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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video I'm going to talk about what is karma you harm yourself as dust thrown against the wind comes back to the thrower that is one of my favorite quotes from the Buddha and this quote gives us a really good hint and a clue as to what karma actually is karma is a concept that comes to us from the east really it's popular in the Buddhist traditions it's also popular than Indian yogi traditions so this dates back thousands of thousands of years to really the dawn of civilization in the east and Karm itself is a Sanskrit word I'm going to tell you what it means here in a second but before I do that what what I notice is that I noticed that people here in the West when they use this concept don't really understand the subtlety of it and they use it in really ham handed kind of way so what I want to do here is I want to I want to put the nuance and the subtlety back in the concept of Karma in the West the way we use Karma and the way we think about is kind of like this we think of it as a universal law of justice so that if somebody goes for example and robs a bank which we consider an evil act so they go rob a bank and then let's say the police don't catch him and he gets away with it then what we tend to think is that well karma is going to get him in the end and by that what we mean is that at some point later in his life eventually the laws of justice will kind of even themselves out just naturally because something bad will happen to that person somehow he deserves it now that he's going to get some other punishment for it so maybe five years later somebody will steal a car from him or maybe five years later something bad will happen some other aspect of his life and we'll say haha karma got ya because you did something evil in your past but this is really not how karma works and this is kind of like a cartoon character version of how karma works so I want to give you the more accurate nuanced way in which karma works and this is going to apply directly to your life so it's not just about bank robbers and murderers this is going to apply to everything that's happening to you right now and it's going to explain a lot of why you suffer in your life and you're not getting the results that you want in your life so this is worth understanding basically as the Buddha was saying every action that you take in life has a certain consequence to it and bad actions have natural bad consequences and these bad consequences they don't have to come from the outside the worst of them come from the inside so the word Karma itself it's a Sanskrit word it's an ancient word what does it actually mean karma actually means action karma equals action if you take away only one thing from this video let it be this karma equals action now when you think about this you might wonder well action what does this have to do with justice and equality that we take karma to mean well think about it like this that your actions and everyone else's actions in life including the actions of governments and societies and organizations the actions of animals and also just the natural actions of life universe flowing the actions of gravity and all the other natural forces that we have these are all potentially actions and every action has a consequence to it so it's basically the law of cause and effect every effect has a cause and life itself is just this giant interplay of actions we can take the moment that you're born and we could take and stretch it out to the point that you're going to die and everything in between and we consider we can consider that to be a series of actions and these series of actions basically one leads naturally to the next so the actions you took earlier on will lead to certain consequences down the road as just a natural consequence of the way that life works so recognizing this and applying it specifically to your life what this basically means is that if you take good action you will get good consequences if you take bad or evil action you'll get bad or evil consequences now all this seems fairly straightforward but what most people don't understand is what actually good and bad mean here it's very different than you might think and I'm going to get to that in a second the other thing that people tend to think about the law of karma is they tend to think that this is some sort of supernatural law like there's some sort of old man with a beard sitting up in the clouds keeping tabs on everybody keeping an account of who did how much good or bad stuff and then trying to even everything out for everybody but that's a really not the way I think this law is supposed to work this law is a natural law this law is a psychological law where really gets interesting is the psychology of it it's so profound and then the way that explains how human psychology works and it's also a spiritual law and the spiritual part of it is understood when you really start to understand what the Eastern sages mean by good and bad by good and evil and here's what it means and it's not at all what we tend to think here in the West good means selfless these are actions that come not from your ego but from your spiritual nature bad means selfish you can also say that these are evil evil is not an objective thing out there there's no devil sitting somewhere who's going to turn you into into someone evil what evil is is something actually very mundane and very simple and this is where it applies directly to your life all this applies directly to your life evil is doing things from your ego doing things from your identity or from yourself and now this this one concept right here goes so deep that I want to shoot a lot more videos on it because it's