內疚和業力
，或內疚，是我們許多人進步的主要絆腳石。如果一個人以良好的清醒和決心，能夠完成態度清除的所有步驟，但仍然沒有破解它，或者如果他們陷入消極和責備中，而這些消極和責備在頭腦清理工作的其他過程中沒有處理，那麼很有可能至少有一些阻止他們進步的是根深蒂固的內疚。如果一個人感到內疚，通常是下意識的，他們不會讓自己進步。但是可以做很多事情來幫助人們解決這個問題。
伯納使用梵語「業力」而不是「內疚」。內疚通常被定義為對自己所做的某事感到難過。這不是一個三維的想法。業力是一個更全面的因果理論，更適合我們真正發生的事情。
帕坦伽利說，潛意識是“一個人的轉移性、進化的業力包袱”。1 業力和想法實際上是一回事。觀念是我們潛意識中業力的影響，它們會產生更多的業力。這可能與西方關於事物如何運作的想法是陌生的，但解開包裝，是完全可以理解的。
業力的迴圈，因果關係的迴圈，不是一種神秘的自然力量，甚至不是神聖的力量，而是我們行為的直接結果。我們通過業力創造我們看到的世界。基督教的良心概念與不正確的行為和內疚的概念有相似之處。
為了處理心靈，一個人需要合理地擺脫內疚，也就是說，他們不會陷入內疚的態度。這並不是說他們不會做他們認為不應該做的事情，但他們不會對此採取一種態度。
許多人陷入成長過程，因為他們不允許自己快樂或變得更好。這是因為他們做了一些在他們自己看來是錯誤的事情。因此，他們認為，在某種程度上，他們應該為自己所做的事情而
受到懲罰。創造業力的不是某個遙遠的神或晦澀的自然法則，而是我們。我們判斷自己是錯的，並有一個內在的平衡。在內心深處，我們認為我們應該為我們做錯的事情而受到懲罰。相反，我們傾向於認為我們應該為我們所做的好事而得到獎勵。
你將確保你通過忍受任何你需要受苦的東西來學習你需要學習的教訓，直到你學會了那個教訓，在這一點上，你將擺脫這種業力。或者，如果你做了好事，當你活了下來，得到了所有你覺得你應該得到的好東西，你又回到了平等的狀態，好事就停止了。
2 一旦你有思想，你也有業力或內疚。根據定義，擁有思想是對他人的傷害，我們對此感到內疚。3 我們相信我們是壞的，因為我們對別人做了什麼。實際上，沒有人是天生的壞人。沒有這樣的事情。但我們相信自己是壞的，並對我們是什麼樣的人形成固定的想法。通過這種方式，業力隨著過去行為的影響而積累，從而產生新的體驗。執行操作。
4 我們感覺不好，因為從根本上說，
我們深深地關心別人。但是，我們對自己所做的事情或我們沒有做的事情感到內疚，實際上會導致我們對待他人更加糟糕。當我們做一些我們認為不應該做的事情時，我們會向別人退縮。
你不再那麼多地伸出援手，你只是用過去你發現不會傷害別人的方式伸出援手。因此，你的個人權力被限制在後面，被控制並關閉。當然，這會導致緊張局勢。你的能量沒有地方表達自己。這會導致沮喪、失望和生活中缺乏成就感。你帶著內疚的良心四處走動。
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這種情況很不舒服，所以我們制定策略，以應對我們沉重的良心。我們試圖找到一個空間來四處走動，否則它似乎是無法忍受的，我們只會壓制並停止做任何事情。我們感覺很糟糕，所以我們通常遇到的解決方案是嘗試減少我們所做的事情的“壞”。
鮑勃借用安吉拉的小屋時把它弄得一團糟，他為此感到難過。他沒有清理冰箱，把髒兮兮的床上用品留在臥室的地板上，離開浴室時，地板上到處都是靴子印和一個髒兮兮的浴缸。他知道她必須收拾他的爛攤子，但他不忍直言不諱。甚至沒有對安吉拉說，『我把你的小屋弄得一團糟，我做了，我很抱歉。他無法面對這一點，因為他認為自己無法面對自己罪責的痛苦，部分原因是他長期以來一直避免這種根深蒂固的痛苦，也因為他對受到懲罰有一些態度和想法。因此，他沒有這樣做，而是試圖通過減少他在腦海中的所作所為來減少他對安吉拉所做的事情的不良感覺。他開始稍微改變一下故事，對自己說，『好吧，反正都是一團糟，東西很舊，它們已經破舊了，所以如果我再把它搞砸一點也沒什麼大不了的。是的，我做到了，但並沒有那麼糟糕。它比這更進一步，他開始想，『好吧，安吉拉真的沒那麼好;那次她說了我家的事時傷害了我，所以沒關係，因為無論如何她都不是一個好人。
人們總是這樣做。我們不能這樣對待人，更糟糕的是，如果我們讓現實看到他們是真實的、活生生的人，我們就會受到傷害。我們走得更遠，而不是逃避對自己感覺不好的事情負責，有時還會責怪他人的行為。
