By Sri Harold Klemp
Have you noticed? Children have their problems too. Little things like rooms which seem to get dirty by themselves.
My daughter will clean her room, and I am amazed. Sometimes she is not even in the room, and I can see the mess accumulate. Where does it come from?
Blouses will appear on the floor, and every time she cleans up she assures me: “Dad, I’m gonna keep it clean. I’m really going to keep it clean this time.”
I am trying to get a lesson across to her, and like every other parent, I feel I am failing. “Do one thing at a time,” I explained to her. “If you put something down, clean it up. This is how you go through life, you know. If you are on top of it, you keep things simple. You live moment to moment. You do one thing at a time. This way you can do an amazing amount of work because you never get yourself confused. You set one goal, and then you set another goal, and then another, but they are little, achievable goals.”
Half a day later, I walked back into my daughter’s room. I was amazed how the place had self-destructed. This happened not once, but time after time. I got tired of hearing myself say the same thing, so I didn’t say it anymore. Instead I watched. After a day or two the chair in her room was stacked a foot high with clothes. The closet is only two steps to the left, and it is full of hangers, but who bothers with hangers? And the laundry basket, which is where the clothes belong after they have been worn, stands there empty. Sometimes clothes hang over the edge of it.
But that is life. I don’t know the answer. I recognize that there are different expectations at work here. One set of expectations is from the parent which says, “Be clean!” The other one from the child which says, “Be alive!” The two have different standards and they don’t mix. As a result, Mom finally raises cain. “You don’t eat until you clean up your room,” she says.
The child believes itself to be the victim of an irate parent and feels that the punishment is unjust. She refuses to clean the room. Parent and child argue. This is how karma is caused.
The Law of Cause and Effect, or the Law of Karma, is always in play your whole life. We must know how to live in harmony with its exacting terms. The experiences that derive from an adolescent or mature understanding of that law will, in time, bring you to an acceptance of divine love.
That’s the reason you’re here.