As you can see from our turnout tonight that, this is a pretty compelling topic. But there are also many misunderstandings that are often associated with these principles. In a theological sense especially, we often think of fate as in fatality, and we think of free will in terms of our limited experience.
We will talk a lot today about the nature of fate, free will, and divine forgiveness, not from a theoretical perspective or from a philosophical standpoint. We will talk about it from an experiential perspective, because in our studies, the term γνῶσις gnosis in Greek means “knowledge from experience.” It is what we live. It is what we verify. We will mention many writers, even theologians on this topic, and some points of view that have been documented in our world’s literature, poetry and scripture, about the nature of fate, free will and mercy. I hope by the end to leave you with some understanding of the principles of these truths that can inform how we navigate life. More importantly, these principles are practical. There is something that we can experience within our very being, within our consciousness, and not merely leave it as a theory, as a belief, something to uphold in the mind or a conviction in the heart, but without evidence. 
Our Focus
We will talk about destiny. Our focus will be precisely about some fundamental principles. We will examine the relationship between fate and free will, which obviously, we know from our humanity’s legacy from scripture, writings, and philosophy, is often very tense. There is a nuance and dynamic relationship between the nature of destiny and also our agency.
We will also talk about the very famous term karma. We will talk about its nature, its notoriety. Basically, in synthesis, we can say it is cause and effect, action and consequence. We will talk about the often misunderstood principle of spiritual action and its results in our life. We will also talk about grace from a divine perspective, and the role of the human individual in developing a personal relationship with divinity. Also, it is about expanding our own agency, how we act, what we can do in the particulars and challenges of our own life. Lastly, we will explain what real freedom is, what it means to have divine intercession and the famous term redemption, from a psychological and spiritual perspective. 
Destiny or the Divine Law
Now when we talk about destiny, we talk about divine law. We talk about realities that are beyond belief―not in the superstitious sense―but realities that are eternal, that belong to nature, to the cosmos, to the individual.
When we talk about divine law, we mean precisely in the same way we talk about gravity. There are laws that govern nature, the universe, and our psychology. There are laws that relate to how divinity acts within humanity, within all the infinite and the many infinites. This can help clarify some common misconceptions about the nature of divine agency, especially when we are examining our own life and how to develop that personal relationship with divinity. That knowledge of experience of the truth is gnosis, the Greek term for divine wisdom, what we live. When we experience what divinity is, such as through practice like meditation and awakening in dreams, we perceive that there are laws that operate within divine reality and divine realms. They are profound and eternal. They do not waver. They do not conform to our prejudices, our preconceptions, what we want. They simply are. In the same way that these laws exist, in terms of how we can navigate life or in the sense of gravity, how we exist in this world. There are laws that once fulfilled within our consciousness, within our practice, within our efforts, they result in the divine fruition of experience: a deeper connection with profound divine states like compassion, altruism, faith (which is knowledge from experience), real love, real patience. These are psychological and spiritual qualities that resonate with higher principles. These laws, the divine law, is precisely what any spiritual seeker strives towards in any religion, no matter what culture or creed. It is an aspiring towards these higher laws that we seek to change our mistaken ways of being. Now, in the west we have a common misconception that divinity somehow can, in a sense, basically do what he wants or do what she wants, depending on the tradition, eastern or western. But the reality is that even divinity obeys the laws set forth within the higher regions of nature or higher ways of being. In this process of seeking divinity in our own life and overcoming the causes of suffering and seeking to improve our lives, we come to recognize that we have a choice. In relationship to higher laws, ways of being, ethical conduct, superior ways of acting in life, we have to make a choice, not in the future or in the past, but now. We have a choice, moment by moment, when we are criticized, slandered, hurt, or betrayed. We must watch and examine our heart. What will we do? How will we behave? What will we accomplish in such a moment? This is free will. Obviously, we have a choice. The very fact that we have the potential to choose in moments of great crises, emphasizes to us the nature of a compassionate divinity, because a divinity that would simply have us do what he wills or she will―we call divinity the Being in our gnostic studies―if the Being were to force the individual to do what it wants, it would be merely a tyrant. There would be no relationship. We would be like a robot, a machine. Really, divinity is a conscious state of being that is very free, very profound, very unlimited, and very dynamic. Moment by moment, we can learn to access that. So, again the choice is ours. Do we learn to follow the inclinations of the heart, an intuitive understanding that knows right from wrong, conscience, or do we follow our own whims, our personal desires, our habits, our attachments? There is an epic poem in English called Paradise Lost. I’m sure some of you have heard about this work by John Milton. It is a very famous work of literature which many people have studied for centuries. It is very beautiful and profound, really a poetic narration of the fall Eden, according to the Bible, and is the foundation of many Judeo-Christian worldviews. Even in Islam they talk about the fall of the rebel angels and the fall of humanity in a foregone time, which are very beautiful symbols of internal psychological and spiritual truths. John Milton, particularly in Book 3 of Paradise Lost, explains the nature of a divine and compassionate creator. This creator is not something foreign or outside of us. This divinity or this law, this conscience, this voice of real wisdom, which speaks in the silence of the mind and the heart, is internal. This law, this truth, this way of being, which is profoundly intelligent and wise, gives us the choice, whether to follow it, or our desires. Book 3 of Paradise Lost explains, in the voice of the Father―in Milton’s depiction―the voice of divinity speaking to a host of angels about the nature of choice, and the autonomy of the soul, and that without freedom to choose, there would be no virtue. There would be no opportunity to grow. There would be no wisdom. Divinity would be a tyrant, as I said, and there would be no freedom to be. What better response is there than to be given a choice, than to be told what to do all the time? We should be persuaded by our own conscience, to follow the freedom of the heart, yet which is freedom born from following the divine law. It’s a funny paradox, right? Our conscience is like a law. It tells us what to do, and if we obey it, we find freedom. You know it in your conscience and your being when we do what is right. We feel strength. We feel fulfilment. We feel peace, and when we break that law, we suffer. We enter anarchy, chaos, and pain. So, the Father in those lines from Book 3 of Paradise Lost explains the nature of free will and that we have to decide what we want, because people obviously blame God, right? You hear people from some church, synagogue, mosque, or any faith, in which they feel traumatized, whether by a war, persecution, the failing of the clergy, spiritual trauma, abuse, and betrayal. People look at religion and say there is no divinity, because we see the poor example of religious and spiritual people what should not be. The Father here in the poem explains and abdicates Himself of, really, the failures of the human individual. In talking about the fallen angels, He says: So will fall, he and his faithless progeny: whose fault?
So, to kind of break down the English here, He is basically saying that, yes, as divinity, the divine is omniscient and sees all, understands everything, and has foreknowledge that can anticipate what will come. But despite knowing what will happen in a sense, divinity says, “You have a choice. You have your will, and real growth occurs when we align our will with divinity willingly, voluntarily in our life.” Otherwise, as it was explained earlier in these verses, how is it possible to show real allegiance and love?
