A Woman’s Gita: Bhagavad Gita by and for Western Women

Transforming Karma: Meditation, Service, and Spiritual Evolution

• Nischala Joy Devi & Kamala Rose • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Join Kamala Rose and Nischala Joy Devi as they dive deep into the profound teachings of Karma Yoga from the Bhagavad Gita. In this enlightening podcast, these experienced yoga practitioners unravel the mysteries of karma, offering practical insights into:

  • The true nature of karma beyond Western interpretations
  • How spiritual practices can transform personal and collective energy
  • The role of meditation in understanding our deeper motivations
  • Overcoming fear and expanding consciousness
  • The interconnectedness of individual actions and universal experience

Drawing from decades of study and personal practice, Rose and Devi provide a compassionate, feminine perspective on spiritual growth. Learn how small, mindful actions can create ripple effects of positive change, and discover how you can use yoga and meditation to evolve your understanding of karma.
Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or new to spiritual exploration, this podcast offers transformative wisdom for navigating life's challenges with grace and intention.

Kamala Rose:

Namaste, friends. Thank you for joining us for a woman's Gita Podcast. I'm

Nischala Joy Devi:

Kamala rose and I'm Nisha la joy. Davey.

Kamala Rose:

Thanks to our listeners and subscribers for hanging with us for our dialogs in the Gita today, we're starting our second season of a woman's Gita podcast, beginning by delving into chapter three, karma yoga. If you've been listening to our deep dive into chapter two, we've covered a lot of ground. Getting here, you've covered a lot of the foundations of the Bhagavad Gita and the the philosophical orientation right chapter two is often a place where, quite frankly, a lot of people get off on their reading of the Gita. They just can't quite understand how the different threads weave together in a meaningful way. And this is where nishala and I are hoping to help our listeners from our long time study of the Gita together. We probably have studied this for over 50 years together, and today we'd like to offer some insights into Karma Yoga chapter three, where we're coming from from chapter two and chapter one, and how we can make the Bhagavad Gita meaningful to us in this modern age as Western women who are encountering a kind of manly man, sort of text, how we can make it our own and take the gems of yogic wisdom into our daily lives.

Nischala Joy Devi:

I think one of the things that I keep hearing from people is a misinterpretation of karma. This is something that is not really present in the western society like it is in the eastern teachings. And because of that, we're so used to, I think, in our society, the duality of crime and punishment, or action and punishment, or whatever that is that we're used to the negative instead of looking at the positive. And then what we do is we then take that and put it onto karma, which is a very different concept. And I think the idea of karma is is really a neutral energy that is propelling us and also pushing us both at the same time, from the past karma, or the past incarnations, into the forward incarnation. I think one of the problems is we see life as as the It begins at birth and it ends at death, physical death of the body, when we don't realize that's just a parenthesis, there's something that comes before it, and there's something that goes after it. And if we can understand that, that it's a continuum, we understand karma a little bit better, because it's not just something that we do now. So for instance, I think the simplistic way of looking at it is my brother punched me in the shoulder, and then he went and fell down the steps and hurt his shoulder, so that we would say, Okay, that was his karma. To bring it to a very mundane level, but when we look at it from a higher level, we see this is what is teaching us, the lessons that we that our soul needs, not necessarily the body and the mind, but really what our soul needs to continue, raising up, moving upward on this journey of incarnation, and that's the main thing. It is so often we talk about, and also in the Yoga Sutras, when it talks about the pain that is yet to come, that is avoidable, when we talk about karma, this is also by doing the practices, and we'll get into the main practice of karma, of of incarnation and karma in a moment. But we have to understand it's a continuum. It's not a stop and go.

