Live Life With Joy

Life is an ever-expansive present moment that we divide into past and future. Everything meets in this moment—the thoughts and deeds of our past, our current experience, and our future. The tree and its fruit live in the seed.
~Yogacharya Ellen Grace O'Brian

Recently someone asked me what my thoughts were about karma. That Sanskrit word is often given a negative connotation. People will say, when something bad happens, "Oh that is karma getting this person back for the bad deed they did in the past". Karma is described by Roy Eugene Davis as "subconscious tendencies which may influence thoughts, choices, moods and actions". Karma can be tendencies that were acquired in the past, or tendencies that are being acquired now, in the present moment. Paramahansa Yogananda described these karmic tendencies as seeds. As Yogacharya says in the quote above, "the tree and the fruit live in the seed." What kind of tree do we want to live with? Do we want a scraggly, unhappy tree that bears bitter fruit or a tree that is fresh and alive, bearing abundant sweet fruit? We can start now, in this present moment, by planting the seeds for the "tree" we want—the life we want. It is all in how we approach life. It's our decision to make. We can move beyond the past, beyond previous mistakes we made or difficulties that came into our lives. We can change our karma. We can plant positive karmic seeds now, through our uplifting thoughts, words and actions. As we move forward in our lives, from moment to moment, we can reap the positive karmic fruit. Our meditation practice calms the mind and teaches us to observe ourselves and our thoughts. Let go of the past and move forward in life with joy, now, in this present moment.