羅傑：嗯，是的，我背著他搞砸了他的工作，但那是因為他那次冷落了我，讓我在老闆面前看起來像個傻瓜，所以這是他的錯。
這是讓人們批評他人的機制。我們的良心不好，使我們批評他人。這與我們可能認為會發生的情況相反。內疚不會讓我們更好地對待他人。它引導我們走上一條對待人越來越糟糕的道路，因為我們的良心因內疚而變得越來越沉重。內疚使我們不再在別人身上看到真實的個體。
艾拉對她冷落約翰的方式感到難過，所以她退縮了。她這樣做是出於愛，真的。但是
對約翰來說，這感覺不像是愛。他只是覺得她冷落他很不高興，而且是那麼遙遠。
克服我們的內疚良心是可以實現的。最明顯的方法是承認我們做了什麼。基督教會有這個;它是七聖禮之一。雖然它在新教教派中使用不多，但它仍然被認為是承認自己罪惡的神聖聖事，因為它是如此重要的行為。當然，這通常被視為承認教會認為是一個人的罪。真正重要的是我們個人的良心認為有罪的東西。
如果我們不認為別人認為這是一件壞事，那麼承認這是一件不好的事情是不好的。這隻會使情況變得更糟。
喬對她的男朋友大衛很生氣，因為他週三晚上出去和朋友玩得很開心，沒有打電話給她看看她今天過得怎麼樣，也沒有告訴她他在哪裡。她認為這是他做的壞事。另一方面，他認為這沒什麼大不了的。當他意識到她不高興時，他感到很糟糕，尤其是因為這導致了他們之間不舒服的裂痕。但他對出去和朋友玩得開心並不難過。在他心目中，他沒有做錯任何事;他根本沒來得及給她打電話，也沒有聽到他的電話，因為酒吧很吵。但喬希望他承認這是一件壞事，在他承認之前，她不會放手。所以他同意這是一件壞事，因為他想不出其他辦法來解決爭端。但這只會讓情況變得更糟。當他不認為這是一件壞事時，坦白在他們之間製造了另一個問題，因為大衛覺得他被她不公正地對待了。
為了克服內疚，只根據自己說真話至關重要。懺悔讓我們克服了我們感到內疚的事情，因為我們承認誰做了壞事。這不僅僅是我們做過或沒有做的事情讓我們感到難過，也不是我們沒有承認它。我們把它藏起來，然後我們就不誠實了。但懺悔往往會在生活中帶來後果。我們一開始就不誠實
，因為我們認為我們會因此受到懲罰。這是小時候經常發生在我們身上的事情，我們潛意識地認為，只要我們承認自己做了什麼，就會發生這種情況。可悲的是，人們確實會追究我們的責任並懲罰我們，有時甚至是成年人，所以假設這種情況會發生並不是沒有道理的。為了能夠坦白，儘管有可能產生不良後果，但需要我們放棄控制後果的想法：“只要你執著於按照你想要的方式擁有事物，你就會傾向於不承認你做了什麼。6 不這樣做的後果是巨大的。我們與他人越來越疏遠，我們的處境惡化。因此，在幫助關係中，認罪絕不能受到懲罰。在某個時候可能會有一些賠償需要做，但認罪本身應該只是一個被另一個人完全聽到和接受的供詞，沒有回頭。如果有復出，這個人不會開門。他們必須覺得他們可以對他們的Clearer說任何話，否則他們不會冒險說出他們在生活中真正想說的話。
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約拿單並不是一個顯而易見的業力清除候選人。作為一名會計師，他來參加會議是因為他覺得自己不值得成功，而他彎腰的姿勢和道歉的態度似乎反映了這一點。他聽說心靈清除解決了卡住的信念，他很想讓這個信念休息一下。我確認我們可以努力，但首先需要做一些初步工作來奠定基礎。
作為這項工作的一部分，我解釋了業力工作，並邀請喬納森嘗試一下。但僅僅過了四輪，他說，『這就是我所需要的。我沒有其他沒有處理過的遺憾。當被問及他是如何“已經處理”他們的時，他說“最好在後悔下劃清界限，而不是讓他們困擾你”——他就是這樣做的，
尤其是很久以前他剛剛獲得資格並做了他現在認為不道德的事情時的遺憾。“我現在有更高的標準，”他補充說。
“給我舉個例子，說明你在你知道之前做了一些不道德的事情，”我問，他告訴我一些事情
，如果當時出來，肯定會給他帶來嚴重的麻煩。當我解釋說很久以前的惡業和最近的惡業一樣具有破壞性時，他同意繼續這個過程。
兩節課後，喬納森自由地回憶起他“在風中航行”的日子里的行為。現在，當他回顧和面對這些行為時，他對那些以他目前的標準不道德對待的人感到真正的遺憾，並回憶起與他的工作無關的行為，他“從過去”就後悔了。在三節課結束時，喬納森已經很明顯，他的“我不配在這裡”的信念既源於對他過去行為的內疚感，也源於早期起源的信念。我們確實繼續識別和處理相關的信念，但業力清除是必不可少的初步工作。