Love does not grow under the whip. One has to be willingly devoted to our inner divinity. But obviously, you know, people criticize these verses, especially in universities, especially if you take a course on Milton, where people are very jaded, sour, morbid. They think, “Well, why didn’t divinity just force me to do the right thing?” Well, this is why. We cannot be forced. We have to choose. We have to act because we have a spark of divine agency, which must learn to grow, develop, and be nurtured, to be fed. So, instead of looking at fate as something fatal or mechanical, it is really managed with intelligence. He continues: So without least impulse or shadow of fate,
Really, simply put, when we are infatuated by our own desires, we judge mistakenly, and we become the author of our own pain. But we have the potential, the freedom, until we enthrall ourselves. We become hypnotized by what we want, a priori―our prejudices, our attitudes, our appetites, our desires.
Divinity cannot break this law. Divinity established the law for a reason, these higher principles. Really, to force the unwilling, in a sense, is to revoke the high decree, which is unchangeable. It is eternal, which basically allows the potential or an opportunity for real freedom. But we enter suffering because we choose to. 
The Fates
In a practical sense, we can relate this all to what are the Fates according to the Greek myths.
We have three women who are symbols of divine law. We have Clotho the Spinner, Lachesis the Allotter, and Atropos the Unturning. Often, the Fates are associated with these women or female figures who spin yarn, and that this thread is a life of individual beings. Even the gods are measured by the Fates, and this is very interesting. So, in the myth, you have Clotho who spins the yarn, Lachesis who measures the length of the thread, and Atropos who cuts. This is a symbol of a person’s life span. We obviously have a measurement of life in terms of the length of the cloth, and the cutting is death. Now in the myth, it is often related that Zeus is the only one who sometimes has the same authority of the Fatea, but all the other gods are subjected to these three women. This is very profound. It corroborates what Milton taught: divinity cannot break his own laws. It operates in accordance with cause and effect. It is by understanding cause and effect, how our actions produce our life, where we can develop real wisdom, in which, we can consciously manage our situation. “And rather than suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” to quote Hamlet (Act 3.1), we can “take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.” We do so with intelligence. We take advantage of our life, and we learn to operate under a higher law. Now what is interesting is that these Fates, these women, represent divine intelligence. The Fates are not some arbitrary dispenser of blind justice, and that they are simply choosing “willy nilly,” in a metaphorical sense, who lives and who dies at a certain time. Really―and this is a very complex issue―these things are governed by intelligence, with wisdom. In fact, fate, what may happen or what could happen, or what should and will happen, is consciously managed. In that way we can understand that, as we are going to explain a little bit later, fate or karma―the Sanskrit word for cause and effect, action, the law―can be negotiated. It can be negotiated because there are intelligences behind all the happenings of life. These are not merely some superstitions. This is something that we can verify. We can experience. Now in the plethora of life’s events, we are faced with a lot of options, right? We have challenges, ordeals, and crises even: maybe at our job, maybe in our marriage, maybe in our career, in our family, with friends. There is a sea of potential. 
How Do We Face Potential?
This is symbolized in the 69th arcanum of the Eternal Tarot of Alchemy and Kabbalah.
You may notice from our lectures that we build on a lot of traditions, because we are trying to get at the heart of what they all practically mean, and how we can apply their principles for really improving our lifestyle. So, the tarot is often depicted as Egyptian symbols, cards, right? Unfortunately, we have inherited a tradition that historically has been abused, passed on in terms of fortune tellers and all that. But really, as we see here from the Eternal Tarot deck, available through Glorian Publishing, we have art and iconography that is very beautiful and profound. It relates to the notion of fate. As you see in this image, we have a male figure in a kind of a tunic or a cloth holding his hands over his eyes, and he is trying to feel his way blindly. This is us. In our life we may feel blind. We may not know divinity. We have a problem, a situation we do not know how to solve. We have difficulty at work, a conflict, maybe. We are being challenged. We feel lost. We look for answers. We look to spirituality. We look to books. We look to scriptures to teach us how to resolve the problems of daily living, and surrounded by a sea options, as I said, we become very overwhelmed. We are in chaos. We are in the arcanum of chance. However, what is very beautiful about this image is that you see the Egyptian Goddess Nuit reclining over the initiate or disciple. She is a representation of the divine feminine, or the Divine Mother. Of all the religions, you can call her Athena, Diana, Shekinah, Kundalini. She has many names: Miriam, Mary. She is not something outside of us. She is inside our heart. She is the divine presence or intelligence of our conscience, who guides us through the heart. As we walk blindly, She still protects Her child. She protects Her child as he or she wanders, trying to feel for a solution. So, the question is, how do we face potential? This card has some very interesting explanations that are pertinent to this discussion. Every arcanum or law, better said, is the Latin term for, for these higher realities, divine law. Arcana means plural for “laws” themselves. Each arcanum has some explanations related to them, that can offer us insight. Chance as a law known by the instinct. Symbolizes the human virtue of transcendental knowledge.
“Chance as a law known by the instinct.” This is very interesting, right?
We know situations in our life instinctually when we are really up in the air, and this is the emotional feeling we get when we receive this card, such as through a reading in our homes, in meditation, or in dreams. We sense there is a lot of potential out there, and we know by instinct, just by a reaction that there is a lot at stake, you know? We are looking for a solution. We are trying to solve it, but we can’t. The solution is in the next verse, which “symbolizes the human virtue of transcendental knowledge,” right? That is why we go to books, scriptures and everything, because we want some higher knowledge to teach us about what to do. But importantly in relation to this card, this transcendental knowledge is not from a book. It is from meditation. It is when you reflect on how your own life relates to a certain struggle, and you seek, in a state of serenity, for the solution, for the insight. That knowledge can come to us when the mind is still, and we could receive through images, in our imagination, with clarity, what to do [study and practice To Meditate is to See]. Now, kind of corroborating some of the earlier points about the Divine Mother, we find that in terms of this card, “it is associated to the planet Venus, the letter M, and the number 6.” Venus is obviously the goddess of love, our Divine Mother, the letter M, Mary, מרים Miriam in Hebrew. 
The number 6, if you studied the tarot, you know that the 6th Arcanum is Indecision, right? Another disciple is caught between two women, looking left, ignoring the Divine Mother on the right.
