We are born into the world with many lifetimes of memory, impressions, beliefs, tendencies and mental programs. Every young mother knows that her child has very definite orientations, likes and dislikes - we may call it personality - right from the first moment. These make up our energy field. Through the course of our life, these energy patterns inform and predispose us to certain kinds of relationships, certain kinds of illnesses, to meeting certain kinds of people, to being in the car that had the accident or, alternatively, the one that just missed it. In the East they call this Karma. We may also call it our conditioning, our patterning or just the imprints we hold, which are mostly stored in our unconscious mind. When we are able to clear these imprints, the outer life changes accordingly. All spiritual work, and all attempts at healing, growth or self development, depend for their success on the ability to clear these imprints that we hold within us (our karma). It is not difficult to clear, when you understand how.
However, most psychological, motivational and alternative healing processes that we are familiar with in our culture work too superficially to clear these imprints. We do not learn any of this growing up, or in formal education. The culture teaches us every day to focus outside ourselves. And when we are focused on trying to change external circumstances, people and situations, we are investing our energy in the wrong place, so typically things don't change, even if we work hard. Most people live their whole lives this way. Recurring patterns in our working life, in our relationships, in our feelings about life and ourselves remain as they always were. When we understand how to undo these deep patterns, however, all these external things change too. The external circumstances rearrange themselves to match the state of our mind. Until we understand this, we are controlled by our karma. The ignorant call it bad luck, or look to blame other people or outside forces. But there is no luck. The more you understand how to clear your own accumulated imprints, the more empowered you will feel, as you will see that you are no longer subject to forces beyond your control. Each of us is much more powerful than we had dared to imagine.
Everything in the outer life adapts itself to the condition of the inner life. This is not philosophy or new age belief - this is cosmic law. It is True for you whether you believe in it or not. Throughout history, it has been common to reject the Truth. This is invariably a response to fear – the ego likes to stay with what is familiar, to not have its world view threatened or questioned. Truth has the power to undo all your conditioning and set you free, but you first have to get past this fear of the unknown. Even if a person DOES reject Truth and the Path, or you have someone in your life who is hostile to your own journey, these same universal forces apply to them anyway. If you don’t understand how karma / conditioning works, and you don’t know how to resolve it, the Universe does not mind.
There is no punishing God ‘up there’. The moralistic, punishing God of religion is a neurotic fantasy of the conditioned mind. The true Path to Freedom leads beyond the mind altogether. The law of energy is impersonal. To the degree that you do not understand the laws of the universe, and to the degree that you are unable or unwilling to bring your being and life into harmony with them, that is the degree to which you will suffer. In ignorance, there will always be bigger forces that seem beyond your control and which determine your life, and there will always be fear.