I am posting this writing from Aeolus Kephas because it deals well with Karma, re-incarnation and, ‘who eats the suffering’. This from his discussion board at:
(the following excerpt comes from "Aeolus Kephas" and was transcribed by myself; I do not take either full credit or blame for the ideas contained herein, though they have been filtered through my own personal consciousness and fingertips.)
Quote:
Even when a more advanced (more loving and energetic) human dies and reincarnates (which in most cases still entails forgetting their previous life), it takes with it those elementals created in the last life, elementals which are, now the personality has been dissolved, semi-autonomous. They do not become ghosts, because they still retain a tie or connection to the reincarnating soul, or rather, to its only semi-completed Merkaba. They are soul parasites, as such, that ride on the energy body, not only throughout a life, but over many lifetimes. Another way of understanding this would be to say that an energy body that is not yet perfected (i.e., a soul that has not fully embraced unconditional love), has many marks or imprints on it, imprints left by previous lives’ indulgences and follies, experiences based in negative emotions.
These energetic experiences form an imprint on the Merkaba, somewhat like putting a leaf on fresh plaster will leave the shape of the leaf permanently imprinted after the leaf itself is removed. At death, even for the evolving Soul, the memories of the individual are released into the collective pool (hence the forgetting), but the imprint remains on the energy body. If the soul maintains enough cohesion (energy) to reincarnate, in its next life in a human body it begins not with a blank slate, nor with the memories of the past life, but only with the imprints made during the past incarnation.
This is the nature of Karma. We attract what fits into our imprints, whether it be the continuation of a lesson, or the delayed consequences of our actions, positive or negative. Referring back to the elementals: these pesky critters, having stuck to our energy bodies, will “haunt” us in our present lifetime, even though we have no awareness of ever having created them. This is where so many apparently irrational emotional stigmas or obsessions come from, and why we must suffer seemingly unjust events, or “bad luck”: because we are not acknowledging and addressing our “past life” elementals, our “Karma.”
This can extend over various lifetimes. We attract what we project, and our imprints are the moulds we subconsciously seek to fill during our lives. This is why trauma sustained in a previous life can carry to subsequent incarnations: it is not the memory of such that is frightening (for we can all access the most horrible experiences in history without developing phobias), it is the imprint which has left its mark.
To illustrate the processing of imprinting, it may help to describe the different, opposing ways which we can act in life, namely, reactionary or responsible action.
Reactionary action is the means by which we sustain our shields and keep the external world of others at bay. It is defensive, ego-based, predatory, mechanical/automatic. We react if a blow is hurled at our heads, or when our person is in similarly endangered, either by dodging the blow or by deflecting it (or both). To react at an emotional/psychic level is to be constantly on the defensive, to be forever dodging or deflecting imagined (and sometimes real) “blows” from the outside world, perceived slights upon one’s manhood, pride, character, honesty, decency, vanity, whatever. Such reactive behavior engages 99% of our energy and at all times; even when we are sleeping we tend to dream up anxiety-driven scenarios in which we are chasing after something, or fleeing something else (or both at the same time). In other words, we are at odds with (opposed to) our environment.
In distinction to reactive behavior, responsible action is the ability to respond, rather than react, to external stimuli. Whereas reactionary behavior puts us in constant conflict with (or on the run from) the world, responsibility means to be engaged in a dialogue with it. Where reactionary behavior tends to aggravate a given situation and feed the demon that is driving or denying us—to build ever more layers of armor about us—responsibility serves to balance, answer, resolve, and so cancel out whatever it is that is challenging us. In traditional mystic terminology, reactionary behavior is what accrues karma, For example, when one reacts to some misfortune by “punishing” a convenient other with anger or resentment, or else by tormenting oneself with guilt, shame, and regret, one is plainly not using the experience as a source of learning. Responsibility, on the other hand, is what absolves karma by accepting the “lesson” contained within a given “misfortune,” and by using it to avoid (or even transform) similar situations/emotions in the future.
All of this relates to the manner in which the energy body becomes distorted by an unexamined life and (within our model) causes imprints from one incarnation to the next.
Whenever we are overly “involved” in a given experience (at a personal ego level, i.e., reacting against instead of responding to), we are unable to perceive impartially of it, and instead of gathering the knowledge/wisdom from it and moving on, we become entangled in it. Essentially, this relates less to the nature of the experience, or even to our emotional response to it, than it does to the way in which we think about it.