We are stuck with a choice. This card relates to chance, relates to indecision. You have many options. You don’t know what to do. You are indecisive. So, really, those moments we have to rely on our Divine Mother, our heart, our conscience. This is because it represents “the principle of the primary faculties as guidance in the way of life.” What are these primary faculties? Intuition, discrimination, discernment. It is not an intellectual faculty. You have a problem. Your mind tries to wander and get scared, thinking up solutions, panicking, “What am I going to do? How do I solve this?” The intellect is not a primary faculty. It is not the most important. The heart is more important. The heart can resolve problems easily, if we calm the mind, if we listen and wait. This is because in relation to the transcendental axiom, this law, this arcanum, cause and effect, is certain. What we do will have consequences, and those consequences will have later causes as it says here: “There is a fruit in any labor, and there is a labor in any fruit.” ―Transcendental Axiom of Arcanum 69: Chance
So, the chance is, you know, we may make a mistake, but the real labor is following our heart.
This card also emphasizes some points about forecasting, so what is interesting is that every arcanum has an element of prediction, kind of tells you what may happen, maybe in a future moment in relation to a problem or situation, especially if you do a reading. As an element of prediction, it promises retributions, compensations, satisfactory changes, opportunity for ranking ascension, success in real estate properties, thoughtless accomplishments of wishes, fortuitous attractions. ―Forecasting Element of Arcanum 69: Chance 
Karma: What Goes Around Comes Around?
Basically all this is pointing is the nature of cause and effect. कर्म Karma is the Sanskrit for “action and consequence” (from कर्मन karman,” to act”). It is certainty. It is knowing that in our heart, the right way of acting in a situation will produce compensation, positive rewards, many retributions, obviously, right?
Nothing is always good or bad, but a mixture. There is good in the bad and bad in the good, according to Samael Aun Weor, the founder of our tradition. So, cause and effect, right? When we hear of karma, we think of “You are going to get what you deserve.” Or “What goes around comes around.” You know that person was a real jerk at work, so they are going to get what’s coming to them. In a sense, it is true, because people talk, reputations spread, and people know. You find out pretty quickly or over time, the person’s true character, not merely just the gossip. But in essence, when we talk about karma, we are talking about those laws that govern everything: our relationships, psychology, countries, humanity, worlds, infinites. More important than just physical action is the state of our mind, which is the most important thing to think about when we examine the nature of cause and effect, of fate. I know we think of it as blind retribution, that karma is something blind or unjust, arbitrary. There is some credence to this feeling, because there are some pretty bad things that happen to people who are good and there are some pretty good things that happen to people who are bad. We look at the situation in our current life, and we think, “Why is this? Why does this happen? Why are the just punished and the criminals get away?” In reality, our perspective is very limited. We do not see the full picture. We talk a lot about in our studies how our consciousness can expand, awaken, and develop to a degree that we are able to investigate the root of certain situations, examining and understanding the causes of certain effects in life. This is not merely from this physical existence, but something even deeper like in dreams, visions, and meditation, even previous existences. It does not have to be something theoretical or a belief, but something we investigate, something we look for. There are levels to cause and effect. More importantly when we study karma, we are not studying it as some negative thing. It applies to all causes, conditions, and effects. We study karma because, in truth, we want to fulfill superior action and to understand why we are in this situation that we are in in life. No one can tell us that. No one can teach us that. That is something that we have to discover. Why do we suffer in a certain relationship, situation, illness, or whatever it may be? We could investigate the root cause of these phenomena and understand where we are at and also where we need to go. The Five Principles of Karma
Now, more importantly, when we study karma, cause and effect, this has to do with our own individual agency. I know we talked about fate and being in a certain situation in life. Maybe we want to understand why we are here. The way that we discover this is by understanding five principles of karma.
The first four were given by Tsongkhapa in his Lam Rim: Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. It is a great Tibetan treatise of Mahayana Buddhism. He is a very great master of that tradition. He initially explains how these four principles are what help us understand the nature of cause and effect. It is not just something physical. This is something psychological as well, because our mind and our thoughts really determine everything. We become what we think. If we have a negative state of mind, we are going to produce situations and consequences for ourselves which are going to be problematic. The reason why we study these five principles especially is to know how to act more appropriately, to follow our conscience, our heart. By understanding the laws of karma, the principles of karma, better said, we will have more strength, honestly. Just as these principles can apply to bad behavior, more importantly, they also apply to good behavior and can result in better outcomes for ourselves, because we always follow the trajectory of our own actions, even in our mind stream. The five principles of karma are:
In a sense, by following and understanding these five principles, we can learn to develop a deeply personal relationship with our inner divinity, because we understand how our own behaviors affect the world. 
The Certainty of Karma
The first is the certainty of karma: actions produce related consequences.
We have an image here of a domino effect. In a sense, when you knock over the domino, it is going to fall and hit the others. Likewise, we know if we get angry at someone, we are probably going to make them angry, right? We know this, but do we understand that it is wrong. We may know to a degree, until we actually tell ourselves, “Yeah, I really should not have said that negative thing to my family member or spouse.” We may feel a tinge of remorse. Cause and effect is certain. Most likely, you punch someone, you are going to get punched back in a very basic level. It is certain. What we do not understand, in our depths, is how certain psychological behaviors are going to produce consequences for ourselves. If we understood, then we would not do it. You would comprehend it. It is not just knowing something is wrong. An alcoholic can know that their addiction is bad but continue to be an addict. Knowledge is very superficial. It is of the intellect. The mind may know something is wrong, may label it, may theorize, but if the heart is not in it, there is no understanding. Then we continue to do things that are harmful. Maybe we do not feel the results of our actions in this life, but we will feel it. Karma is certain. It is like an imprint in the film of nature. Think of life as like a photographic film. You may have heard of akashic records. Some of you may have heard of this, how every action in life is recorded in higher realities or higher dimensions. We have talked about some of this in our dream yoga course [see Navigating the Internal Worlds]. The Qur’an talks about how every action will be written in a book. It is the same metaphor, that divinity sees all action and that our actions will produce consequences, maybe not immediately, but it will come to fruition at some point. If we wish to cultivate a psychological space of serenity, we should learn to stop performing harmful actions, because karma is certain. There are effects. We do not live in a bubble where we can think and feel whatever we want. We affect everyone. You know this when you go to a meeting or you are talking with someone who is very angry. They may not say anything, but you feel it. Think of this: certainty of karma. Cause and effect is certain. 
The Magnification of Karma
But there are also other laws, the magnification of karma.
Contrary to common belief, the consequence is actually greater than the action. This may seem strange. We think of Newtonian physics, like every action has an equal and opposite reaction, but the truth is that every action is magnified in nature. Think of it like dropping a stone in a lake. The ripples reach out to all of the pond and every living thing in it feels the disturbance. In the same way, we have a politician, or an angry person gets on a podium speaking very negative things. Their words are recorded on X or Twitter or whatever you want to call it now, Youtube, podcasts, media. Those words are magnified because they reach more people, and that one angry person now becomes millions of angry people. The consequences are by far greater than the initial action. Actions expand. Now, more hopefully for us is that this is not something just negative but, you do a good deed, it reaches out to people. Our communities are benefited when we are upright. We perform things that are of benefit to our immediate members, our clients, whom we work with, our families. When we are performing good deeds and acting uprightly, that has a ripple effect. It reaches out. It expands. It is contagious. 