懺悔，或所謂的業力清除，是非常強大的，可以解開消極的深層模式。但是，使用懺悔來克服內疚是有限制的。這始終是我們必須鍛煉意志才能執行的技巧。每當使用意志時，這都與真正的個人格格不入;它是強迫的，所以它總是在二元論的領域。如果一個人不斷承認他們做了他們認為錯誤的事情，他們最終會陷入這一面。因此，為了避免只朝著一個方向卡住，這應該與他們認為他們沒有做的事情交替進行。就像在態度清除中思考相反的東西一樣，這將保持過程的開放性，並防止這個人被固定在一方或另一邊。
業力清除對我來說是黑暗中的一劑強心針。我不知道這意味著什麼，只是決定相信菲奧娜，她是我的老朋友和導師。她正在為這個新流程尋找客戶，我希望在日常生活中取得一些進展。我預訂了十個 2 小時的密集課程離子超過10天。我喜歡做這項工作的想法，遠離我忙碌生活中的責任和限制——我想這是一種假期，有很多空閒時間放鬆和享受周圍的環境。
在火車旅行中，我偶爾會想一下業力這個詞。我想，關於前世的一些事情;你不得不在下輩子為你所做的壞事付出代價。還是接下來的幾世？我聳聳肩，回到我的書本上。我很快就會知道的。
我安頓好自己的房間，散步，準時參加我的第一次會議。我們相對坐在直背但舒適的椅子上。菲奧娜用藍色的目光盯著我。當會議開始時，我期待著序言或解釋。相反，我得到了一個指示：「告訴我你做了一些你自己估計不應該做的事情，
」菲奧娜說。她已經解釋了一些關於我們正在做的事情和說明，但我發現它非常坦率，有點困惑，所以她重複了指示。
我坐回椅子上感到困惑。她能說什麼意思？我現在做過的事情，或者很久以前或我出生之前的事情還是什麼？所以我讓她解釋一下。
“沒關係，”她說，“它只需要是你做過的事情，而你不應該按照自己的估計去做。
於是我坐下來沉思。“好吧，我不知道從哪裡開始。我的意思是我在火車上吃了太多蛋糕，我絕對不應該這樣做，因為現在我覺得有點噁心。這就是你的意思嗎？
“這是你自己估計不應該做的事情嗎？”
“嗯...是的，“我說，希望這是正確的回應。“謝謝你，”菲奧娜說。“告訴我一些你沒有
做的事，按照你自己的估計，你應該做。我的心沉了下去。這一點也不好玩，這是艱苦的工作。
我想了一會兒。
我想我沒有對我的祖母好。“你到底沒做過什麼？”
“我失敗了，”我說，吞咽著，突然心煩意亂。“當我母親在我6周大的時候回去工作時，她在她家照顧我。當我上學時，她搬進了我們家，所以她午餐時間在那裡，當我回家時。
菲奧娜的眼睛盯著我。它很善良，但無法逃避：「那你到底沒有做什麼？
“她變得失智，開始做奇怪的事情。沒有人解釋發生了什麼。我對她很可怕。我生氣了，對她大喊大叫。
“你沒做過什麼？”
我以為我已經回答了，正要抗議，但隨後我重播了我的回答，並意識到，令我有點不適的是，我仍然沒有直接回答這個問題。所以我回想起了我的祖母，以及為什麼我感到如此可怕。當我想起時，我渾身都涼了。“我每次擺桌子時都沒能給她合適的餐具。我總是在應該給她湯勺的時候給她糖勺。她總是注意到。
GUILT AND KARMA
Karma, or guilt, is a major stumbling block to progress for many of us. If, with a good Clearer and determination, a person is able to go through all the steps of attitude clearing but still not crack it, or if they are stuck in negativity and blame that is not dealt with in the other processes of Mind Clearing work, then there is a good chance that at least some of what is stopping them progress is deep-seated guilt. If a person feels weighed down by guilt, often subconsciously, they will not allow themselves to progress. But a good deal can be done to help people with this.
