We do not have to believe in reincarnation to benefit from this post or weblog. We only have to agree that present volitional actions have effects in the future. What we call our past history was once the future that was caused by previous “present” volitional actions.

Prologue: We are told that karma is carried from one lifetime to another and from one situation to another in this present lifetime. It’s much like passing the torch in a relay race. But what does karma actually look like “on the ground” in our daily lives? Put another way, what are the consequences of our past volitional actions when certain causes and conditions meet and certain seeds ripen in the present?

Based on my weblog page called Actual face of karma,what would the life of someone who is the present (fictional) incarnation of Queen Tiye (mother of Akhenaten), Queen of Sparta (aka Helen of Troy), Queen Jezebel, Cleopatra, St. Teresa of Avila and Sigmund Freud actually look like? In other words, what is the fruition of the karma (past volitional actions) of this portrait gallery of six historical figures in areas like money, sex, friendships, career, family etc.? To try to answer this question, I use diary entries like the one below.

* * * * *

I, Rainbow Desert Flower, enter this into my private diary on the 05 th day of the month of December in the year 1970 CE. May it benefit all those who are trying to understand their own karmic package.

Over the last few years, there have been reports about the possible reasons that King Tutankhamun died at the age of 19. The latest was this past Tuedsay, February 16′10, one of which is entitled King Tut Mysteries Solved: Was Disabled, Malarial, and Inbred. It says that the young pharoah died of malaria and mentions that his father and mother were brother and sister. The diary entry below tells the real story…..

I am a slave in the court of Tutankhamun. Tumult in Egypt. Akenaten has disappeared. Tutankhaten (later changed to Tutankhamun to appease the priests of the old school), a physically disabled lad of nine or ten, came to the throne in 1333 B.C. His uncle, the High Priest Ay, is the power behind the throne and is plotting to have his nephew Tutankhamun murdered so he, Ay, could ascend the throne.

It happened this way:

Tutanhkamum’s mother, under pressure from her brother, the High Priest Ay, agrees to murder her son. How to do it? She notices that when her son reads a manuscript, he licks his thumb and then turns the page with the moistened thumb. Clever, nasty woman – she puts poison on the bottom of the pages of the manuscripts.

One day the pharoah, walking with the help of his golden canes, enters his library. Moistens thumb. Turns page with moistened thumb. Gets poison on thumb. Reads a page. Moistens thumb. Turns page with moistened thumb. Gets more poison on thumb. And the cycle begins again.

This murder took place circa 1324 B.C. to the best of my recollection.

This  of course does not mean that the king didn’t have diseases like malaria.

I’m just saying that he was also poisoned.  I was there. I saw it. Slaves are considered to be  “sub human.” Useful, but not of any consequence in the order of things. Almost invisible.  I used that “invisibility”  and learned the truth in the case I just described.

I also use my “invisibility” another time….the latest report states that Tutankamun’s mother and father were brother and sister. Not by my recollection! His father was the pharoah Akenaten. And his mother? Queen Tiye, mother of Akenaten, and therefore Tutankamun’s grandmother as well. During some periods in ancient Egypt, incest was practiced by the royal families. This was not such a period. And so, after Queen Tiye, mother of Akenaten and Tutankamun, murders her son Tutankhamun at the behest of her brother the High Priest Ay, she is buried alive.

Karmic Update: Today’s incarnation of Queen Tiye, called Rainbow Desert Flower, has one son. He is the incarnation of Tutankhamun, called Prince. The High Priest Ay, in this incarnation called York, is Prince’s father.

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July 1971 visiting HH Dalai Lama XIV, India

Amidst all the suffering — which I knew was somehow connected to my karma, but didn’t understand much more than that at this point — in the 1970s, there were a few beams of light in my life. One of them was meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV at Brock University in the Fall of 1967 and my pilgrimage with 108 others to India to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV, among other teachers. The trip took place from mid May to mid August, 1971.

India and Pakistan were preparing for war. Before reaching India, we disembarked from the ship and took a sight-seeing trip to Tata to see some historial ruins.  My friend Mary and I were almost kidnapped by the taxi-cab driver and his friend.