The Compensation of Karma
Also, we have to understand the compensation of karma. We have an image here of a pendulum, right? In essence, you cannot receive the consequence without committing its corresponding action.
Some people think, mistakenly, that if karma can be shared, this negates the principle of individual agency. If the husband commits murder, does the wife go to jail? It’s like, other people cannot pay our karma for us. It is something individual, strictly speaking, in a fundamental sense. Other people cannot basically pay our karma for us. We have to do so willingly. We cannot receive the consequence without committing its action. It is like you hit a pendulum. It goes back and forth. In the sense that we propel the action, the action comes back to us. It is very important to understand this principle because, I know some traditions teach that other people or someone else can save us. This is very much a Christian dispensation, but in reality, no one can save us but our own actions. We have to fulfill the necessary requisite causes for our own redemption, for our own change. Our own inner divinity, represented as or symbolized by Christ, can save us, but not any outside person. It is inside. We have to fulfill the law, because we are compensated based on our actions. If we do it, we will reap the benefit. If we do not, only we suffer the consequences, but obviously we can bring others down in the meantime, if we are really quite sour, morbid. 
The Permanence of Karma
Karma is permanent. Once an action is performed, the consequence cannot be erased. This has both good and bad connotations.
You cannot take back a bullet. You fired the gun. You cannot take it back. Likewise, a negative word cannot be retracted or redacted. If we do something wrong, we have to suffer the consequences. It is permanent. You cannot forget it. Maybe you do forget it, but in a sense you cannot erase it. It happened. This should give us pause: what actions on our part are we willing to live with? Really, should we live with the consequence of saying a hurtful thing to the people we love? Or should we be patient, understand our own agitation, and seek to be the best person we can, promote the wellbeing of our own community, of our loved ones? However, this also has a positive connotation too because if you do a good deed, it is permanent. People will remember. People always remember the person who is kind, who is altruistic, who is patient, who is giving, consistently. That is permanent. You cannot erase those consequences unless you really work hard at going against that. 
The Transcendence of Karma
More importantly, to go beyond Tsongkhapa’s explanations about karma, we have a fifth principle that is related to us by Samael Aun Weor, especially in his book Tarot and Kabbalah.
He explained that a superior action overcomes an inferior one. This is very beautiful and profound. Given that karma is permanent, it might sound fatal, like you do something wrong and you cannot erase it. You cannot take it back, but in a sense, there is redemption within the law. A superior way of being always overcomes an inferior one. Say for example, you hurt someone with your speech. Later you were genuine. You feel remorse. You go back and you apologize. Not only that, you do something good for that person. You act for their benefit. We are really repentant, and you mend the relationship. You heal it. You make it grow, and someone who was once an enemy can really become a friend. This is the really the real meaning behind Christian transcendence or redemption. This is an action that is represented within all religions, but we find especially and beautifully represented by Jesus―how a superior law can overcome an inferior one. “An eye for an eye” is replaced with mercy. In a sense, we all think this because, we have many faults. We need a higher power, a higher principle to guide us. That superior action comes from within the heart when our own inner divinity is expressing through us, when we empty our mind and our heart, our preconception, our appetites, our desires, and become still. Even if but for a moment, the real Being can express, the real power of divinity. That is the power of transcendence, because our own inner divinity, our own conscience knows how to act and even to mend our mistakes. So, there is a higher law, and it is this higher law that guides us when we are trying to change. 
Grace, Works, or Both?
We have an image of St. Paul and St. James. They have varying perspectives that we are going to synthesize here. Both are right, but unfortunately within some Christian denominations, there is a great argument about whether or not one is saved just by grace or is saved just by works.
In truth we need both. It is a very interesting interplay of principles that is something we can only verify through our own practice. I believe James said that we have to do certain works. There is cause and effect. There is karma. We have to put certain causes in action that are going to produce the changes that we want. Mere belief, without the fruit of effort, is dead. As he says: For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. ―James 2:26
Here he means belief, just thinking a tradition or a scripture is true, but not really living it within the heart. If we do not act upon what we learn, study, or meditate upon, our spirituality is ineffective. It does not produce anything. That is the measurement.
Also, as we are working on ourselves, there is also the element of grace too, right? We need forgiveness. That forgiveness is not from someone outside, but from our own inner God, our Divine Mother or the Divine Father, the Being. Grace is an interesting concept, really, but in practice it is when we receive help. We cannot fundamentally change our deepest habits, errors, and mistakes on our own. We do our part, and it is a major part, but it is not everything. We need grace. We need blessings from our own inner Being, strength within our heart, guidance, insight. That grace often comes in the form of dreams. If you studied our course in dream yoga and astral travel, we teach how to meditate, put the body in a state of suspension, relax, awake the consciousness, fall asleep physically, but maintain your mindfulness. Then in the screen of your imagination, you start to see images. You start to dream, but consciously. You can start to see things that are beyond the physical world. You receive help from your own inner divinity, through certain visions or symbolic experiences. We need these visions to inspire us. There is a balance. We need to work for them, to change what we can in our daily life, but also learn to be meditators and to change psychologically, so that in the clearness of our mind, we can get superior guidance. This why Paul of Tarsus states in Ephesians: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith―and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God―not by works, so that no one can boast. ―Ephesians 2:8-9
It is a delicate, nuanced things. These two verses seem to contradict each other, but we need both. We have to work to have faith, develop conscious experience within ourselves of what these realities are practically. This is not belief, to think or feel something is true, but to know. We have to learn to have those experiences, patiently, so that we get guidance, in that you know we cannot do this on our own. We need help.
Three Ways to Pay Karma
In relation to karma, there are three ways to pay it.
We have a lot of debts, you can say, in a spiritual sense. We have committed many actions in our past, not only in this life. If you have studied this tradition for some time, we have talked about previous lives, so that we can experience, meditate, and verify. We can say that there are three ways to pay karma:
We have an image here of Ganesha. In Hinduism this is the divinity associated or principles associated with obstacles and their remedies. He is depicted as an elephant. There is a key here because he has the key to knowledge, real knowledge, real experience. Our inner divinity gives challenges. How else can we prove ourselves that we want to really perfect our livelihood, our life, our lifestyle, to be a better member of our community? But also, divinity provides the solutions, right? So, Ganesha is both the obstacle giver and solution giver. That is the role of divinity: to teach us how to grow. We need challenges so that we see our own mistakes that we created, so that we can change them. This is a gift from divinity. Samael Aun Weor stated in a lecture called: “False Personality, Patience, Repentance and Forgiveness” about these three ways of paying karma, the residue of our past actions: Karma is not only paid with pain. Karma can also be paid with good deeds; and even forgiveness can be achieved through supreme repentance, and then the causal-egos are dissolved. ―Samael Aun Weor, “False Personality, Patience, Repentance and Forgiveness"
Commonly most people go through life who have no inclination of changing themselves fundamentally. They pay with painful situations. They murder in one life; they are murdered in the next. They steal from someone in one lifetime; someone steals from them in this existence. It is a blind, mechanical, repetitive, cyclical thing, and often times it is compounded and exacerbated by our own anger, fear, and impatience. In the moment, we make things worse. We just continue the cycle.