Kamala Rose:

And this is really a deep dialog in eastern thinking. I think what you brought up that when we're looking in the binary terms of crime and punishment, we are action and punishment. We're I think, as Western readers of the Gita, we. Are, many times bringing a sort of Christian or Western worldview into our understanding of a very, very deeply Eastern idea of karma. And when we, when we speak about karma, we're, we're engaging in this dialog over about nature, about the nature of reality, karma, being that property of nature that we might summarize as as time or of the activity of the countless billions of beings, right, who have who are sentient and have free will to exert their thought on the world. Right? That, you know we generally think of as human beings, although you know this kind of worldview is is in question these days. The more we the more we grow and we learn about other people and other ways of seeing the world. I think we're able to take up our own worldview, the way we frame the world philosophically, and re evaluate it, and I think this is one of the gitas greatest strengths and contributions to our modern world, and why I think it's important that we're able to make it more accessible, is we have this. We have this very foundational Eastern concept of nature as a collective force, as the world as a collective history made up of individuals, but also having a larger right, like the example, you used a neutral energy that right if you do something that harms someone else, then eventually you will receive something equal or of equal measure or weight back, right, and an intelligence of nature that it is ultimately mysterious to us, right? It's, you know, it's the problem of karma that brought about the teachings of yoga. So this is really at the core of why we practice, is understanding that karma is a mystery to us, and we have to learn how to balance it and deal with it, to, let's say, to win life in order to be ourselves, to be authentic in the world.

Nischala Joy Devi:

Not only is karma mystical, but Yoga itself is mystical. I think most people miss the mysticism of it because they focus on the physicality of it. They don't let go of that. So when we look at karma, it's it's, I both love to talk about it, and it's also a quagmire when you get into it, because when you were speaking about the world, we have to understand that if we could see with not the two eyes, but with the third eye, we see we were really all connected. All our arc feels are connected. And the person that you just passed, and they dropped their wallet, and you picked it up and handed it back to them, that was a karma that you had with them, whether you realized it or not, and you then fulfilled that at that moment, simple things that happen every single day, and then there's things that that complicate it. For instance, I'm a single woman. I have my karma. If I then get partnered with somebody, it's now my karma, their karma, and our karma together. So now I've just increased what my karma is, and how do I then lessen it so we don't know exactly who we were, even sometimes we can't remember who we were as teenagers. We might not have been very nice people. We might have done things that weren't nice, because you don't have that full consciousness yet of what's right or wrong. So suppose I did something it wasn't very good, and now I'm reaping the karma of that 25 years later. What do I do? Well, this is where the practices come in, we always had an expression. My teacher always said he'd say, when talking about karma, he'd say, they went for the head, but they got the hat instead. And I always imagined an arrow, you know, like those putting an apple on your head, and they shoot the. Arrow to that, and what it means, and what it was always meant to me, is that I can, I may not be able, to get rid of the karma completely that is holding me back, that is causing me to be sick, or whatever it is, that money wise, it's not allowing the money to flow, whatever that may be, the key and the magic in this is that it can be lessened by deep spiritual practice. So they do go for the hat. They do get the hat instead of the head. And I think this is something that even if you're not thinking about your next lifetime in karma, whatever, just think about right now. Can anything you have be lessened? Perhaps, physical pain, emotional pain, financial distress, whatever it may be. Can it be lessened by doing more deep practices? I think it's worth a try. If it doesn't work, the worst can happen is you sat quietly for an hour a day, right? So I think that's something that's important.

Kamala Rose:

Meditation offers us a way to to look deeper at why we act, and I think this is what we're getting at here in chapter three, and again, based on that important foundation, theoretical foundation in chapter two, right? We're we're hoping to understand why we do the things we do, and this is really that purpose of of dharana and Dhyana, as we've discussed, as meditation, it's very clear that we, you know, through concentration, concerted concentration and creating an open space in our minds and hearts, we can really understand why we do things and right. My experience is this is not at all linear, right? It. Insights arise when the time is right to understand why you make the choices that you make, and as you, as you said, not so much. Who am I going to become in another lifetime? Or who have I been? But what did I do yesterday to create the world that I'm in right now, and if there are areas that I'm unhappy with or are of a constant irritation and concern and never able to move into a more comfortable or easy going relationship with a situation, then how can I solve it? And, you know, having the courage that we've been talking about, the courage to do the deep work, to ask the tough questions of, what is it that in me that is contributing to this? Maybe, what do I want on a deeper level that I'm not aware of, and the tool of meditation really, for this purpose to understand, to understand karma in a very deeply personal way, I think, but Also in that it's very deeply personal in that it's mine. It's very intimate to my psychology and the pathology that emerges from that, but also to understand that I am really no different in motivation than all other people. You know, everyone wants a little bit more. Everybody wants to be a little bit happier. Everybody wants better for the people they love. And they want to be recognized in their work. They want to feel that they've contributed right, some sort of professional or right. So these