Berner used the Sanskrit term karma instead of guilt. Guilt is often defined as no more than feeling bad about something one has done. It is not a three-dimensional idea. Karma is a more rounded theory of cause and effect and better suits what really goes on for us.
Patanjali says the unconscious mind is the ‘transmigratory, evolving karmic baggage of a person’.1 Karma and ideas are virtually the same thing. Ideas are the effects of karma in our subconscious and they produce more karma. This may be foreign to Western ideas of how things work but, unpacked, is perfectly understandable.
The cycle of karma, of cause and effect, is not a mysterious natural, or even divine, force but the direct result of our actions. We create the world we see through karma. The Christian concept of conscience has similarities to the idea of incorrect action and guilt.
In order to deal with the mind, a person needs to be reasonably free of guilt, that is, they will not get stuck in the attitude of being guilty. It is not to say they will not do things they think they should not have done, but they will not get fixed in an attitude about it.
Many people get stuck in their growth process because they will not allow themselves to be happy or get better. This is because they have done things that, in their own estimation, are wrong. They consequently believe, on some level, that they should be punished for
what they have done. It is not some remote god or obscure law of nature that creates karma, it is us. We judge ourselves as being wrong and have an inner balance. Deep down we think we should be punished for the things we have done wrong. Conversely, we tend to think we should be rewarded for the good things we have done.
You will see to it that you learn the lesson that you need to learn by suffering whatever you need to suffer until you’ve learned that lesson, at which point you will be free of that karma. Or if you’ve done good things, when you’ve lived it up and gotten all the good things that you feel you’re supposed to get and you’re back to equal, the good things stop.2
As soon as you have a mind, you also have karma or guilt. Having a mind is, by definition, doing harm to others and we feel guilty about it.3 We believe we are bad because of the things we do to others. No one is actually an inherently bad person. There is no such thing. But we believe we are bad and develop fixed ideas about what kind of people we are. In this way, karma builds up as the effects of past actions result in new experiences and actions.4
We feel bad because, at base, we care about others deeply. But the guilt we feel about what we have done, or what we have failed to do, actually leads to us treating others more badly. When we do something we think we should not have done, we back off from others.
You quit reaching out so much, and you just reach out in the ways that in the past you found didn’t hurt other people. And so your personal power is throttled way back, held in and closed up. And of course that leads to tension. Your energy had no place to express itself. This leads to frustration, disappointment and lack of fulfilment in life. And you walk around with a guilty conscience.5
This situation is very uncomfortable, so we strategise in order to deal with our heavy conscience. We try to find a space to move around in it, or it would seem intolerable and we would just clamp down and stop doing anything. We feel bad, so the solution we generally hit upon is to try and reduce the ‘badness’ of what we have done.
Bob made a mess of Angela’s cottage when he borrowed it, and he felt bad about it. He didn’t clear out the fridge and left dirty bedding on the floor of the bedroom and left the bathroom with boot prints all over the floor and a grimy bathtub. He knew she had had to clear up his mess, but he could not bear to be direct about it; not even to say to Angela, ‘I made a mess of your cottage, I did that and I’m sorry.’ He could not face that because he believed he could not face the pain of his own culpability, partly because he has avoided this deep-seated pain for a long time and also because he had some attitudes and ideas around being punished. So instead of that, he tried to reduce the bad feeling about what he did to Angela by lessening what he did in his mind. He started changing the story a bit, saying to himself, ‘Well, it was a mess anyway, the things were old, they were worn out, so no big deal if I messed it up some more. Yeah, I did it, but it wasn’t so bad.’ It went further than this, and he started thinking, ‘Well, Angela’s not that nice really; she hurt me that time when she said something about my house, so it’s OK because she’s not a great person anyway.’