However, as I was explaining earlier, with the transcendence of karma, karma can also be paid with good deeds. You can negotiate. It is not just something blind you got to suffer through. You can even ask for credit from divinity, and say, “If you provide me with these things of spiritual benefit, I will perform a), b) and c) in return.” Doing good deeds, in a sense, offers us credit. It is like a bank. You pay off your debts, you are relieved (pretty sure people who paid off college can feel the same way). In a spiritual sense, it is the same thing. We pay our karma with good deeds. Lastly, you can even pay karma with eliminating the defects related with the crime or the error. In a sense, if you were to really comprehend and disintegrate anger, for example, that caused a certain marital problem in a past life or a current situation, you do not have to face the karma of what would happen if that anger continued to live like a demon, feeding off your mistakes. There is a way to repent, and that is comprehending and eliminating our errors. Psychologically speaking, we call them egos, defects, vices, desires. In a deep sense, when the causes of those egos are eliminated, you have real peace. That is another way. These are three ways in synthesis. That way, if you pay your debts, we develop a more personal relationship with divinity who manages all of that. 
How Much Free Will Do We Really Have?
Some questions people might have asked in the past is, how much free will do we really have? It is a bit dark, honestly.
Samael Aun Weor mentions that 97% of our consciousness tends to be trapped, conditioned within elements like anger, pride, and fear, and the best part of us is in a sleeping state, inactive, trapped, conditioned. Every defect like anger, pride, or fear is a cage. It traps us in that habit and processes the consciousness in accordance with that condition. So, the consciousness trapped in anger will only act with anger, pride with pride, fear with fear. Since those desires are so strong, we just tend to repeat them. 97% of our mind is like that. There is very little of us that is free still. We say that there is 3% consciousness that is not yet trapped within ego, and this might seem very daunting and pessimistic. It is a very dark thing but look at the story of David and Goliath. 
In the Bible, David (the free consciousness) with a stone and his faith, killed a giant, killed his desires, his defects, conquered himself in battle. It can be done. But we have to learn to activate the will that we still have, the free will left in our disposal to be able to act on the conditioned consciousness and liberate what is trapped there, so that we expand, grow, and develop the capacity to act freely, more and more.
Samael Aun Weor, kind of emphasizes these points in, or the reality of our situation here, in “A Talk on the Mysteries of Life and Death”: “There is a small space of free will, but it is very small. Imagine for a moment a violin inside its case. There is very little space for that violin to move around. That is like the space our free will has to move in, which is almost nothing; so, there is only a small space for free will, almost imperceptible. Yet, if we know how to use it, then it is possible for us to transform ourselves radically and become liberated from the law of recurrence, but it is necessary to know how to take advantage of it. How?” ―Samael Aun Weor, “A Talk on the Mysteries of Life and Death"
The solution is to study our psychology and to understand the dynamics of karma
Resources
If we wish to develop a more personal relationship with our own inner divinity, to expand our potential of free will, to liberate the consciousness, to free ourselves from suffering, we can study two works: Treaties of Revolutionary Psychology by Samael Aun Weor and the book Karma is Negotiable: Destiny and the Divine Power of Love, available at Glorian Publishing. These two books will provide a bases for first, examining our own situations in life, and second, understanding in us what part of us is free and what can change.
These books are very radical, in the sense that they offer a practical basis for approaching the problems of life, so that by learning to endure the challenges of our current existence and by learning to respond to them with efficacy, with ethics, with love, with understanding, we can make great changes and produce causes that are going to be beneficial for us and others, in a deep and lasting way. At this point, I invite you to ask questions. Questions and Answers
Question: When we are exercising making the decisions that you talked about earlier in the lecture, would that be us working with some of that 3% willpower and engaging with that?
Instructor: Yes. All the practices of our tradition are for the 3% consciousness that still can work, since these techniques are meant to help liberate our willpower. Regarding practices for engaging with the 3% really, the most fundamental practice we use, is meditation. There is a specific meditation that we teach from the book The Revolution of the Dialectic especially, by Samael Aun Weor. It is called retrospection meditation or blue time or rest therapeutics, more specifically. In the practice, as we are observing ourselves throughout the day, watching our mind, examining our heart, looking at our actions―not just physically, but in a psychological sense―we are gathering data about our own defects. We watch ourselves. As we are acquiring data about our own habits of mind, we learn to sit down. We relax, calm the mind, calm the body and call upon the screen of your awareness the events of the day. We try to imagine what you saw, what you thought, what you felt. The purpose is not to just relive the experience and get sucked in, right? Not to get angry or upset with the situation, but to watch it dispassionately. You call upon the screen of your imagination the events and what you perceived―factually―not what you assumed or what you wished it could be, but what it was. You imagine it. You could review at night, right before you go to sleep. You sit. You visualize the events of the day from the morning up until that point, and you examine in the screen of your imagination the defects that you witnessed. This is why self-observation, mindfulness, watching yourself repeatedly, moment by moment, every day, is really fundamental, because we are trying to gather food for meditation. Maybe at work you felt angry at someone and then maybe you were sacred, “What if this person rejects me?” These thoughts, feelings, and impulses to act come up. Maybe pride came next, “Oh, I do not deserve to be treated this way,” and there is a transaction of different errors that can come up. We are studying all these interactions in ourselves, but first you got to see it. You got to watch it, discover it in the moment. Later you sit down to retrospect. You call upon the screen of your imagination: what happened? You try to go deep into those specific defects that we saw. With comprehension, with patient application of the technique, we wait for the answer. You look at the ways that maybe this defect is fed. You can even see where it came from, what it wants, how it traps our consciousness, how it relates to other defects, other egos, and then with patient application, we gain deeper understanding about each error and what the benefits would be if we eliminate them. Then we pray to our inner Divine Mother Kundalini to eradicate them. That is a very basic surface level explanation, but I invite you to study on our website the lecture in our series on Gnostic Meditation. The last lecture is all dedicated to this practice. It is called retrospection meditation. If we meditate and eliminate defects, you take the mechanical errors that perpetuate our suffering and you destroy them. You free the consciousness that is trapped there, and little by little, we start to have more free will. We stop being mechanical. We stop repeating the same mistakes, and you know that this is effective when you face the same situations in life and you do not react at all the same way you use to. Personally, I’ve had a job that has been pretty challenging, very difficult, and just working on certain defects of impatience, fear, and anger at the situation, to the point that I do not respond or react the same way I use to. People notice and there’s been a lot of benefits and changes, so we irradiate a quality of more liberated will. So, I’ve had more freedom and freewill as a result of reflecting on certain errors of my own that is the method. Study the lecture: Retrospection Meditation. Very deep. I hope that answers your question. Question: How does one know