January 21

It Is All You, You, You

The more you think of yourself, the more karma comes to you— “What can I get?” “How much can I gain?” “What should I wear?” “What should I eat?” “What should I do?” “I! I! I!” We cannot avoid karma already accrued, but we can avoid the new ones by not doing anything for our sake. By always feeling, “Everything is being done through me by God. I am not doing anything for selfish purposes. I am doing everything for the sake of others, for the benefit of humanity in the name of God.” That way all your actions become selfless service, Karma Yoga. You do not create any new karma that way.

You cannot exhaust all the accrued karma in one lifetime. You come only with what you can burn out in this life. When that is over, another group of karmas will come and you will be given another birth. Until all of it is exhausted, you will take on bodies. If you are lucky enough not to create any new karma, one day everything will be exhausted.There is one way that it all—past, present and future karma—can be burnt. That is when you totally put yourself into the hands of God and say, “I am not the doer, I have not done anything. It is all You, You, You. You do whatever You want. It’s not even my past karma. I made a mistake in thinking it was mine. I know it is all Yours. I simply put the label ‘mine’ on it, so I am suffering. Now I realize no action, and no reaction was ever mine.”

That is the ultimate realization. When you realize this, you rise above all the karma. You feel that you are not doing anything and that you have never done anything. It’s true. We have never done anything ourselves; we have no capacity to do anything ourselves. It is God who does everything. 

So don’t ever say, “I did it. That’s mine. I earned it.” Instead say, “God, it is all You. Even the thought is Yours. The energy is Yours, functioning through this instrument. Nothing belongs to me. I am Thine, all is Thine, Thy will be done.”

If we realize that, and if we live up to it, then no karma will ever bother us. We don’t need to worry about anything.