Good Karma, Bad Karma, Beyond Karma

By Anthony Enoma

Karma and reincarnation are two important aspects of the teachings of Eᴄᴋᴀɴᴋᴀʀ. But I was having difficulty in accepting both of these spiritual principles. I had my doubts about them and wondered how they worked.

Then I got married. My wife and I shared a warm and deep love and were very happy. We wanted to start a family. But after many years of marriage, we remained childless.

This became a real problem for us. Over time, our relationship grew strained. We quarreled and fought constantly, and we couldn’t agree on anything. After our arguments, my wife would cry for hours. I knew the underlying reason for all this fighting was really about our childless situation.

Finally I decided to ask the Mᴀʜᴀɴᴛᴀ, my inner spiritual guide, to help me understand why we were unable to start a family. Then I waited for an answer.

For three years, I didn’t receive a reply. I began to wonder if the marriage was a mistake. Finally, I told myself that if I didn’t have an answer by the end of the year, I’d have no choice but to end our marriage.

Shortly after that, I had a dream.

I am a king. Powerful and feared, I order people killed at the slightest provocation. I also have several wives, some of them stolen from other men.

One day, my men steal a female trader from a distant village from her husband, and I make her my wife. (I recognize her as my wife in my present life.) She stays with me in the palace for three years, then she escapes.

Furious, I declare war against her husband’s people. During the fighting, her husband is killed, and my wife is returned to my palace.

But our relationship is loveless. There is no peace or harmony for either of us, and she vows never to have any children.

When I awoke from the dream. I knew the cause of our problem. My doubts about karma and reincarnation were gone. I realized my wife and I had been together before in a past life. Now we had come back into this lifetime to work off that karma.

My attitude and behavior toward my wife changed dramatically. I was more understanding and compassionate, and our relationship again grew in love.

Shortly after the dream, my wife became pregnant. When our lovely baby girl was born, we named her Ikponmwosa, which means “Thanks to God.”

This experience taught me important lessons.

I learned that the problems we have in this life may come from a past life. When we are ready, the Mᴀʜᴀɴᴛᴀ, the inner guide, is always willing to help us see how our actions created our present circumstances.

I also learned that Soul can never die. It lives forever. Reincarnation and karma are gifts that help Soul gain in experience so It has a greater capacity for divine love.

By James Potter

When I was a small child, I had chubby cheeks and could surreptitiously store food in them like a squirrel or chipmunk.

I realized this physical attribute could work to my advantage at the dinner table. When Mom served vegetables that I despised, I would pack the fare into my cheeks and pretend to swallow it.  Then I’d hurry off to the bathroom, spit the food out into the toilet, and hastily flush.

This activity went on successfully for months, until one summer evening. I stealthily stuffed a plateful of beets into my cheeks, excused myself from the table, and ran out the front door with the intent of concealing the evidence behind some bushes.

In my haste, I tripped and fell onto the cement walk and began screaming bloody murder! My mother rushed out and saw a gory scene—red ooze issuing from my mouth as I lay there bawling. “Oh my God! He’s bitten off his tongue!” Mom screamed as she raced to my side.

But Mom’s mood suddenly shifted when she realized the hemorrhaging was beet and not blood. Her exasperation was evident. Yet she was kind when she scolded me and told me to never do this again. Thereafter, she never forced me to eat a plateful of beets.

Now here is where the wheel of karma completes its turn, impresses its message, and collects a debt.

Many years later I was dog sitting my daughter Sabina’s golden lab, Schubert. Suddenly he displayed serious discomfort. Blood was flowing from his mouth and gums. Time to panic!

I called my wife at work for help. Luckily, she was in the neighborhood and came to my rescue. She took one look at Schubert and saw the reason for my panic. She quickly called Sabina. Fortunately, Sabina was only minutes away. She rushed home and took Schubert to a veterinarian just one block from our apartment.