going to be necessary especially if you're interested in enlightenment work which I'll be shooting a video on soon spiritual alignment that is but what this means selfish acts what do we mean by selfish acts this is this is such an interesting concept to unravel so of course we mean the most obvious selfish acts I mean when we think selfish the common example that comes to mind for example is going to Thanksgiving dinner and you if you're sitting there you eat all the food yourself you take on the best food for yourself you don't give it to anybody else you don't share any of the food and the other people are left hungry at the table clearly that's very dickish and selfish we also going to think a selfish act might be taking some candy from a baby like that would be clearly selfish and clearly evil and wrong and that leads to bad consequences now what are the bad consequences here it's interesting because we didn't to think that the worst consequences come from punishment from the outside so for example if you steal candy from a baby the baby is going to cry or if you steal candy from a baby other people will think bad of you or if you take all the food at the Thanksgiving Day table some people might get mad at you and start a fight with you so those would be bad external consequences and if you take some action like robbing a bank then clearly going to jail would be you know really bad consequence but actually the law of karma isn't concerned with that what the law of karma is more concerned about is what's going on in here in your mind and this is the really most damaging part of the whole thing you might think that robbing a bank the worst part of it is that you get potentially sent to jail but no what's happening here is the Buddha was saying is that the dust comes back after you throw the dust it comes back in your face and so what's going on here is that immediately as soon as you take the bad selfish action what happens is that you already suffer the consequence even if you don't get caught even if nobody sees you even if the baby doesn't start crying right it already damages you on the inside and why does this happen and more importantly you have to recognize how damaging this damage is on the inside you tend to think and say oh well you know a little white lie here or a little bit of getting angry at someone here or doing a little bit of you know something here isn't going to cause too much damage to me on the inside as long as I can avoid external consequences but actually no see what we're talking about here and what the Easterners we're talking about is that the the caring through the cycle of selfishness that your entire life basically is right when your actions come from yourself promoting yourself defending yourself fighting on behalf of yourself these are all selfish actions and what we mean by this is you right when I'm pointing my finger right now at you that's what I mean by selfish I don't just mean when you take candy from a baby but I mean any actions which defend promote or a grand eyes you the self your identity not just some part of you but all of you so whatever your name is you could say your name in your mind right now that's what I mean by you now any action which promotes or defends that that's a selfish action and that's an evil action and now this is a difficult pill for many of us to swallow especially if you carry the ramifications of this through your entire life because if you do what you discover is that oh my god my entire life has been about me it's been very selfish and self-absorbed and there's a lot of examples that I want to give you here because it's not just black and white like oh well below I never robbed a bank I never murdered somebody I never took candy from a baby and I never did anything bad at the Thanksgiving Day table but see those are really easy black and white examples and it's easy to point at those and say hi that person is bad because he did something clearly wrong but see there's a much more subtle element to evil that lurks in your life and you're doing it every single day what you have to realize is that today just today you already committed many many evil acts and karma is getting you because of this the way karma gets you is something like this so let's say that this bank robber he robs a bank and he gets away with it and let's say he goes to some tropical island and now he's chilling on the island he's just live in there now you might say well he got away with it maybe karma will get him five years later by something going wrong with him but no karma already got him see because in his mind this is a selfish person the act originated from selfishness it's not like the person just did something evil and that was an isolated example know what's happening here is that actually his selfish nature is causing this person to do evil acts now why isn't it his a nature selfish well because he's unconscious he doesn't really understand what he's doing with his actions in life so as you get more conscious you realize that you unwittingly commit evil and evil is promotion and defending of yourself so in this case because this person was imagining how great of his life could become if he robbed a bank and had millions of dollars so he wouldn't pee he did this evil act to promote himself right to secure himself at the cost of others that's an evil action that's a very clearly evil action just from a societal standpoint because we have laws against that stuff but then there's a lot of evil actions that we take that we don't have laws against but nevertheless it gets you in the way it gets you like for example with this person you might say well he got away with it now he's sitting on the beach sipping pina coladas his life is great but actually that's