Nischala Joy Devi:

deeper thing, yeah, life means something, yeah, it's

Kamala Rose:

important. It's important. It's and these are, you know, these are deeper motivations that we don't want to take the attitude, I think, 111, way that I often find Karma Yoga interpreted as, like, we just need to smash those. We need to eradicate. We need to subdue, right? We need to eliminate, or, you know, in in the violent language of the Gita, we need to kill these motives. And I, I ask you honestly, who has had success with that? No one, no one. You and I entered monasteries to to do this work, to to we saw the problem of karma and said, Good, let's stop making it. Let's let's go to a place where we can eradicate individuality, which is the that, that seed of avidya. Of that wrong understanding. Let's get to the get to the core of it,

Nischala Joy Devi:

and what you just said really scares people. Yeah, I think that's that, that that idea with of the truth that you just told scares people because it makes them responsible for their own action. You can't just say, and I hear this also a lot in medicine, oh, it's genetic. There's nothing I can do about it. There's always something you can do about it.

Kamala Rose:

Yeah, always there. There really is. And I think one of those strengths of the Gita is it's not trying to take us out of the world. It says these base desires, these the will to want to contribute to the world and to be recognized that you're good at it, right, the desire to see your children and your family happy. You want to you to be a little bit happier, have a little bit more comfort around you these basic human things. You know, there we we're not going to make headway in eliminating it, right? We're not going to end that. In fact, the world is the world is created by these deep desires to contribute to a greater whole, to help other people and make improve their lives, right, to improve our own lives, to grow and expand intellectually in our inner lives, right? These are desires I don't think we should think about eliminating, but as you so often say, to refine that, we have to take it up some levels and transfer those base desires for just a personal well being into a larger sense of well being that includes everyone

Nischala Joy Devi:

I agree so much that the understanding has to be there. People really need to not just live it, but understand it. And I guess one of the things that came up for me while you were talking Kamala is that, for the viewers, you may or may not know, I think we mentioned it a few times, but Kamala and I are both part of this extraordinary organization called Yoga. Gives back that it does exactly what we're talking it gives yoga teachers who have gained so much benefit from yoga, it gives them the opportunity to give some of that energy back, and therefore changes their karma. It. It really lessens anything that we all inadvertently do that we don't realize, and helps us brighten and move forward. And I think the extraordinary thing about this is that these children that we are supporting and women that they have had according to a Western look and probably most Eastern, not very good karma in their life, they've been abused. They've been in abject poverty, poverty that most of us can't even imagine. And suddenly, from halfway across the world and around the world, money is coming to them to improve their lives. Well, this is, this to me, is, is, is a vision of karma that is so extraordinary, and they're now becoming doctors and nurses and it and things that they could have never dreamed of. So when you look at this, you can say they have really good karma, because they've been lifted out of this abuse, poverty, etc. But don't forget about the other side, the good karma that comes from doing something like this for someone you will never meet. You don't know who they are, but somehow the entire world has been uplifted, maybe minuscule amount, by your action, by the way that you did this, and that little girl or that little boy is now growing up to be a leader in their community and changes the whole world. That's what a little bit can do. So I just think this is such an extraordinary, empowering idea, which most people feel is disempowering. And to me, under. Understanding that we can do something. We may not be able to get rid of everything, but we can do something for ourselves and for the world that uplifts and sustains it also at that same time. So if any of you are interested, when yoga gives back we can, you can look it up in the internet and ygb, and you may want to join too. You want to want to join too. If you know how good it feels, you'll want to join

