OUR LIVES LIVE THEMSELVES

There is this distinct feeling in us that no matter what we do, our lives are on automatic pilot, as if they are living themselves.  Why is this?  It is because our lives are living themselves for the most part, due to karma.

Karma is defined variously as a mental or physical act; the consequence of a mental of physical act; the sum of the consequences of an individual's actions in this and previous lives; the chain of cause and effect operating in the moral world.

The types of karma are agami karma, which is the mental and physical acts that a person performs in the present life, the fruits of which are to be reaped in the future; prarabdha karma, which is that portion of stored-up karma from past lives which has begun to bear fruit in the present life, in which it must be exhausted; and sanchita karma, which is karma that an indivdual has created in prior lives and which is waiting to fructify in a future life.

Each individual's karma is made up of what is called samskaras.  A samskara is an impression, tendency, or potentiality, created in a person's mind as a result of an action or thought.  The sum total of an individual's samskaras represents his character.

The samskaras guide his motives and conduct in both his present and his future thoughts and actions.  In this way, every karma becomes a seed of another karma.  The fruits of karma are reaped as happiness or misery, in accordance with the nature of each thought or act.

While each person's character imposes certain limitations upon him, he has two options.  He can either choose to follow the tendency he has already formed, or decide to make a change. 

Devotion to God, enhancing good karmas and mitigating evil ones, begins to loosen the bonds of karma.  When a person "awakens," becomes illumined, all karma is then wiped away.  The ability to choose, to exercise true free will, comes with awakening.  No longer will one feel his life is living itself.