To give an example, let us take the case of a severe and “undeserved” rape or beating. Such experiences are often traumatic for the person so “inflicted,” and therefore leave a heavy “imprint” on the energy body. However, it is not the experience of being assaulted in itself that leaves the imprint; nor is it necessarily the extremity of emotions which accompany the experience, be they fear, rage, hatred, sorrow, or even (in rare cases) exaltation. From a “karmic” view, since any given experience is itself the result of previous “imprints” and can serve to smooth them out (absolve karmic debts), what counts is the manner in which we use our experience and emotions.
E.g. Livingston, when attacked by a lion in a jungle, reported being taken over by a sense of euphoria that allowed him to more clearly glimpse the nature of the world and of life and death, and his place in them.
Such euphoria is perhaps the very reverse of trauma. In this particular case, it released Livingston from his ordinary fears and attachments to self, and allowed him to perceive on more impersonal, “unfettered” terms. In other words, rather than making him more afraid of death (or of the jungle), it dramatically reduced his fears. In a word, the experience was cathartic, rather than traumatic.
Since catharsis (purification) entails the release of trapped emotional energy (an obvious example would be that of innate rage and hostility released by watching violent movies), it follows that such energy must at some point have been trapped (in the physical and energetic body) in order to need releasing. This relates the idea of imprints to the basic psychological concepts of trauma and catharsis.
If a person needs cathartic release for internal violence (i.e., pent up rage), it seems likely that such inner pressure must originate in formative experiences, buried deeply (or not so deeply) in the person’s past (i.e., an abusive father, bullying brother, or such like). Likewise then, if a person is attacked as an adult and, rather than accepting the experience and adapting themselves to it, reacts defensively by becoming more fearful and stressed, as well as more suspicious and hostile to strangers, then they have, rather than using the experience as catharsis to develop deeper courage and compassion, been traumatized by it. The overriding factor that determines how a given person is affected by a given set of circumstances, then, relates to awareness.
Awareness is not intelligence, however. Disciplining a child with a hefty slap now and then (just as a lioness swats her cubs) is not necessarily traumatic, provided the slap is itself a response to something the child has done, or failed to do, to incur such a slap. Without any ratiocination being necessary, the child instinctively understands the “meaning’ (lesson) behind the slap. Children, like animals, are ipso facto less “intelligent” than fully developed humans. But they are, in many if not most cases, considerably more aware. The primary quality of such awareness is the lack of internal dialogue, by which the child or animal might ask themselves (the central question of the self-reflecting human): “Why (me)?” In a word, they are incapable of self-pity, and its even more malignant twin, self-importance. (This incapacity to reflect/pity/aggrandize the self is the sum total of children and animals’ supposed “innocence.”)
It is this self-reflection—the ability to question one’s place in and relation to circumstances, and be offended by them (i.e., “I don't deserve this,” “It wasn't my fault,” etc)—that begins the endless cycle of reactionary behavior. It is also what causes the threads of the energy body to become entangled, in such a way that they trap the emotions inside themselves. As a result, any time thereafter, when a similar experience or emotion arises, the same threads become agitated anew, and the person reverts to former behavior patterns, as it were compulsively, and “relives” the trauma without actually releasing its hold upon them. On the contrary, such compulsory reenactment of trauma tends to only intensify its hold over us. Karma begets karma. Again, the reason is that the reversion to old emotional habits happens automatically, without awareness.
The ego or personality, then, is really no more nor less than the sustained self-reflection by which sufficient energy threads become entangled to create a temporary (and wholly unnatural) “configuration” within the energy body. This configuration, by shaping and interpreting all our subsequent experiences, commits the error of assuming for itself an autonomy and identity separate from the energy body, which is the true organ of perception (the ego being no more than a filter).
Ironically, then, the process of “reincarnation,” such as it is, is the means by which the energy body untangles, and finally eradicates, the arbitrary configuration (distortion) within its glow, so casting off the very “ego” (personal constrictions) that is all the while fantasizing about future lives and past incarnations! What survives any given incarnation, then, is not the wholly “personal” (hence insubstantial) emotional/mental interpretation of that life’s experiences, but the energy gathered in and by the experiences themselves.
) Chogyam Trungpa's The Myth of Freedom ,where there are Six Bardo States.
