are owed. Sounds exhausting and endless, doesn’t it? Welcome to Samsara. So here we all are singing the praises of Yoga for helping us to have lovely gardens and missing the point that personal comfort alone has never been the endgame of spiritual practice.
Although its true, that if you have to have a garden, it seems logical to want a pretty one that’s pleasant to be in. But having the best of gardens doesn’t always better us as people. And here’s where manifestation comes in. I have noticed that many who are speaking about manifestation are sitting in really privileged gardens. They are rarely people who are being actively oppressed or abused, who have no voice, who are in difficult economic situations, who are dealing with mental or physical illness. Mostly it’s pretty ladies on a beach. Mostly, it’s folks who are currently reaping good fruit, who have had economic, educational, and societal advantage for most of their lives, and who are riding on that experience to continue to plant pleasant seeds and considering that they have the game of life all figured out. And to some extent they might.
There is another angle to consider though. We often believe the goodness in our lives as being a reflection of our goodness; something we have earned and deserve. And we then by default are saying that other people’s inability to access the beach and the prosperity are receiving a reflection of their badness. This is a lot like what capitalism tells us; richness is available to anyone who works hard, if you aren’t experiencing abundance, it’s your fault. What most spiritual beliefs would tell us is that everyone has seeds of both, it’s simply that your garden THIS TIME is soft and fertile, and someone else’s might not be. And there is another layer; that actually those with soft and fertile soil tend to nap in it, to forget what’s really important and to go back to planting shitty seeds that they’ll need to snack on later.
We all want to be happy and healthy and have ease and comfort. And we probably also all know that this is not necessarily what makes us grow, develop new skills, deepen our compassion, and overcome our own sneaky little ego. The ability to acknowledge that we don’t always know what's best for us is something precious. Most of us have had horrendous experiences that only in retrospect could we look back on and recognize as being pivotal moments in our lives, ones without which we wouldn’t be who we are today. We would never have ‘manifested’ those. If they were on the menu, we wouldn’t have ordered them, but they are crucial to our development. We believe firmly that we know what’s best for us, but do we?
So, what would it be to act without planting seeds? It is renouncing the fruit of your action, doing what needs to be done to the best of your ability, and not expecting anything back from it. Sound easy? It ain’t. It’s a science called Karma Yoga, there are entire religions built around it, volumes written about it, and it is in interplay with the bones of most eastern philosophy; that the power, omniscience, and bliss is only available to me as an individual in measly portions, but when I start acting as part of the whole, the joy, wealth, and comprehension of the whole avails itself to me.
So if, in our frenzy of online ordering from the universe, we could start to also mix in a little thy will be done, we might get mysterious and hitherto unimagined wonders in return. Sometimes there is magic for us that we never dreamed of. It is human nature to go after what you want, and to dream of what would make you happy and fulfilled. When we are able move away from prayer being an itemized list, and take the risk of gazing at the sky and uttering a “Give me what you’ve got for me” or “Put me where you need me” we are opening ourselves to the beauty and terror of finding our purpose, fulfilling our destiny, and becoming everything and nothing at all.