The Self, ego and bindings – The law of karma

All things are governed by laws of one kind or another. Even insignificant business concerns and public institutions have their laws and cannot function without them. This is even more true of the universe. It may seem sometimes as if the universe were not subject to any self-justifying law, and sometimes it appears as if sincere toil were lost, the virtuous condemned to suffering and the vicious endowed with power and success. But this fractional and false view is derived from man’s ignorance of the law of karma.

When the ego-mind refuses to understand life and encounters accumulated prejudices and resistance, it loses its equilibrium and tranquility. It is thus impelled either to release or inhibit good or bad actions, getting further involved in the results of its own activities, whether in the form of thoughts or deeds.

The law of karma prevents the ego-mind from escaping the results created by its own good or bad actions. The ego-mind is harnessed by the gathered momentum of past actions and is incapable of emancipation or true balance because it is constantly disturbed, not only by environmental knocks and impacts but also by the goadings of its own stored impressions. Although the ego-mind has an inherent tendency to keep restoring its lost equilibrium, it attempts such restoration through a mechanical reaction of going over to the opposite and clinging to that, until it discerns through experience that balance is not to be gained in such clinging either.

So the ego-mind goes from opposite to opposite in the illusory karmic pendulum until, through endless testing and suffering, it runs its course of opposite actions and reactions, or until it has the good fortune to contact a Perfect Master and receive his grace.

-Life At Its Best, p33

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