It was not uncommon to see tanks rolling along the roads in Northern India, where we spent most of our time. We arrived in Bombay in mid July. The transit system was on strike.

The trip was like a fiction story because the cultural differences appeared so vast between Canada and India: black market money exchanges; railroad stations that bring Dante’s Inferno to mind; babies purposely deformed so someone will have pity and give the mother money; and a bureaucracy that made Canada’s look like a “love-in” scene…

I kept wondering how India could go on existing one more day — the continuing, grinding poverty; the 7,000,000 refugees; the monsoon floods; the eastern tidal wave; people who never leave the floor of the train stations. At some point the aware traveller is going to start to raise some questions, the type that never seem to have any answers as we conventionally think of them, despite all our sophisticated social scientific explanations.

Why does one country have so much suffering?….Actually, it can be difficult to compare the Indian experience with any other. In order to compare and contrast there at least must be a shared human experience.

There is: human suffering.

The following account is from a diary entry circa August 05, 1971 from my Trip Journal.

We’re on a train ride to Bodhgaya, place of Buddha’s enlightenment. A group of 15 gun-toting revs [revolutionaries] from Bihar [India's poorest province] have now gotten onto train.

Lock the doors! S- -t! Doesn’t work because one of the men in our compartment, with police uniform on, aids revs. Now there’s 15 of them + 6 of us in car that seats 6.

Confronted by hostility + aggression of enraged people.  Brings out our prejudices + lack of understanding. Terribly  frightened. Actually, terrified! Intellect not  helpful here. At this point, it’s our smugness vs their guns.

What to do to change situation????

Can hardly discuss “the necessary and sufficent conditions of a revolution” with …violent revolutionaries pointing guns at us. No. Hardly skillful. Our attitude will decide outcome. … odd setting for a “conference table,” sort of like UN conference. Only way to bring about a unity is by dropping …the “them” and “us” distinction, Don’t speak each other’s language. We don’t have to. We still hear their message… struggle for survival….

Probably good thing we can’t speak each other’s language. “Reasoning” with them [in other words, manipulating the situation to try to convince the revolutionaries that our point of view is the correct one] would touch sore spot + cause them to ↑ fixation on their “cause.”  Would  inflame  already  dangerous situation.

Close eyes + meditate on loving-kindness [Sanskrit: Metta]. Militant voices become mild. Can’t say if Metta cause of the situation calming down. But at least aggression hasn’t ↑.

Update - October 11, 2009:

• The title asks “Can I turn these obstacles into opportunities?” The obstacles were our own lack of understanding; prejudices of various kinds; and our own self-righteousness, in the face of angry revolutionaries with guns. The opportunity was to use that situation to learn about loving-kindness, compassion, to learn about softening the hard places in ourselves.

• The experience with the revolutionaries is, for me, a good example of shenpa – getting hooked – as Pema Chodron describes it.

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Readers do not have to believe in reincarnation to benefit from this post or weblog. We only have to agree that present volitional actions have effects in the future. What we call our past history was once the future that was caused by previous “present” volitional actions.

Prologue: We understand intellectually, conceptually, that karma is carried from one lifetime to another and from one situation to another in this present lifetime, much like a torch is passed from team membert to team member in a relay race. But what does karma actually look like “on the ground” in our daily lives? Put another way, what are the consequences of our past volitional actions when certain causes and conditions meet and certain seeds ripen in the present?

Based on my weblog page called The actual face of karma: a portrait gallery, what would the life of someone who is the present (fictional) incarnation of Queen Tiye (mother of Akhenaten), Queen of Sparta (aka Helen of Troy), Queen Jezebel, Queen Cleopatra, St. Teresa of Avila and Sigmund Freud look like? In other words, what is the fruition of the karma of the Portrait Gallery of these six historical figures in terms of money, career, sex, family, friendships, etc.? And what would today’s (fictional) incarnation have to do to change the karmic stream so that future lives would not just be a repeat of the past? To answer these questions, I use diary entries.