People do this all the time. We could not treat people like this, and much worse, if we let in the reality that they are real, living people we are hurting. We go further than avoiding the responsibility for what we feel bad about and sometimes blame others for their actions.
Roger: Well, yes, I went behind his back and messed up his job, but it was because he snubbed me that time and made me look a fool in front of my boss, so it was his fault.
This is the mechanism that makes people critical of others. Our bad conscience makes us critical of others. It is the reverse of what we might think would happen. Guilt does not make us treat others better. It leads us on a path of treating people worse and worse as our conscience gets heavier and heavier with guilt. Guilt makes us stop seeing the real individual in others.
Ella felt bad about the way she snubbed John, so she backed off from him. She did this out of love, really. But
it did not feel like love to John. He just felt upset she snubbed him and is so distant.
Getting over our guilty conscience can be achieved. The most obvious way is literally to confess what we have done. The Christian churches have this; it is one of the seven sacraments. Although it is not much used in the Protestant denominations, it is still considered a sacred sacrament to confess one’s sins because it is such an important act. Of course, this is usually seen as confessing what the Church considers to be a person’s sins. What is actually important is what our own individual conscience considers sinful.
It is no good confessing to something other people think is wrong if we do not think it was a bad thing. This just makes the situation worse.
Jo was angry with her boyfriend, David, because he went out and had a good time with his friends on Wednesday night and did not call her to see how her day went or to tell her where he was. She believed it was a bad thing he did. He, on the other hand, thought it was no big deal. He felt bad when he realised she was upset, not least because it caused a rift between them that was uncomfortable. But he did not feel bad about going out and having a nice time with his friends. In his mind he had done nothing wrong; he simply did not get round to calling her and did not hear his phone because the pub was noisy. But Jo wanted him to admit it was a bad thing and she would not let it go until he confessed. So he agreed that it was a bad thing because he could not think of another way to resolve the dispute. But this just made the situation worse. Confessing to it, when he did not think it was a bad thing, created another problem between them because David then felt he had been unjustly dealt with by her.
For the purpose of getting over guilt, it is vital to speak the truth according to oneself alone. Confession gets us over what we feel guilty about because we own up to who did the bad thing. It was not just the thing we did or failed to do that we feel bad about, it was also not owning up to it. We hid it away and then we were untruthful about it. But confession often carries consequences in life. We were not honest
in the first place because we thought we would be punished for it. This is what often happens to us as children, and we subconsciously think this will happen any time we confess that we did something. And sadly people will indeed hold us to account and punish us sometimes, even as adults, so it is not unreasonable to suppose this will happen. To be able to confess, despite the possibility of undesirable consequences, requires us to let go of our idea of controlling the consequences: ‘To the degree you are attached to having things the way you want them to be, you will tend not to confess what you have done.’6 The consequences of not doing so are huge. We become more and more distant from others and the situation for us deteriorates. So there must be no punishment attached to confession in a helping relationship. There might be some reparation to be done at some point that might be worked out, but the confession itself should just be a confession that is heard and accepted by another person fully, with no comeback. If there is comeback, the person will not open up. They have to feel they can say anything to their Clearer or they will not risk saying what they really want to say in life.7
Jonathan was not an immediately obvious candidate for karma clearing. An accountant, he came for sessions because he felt stuck with a belief that he didn’t deserve success, and his stooped posture and apologetic manner seemed to reflect this. He’d heard that Mind Clearing addressed stuck beliefs and he was keen to lay this one to rest. I confirmed that we could work on it but first needed to do some preliminary work to lay the foundation.
As part of this preliminary work, I explained karma work and invited Jonathan to try it. But after only four rounds, he said, ‘That’s all I need. I don’t have any other regrets that I haven’t already dealt with.’ When asked how he’d ‘already dealt with’ them, he said it was ‘best to draw a line under regrets rather than letting them bug you’
– and he’d done just that, particularly with regrets from long ago when he’d just qualified and done things he’d now regard as unethical. ‘I have much higher standards nowadays,’ he added.
