Not long ago, Mike Adams wrote an article regarding karma. I would like to add to that.
First and foremost, the driver of a vehicle and the vehicle are two separate entities. Just like it takes a driver to drive a car it takes the driver of the body to drive the bodily vehicle. One is permanent and one is temporary.
What activities the driver of the vehicle engages in has a profound effect on its future and the type of vehicle it drives.
It is not that God arbitrarily chooses to make you poor and another person rich. It is not God who’s doing it but you.
Many religious sects, atheists and people in general have always posed the question, why is it if God loves all of us – His children – are there so many disparities and disabilities?
Unfortunately, however, people have failed to receive a satisfactory answer to this question. Many priests, pastors, ministers and rabbi’s who do not actually have the answer attempt to reply:
“We can’t understand God’s dealings. It’s a test. It’s God’s will, you know”, and so on. Because they don’t appreciate transmigration of the soul or the science of reincarnation and karma, then they cannot satisfactorily answer this question. In reality the answer is simple:
If you appreciate the law of karma, “as you sow, so shall you reap”, or “what goes around, comes around”, then you can appreciate how your prosperity or non-prosperity, or joy or pain, is due to your previous activities.
God has simply arranged the laws in such a way that you have possession of your own destiny. If you are suffering now because you were born with one leg, then you may have two ways of looking at it.
First, you see it as your fault. Second, you see it as God’s fault. After all, if you think that life just began with this body then you will question, “well, how come it’s like this?” What possible basis could God have for doing this to me? I didn’t do anything.”
If you do not appreciate that you existed previously and that whatever you are going through now is simply the result of your past activities, you will see it as being unfair.
This means that whatever you are reaping now, you must have previously sown. Jesus did not say, “as you sow, someone else will reap”, or “what you’re reaping now, you never sowed. He said, very clearly, “As you sow, so shall you reap”.
So, it’s not a question of God not being perfect, or of Him not loving you but it’s a question of your having done something which you shouldn’t have done and which you must pay for even though it might be a result of something you did in a previous life.
While the body is material and temporary, the soul is spiritual and eternal. But, until we understand this reality and act upon it we take on body after body according to out desires and continue to suffer the reactions of our actions.
If you do not appreciate this truth that you are the one responsible for your destiny, then you’ll end up throwing the blame at God. Unfortunately, you may even come to the point of seeing God as a very powerful being who has no concern and no sense of justice.
Because of not understanding the reality of karma, reincarnation, etc, people not only become bitter towards God but may become atheists as well and totally reject the existence of God altogether. Therefore, there must be appreciation of the reality that your situation is due to your own making.
You made your present existence by your past activities. What’s more, you are preparing for your future existence by your present activities.
What if something horrible happens to you at a young age when you had little time to create bad karma? That horrible reaction is a carryover from a past life. If you know and understand that, letting go of that horrendous reaction becomes easier.
Remember that karma means action. Good karma means good action and bad karma means bad action. Good and bad, here, are both material concepts and not at all transcendental. Good karma leads to good karmic reaction and bad karma leads to bad karmic reaction. Both are in the material dimension and not in the spiritual dimension.
Say you engage in activities that help or benefit others. This is good karma. If you engage in activities that bring pain and suffering to others, this is bad karma. Both of these actions are noted by the Lord and both are stored in your karmic “bank account”. After death, a person then gets a body according to his mentality and to the karmic reaction good or bad due him.
So although God provides a person with a gross material body according to how that person wants to enjoy, it is the person himself who is responsible for the actions, which he engages in while in that body. Being responsible for one’s actions, a person must suffer or enjoy all the reactions to his actions.
Pleasure and suffering relate directly to an individual, not a group of individuals. In other words, I’m in this body and you are in your body. I can suffer and I can enjoy but you cannot experience what I feel and vice-versa.
In any case, try to understand that everyone suffers. It’s not only that some people suffer. Some people might think it unfair that a person leaves their body at age twenty. But if someone leaves their body at age eighty, is that fair?