that one is paying for a karma in a present lifetime or past lifetimes? Instructor: Meditation is really the answer. You have to meditate on what the event is and especially, if it is a very deep suffering, a very deep pain, a problem that repeats, consistently, maybe throughout our whole lifetime, one situation arises from another, there is a recurrence there. Recurrence probably means that we are repeating a very deep error from other lifetimes. As a general principle, we could pay for our karma in our present lifetime, and we will know it when we have visions in our dreams. Especially dreams of being paid money is a very good sign. They are saying that, basically, “Yeah, you are paying for a certain debt. We are actually paying you dharma,” and you can be shown in your inner experiences that it is in relation to paying certain debts. But in terms of karma, really, I would say that the deeper the problem, the more frequent the recurrence. It is something common that happens all the time. It can manifest in many avenues of life. You know that you are paying it when your life is changing, especially if the recurrence is very deep and intense. You know that it is from past lifetimes when or if it is very influential. There are some situations in our lives that are like, someone has a problem with money, or someone has a problem with being angry, and maybe that’s their chief defect, chief characteristic. Some of us have certain defects which are very deeply ingrained with karmic debts. We tend to repeat those the most. Those tend to have deeper roots in other existences because they are very ancient. We fed them a lot, but you could cut them at the roots if you go to the roots, and the consequence will be that you don’t repeat them. Question: Can someone stop being reincarnated to get out of the whole karma thing? 
Instructor: It would be the nice answer to simply get away from it all. We have studied an image called the Tree of Life. Many of you may be familiar with this. It is often associated with Judaism. It is a mystical glyph of ten spheres, from lower regions of matter, energy, perception, to the highest and most divine. These are different dimensions in nature, different levels of being. In a sense, the higher you go, the more divine the realities you reach and the less complexity and suffering there is. In a sense, the further up you go, the more aligned with divine law you are and there is less suffering as a result of karma, less laws.
Now, the ultimate goal of our studies is to eventually pay everything we owe. That is the ultimate, optimal way of being, but it is also very difficult to do. It would be nice to “retire” from life if you could get out of suffering even if for a little bit (i.e. through a spiritual experience in meditation). There are spiritual paths that teach that. There are some yogis and practitioners who have learned to meditate to the point and practice to point that they enter nirvana, higher dimensions. Then they choose not to reincarnate because they want to enjoy that level of nature, which is very pure and divine. We call it the spiral path. But yeah, it is possible. There are some beings who can learn to develop themselves to a point that, rising up the Tree of Life into higher dimensions, they learn to stay there, and they may choose to reincarnate when they want. Usually, it is also temporary, because in a sense, you cannot escape karma. There may be a temporary pause in suffering because you reached elevated states of being, but really, the only way to get out of karma, meaning, to pay all your karma, is to willingly pay it all. We call that the path of the bodhisattva. It is the path taken by masters like Jesus of Nazareth, Padmasambhava, Buddha, Moses, Krishna. It is a very difficult path, because one has to pay all their debts in one life. It is very intense. When that karma is paid, you can go higher and higher and leave behind the world of pain. But in a sense, even the gods cannot escape karma. There is cause and effect even in the higher regions of divinity. It is just different because it is for gods. We are not at that level, so we are here. We have to work with where we are at, and not to avoid it, run away from it, or dream that we are something we are not. It is better to pay karma consciously, and when you pay it, you do not suffer anymore. But also, it could be suffering in the beginning because you take it on voluntarily and it is a challenge. It is a delicate thing. Levels upon levels of work, right? I suggest if you are interested in learning more about this topic of reincarnation, especially, and what does it mean to reincarnate, Glorian just recently came out with a blog and a podcast about it: “Reincarnation is Real, But Very Rare.” I suggest you study that. Question: How do you tell the difference between virtue and people-pleasing? Instructor: Examine your heart. Watch your emotional center. Is It really in a state of giving to the other person to benefit them, or do we feel a subtle prejudice or desire there that wants to be liked? You can only taste it through experience, patiently. Observe it. Watch it. In a sense, no one can tell you when you are being virtuous or not. You have to see it for yourself. What states in you are different, distinct? It is like discriminating between the taste of water and wine. Psychological states are like that. They are very distinct and have a flavor to them. Some leave a sour taste. Some of them are open and expansive, uplifting, virtuous. Watch your heart and then meditate on what you feel. Question: Hi, thank you for the lecture. I had two questions both related to the Fates. The first one, could you just speak a little more on the terms, “The Spinner, The Allotter and the Unturning?” Instructor: The three Fates were sometimes related to past, present, and future, or I believe the Nordic Norns are often associated with the three Fates, in terms of our lifespan, our life, and the moment of death. In a sense, these are eternal laws. These are principles that govern the nature of being itself. Even Richard Wagner in his Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung (Damnation of the Gods) emphasized the nature of these three principles, that they govern the life of any individual and also, any initiate who is working in the spiritual path itself. The three Fates can apply to our own individual life. In a sense we say that some parts of life involve predetermined things, things that will happen in our lifetime, that must happen, because we set causes and the conditions for them, and that they are going to come to fruition at some point. How we negotiate with it in the present is up to us. It is up to our mind, the choices we make, what free will we apply. We also say that in terms of lifespan. Pretty sure you are familiar with Gurdjieff. He talks about what is called, Bobbin-Kandelnosts, right? Life, vital capital. We have certain amount of energies, vital values that allows us to exist, psychologically, physically, and spiritually, in terms of our life span. We can live short lives because we waste our energy, right? Or we can live longer because we save it, in a basic fundamental sense. In a sense, that is a negotiation that we make by living an ethical lifestyle. That could prolong our life, and maybe we were perchance going to die at a certain time due to our former actions. Yet by living an ethical way of being, we prolong our life, especially through the practices we have been teaching in relation to the vital energy, the creative energy itself, like through pranayama and The Perfect Matrimony. It is a process you negotiate it in terms of what action do we fulfill now to procure a better future, that can also relate to the three Fates. Question: The second question I had about the Fates as well, is that directly related to, then, the Three Furies: Megaera, Alecto and Tisiphone? Is that another functioning or are they a functioning of the Fates? Instructor: Yeah, in a sense, there is a correlation. Sometimes it is the Fates, sometimes it is the Furies. They could be denoted as the Furies because in a sense, when a crisis hits, there is a great challenge, an ordeal. Fate is like a fury. We face the consequences of whatever may be. But yeah, there is that connotation too. Question: So, is it safe to say that all suffering one goes through is related to karma, either in this or past lives? There is no suffering that is outside the law? Instructor: Some situations are the recurrence of previous states. Other sufferings might be novel or new. That is something you need to investigate in yourself, especially through meditation and dreams. It is not something