‘Give me an example of something unethical you did before you knew better,’ I asked, and he told me something
that would surely have got him into serious trouble if it had come out at the time. When I explained that bad karma from long ago was just as damaging as recent bad karma, he agreed to continue with the process.
Two sessions later, Jonathan was freely remembering actions from the days when he was, as he put it, ‘sailing close to the wind’. And now, as he reviewed and faced those actions, he felt genuine regret towards those he’d treated unethically by his current standards, as well as recalled actions not connected with his work that he regretted ‘from the old days’. By the end of three sessions, it had become apparent to Jonathan that his ‘I don’t deserve to be here’ belief had arisen as much from a buried sense of guilt around his past behaviour as from a belief of earlier origin. We did go on to identify and tackle an associated belief, but the karma clearing had been an essential preliminary.
Confession, or what is called karma clearing, is very powerful and can unlock deep patterns of negativity. But there are some limits to the use of confession for getting over guilt. It is always a technique we have to exercise our wills to perform. Whenever the will is used, this is out of line with the true individual; it is forcing, so it is always in the realm of dualism. If a person keeps confessing what they did that they thought was wrong, they will eventually get stuck in this side. So, to avoid getting jammed up going in only one direction, this should be alternated with what they believe they failed to do. In much the same way as pondering the opposites in attitude clearing, this will keep the process open and prevent the person from getting fixed in one side or another.
Karma clearing was a shot in the dark for me. I had no real idea what it meant but just decided to trust Fiona who was a long-time friend and mentor. She was looking for clients for this new process and I was looking to make some progress in my daily life. I booked an intensive of ten 2-hour sessions over 10 days. I liked the idea of doing this work away from the responsibilities and constraints of my busy life – a sort of holiday, I thought, with lots of free time to relax and enjoy my surroundings.
On the train journey, I wondered occasionally about the word karma. Something about past lives, I thought; you had to pay in the next life for bad things you had done. Or was it the next several lives? I shrugged and returned to my book. I would find out soon enough.
I settled into my room, went for a walk and turned up on time for my first session. We sat opposite one another in straight-backed but comfortable chairs. Fiona fixed me with her blue gaze. When the session began I was expecting a preamble or maybe an explanation. Instead I got an instruction:
‘Tell me something you have done that you should not have done in your own estimation,’ Fiona said. She had explained a little about what we were doing and the instructions, but I found it very upfront and was a bit flummoxed, so she repeated the instruction.
I sat back in my chair feeling confused. What kind of things could she mean? Things I’ve done now, or ages ago or before I was born or what? So I asked her to explain.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘It just needs to be something you have done that you should not have done in your own estimation.’
So I sat and pondered. ‘Well, I don’t know where to start. I mean I ate too much cake on the train and I definitely shouldn’t have done that because now I feel a bit sick. Is that the kind of thing you mean?’
‘Is that something you should not have done in your own estimation?’
‘Um…yes,’ I said, hoping that was the right response. ‘Thank you,’ Fiona said. ‘Tell me something you failed
to do which you should have done in your own estimation.’ My heart sank. This was no fun at all, it was hard work.
I thought about it for a moment.
‘I guess I failed to be kind to my grandmother.’ ‘What did you fail to do exactly?’
‘I failed,’ I said, gulping, suddenly distraught. ‘She looked after me at her house when my mother went back to work when I was 6 weeks old. When I went to school she moved in to our house, so she was there at lunchtime and when I came home.’
Fiona had her eyes fixed on me; it was kind but there was no escape: ‘So what exactly did you fail to do?’
‘She got dementia and started to do weird things. Nobody explained what was going on. I was horrible to her. I got angry and shouted at her.’
‘And what did you fail to do?’
I thought I’d answered, and was just about to remonstrate, but then I replayed my responses and realised, to my slight discomfort, that I still hadn’t answered the question directly. So I went back to thinking of my grandmother and why I felt so horrible. I went cold all over when I remembered. ‘I failed to give her the right cutlery every time I laid the table day after day. I always gave her the sugar spoon when I should have given her a soup spoon. She always noticed.’
‘Thank you,’ said Fiona. We started again.
‘Tell me something you have done that you should not have done in your own estimation.’ Well, I guess I can’t use the cake incident again, I thought. ‘I’m not too sure about “in your own estimation”. What does that mean?’
‘It means you know for yourself that you shouldn’t have done something, rather than somebody else deciding you shouldn’t have done it. You are looking for your own inner standard.’