not the case at all see the kind of person that went out and robbed a bank that that's not like an isolated example this person is coming up with these actions because he screwed up on the inside because he's unconscious on the inside and so you have a chain of this and so what we mean by karma is this perpetuating chain of selfishness and the punishment is not jail or someone yelling at you or a fine that you get the punishment is suffering the emotional suffering and distress that this person experiences in life because even though he got away from from this bank in the back of his mind this person he's always going to be afraid now he's only going to be looking over his shoulder are they gonna catch me tomorrow maybe they won't but see he's going to suffer for that he's also probably gonna feel some sort of remorse or guilt he's also probably going to feel out of integrity with himself because he's not following his own principles he knows that robbing a bank is not right but he did it anyways because he knew that it would make him feel good but see he didn't calculate the suffering that would come after the fact and of course you might say well Leo he can suppress that stuff and what he's not going to feel guilty about it and that's true you can suppress that stuff but still it seeps out right you can't suppress it forever and you can't suppress it in all them in all the ways that it's going to come back and get you and the way in which it gets you is the fact that well just by the fact that he did something selfish here something so obviously selfish this is going to create a habit of selfish behavior so now even though let's say he says I'm never going to rob a bank again and he never does okay that's fine but the selfishness is still going to be within him and the point the problem here is that he's not recognizing that he's doing selfish stuff he's not admitting it to himself and so this is where a lot of the harm comes from so now he's got all this money and he might go do something else selfish he might be selfish in his relationships with his girlfriend and that relationship might go sour because of that and so he might have a string of bad relationships throughout his whole life because he's being selfish there he's not recognizing it and then maybe he goes and he does something else maybe he goes party with his friends and then there they have a fight because they're not able to agree on something and so he has a fight with his friends and his whole life is very turbulent and there's a lot of suffering because he's not able to get along with his friends or his girlfriend or his potential life or other aspects of his life he feels now that he needs pleasure from this money that he's got what if the money runs out how's it going to feel then so the selfishness just keeps from Pech waiting itself in the end if you want to stop this cycle what you have to do is you have to apply conscious awareness to see that what you're doing is selfish and this is not easy to do it's easier to do in very black-and-white cases but it's hard to do in more subtle cases which brings us to the point of view because we've been talking about this extreme example but what about you right now see the fact is is that you commit evil selfish actions all the time and an example of this might be for example the way that you get jealous towards people maybe it's not even something that you verbalize maybe it's something that is just in your mind a thought that you have the thought itself can be an evil action you actually need to go do something evil so maybe at work you're a little resentful and jealous because one of your co-workers is better than you at some of the tasks there and he's likely to receive the next promotion or maybe you find out that one of your coworkers earn a little bit more than you and so you get you get mad you get jealous about that maybe on your drive to work you get upset at somebody and cutting you off on your way there or maybe you get mad at your girlfriend or your wife or your husband or maybe you criticize people all the time just in your head maybe you don't even say it but you just criticize people you see someone who looks funny and you judge them criticize them you see someone doing something stupid you judge them and criticize them or maybe what you do is you manipulate people in subtle ways maybe in your relationship with your friends you try to manipulate them and you play a little power games and you try to be the one that's the best in your fruits circle of friends or maybe with your girlfriend or with your boyfriend you try to manipulate them in very subtle ways that you don't even admit to yourself as manipulation but you do you do this manipulation and why are you doing this you're doing this because in the end at the very core of it is that you're afraid and you need to protect yourself right remember we're talking about you that identity you the ego well the you feels like it needs to live life protecting itself all the time this has been the case for you from the moment that you were born up to right now and it will likely be the case until you die is that you'll be living this self survival mode all the time where it's always about self protection and self aggrandizement so it's how do I make myself a little bit more money so I can feel a bit more comfortable more secure how do I find myself that husband or wife that can make me feel a bit more secure how do I get that house or that card it's going to make me feel a little bit more secure how do I get that better career promotion would that improvement in my business so I can feel a little bit more better and secure about myself how can I improve the way I look the way I dress the way my teeth look the way my hair looks how