Kamala Rose:

Absolutely. We'll make sure that that's in our show notes. And so easy just to host a class. And there's just a lot of

Nischala Joy Devi:

maybe we should add that in with the information. This will help your karma,

Kamala Rose:

right? Because once we become exposed to the idea of karma, and we start to think about this, we naturally become interested in how we, not only on a personal level, can practice in a way that that feels ethical, which is the foundation of when we're talking about karma, What, when we're talking about punitive or meritorious karmas, where, once we learn about it, we're interested in how to turn a turn the wheel in a good way. How can we help be a part of the solution, and now part of this kind of corruption that we see in the world? I think this really gets to the metaphor of the Gita, and some of the ways that we as modern Western women or international women, all women who are taking the Gita into their hearts at this crucial time in history, you know, we should understand this as an existential battle of ethics, Right, that those who are really trying hard to do the right thing and be a part of the solutions that ensure ensure a the kind of life that makes available the conditions for self knowledge and all of these beautiful ideas that the Bhagavad Gita points to, we know for a fact are just simply not available to billions of women across the world because of the conditions of their birth right. And I think why? When in our initial dialogs on this that we, you know, we really look at the we look at the world in in all of its complexities, and see the important role of yoga practitioners who are waking up in the western world armed with the empowerment of the women's movement, right, in a sense of Self that says I should be able to see myself in these scriptures. I should be able to imagine myself as this warrior on a battlefield, right? My own personal images might not be involve, you know, gallons of blood and rivers of headless soldiers and everything, like some of the, you know, some of the Gita, let tends to go in that very manly man sort of direction. And I think this is where we can, you know, looking especially here at karma, it's a, it's a feminine force, right? It's, it's, it's nature. It's causality, right? It's cyclic, right? It, it is cyclic. It, you know, it arises within us questions about what's the right kind of effort to apply to what situations. And I think as Western women, we're really coming from a really different place, of course, than a soldier. And, you know, we're moved by the conditions of the world, and are looking to help in ways that are effective. Are really effective.

Nischala Joy Devi:

I think that's the whole point here, that we and I think sometimes people have a misconception. They think that spiritual practice is selfish, and maybe in the beginning, it is because we're really having to carve time out of a very busy day that we never had to before. I mean, as for me, I have to always figure an extra hour between my getting up and doing something, getting to the office, going out, etc, because of my practices. And that's built in. That doesn't change. And you.

Unknown:

Yeah, I think, I think maybe it helps to see the chain

Nischala Joy Devi:

of how this affects people. So for instance, if you're meditating and you're feeling a sense of calmness, the first person you meet, you will distribute that kindness to them that's almost like contagious, and then they may be say they're a waitress in a restaurant. So they then take that and they then distribute it to all their clients that day, and then the clients go home and they're in a good mood because they had a nice conversation with the waitress or wait person, and they go out and they so this, how I see it is karma expands exponentially every time it's passed to that next person. And what you were just talking about, kama is also a way to pass it, but it's not a good way to pass it. It's the way of the disgruntled. I don't know if you ever it's always funny to me. I love to read the little Yelp things, what if I'm going to a hotel or wherever, and the things that people say have nothing to do really with the hotel. If they really looked in themselves, they saw, they see, it was them that was having the problem, not that the hotel was giving the problem. And I think if we could all start to see that in ourselves, what did I do to cause that without putting guilt on ourselves, we don't need guilt. We have enough. But just from a Yana yoga standpoint, just observing how could this have been made different? She said this, I said that, is there any way it could have been made differently, and that also impacts the karma, so it's not something that we just hold individually. I always think of it like trees in a forest, they look separate, but if you go down a little bit, all their roots are intertwined, and that's what keeps them strong, that's what keeps them from blowing over is that interconnectedness and by separating ourselves, because we feel that that's the best way to do it, we're actually hurting our karma. So knowing when you can do something and when you can't do something, I think that's that's the wisdom that comes from years of meditation and understanding, and that people change. That's the other thing. People change. They may be not so good. Now, we talked about this, about teenage maybe you weren't so sweet, then I know I certainly wasn't. But things change. People change. I think what changed me the most was starting to work with very sick people. Something happens to you when you do that and you start to be grateful that you can get out of bed by yourself, etc. And I think that goes on. So it's all karma. It's all karma.

