It’s been said that being human is a unique gift, since it allows us to change our karma. Looked at in this way, time is also a gift. Therefore, choice is a gift, too. Without any of these – our humanity, our free will, and the reality of time – we cannot hope to change.
But what about karma itself? Is there such a thing? I’d hate to be the one to go against thousands of years of philosophy, religion, metaphysics and spiritual practice, but the question needs to be asked. Strictly translated, karma means ‘action or act.’ In its broader and more commonly understood meaning, it’s an axiom which refers to spiritual cause. The behaviors and thoughts of a being are assumed to have an effect on that being’s destiny. Karma, in its most broadly understood sense, means that your actions can affect you in this life, or in the next life into which you’re reborn (if you believe in rebirth). Now, there are many differing views on karma, and it is a very broad concept. I’m not here debating its meaning, but only its possibility.
Of particular interest to me is the relationship of karma to time. At the risk of oversimplifying, karma is cause and effect on a metaphysical plane. Cause and effect have their validity in time: If this cause happens now, then that effect will happen in the future. Because that cause happened in the past, this effect is happening now.
Yet what if time itself were illusory? What then? Then nothing that we do here has any effect, because nothing has changed since the beginning. It can be likened to a rubber ball that you bounce against a brick wall out in a parking lot, one of my favorite pastimes as a boy. With the law of karma, the ball comes back to you (if your aim’s any good. Otherwise, it ends up in Mrs. Schroeder’s rhubarb again, and you ain’t gettin’ your ball back).
With time, there is cause and effect. Without time, there is no cause and effect, so when you toss the ball against the wall, it doesn’t bounce back. Both karma and cause and effect are founded on the reality of time.
Now, here, on earth, and throughout the universe as we know it, time is an essential reality. It’s a variable in physics (spacetime), and in our everyday experience (You’re gonna be late for work!). There is cause and effect because there is time. The cause is in the past and its effect is in the future. And that means that there is karma. If I do something constructive, like eat right and work out, I can expect to lose weight in the future. If I do something destructive, like eat pizza and watch football all weekend, my karma may be that I gain weight.
What I’d like you to do is think of your life like a dream, like in the song Row Row Row Your Boat. When you dream, there are bodies, and objects, and actions and words. There is cause and effect, sometimes. The world in your dreams isn’t exactly like the waking world, so cause and effect are sometimes distorted, sometimes suspended in dreams. Yet overall, dreams resemble your waking reality. Events unfold in time sequence, and there are causes, effects and karma. But here’s the kicker. When you wake from your dream, there are no causes. There are no effects. There’s no karma for what happens in your dream. Nothing in the dream has ever left its source. So, you don’t pay a price for eating pizza and watching football in your dream. You don’t go to jail for committing a dream murder or get a divorce for having that dream affair (whew!) or go broke for betting all your money on the dream Chicago Bears (which are really a nightmare), and no, you’re not late for that flight. And even though you’re unprepared for your exam, and you’re naked on a stage, in front of an audience of supermodels, you don’t flunk and you’re not humiliated.
Yet everything in the dream seems very real. In most dreams, we think the stakes are real while we’re dreaming. We think that it’s really happening. That there’s a price to pay for what we and others do. We feel real fear and real anger or experience real joy and orgasm. Until we wake up. Well, maybe sometimes you do have a real orgasm even though it was just a dream.
What if the world around you, right here, right now, was just another level of the dream? Then everything – the stakes, all the consequences, all the pain and suffering and mainly, all the terrible things we’re afraid of – is meaningless. Nothing you accomplish here means anything. Nothing you acquire means anything. Nothing you do wrong has any effect at all.
This a very difficult assumption to accept, because we really really want our lives here to matter. We think we’re important, and that what we do and don’t do is consequential. We want our selves here to mean something. we want what we do to make a difference. We want our lives to have impact. In fact, we want these things so badly that sometimes, we don’t even care if we make a positive impact on the world, or a negative one. As long someone notices us. As long as they pay attention. We want to be somebodies, to be somethings so bad, that we even invented a dream called hell where some of us go, because the somethingness of hell is better, we think, than nothing at all. We want the dream to be real.
But if nothing you do here matters one way or the other once you wake up (if you’re following, that means once you croak), there’s a plus side to it. If nothing you do here means anything, then there’s no reason to get excited. No reason to be afraid or angry or depressed. If all this is a dream, then it ain’t no big deal, is it? While you’re here, you get to learn to abide by the only law there is, to follow the only commandment there is, and to sin by falling in violation of the only rule there ever was. And that universal principle is this: Don’t take yourself or anything else so damned seriously.
So, if we assume this world is all bullshit, then look at the upside to it. Just relax, have some fun, and above all, lower your expectations a little (no, a lot). You’re just not that important. And either is anything you do or left undone. At the end of your life, when you’re on that deathbed, whatever it is that you’re doing or thinking or worrying about right now? Trust me, chances are that you won’t be thinking about it then. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Seriously, you’re just not that important.
© 2022 by Michael C. Just
Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.
You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23
Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002
Four of his short stories have recently been published online:
Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)
The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW
I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October
Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within