can I improve all that so that I'm a little bit more secure see it's always about making yourself a little bit more you're and that's why whenever anything comes into your life that threatens this security then you get afraid you get angry you get manipulative you get critical all these negative things start to come out and you suffer because of that this is a very deep truth but it's something I'm going to cover in my spiritual alignment video but the problem at the very centre of all this this karma stuff is that there's this identity that thinks that it needs to be protected the you the you and fundamentally this identity is false it's really an illusion it's a it's created out of thought and concepts it's not part of actual physical reality and so because of this your entire life is basically a this giant drama of trying to protect an illusion which always feels insecure because at the center of it it's Hollow there's nothing solid there it's completely Hollow and so because of this you have your perpetual cycle of a suffering in life and that one thing that we tend to think about life is that well life is pretty hard life is challenging life is difficult life is full of negative emotions and life is full of drama and it's full of pain and this is just how life is well what's interesting is that that's not actually true life is that way for 99.9% of people because they're behaving selfishly all the time and karma is always nipping at their heels that's why that is the punishment for karma is suffering on the inside it's not external punishments although you know those can be bad too but it's the inner punishments that you get so for example when you get a little bit jealous at that co-worker of yours what's the internal punishment the coworker might not even ever find out that you got jealous at them but the internal punishment is that your mood is soured now you feel passive-aggressive towards him maybe on your drive to work because you're thinking about how angry you are at him you cut somebody off or you come home and you snap at your wife or your husband or you snap at your kids or maybe you perform at work because instead of focusing on your work what you're doing is you're thinking about this these colleague of yours who's doing better than you and getting paid better than you and you're jealous of it see it undermines you and because you're behaving in the selfish way see what's happening there's it you're trying to protect yourself is like Oh meaning II mean why is it why isn't it me who's in the position that that employee has why isn't it me why is it him and so because of this you're so focused on yourself that your whole life becomes the cycle of being focused on yourself when you're focused on yourself all the time then what happens you might think that well Leo what's wrong with focusing on myself this is how I survive life is kind of a dog-eat-dog world I got to survive don't I well the problem is that you don't need to actually put so much attendance into your survival when you put so much attention and effort into your survival you become blinded unconscious to the way that this survival cycle is actually damaged in your life and it damages your life it makes you unable to have a peaceful calm happy life you're not able to be happy because you're always looking over your shoulder you're always afraid of what's going to happen to you you're always afraid that this hollow illusion that you're defending is somehow going to be found out by somebody else and so you're afraid of it and you're protecting yourself and you're putting more and more layers over this illusion so it feels a little bit more real but that's a battle that you can never win and in fact not only are the bad actions that you're doing and bad thoughts that you're having contributing to this cycle but even some of the stuff that you would think is good so it's pretty obvious to you probably that when you get angry at somebody that's probably hurting you psychologically on the inside and when you try to manipulate people or when you criticize people but even good stuff so for example have you ever contributed to charity or have you ever given a couple of dollars to a bum on the street but the reason that you did that is not because you were doing an honestly selfless act but instead what you're doing is you were masking this selfishness in a veneer of selflessness so what does that actually mean well you go do some charity because it makes you feel good or because it gives you a good reputation or you give that bum some money on the side of the street because if you didn't give it to him you would feel awkward on the inside and so because you don't want to feel awkward again you're protecting that that self that you you don't want to feel awkward or you don't want to be a person who doesn't give to charity because you don't like those associations what you do is you give to charity but you give it kind of reluctantly you don't really give it selflessly you actually give it selfishly and in your mind you tell yourself on doing good I'm doing good I'm doing good and see when you say that oh I'm doing good look at me look at how good I am even if you don't tell anyone you just give someone a dollar on the street you don't tell anyone about it on the inside you tell yours of all I'm a good human being well what you're doing there is you're building up this this ego of yours you're building it up and make no mistake about it that when you do that you're going to suffer for it because of this ego now you have to carry that around with you wherever you go every interaction you're in when you go into your into your marriage that ego is going to be there and guess what it's going to be that inflated ego that you got from giving