Law of Karma! How does it affect child birth?

Law of Karma! How does it affect child birth?

As children, most of us believe that our parents wished for us and got us as their child. And then as we grow up we get mixed signals and we wonder why our parents get annoyed by us, behave in ways that make us feel they hate us. We pick signals from their expression of displeasure. We tend to categorise every event in life as favourable or unfavourable based on whether the outcome is aligned with our desire or expectation. So when the parent realises that the fairy tale life that they dreamed is not what their child brings to their life, it turns out to be a suffering but they live with it for the rest of their life as they don’t have a choice. Therefore, it is high time we wake up to the truth that our parents didn’t wish for us as their child. They just got us and they are putting up with it.

Parents didn’t have any clue that the child being born is a separate individual, born with latent tendencies carried forward from its previous lives. The child’s behavioral traits, habits, interests and thoughts are shaped by these tendencies with which they are born. Parents were not prepared to accept into their life an individual with his own unique traits, someone who would be very different from them. What pursues from then is a tug of war between the parent and the child, where the parent embarks on a journey to condition the child, to control and align all traits of the child to match theirs and the child on the other hand trying to exert their independence to be themselves.

Child birth is one of the most important events of one’s life because the child continues to be in the parent’s life manifesting events in their life for the rest of their life. The events parents live through are predetermined, which is called prarabdha karma, karmas chosen for us to exhaust in this life, a direct result of our past karmas. Unlike we having the liberty in choosing our partner to start a life with, a child cannot be chosen by the parent. In the case of the child, based on what karmas the jivatma needs to exhaust by taking a new birth, it chooses the most suitable parents who would facilitate in exhausting them. Thus the child has chosen the parent.

However, the ignorant and unrealised child who identifies just as the body, might at times wish that his parent was somebody else with traits that would make him experience favourable experiences, just like how the parent wishes his child to have aligned with him. The sooner we realise the fact that the experiences we live through is a mere reflection of our past karmas, the better it is. Peace dawns in only with this realisation. It lets us take ownership of events happening in our life and we stop blaming the situation and the people around us.

Everything is not dark and gloomy in life. There is light at the end of the tunnel. It’s true that events keep happening in life and we cannot control them. We don’t have to be disheartened by this. The good news is that we have the power to decide what we experience from the events happening. The reality is that events do not determine our experience, but it is our thoughts and actions that determine our experience. We have the power to observe, contemplate and respond, through which we can manage our experience. If we regulate our thoughts and refine our actions, we not only are creating good experiences for us in this life, but it also helps create good karmas for us to experience in our next lives. Thus we are exercising our control over our destiny and it is up to each one of us to realise and awaken to this wisdom!

The law of karma is that every single event we live through is a result of our past karma, that we deserve and we cannot change any of it. Suffering is a phenomenon where outcomes of a specific event are not what we desire for, leading to disappointment. When we don’t realise the fact that we are just a mortal being experiencing karma in this form of life, we mistakenly think highly about ourselves and feel that we deserve better, whatever meets our desires and expectations. Our experiences are bestowed upon us by the creator of this world. When taking a birth we come with a script of what we must experience in this life. There is no escape from it.

We need to rise/evolve to a point where whenever an unfavorable event happens we take responsibility and blame ourselves for our past karma done through all our past lives. Further evolution is to a point where there is no expectation or desire about what event should happen in our life, thus eliminating suffering altogether. Our purpose is to rise and reform and not let the events in our life affect us. For example, getting diagnosed with cancer is an event. If it is destined it shall happen. The purpose is to rise to a point where that event is neither favorable or unfavorable for us. It is just an event. One who has a desire to not get cancer, suffering ensue. For the one without that desire, that event does not lead to suffering. Embarking on a journey towards understand suffering and eliminating it leads us to our natural state of bliss.