* * * * * *

I, Rainbow Desert Flower, enter this dream into my private diary on the 1st day of the month of July in the year 1971 CE. May it benefit all beings who are trying to understand their karmic footprint.
……..

I think I was born with a state known as chronic depression! I believe I have been carrying this habitual way of relating to the world with me from lifetime to lifetime.

Last night I had a dream that has given me a wider perspective:

Dream:

I am in a very, very large theatre. It is empty. Nothing in it. No chairs. No actors. No audience. No musicians. No props. No sets. But I know right in the dream [as opposed to thoughts upon waking from the dream] that the space is a theatre. I also know that the theatre is space! I rest there. Then a black cloud floats in from stage left. Right in the dream I think “This cloud is depression. But it wasn’t there in the beginning. Just space was there. Then the black cloud moved in.” I notice that the cloud is not affecting the space around it in any way.

Notes on interpretation of dream:

• theatre = space = our primordial nature
• depression = insubstantial; like a cloud blocking the sun of our true nature. But the sun is still there. Just blocked temporarily
• main message of dream = I am not my depression.
  

Update June, 2009:

We experience depression as a solid thing. I think that “depression” is comprised of a bundle of habitual patterns which have both an action and an emotional component, which contribute to creating our karmic stream and maintaining it.

Fortunately, just like a theatre provides an unchanging stage for the actors to enact the play, our primordial nature is vast and provides an unchanging space for a multitude of changing, temporary, unsolid, impermanent, insubstantial — ie. empty — conditions like depression.

The pure nature of mind beyond the intellect, beyond all of these ordinary mental operations and activities, is not affected in the slightest by a dense state of mind.

NOTE: I am grateful for this message on Twitter, July 17′09 from N_Odzer: #FollowFriday @ExBP_Buddhist Great in insight in depression, & Bipolar Disorder with a Buddhist perspective, @Margaret_Scott 4 Karma blog.

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]]> http://www.getalifetime.com/2009/06/21/private-diary-entry-july-01-1971-when-karma-manifests-as-depression/feed/ 3 http://www.getalifetime.com/2009/04/12/diary-entry-june-29-1970/ http://www.getalifetime.com/2009/04/12/diary-entry-june-29-1970/#comments Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:00:49 +0000 Maggie http://www.getalifetime.com/?p=1610

We do not have to believe in reincarnation to benefit from this post or weblog. We only have to agree that present actions have effects in the future. What we call our past history was once the future that was caused by previous “present” actions.

Prologue: We understand intellectually, conceptually, that karma is carried from one lifetime to another and from one situation to another in this present lifetime, much like a torch is passed from team membert to team member in a relay race. Put another way, what are the consequences of our past volitional actions when certain causes and conditions meet and certain seeds ripen in the present?

But what does karma actually look like “on the ground” in our daily lives?

Based on my weblog paged called Actual face of karma, what would the life of someone who is the present (fictional) incarnation of Queen Tiye (mother of Akhenaten), Helen of Troy, Jezebel, Cleopatra, St. Teresa of Avila and Sigmund Freud actually look like? In other words, what is the fruition of the karma of this portrait gallery of these six historical figures in terms of money, career, sex, family, etc.? To try to answer this question, I use diary entries like the one below.

*  *  *  *  *  *

I, Rainbow Desert Flower, enter this into my private diary on the 29th day of the month of June in the year 1971 CE. May it benefit all beings who are trying to understand their karmic footprint. This diary entry deals specifically with the romantic relationships that arose out of the kind of past karma carried by the present incarnation of our portrait gallery described above.

Part One:

You needed to see me as
rough
but my kiss told you as
tender

You needed to see me as
critical
but my words told you as
helpful

You needed to see me as
formidable
But my eyes told you as
searching

You needed to see me as
having left you
But my presence told you as
here

You needed to see me as
You needed to see me
You needed to see
You needed to
You needed
You

But where does that leave us?

Part Two:

rough kiss tender
critical words helpful
formidable eyes searching
left presence here

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