The fact is that this material world is not our home. We are spiritual by essence and we are eternal. We don’t belong here. It’s not that we are being punished. It is actually a method – a system of education.
This world is a school that has been set up by God. We are supposed to learn that this is not our home and we are supposed to go back home – back to the Kingdom of God, back to our Supreme Father. And we do this by engaging in God-centered spiritual activity.
We have to transcend the material dimension, both good and bad karmic activities, and rekindle the desire to go to God’s Kingdom, which cannot be achieved by pious activities, which are material by nature. We have to come to the platform of being resituated in the loving service to the Supreme Father. When we are tasting the nectar of loving devotion to God we will be satisfied and happy.
God is in the heart of every living entity. He knows our wants and He knows our desires. If you want to know Him, He will work it out. We have to go deep within ourselves and pray for His help to reconnect with Him.
In an ancient text called the Bhagavad-Gita As-It-Is, God says, “If one offers me, with love and devotion, a leaf, a flower or some water, I will accept it”. In Genesis, God tells us that plants have been provided to us as the foundation of our diets. Only through time, circumstance and whining, was flesh permitted, and that was strictly for survival. And the flesh had to be prepared in a very lengthy process and as a sacrifice. Not by killing 400 plus animals an hour.
So the easiest way to start the reconnecting process is to offer all plant-based foods to Him before we eat them. It’s a matter of putting Him first. As this continues and as we become more and more engaged in devotional activities to Him, our karmic reactions will become farther apart and if we are fortunate we will not have to come back to the material world again.
And the reason we are here in the first is because when we were at Home and saw how out Father was enjoying we became envious and wanted to enjoy His pleasure. Because of this he gave us the material world.
So, rather than bask in the temporary material joys and miseries, if we can somehow turn to Him and rekindle our relationship with Him, we can get back where we belong next time around.
Back in 1975, when I finally made it to Hawaii, there was a multitude of spiritual paths beaconing. There were the impersonalists that said we were God but forgot and if we paid them they would teach us to remember. For me, having at that time no sense of spiritual advancement, I would ask them if I created the heavens and the earth how could I forget I was God? And, if I were all-powerful, how could I die? The double talk I received was unbelievable.
Then, I met someone that explained everything above and it made sense. That person told me I needed to do two things to rekindle my relationship with God. One, was to offer all fruits, vegetables, grains and dairy products to Him before eating. If that were done with sincerity, all the karma involved in the ‘killing’ of the plant foods would be removed by God and what I ate would be karma free.
When I said I was vegan and didn’t eat dairy products I was told that by offering the milk products to Him, the cows would benefit and put them on the path to a human form next time or so around. So, if something had dairy in it I offered it and gave it to someone else. Doing that benefitted the person I gave it to as well as the cows that produced it.
Then I was told something bizarre. If you chant His names you make the contact between you and Him stronger.
All I knew was Elai or Eluhanu. I did not know of other names. I then learned about Jehovah, Allah, and Krishna.
When I heard “Krishna”, I freaked. In my travels I ran across “Hare Krishna’s” that were so pushy and obnoxious that that was the last thing I would entertain.
When I first heard George Harrison of the Beatles sing “My Sweet Lord”, I heard him sing the Hare Krishna mantra. I loved the song and wanted to know more about why he was singing that mantra.
When it was explained to me that this was the most personal contact and never had to be identified with anyone but Him, I tried it and got hooked. So much so that it has become the ending theme song of my radio shows.
The Hare Krishna mantra is made up of three words: Hare, Krishna, and Rama. Hare refers to the energy of God, Krishna is one of His names meaning The All-Attractive One, and Rama means The One Who Bestows Internal Pleasure Through Devotional Service To Him.
So, every time one chants,
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare,
one is simply asking God to let you love Him.
So, I mind my own business and chant silently and can get through just about any stressful situation.
Haribol (Chant the Holy name)!
Sources:
The three following vedic scriptures –
Bhagavad-gita-as-it-is
Sri Isopanisad
Chaitanya Charitamrita
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