that that person on the street a dollar and feeling good about yourself for it patting yourself on the back and then that creates problems more and more problems and just creates this cycle of karma and so there you have it the real punishment for all is is basically hell in the West we have a Christian notion of Hell which is Hell somewhere out there another life but actually that notion is not what hell literally means that notion of Hell where did it come from it came from the actual hill which is here for you right now you have the hell you're living in hell right now hell on earth that's what your life is it's a life where you're unable to actually have true happiness and peace of mind you don't have true peace of mind because you're always stressed and anxious all the time you're always secretly angry at someone bitter at someone trying to manipulate some circumstance wherever it is in your life you're always trying to do that in whole life is that this concept goes very very deep and it's very very subtle because you don't like hearing this stuff you don't like admitting this stuff because the only way that it actually is effective is when it's not admitted so it takes a lot of mindfulness work a lot of what I call enlightenment or stuff like meditation to start to see how you suddenly manipulate everything around you in order to promote and protect yourself and this is what we call evil selfless selfish action selfless action on the other hand if you want to know what that is that is just action without thought that's what true spirituality is it's action without thought why is it action without thought because thought contrary to what we think in the West here thought is a problem because your thoughts create the notion of you they create the identity the false identity that's constructed out of thoughts so the only way to get rid of that is to get rid of the thoughts when you silence the thoughts you can still have practical everyday thoughts so if you need to go buy some gas or you need to figure out how to get to the grocery store those are okay but we're talking about here thoughts about you right the self-absorbed thoughts that permeate and predominate your entire existence so how many times for example just today just during the span of today how many times did you think negatively about yourself or about what someone's going to do to you or how something is going to threaten you or harm you how many times has that thought into your mind just today if you're self honest it's probably a dozen times at least if not more like 50 or a hundred times so you have to become more and more mindful of this because your punishment is hell and make no mistake about it right now you're living in a hell and what's bad about is that you don't even recognize many of you don't even recognize that this hell is here for you right now that you're living in it you're always afraid that hell is going to be out there somewhere for you know hell for use right now you're not able to be happy and the other punishment that you get is kind of the opposite side of that coin is that because you're in hell all the time you're not able to experience paradise paradise heaven what is paradise in heaven again that's not something up in the clouds somewhere after you die it can be here for you right now heaven is the state of being spiritual the state of having no thoughts and the state of selflessness when you get rid of the sense of self that you have when you unravel that whole thing which is basically what all in light network is leading towards then what you discover is that you can actually have true happiness right here right now regardless of external circumstances and you can also have paradise for yourself right here true peace of mind because you're not caught up in this karmic cycle and so that's what the Buddha is really talking about and that's what the eastern Yogi's talk about with karma is that you perpetuate your own suffering in your own hell here on earth 99.999% of people do this and if you want to turn this around then you have to start to just become aware simply aware of what's really going on here how this karma is working because it can always hold work in your favor if you start to dissolve the self and you start to behave from a selfless place then you get this positive karma building up and then you can experience paradise so it's really that simple but you have to see how nuances you have to see how deep this rabbit hole goes we could talk about this for hours hours and hours and hours and all the subtle ways in which you manipulate yourself to perpetuate your Nega negative karma cycle but that's it for now for here I'll cover it more in other videos all right this is Leo I'm signing off go ahead post me your comments down below I'd love to hear what you think click the like button like this video share the video with a friend on Facebook and finally come sign up to my newsletter right here at actualized org free newsletter I release new videos every single week I also have a lot of cool stuff for my subscribers for signing up bonuses and such the reason I want you to sign up is because I'm delivering new videos about how to master yourself your own psychology how to understand yourself at extremely deep levels if you want a really fulfilling life you have to do this work this is not just going to happen spontaneously for you and what I've also discovered is that it's difficult to do this work it's not just enough to hear it once or twice what you really have to do is you have to keep on track with it and part of the mission of actualize that org is not only to introduce these concepts to you which I'm doing in these videos but also to how these 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