Question: I am worried that my karma will take me to situations I don’t want to be involved in. Can you help me?
Response: Many people misunderstand karma, seeing it as a form of divine retribution. Karma is a tendency to experience life according to a definite trajectory. We reinforce this trajectory over lifetimes. Every thought we think, every desire we feel, and every choice we make reinforces our trajectories and adds to our karmic tendencies. Thus, karma is simply the impersonal law of cause and effect. As the Bible says, “We reap what we sow.” The good news is that God’s grace trumps karma because grace is the energetic force of God’s love. As such, grace is uncontaminated by habit, ignorance, selfishness, or prejudice. Grace offers us a fresh start, a new beginning inspired by truth, beauty, and goodness. We avail ourselves of grace through meditative stillness, a sincere aspiration to be in alignment with God’s will, a commitment to radical wakefulness, and receptivity to the Guru’s guidance. Yogananda tells us: ”Since all effects or seeds of our past actions, our karma, can be destroyed by roasting them in the fire of meditation, concentration, the light of superconsciousness, and right actions, there is no such thing as fate. You make your own destiny. God has given you independence, and you are free to shut out His power or let it in.
”Yoganandaji,
You teach me that
There is no such thing as
Irrevocable, pre-determind fate.
Help me to do what I must do
To create my own destiny.