The doctor examined Schubert and then quickly returned to the reception area. “Who fed the dog beets?” he asked. Well, it seems my daughter had cooked some beets for breakfast and gave some to Schubert as well. Dogs and beets do not mix, and the doctor advised Sabina to refrain from any further beet treats for Schubert.

This experience jarred my memory of when, years back, I had given my mother a severe shock with my ruse to discharge a mouthful of beets into the bushes.

Maybe Divine Spirit has a sense of humor. In any case, It has an uncanny way of making a point and teaching a lesson. Deception as seemingly innocuous as spitting out beets will come home to roost—even if it is sixty years later, as karma has no statute of limitation.

Lesson learned and fully appreciated.

By Uwakwe Onwuchekwa

I’m a truck driver. One day while traveling north in Texas, I was pulled in to an inspection station. After a complete inspection of the truck and trailer, the officer let me know they found three violations—two involving the brakes and an oil leak from the engine.

After explaining the violations, the officer advised me to fix them as soon as possible. Then came the big surprise. She said, “No ticket was issued.” Not even a warning ticket! I was blown away. This was unheard of, in my experience.

But instead of just saying thank you to the officer and accepting the gift, I started complaining to her about the mechanic at my workplace. After all, he had inspected the truck that morning. As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized I’d turned a happy situation into a negative one. The complaint was unnecessary, and I instantly knew it.

   I left the inspection station and resumed my trip. But within minutes I looked back and saw a thick cloud of smoke between the truck and trailer. I pulled over to the side of the road. My drive-axle tires were almost in flames! This could have been a very dangerous situation, as I was hauling acetone, a highly flammable chemical.

My spiritual realization from this experience: My complaint to the officer was anger, and anger burns like fire. I’m grateful for the clear lesson in self-responsibility.

By Michael Ikpoma

A few years ago, I began to wonder if the profession I’d chosen was the right one for me.

I work as a nurse. It is a career where I know I can help people. But the hospital working conditions caused me a lot of emotional pain. With an overload of work, a lack of appreciation from my supervisors, and a generally unfriendly environment, I questioned if this really was my destined career.

One evening, I was tending to a sick child in my ward. His mother sat beside him. The sun was setting, and soon it would be dark. My heart was filled with sadness as I thought about my dilemma. With a syringe, I drew out some medicine from an ampoule to infuse into the IV bag attached to the child’s arm.

Suddenly, a bright light engulfed the whole ward.

The intensity of the light forced me to close my eyes. Wanting to see what was happening, I opened my eyes again. But I couldn’t see anything but the light. I didn’t see my patient, the hospital bed, or even the walls of the room.

Afraid I’d gone blind, I silently called out to the ECK Masters to help me. Slowly, the light began to wane, and the room came into vision again.

“My son,” the mother of the sick child asked, “is anything the matter with you? You’ve been staring at nothing!”

I realized the syringe was still in my hand. Quickly I delivered the medicine, then left to ponder the experience.

I knew I had experienced the Light of ECK. Often an experience like this can bring you greater spiritual wisdom. But I didn’t understand the message.

That night before bed, I sang HU and asked the Inner Master to explain the experience to me. Early the next morning, I had a dream.

I am the commander of a battalion. My troops and I have just quelled a rebellion by putting our enemies to the sword.

Now I’ve received a message that the rebel leader has been caught. I send word to keep him alive, then ride off with my most loyal men to meet my enemy.

When we arrive, I show no mercy to the captive rebel leader. I cut off his head and hold it in the air in bloody jubilation for all to see.

When I woke up, I realized the dream was a violent past life where I had not understood the sanctity of life.

Now the message of the Light of ECK was clear. The Inner Master was letting me know that through my nursing profession, the ECK and the Mᴀʜᴀɴᴛᴀ were helping me unwind the coil of karma I had created during that and other lifetimes. Now, it is time for me to serve life and not destroy it.