I thought about that for a while and she gave me the instruction again. ‘I threw a can of peaches at my grandmother.’ I felt sick with horror when I thought about what I had done. Why did I remember that? I was 13, for God’s sake!
‘So, you should not have done that in your own estimation?’
‘Yes,’ I said, quite sure this time. ‘Thank you.’
‘Tell me something you failed to do that you should have done in your own estimation.’
‘I failed to say I was sorry before she died.’ ‘She?’ asked Fiona.
‘My grandmother,’ I said, and began weeping, feeling overcome with guilt at how I had treated her.
‘Thank you.’
‘Is there something that you would like to say now to your grandmother?’
‘Now?’ I was perplexed. How could I do that?
‘You could speak to her now, as if she were right here, in this moment.’
‘How could she hear what I might have to say? She died years ago.’
‘If you get it across properly, it will make a difference.’ The strange thing was, I believed her.
‘What would you like to say to her?’ asked Fiona.
My eyes filled with tears and I stared at the floor. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered.
‘Speak to her. Take a moment and get a sense of her. Try closing your eyes; sometimes that helps. Then speak to her directly as though she were with us right now and could hear you.’
I took my time and closed my eyes. She had always had a sort of powdery, Yardley’s kind of smell and pale, papery skin. The funny thing was I could smell it. I mean really smell it.
‘Nan’, I said tentatively, ‘Nan?’ Something seemed to break inside me and it all poured out – grief and rage and shock. ‘I didn’t know, I didn’t know. Nobody told me. They didn’t tell me. How was I supposed to know?’
‘What do you want to say to her about that?’ said Fiona.
The ‘I’m sorry, forgive me’ came out of me as if wrenched from down in my toes, followed shortly by ‘Thank you for looking after me.’ I took a long, shaky breath.
‘Thank you,’ said Fiona. ‘Did you get it across to your grandmother?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Good, we’ll continue with that tomorrow. Do you have any comments about this session?’
I couldn’t believe how quickly the time had passed. I felt wrung out and stunned.
Karma clearing is particularly indicated where someone is stuck in a negative, critical state, as so many of us are. It is an aspect of the victim state. This technique will open up some space and people will feel a lot better for having confessed the things they did they think they should not have done, as well as the things they failed to do they think they should have done.
Karma clearing is also indicated where a person has persistent bad luck that does not seem in line with the rest of their lives.
Paul came for sessions because he saw himself as unusually unlucky and had begun to suspect he might be playing some part in his own misfortunes. Reviewing his life in his first session, he certainly seemed to have suffered a more than average share of bad luck, from physical accidents to losing money, to having his house burgled and vandalised, and losing his job when his employers went broke or sold their businesses.
He communicated well; no self-defeating beliefs or attitudes were apparent, and he seemed to organise his life efficiently. In other words, nothing pointed to Paul contributing to his own bad luck. So I thought karma clearing might be indicated and explained it. If he was somehow sabotaging his life, this could be because he was unconsciously punishing himself for things he had done that he felt bad about.
But Paul had reservations: he didn’t like the term ‘karma’ because, to him, ‘karma’ implied a belief in reincarnation he didn’t share. However, he agreed to go ahead when I explained that it accommodated clients who believed they’d had previous lives, without implying that such beliefs were necessary, and our focus would be on the life he knew he’d lived.
I alternated the instructions: ‘Tell me something you’ve done that you shouldn’t have done in your own estimation,’ and ‘Tell me something you’ve failed to do that you should have done in your own estimation.’
After perhaps 15 rounds, he said, ‘I shouldn’t have stolen some apples from my headmaster’s orchard at boarding school when I was 10,’ followed by, ‘I failed to share those stolen apples with the others in my dormitory.’ But he’d said the ‘failed to’ part in a way that didn’t ring true, so I said, ‘Clarify to me why it was wrong for you to steal the apples but would have been right to share them with others.’
He thought for a while, then said, ‘I’m beginning to get bogged down with this “in your own estimation” part. I mean, I only thought stealing the apples was wrong because everyone knows stealing is wrong. But I don’t
really think I was wrong. The apples were windfalls, being eaten by wasps, and we boys were given so little fruit back then that it’s a wonder we didn’t get scurvy. So, in my own estimation, I was right to steal them but wrong to eat them all myself.’
