Action and reaction

stayed up last night buried in Venkatesananda's talks on Karma yoga and had a major breakthrough in my understanding of karma, vasana. samskara and dharma. So here goes, bear with me if your interested or just click on to a more lightweight blog.

Consciousness spirals out from a fixed point
This fixed point is called oneness or brahman
The spiraling out is the force of shakti's split from shiva
It is in our nature to feel like we are constantly pushing away from the center in this spiral arc or being pulled back to the centre
It is in our nature to want things, to take action, to attract pleasures into our lives, to have goals
This very action is the "pulling away from the centre"
Sleep is a returning to the centre, fatigue is our exhaustion from constant goal orientation
Karma therefore is the action we take to have what we desire
As we take action or rather shoot the arrow towards our goal an impression is left
This impression can be broken down into two things:
Vasana- deep unconscious habit or a scent that stains our fingers like inscence
Samskara- the way our particular personality expresses this vasana

As soon as the arrow hits its mark we react- this is a given
The reaction is often based on our Vasana- ( habit or tendency) and our Samskara (personality patterns) for instance: I insult you and you react
If you have the vasana( tendency) to be violent and you express that in your peronality as anger you may yell at me or hit me.The reaction is there but how you express it is based on your conditioning
If I insult you and you have the habit of "turning the other cheek" then that is how you will react and you will most probbaly express your reaction in a loving way
In yoga it is not important to notice the reaction- after all it is just a reenactment of your intial action which in turn creates more action
I insult you, you hit me I insult you again and so on and so on
Whats important is to root out the Vasana while aknowledging the Samskara

In modern day therapy we mainly adress our Samskaras- the personality issues
In yoga we can use Kriyas to burn up the Vasanas and purify ourselves or as my teacher Alan Finger puts it " bake the seeds until they pop and dissapear"

What then is Dharma? Dharma is what is presented to us to work out our Karma- Its what causes us to act and react in the first place. With out the law of Dharma there would be nothing happening just stillness and bliss. But the reality is that we are moving in this outward spiral and a spiral never returns, it does not close like a circle, The spiral then is destiny ... it is the pulling away and returning back that I mentioned earlier and within that are lots of actions, vasanas, samskaras and reactions, lots of events for us to keep working out our Karma.

Venkatesanada explains that ultimately we do not have free will as it is our destiny to play out these actions and reactions which may even come from lifetimes of spiraling out from the soul of the universe.

The only thing we can do then is to return back more often to the centre until that becomes the strongest pull... we can turn back to the light, through meditation practices, be they tantric or otherwise...

These thoughts inspire me to turn back....

"He who sees inaction in action and action in inaction, he is wise among men; he is a Yogi and performer of all actions." -Gita, Ch. 4, Verse 18. From The Bhagavad GitaTranslated by Swami Sivananda, Rishikesh