The experience at the hospital showed me my profession was the right one after all. Now I know that, as Soul, we are always learning and growing spiritually, especially during periods of pain and hardship. We are always at the right place in life!

By Sri Harold Klemp

What do you suppose makes people unhappy?  A survey would probably list a hundred reasons, both real and imagined.

Now how many of those people do you think would like to hear the true reason for their unhappiness?  Just a guess—very few.

The choices you’ve made in the past are the direct cause of all your unhappiness today.

If this answer doesn’t suit you, don’t read another word.  You have better things to do.  But maybe you’re one of the few people who doesn’t absolutely reject the above explanation for your unhappiness.  Then keep reading.  Perhaps you’ll see how and why individuals make bad choices.

Most important, you may learn how to stop making them.

So how do we get here?

Soul enters this world to pursue a series of tasks, for each is an exercise in spiritual purification.  Taken as a whole, these assignments make up one’s destiny.  To set the tone for Its mission, Soul enters a new lifetime with a body of strength or weakness, of great intellect or a simple mind, in a popular shade of skin or not, either as a male or a female, into wealth or poverty.

The idea of destiny as a concept is out of fashion in much of today’s Western society.  People want to be captains of their own lives.  They wish to run their own fate.  They will shape their own tomorrows.  Yet how can they do so without a knowledge of and an appreciation for the meticulous Law of Karma?

Or especially, of the Law of Love?

In spite of all fictions about who is the master of their own fate, they cannot even set the conditions of their birth.  So the rules of karma and reincarnation remain a mystery, and they find a great deal of sorrow and disappointment in the outcome of their plans.

How could the stiff rules of karma include them?

Many would like to think they don’t, sure of being above the common pool of humanity and thus exempt from these rules.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

By and large, though, the Lords of Karma—not the individual—select a family for each Soul.  They are responsible for the distribution of karma from the time each Soul first enters this world.

The Lord of Karma is like a minor’s guardian.  He administers a trust on behalf of a spiritual infant, arranging for him or her to join a family with the best prospect for that Soul’s unfoldment.  In selecting the time and place of reincarnation, the Lord of Karma is the sole judge.  He is the sole arbiter in the choice of a body, health, family, or future.  The Lord of Karma alone sets the conditions of most people’s fate.

Placement is a simple karmic detail.  The Law of Karma governs all such placements, and he is only its agent.

The primal seed for each incarnation exists under the umbrella of destiny, which we also call past-life karma.  On a practical level, genetic, cultural, and social elements combine to decide Soul’s place in this world.  For people on the lower end of the survival scale, the Lord of Karma alone chooses the time and place of rebirth.

Soul then follows the script of destiny and enters a physical body.

What about free will?

After birth, the name of the game is survival.  The survival scale, by definition, is a measure of one’s can-do instincts.

But karmic placement does set other standards for individuals on the high end of the spiritual scale.  Most of them enjoy a voice in the choice of a human body or place of birth.  They sense the need for spiritual freedom, a view gained from many past lives, and the self-responsibility that goes along with the package.  So these Souls demonstrate creative ideas and inventiveness in their incarnations.  For the most part they are cheerful, upbeat people.

Spiritual gains in past lives have given them a voice in choosing some of the conditions in their present incarnation.

They have earned the right.

Think of destiny as the equipment, talents, or gifts that one brings to this life.  They carry a divine mandate to use them for the good of all life.  It’s our responsibility to do so, with wisdom.

The idea of destiny, or fate, is poked fun at in many Western circles.  Yet it is an age-old principle of the spiritual life.

What is the basis for a cultural bias against fate?

People are in a state of confusion about it.  They wonder, How can fate and free will exist side by side?  Destiny controls the conditions at birth.  Much of what an individual does after birth is an open book, an exercise in free will.

To sum up, fate governs the conditions at birth; free will allows a choice as to how to move beyond them.

Free will can offset or even overcome the drawbacks of destiny, but only through the awakening of one’s consciousness.  One may thus reshape both his material and spiritual life.