From then on, the session took off as he re-evaluated memory after memory in the light of his own estimation. In particular, he remembered times when he’d behaved badly, ‘Because’, as he put it, ‘other people behaved that way, so I did too’ – for example, when he joined others in bullying weaker boys at school.
Towards the end of session two, he found himself feeling devastated by his failure to help his brother when he was in financial trouble, and we broke off karma clearing temporarily while he expressed his deep regret to his brother as if he were present.
Paul found the work valuable not only because he felt as if a weight had been lifted from his mind, but also because each time he homed in on his own inner standard, he gained a clearer sense of who he was. He saw how letting other people’s standards be his yardstick had masked his own standards. That, in turn, meant he didn’t trust his own judgement and therefore had sometimes placed himself riskily in other people hands, particularly in money matters.
In the worse cases, if a person is given the instruction ‘Tell me something you did you think you shouldn’t have done,’ they will say, ‘Nothing, I haven’t done anything to anyone.’ They have persuaded themselves that everything is the fault of others; they never did anything bad to anyone. It will take persistence to get someone in this condition to look in the first place and to come up with anything at all. They are so steeped in guilt they cannot face looking at what they have done to others and have directed it all out at the world in criticism that is really self-criticism and at base, guilt. They prefer to move right on from that inner stuff and look at the fault they are projecting onto others. So a Clearer will have to be persistent with someone like this, and it may be too difficult at that point. The person may be better off discharging all the anger and frustration they are carrying around. They will not
be able to see their part in anything until a good part of this anger is expressed.
Eventually, though, if karma clearing is pursued, the person will come up with something. It will probably be quite vague and general to start with. They might say, ‘Well, I suppose I’ve sometimes been a bit mean to people.’ This is a start. When they have come up with a few things like this, they can be asked for specific examples of being mean and they might struggle with that but finally come up with, ‘Well, I’ve sometimes been a bit mean to my mother.’ From there, they can be encouraged to give a concrete instance of when they were mean to their mother. It will probably come along with a lot of blame towards others and lots of justifications, which should be ignored. They will come up with specifics. Eventually, they might say something along the lines of, ‘Well, I told her she was stupid when she bought the wrong attachment for the vacuum cleaner. That was mean. I feel bad about that.’ And they might then start to say, ‘But it was pretty stupid. I’ve had to put up with her stupidity all my life, and it drives me crazy.’ This second bit is quite normal but unhelpful. If there is a lot of it, it may be necessary to go back and get them more discharged around their anger. They should be encouraged to say all that stuff they have been bottling up. In karma clearing we just want the thing about which they feel bad, not the justifications. The justifications just pile on more things to feel bad about later. They undo the karma clearing.
When the person has communicated something they did they think they should not have done in their own estimation, then they can be asked to consider what, again in their own estimation, was the effect of what they did. They might say, ‘How should I know what the effect on her was?’ So it will be necessary to keep going and be patient, and finally they will be able to say it: ‘It upset her. Yes, she was upset about it.’ They can finally confess what they did and what effect it had. Karma clearing is powerful. The person has been feeling bad about this thing they did for years, maybe most of their life. They never told anyone before, and now they have. The person was critical, bitter and eaten up inside with guilt and anger. Now they have looked at the reality of what they did and said it. It does not matter what anyone else
did when it comes to karma clearing. The thing hanging us up is what we know we did wrong.
With karma clearing, people can come back to life. When a person can confess what they feel they have done wrong or failed to do, and see their part in what has been going on in their lives, then there is not so much need to be bitter and critical of others. They are freed up to treat others better. They can relax all the tension that has built up around their guilt and withholding. It can have a profound effect on their physical health and luck in life.
This is a very powerful, simple approach to resolving the unchanging and critical case, that kind of person who won’t let himself improve. Such people batter their heads against the most complex and clever techniques, but they won’t get better because they, in their hearts, don’t feel they deserve it. For the stubborn type of person who feels he never did anything to anybody, it takes a very clever [Clearer] to get him started. Once started and he’s got the idea, he’ll say, ‘Hey, this is the greatest technique that I ever came across. I slept soundly for the first time in my life.’ Then almost anybody can work with him, in any technique, after he has confessed for a while.8
The results of our past actions in our present lives are all a form of self- imposed penance.9 Karma is very little different from attitudes as they are all the fruits of action done in ignorance. Dealing with karma is working on the fixed attitudes in a different way.
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