theoretical or something to believe in. It is something that you can experience through the techniques given by Samael Aun Weor, especially and some of the meditations we provide. Retrospection meditation, for example, is certain exercise’s you could do. I know there is one mantra we use, Raom Gaom. It is a mantra you could use when you wake up from dreams, to remember what you experienced in the nighttime. Also, you can use this mantra and other mantras to remember the past, way beyond the current spectrum of our physical existence. We will provide a link in the chat for you in a lecture called: How to Remember Dreams. Many of the exercises given there can relate to that. It is something you have to investigate for yourself. Question: Does your inner divinity know who your future spouse is? How can one receive answers to this question without allowing fear, emotional anguish, and impatience cloud these visions? Thank you. Instructor: You know, that is something you can verify. You can see it. You can experience it, but often times they will not come in the form that you like. The important thing is that when we are practicing meditation and looking for deep answers within ourselves to problems such as this, you have to be willing to perceive the experience without attachment. You can have a genuine, authentic experience in meditation, maybe a vision in a dream. It can be fundamentally objective and real, but it is very easy for the mind, for fear, for attachment, impatience, and frustration, to want to interpret in a certain way. There is a very delicate balance to be reached in terms of opening up to that experience, but also knowing how to interpret it with clarity, without prejudgment, without assumption. I recommend you listen to a lecture we gave on the dream yoga course, especially. It is called: How to Interpret Dreams. The important thing is that we have to be willing to receive the answer we do not like and to withhold judgment, assuming that it must mean or we want it to mean a certain thing, but to be dispassionate, to be clear. More importantly than just having any experience is understanding our own mental reactions, our own mind, our own egotism. You overcome that process or that questioning by watching your heart, watching your emotional states, and to be willing to submit to divinity, whatever the answer may be. Be patient, and also be patient with yourself. We have to be willing to be open to whatever comes and to examine: what in us wants a certain answer, right? We want a certain result. We want, maybe, our life to be a certain way. Contentment is a very profound virtue: to accept what we have and to be humble. We get what we need, not what we want. If what we maybe want is a spouse, look at that desire. Where does it come from? How does it feed? What are its thoughts? Where is this fear coming from? What is this insecurity that wants a certain situation in life? Where is this source of pain that you feel? That is more important than getting any answer at all, really. Examine the root of these emotions, thoughts, and states. Look at them. Observe them. Understand them. The more conflicted and confused you are in terms of your emotional states, the less you will be able and clear to reflect that insight that you desperately long for. When the water is clear, maybe the jar is filled with sediment, stone, and dirt, it subsides and calms into layers. It stratifies, and the water rises up, and you could see clearly your situation. But the more we feed into negative emotions and attachments, the more disturbed we get. You cannot interpret your dreams or visions when you are clouded in your mind like that. You have to enter serenity first. Practice serenity: the nine stages of meditative concentration, especially as outlined by Glorian. I recommend you really practice that course to get yourself settled, especially Meditation Essentials on their website. Question: Is karma proportional to the action and knowledge a person has about it? Instructor: You could say that it is proportional in relationship to the energy we invest in it. Some consequences are much more effective, or better said, impactful, because the energy that was put into motion was much more severe or strong. Now whether we have knowledge of it or not is relative. It is relative in terms of our state of consciousness in this moment. You know, examine yourself. How much are we actually conscious of our mental states, emotional states, the root of our problems, the root of our sufferings, where they came from, how they arise, how they feed, how they sustain, how they pass? How aware are we about this whole process? Because in our daily life, we are very, spiritually asleep, very unconscious. We do not remember things. There is a lack of clarity about the source of our psychological states, unless we are actively learning to watch and to observe. However, our actions continue to perpetuate negative situations and often intense suffering. You could have knowledge about it by expanding your consciousness little by little, day by day, through your discipline. That way you can understand, maybe, the magnitude of karma and how it originated in relation into a particular issue. So, obviously we talked about magnification, right? The effects are greater than the cause. In that way, the effects have their origins somewhere in a cause that we have to discover patiently. But to have greater impact, we must now how to invest more energy into the good. Question: How do you know how to pay back your karma? Instructor: There is a very simple practice you can you use. It is in The Magic of the Runes by Samael Aun Weor. We learn to pay back karma and know how to do it through certain exercises such as through the Rune Not. It is one way we learn to negotiate with the law. It is a yogic practice. You adopt a certain posture. You enter a certain form of prayer. You relax, and you can ask from divinity certain credits to receive, certain helps and blessings, in exchange for doing good deeds. In that way you can pay certain karma that would have resulted in a lot of pain. You know, we pay with good deeds. We pay with Christian ethic, the ethics of Christ, to give selflessly. You really pay back karma when you give from a state of selflessness and love, especially in situations that are really provoking you. That is how you know you are being the most generous. There are three ways to pay as we talked about. But you know it when you see your situations change, certain repetitive, cyclical events, certain recurrences in life which are causing a lot of pain―they are gone. They vanish. You can pay with good deeds, or even pay with pain, but you know it is paid when the situation is over. It is done. Question: If an unethical business leader that treats employees badly set up a foundation or makes regular monetary donations to many orphanages, can that pay for the bad karma from unethical deeds? Instructor: It is a good question. Obviously in the Buddhist tradition, it is emphasized that one should have right livelihood or right business: to earn one’s daily bread in an ethical way, because having an unethical business to do ethical things still does not negate, or really does not transcend, its cause. There are still some shady things going on that are made for that purpose. So, no, I would say that our business should be ethical. What we do should be honest and that will align with our conscience. We cannot just do bad business to do good things with the money later, because you are still causing actions which are harmful and which should be evaluated. Question: Is karma responsible for the descent of the human race that is now from the Polar Race up until now, the Aryan Root Race? Instructor: If you studied Blavatsky’s explanations about anthropogenesis, about root races, she explains that there is the karma of the worlds, right? The development of different humanities within different times, which is allegorized in or represented within the Bible especially, especially the Book of Genesis. In a sense, there is karma for worlds, karma for planets, karma for humanities. The individual karma is intertwined with the karma of races, the karma of groups, the karma of religions, the karma of nations, the karma of humanities, and everything that precedes in this present moment came from some past action. There is a connection there. There was, really, a descent of the human race, not merely from the Polar Epoch according to Blavatsky, but Lemuria, which was allegorized in the Garden of Eden, in the fall. I would study on Glorian Publishing’s website, there is a course given by those lecturers, especially called “Cosmic Evolution in the Bible.” It goes into a lot of depth about the development of that karma from the past epochs to the present. There is a relationship there, something to investigate. Question: By studying the tarot do learn about the law? Instructor: Yes, the twenty-two arcana of the tarot, especially the Eternal Tarot that we have available through Glorian Publishing, is related to the divine laws. Arcanum, singular, is law, and arcana means “laws.” There are twenty-two major arcana relating to the twenty-two Hebrew letters of the Kabbalistic alphabet. These cards and these Hebrew letters themselves relate to principles that the individual needs to develop in order to transform their psychology. So, they relate to aspects of the spiritual path, about certain obstacles that we face in our own life, and what to do, how to overcome them. In a way, when you study those principles, you learn about karma. In fact, the 5th arcanum relating to The Hierarch, relates to the law, the divine law of karma. Work with the tarot individually. I do not recommend going to fortune tellers or to performers in a spiritual sense, to learn about the tarot. You learn about it by working with it individually. Study the tarot and you learn about the law. The twenty-two laws and also the fifty-six minor arcana, the minor laws that relate to the development of the psyche too. Question: Does removing oneself from society and being a shut in, or limiting contact or help, reduce karma? Instructor: No, unfortunately. You might suspend certain karmas. Maybe you take a break for a while. You get some rest, some rejuvenation. I know that basically, we go on retreats a lot with our school, and we go to Glorian Publishing retreats as well, where you get some time to relax and to take a rest from the world. In a sense, it is a blissful experience, because you get away from the hustle and bustle of daily life. In a way, we learn to gain serenity so that we can face our deepest problems. But in terms of reducing karma, it might pause it for a while, but it will come back because karma is certain, but living in a shut in or cloistered way will not get rid of the causes of our former actions. You can gain some stability in meditation, so that when you re-enter the world or leave a monastery, or place of retreat and worship, that you have more consciousness and strength to transform the karma when it arrives. You cannot get rid of karma through avoidance. It is certain. It is going to happen, but how we face it is what matters. Question: What happens to karma with people who think they are being ethical, but others do not think the same way? Instructor: That is a problem, right? We have to look at our heart and see, are we ethical? Are we really following the law in our heart? Other people may not think that we are being ethical because, unfortunately, to a degree, our modern world is crazy, right? There are prejudices and beliefs that we should be a certain way. In a sense, it is a delicate thing, because we want to be useful to the world, ethical, to know how to thrive in this society which is falling apart. However, other people may think that certain spiritual practices or traditions are not good. It is fine. We respect that people have their opinion, their differences, their traditions, and different ways of thinking. We have to follow our conscience. In a sense, is our spiritual practice improving our relationships? That is an important thing to consider. We want to have a balance here. Our spiritual practice should not be a source of pride, where we think we are being ethical but other people in a sense can see us for who we are―arrogant. There is that reality too. But sometimes, by following the things we are teaching here, we know it is going to offend people to a degree. We have to be open, willing, and patient. Now, the problem is when we think we are doing right, but we are not, and that is not good. That is really where the problem lies with a lot of us. We think we are doing a good thing, but we are attached, so we need to question that. Often times other people can be the barometer for what we are really doing, right? You know, if we are doing it in the right way or not because other people can see us sometimes better than we see ourselves in terms of our worst defects. So, it is a balancing act. In a sense, Samael Aun Weor, mentions in our tradition that we have to be in the world, because human relationships are like a mirror. We see ourselves for who we really are when we are with others―that is the thing. The danger is when we think we know what is right, when we do not, so we have to be humble. Question: Is it wrong to use tarot to help out a person as a guide, to solve a personal conflict? Instructor: Personally, I would introduce the tarot to this individual. Teach them how to use it themselves, because the tarot are meant for the individual. I know that there is a tradition and tendency to go to other people to perform a reading. It is kind of a tradition that has been passed on for a long time, but really, the tarot are most effective when we develop that personal relationship with our own inner divinity. So, use the tarot on your own. That is the thing. Teach them how to do it on their own. That is really the best gift you can give because they will learn the language of God. The tarot will unveil, the divinity will reveal through the cards in the certain reading what they need to do about their personal situation. That is something that we can model for them, how to do it. Give an example. Good teaching is about modeling for others, from example. So, show them how to do it and then they say, “OK, I know how to do it.” Apply it when you need and let other people solve their personal conflicts. It is important to let other people resolve their issues. As instructors too, we often get questions from people, “Can you help me solve this problem?” Honestly, the best advice we can give is to teach you how to meditate and get the answer from your inner Being, because we are limited, really. We have our own flaws. So, I would teach them how to be independent. Question: Is losing the sense of urgency to practice consistently a consequence of karma? Instructor: I would say losing a sense of urgency is a result of a lack of practice in itself. It is a feedback loop. You practice more, you get more inspired. You get more inspired, you practice more. Now, is it karma? I think this is in a general sense, like, as a result of former actions. Losing a sense of urgency can be as a result of identifying too much with certain defects like laziness or dejection, morbidity, despondency. I would not say it is a result of karma, like we are losing hope. That is an individual personal thing. Even in the dark night or what is called dark nights of the soul, in which we feel abandoned to a degree in our spiritual work, we can find inspiration to practice. “Dark nights” happen to everybody. It happened to Beethoven.
If you have heard his Moonlight Sonata, it especially represents that. It is often the result of, in karma and hard situations that hit and when we have to face the consequences of them, but seemingly without help, and that could be a source of great pain for people. We may feel a lack of urgency in that hardship and many people break under those conditions, but those who achieve success are those who are consistent and strive forward even despite the hardship. So, urgency has to be cultivated like a fire. We have to tend it diligently, patiently, and not let it die out, and even if it dies out, you can bring it back to life, especially when divinity hounds you.
Question: In helping others and getting them out of difficulties, are we not preventing them from learning their karmic lessons? Are we not interfering? Instructor: It depends. You have to follow your heart. You have to know what is in your conscience, what is really going to be beneficial to this person and what is not. In a sense, you cannot prevent people from learning their own karma because divinity is the one managing their situation anyways. They are going to learn no matter what, or not learn. But who is to say that your compassionate gesture is precisely teaching them about their karma and how to resolve it? So, in a sense, we interfere when we let our ego get in the way, our pride, our defects, so that’s the thing. I know we ran over. Thank you very much for your questions! We will be continuing lectures, I believe one next week. It will also be on zoom. So, thank you all for coming!
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The Gnostic Academy of Chicago
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