Karma is not punishment, it is a mental law; and it can be changed by right thinking and right action.
Ernest Holmes, SOM pg 95.
Because Karma is a mental law, it's about how we do what we do; unconsciously, out of habit. And how we do what we do is based on our mental tendencies. This is why someone who has road rage thinks all drivers are idiots and out to get them. It doesn't occur to them that maybe that person that just cut them off was distracted, or not paying attention. We develop mental tendencies (habits) around how we do what we do. For example - victim consciousness is a mental tendency - a way of habitually showing up in the world. Someone with victim-consciousness, no matter how well their life may be going, will find all the reasons why the Universe is against them. Because our mental tendencies tell our brain what to filter in and filter out! If we claim victim consciousness, we are telling our brain to filter out anything that would suggest we are the least bit empowered, and ONLY let through the filter all the reasons why life is hard, and we should feel sorry for ourselves. However, when we are in a mental tendency, we don't think about being "stuck in that rut" lol. We will usually find some perfectly reasonable explanation why something out there just made our life hard. To "change our karma" so we can change our lives, we have to look at mental tendencies - and how we show up in the world on autopilot. How are you feeling? You may not realize you are stuck on auto-pilot, but you will notice how you are feeling. If you are struggling, suffering, blaming, or judging; chances are you were on autopilot. Whatever task you were just involved with; ask yourself how you felt doing that task. For example: Did you feel resentful having to clean up after someone else? Did you feel obligated to help a friend move? Did you take something personally? Did you feel victimized because someone got impatient with you? We discover our mental tendencies by how often we experience those particular feelings. If lots of things make you feel resentful, then that's a tendency. If lots of things make you feel victimized, then that's a tendency. So this is the first part of our 10 Day Karma Challenge: we pay attention to our feelings while we do what we do. How are you showing up to life?
Over these next few days, write out what you are feeling throughout your day. How did you feel while cleaning up? How did you feeling driving? How did you feel running errands, doing chores, returning phone calls?