Theos-Talk Archives (December 1993 Message tl00018)

In entering chelaship in a particular lifetime, we go through a period
of probation, a period of about seven years in which the karma of the
current life can come out and be dealt with. This allows us to devote
much of the remainder of our life to the Work.

But what does it mean for dammed-back karma to come rushing forth? Does
it mean that we encounter a rush of pain, misery, and suffering, which
we have to wade through, to stand up against, and to endure, as a
rite of passage, as a price that must be paid in order to deserve
admission to the spiritual path?

At the end of devachan, when the energies of the previous life have
exhausted themselves, the moment comes when the impulse to new life
happens, when the decision at the highest levels within is made to
come forth into life again. The nature of this impulse, the qualities
of it, the energies in it, go to shape the life that will be. Much like
the opening impulse of a Manvantara, issued forth from the Dhyani
Chohans, acting as Manus, governs the coming period of evolution in
the world, our own impulse sounds the keynote of the life to come.

A new ray of the Monad issues forth, to become the personality that will
exist in the world. And this ray contains a portion of the whole man,
containing some of the interests, qualities, attributes, and
characteristics of him, that portion of him which will be experienced
in the life to be.

When we think of the person as a separate individual, we consider these
qualities as attributes of self. When we take a higher standpoint, and
consider all life as inter-related, we consider there not being
qualities, but rather a web of relationships with all of life, a
karmic web, a mass or body of karma that will shape and define the
person to be.

That body of karma is the karma destined for the life, and defines the
person to be. In a normal lifetime, it unfolds itself slowly, coming
out over the entire lifespan of the person. But when we undertake the
Path, the process is changed.

With the Path, there is a dual experience of existence. The normal
course of life as a personality is still gone through, for that *is*
what we are at this time; we are human egos at this point of evolution.
But another side of ourselves, a higher part, also comes into play, and
accomodation is made so that it too may enjoy some experience, so that
it too can be lived out in some fashion.

Life is pushed harder, and like a system undergoing stress, it undergoes
a bifurcation, a point of transformation, after which there are *two*
selves that we experience things through. We have the ordinary
personality, and another, a higher self, the individuality, as a second
ego in which we can also experience life.

The Masters have written how they are ordinary men, in bodies of flesh,
just like us, and when functioning in their ordinary selves, in their
personalities, are just as fallable and likely to make mistakes as any
of us. It is just, they say, when the human element is paralyzed, and
they temporarily function in another part of their nature, that they are
actually functioning as Mahatmans.

In probation, we would have started this dual track of personal
development, of the outer self and a new, budding inner self. The
life of the personality must be fulfilled, the karma is not dropped,
but another life is cultivated too, apart from the personality.

When we hear that the karma of a lifetime comes up to meet us in the
period of probation, in but seven years, we must not assume the worst!
Karma is *not* merely a burden of suffering, waiting to cursh us. It
can also be apparently unmerrited good fortune. It can help us in
doing the work, and is not necessarily a collection of obstacles in
our way.

Don't look at karma as deferred punishment. It is not. When we hear of
all coming forth in probation, we are seeing the experiences of a
lifetime coming out in a short period of time.

The value to having all our karma come forth in probation is to allow
us to devote a period of time, the seven years, to getting our life
in order, to giving a direction to what all our karmic experiences
will take, a spin to it. This allows us to organize how the events of
our life will unfold, to order them, so that we can make room in our
life for something else as well.

When we speak of karma being intensified, that does not mean that is
all happens quickly, then is over, exhausted, and gone. Our ability
to interact with outers in life, and the very fabric of our beings,
is our karma, our living links to the rest of life. This does not all
go away after seven years.

The intensification of karma refers to all the events of the life,
all the people we will know, all the things that we will experience,
all the aspects of our personality's nature, to be drawn forth, to be
called into action. This is so that we can *start* things, not so that
we can have them all finished and over with.

This *starting* of things, in a short period of time, is to allow us
a concentrated period where we can organize the direction that they
will take in our lives. We cultivate the remainder of our lives, so that
there is *room* for other types of work and experiences, gaps in our
personal experiences and responsibilities, for other types of
experiences and responsibilities.

Our life is not regulated by some external lesson plan that we must
follow. The analogy of life being a school has merit, but we must not
carry it too far or we will be mislead.

We have certain personal responsibilities to others, and these karmic
links are not debts to be paid, where we try to pay them off quickly
so that we are no longer burdened with them. The karmic connections are
living links, that do not go away.

In probation, we come into contact with these people, who make up our
personal lives, and establish the nature of our future relationship
with them. We do it according to the revised plan for our lives,
rather than by chance, as we might have come across them later in life,
perhaps only meeting them when we were 60 or 70 years old.

We are not free of the complusion to take physical birth, but can
transform and adapt our personality as best as we can.

The intensification of karma that we experience in probation is not
as where every experience of our lifetimes are rushing forth to
be lived out in seven years. Rather, it is where we are faced with a
bewildering rush of *choices*, all at once, where we are starting or
sprouting every seed of karma in the life.

We start everything during this period, while we are giving our
full attention to shaping the direction that our lives will take, so
that we can also have opportunities, periods, gaps in our lives where
we also experience another side to life. And we fashion ourselves
during this time so that the remaining life has as much flexibility as
possible to allow us to participate in the work.

Our personal karma still defines the limits on who and what we will
be, and we still work within the established structure of life, but
we seek to make the best of things. We are still the same person, and
still have the same personal ties and responsibilities to fulfill,
but we've organized them to allow us to do the best work that we can.

                                Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com)