Kamala Rose:

And what a powerful teacher. Yeah, and your life as a powerful teacher, and you really bring up the, the this core in, in the theory, right? The theory of this beautiful dialog on reality and the Gita, that property nature, what karma is built out of, really exists for the liberation of the individual soul, right on a very deep level, once we discontinue being confused about the permanence of these situations, right? We're constantly fooled that, you know, I am my reaction to this situation, and we're so sure it will last forever, whatever it is, good, bad or ugly, once we're able to understand, okay, it's just temporary and I'm having a reaction to it, good, bad or ugly, we can take a step inside and have a little space to Evaluate that I I see myself as as part of this drama when really This drama is far beyond me, right? Is connected with all of the other players in this and when we're able to have that point of view, then nature and karma become something else. We can see it differently once. We can see it as it really is Be it now becomes that agent of our liberation and our great friend in awakening, and we are able to see our life situations as places to learn, rather than you know, places to be perfect and in control. And, you know, I think this is the deep, deep lesson of the Gita, is that you're just not in control of karma. You You have to own it, and you are in it, and you see yourself. You see your karma as you very personally, subjectively. But we have to learn that you are not in control of this. And you know you mentioned that that transformative experience of end of life care and how much that changed your worldview, how you saw yourself and your action in the world. And, you know, I've had, I've had some of that myself, caring for for people on the edge of life and but I think one of my most transformative experiences, and how I see this, is in working with my garden and becoming a permaculture gardener. And I couldn't help but think, when you brought up the example of the trees and that, you know, trees are like a family, yeah, right tree, trees literally are a family. They're they're thought of in neighborhoods, or they're thought of in guilds in permaculture. And, you know, one of the ways I've really contextualized these chapters in the Bhagavad Gita in this this last year, and I feel like my understanding of the Gita is always applied in my garden, or in the garden that I tend, the garden that I care for. You know, the first part in looking at your work in a garden is just to grab a chair and sit down there and observe. And for me, this is like chapter two of the Bhagavad Gita. We're getting into an in depth study, or let's say, an introductory in depth study of how the mechanics of the mind work. You know how we exist in karma, but we also have individual choice, right, these big issues that the Gita wrestles with, right, when, when you, when you stake your chair in the garden. You commit yourself to watching the sun pattern, seeing where the light is coming through, becoming familiar with the insect life, right? You You literally take a bird's eye view, and you come up to look at the sources of water close by, and you look beyond your fences and to the to the larger environment, to the neighborhood of trees that the trees that you're planting are going to live with. And it's only on that understanding now that we begin to take skillful action and create a permaculture, or a permanent agriculture situation where everybody's helping each other, right? So that the ideas that we plant in companions and we create guilds of cooperative vines and trees and shrubs and herbs and fruits and vegetables that will attract the birds and to stay longer, to attract the bees, to stay longer, and we we open our minds to the to the whole of the ecosystem, to as great as we can think, as much of a bird's eye view As we can conceive and take action based on that, yeah. And for me, this is a great metaphor for karma yoga as a very cyclic, intuitive way of being in the world that is not just considering the personal point of view, although it's not not considering the personal point of view, but has the largesse, or has the Magnanimous, the magnanimous mind and heart to consider the non human players, Right? The other human players, the animal and vegetable players in every environment, and this helps us to look beyond ourselves and see it. My efforts are important, but they're not all that's going on. And I think this is essential in karma yoga.

Nischala Joy Devi:

I think that scares people to think they're not as essential. And. And, yeah, it's a beautiful, beautiful metaphor. And I think about my garden when you say that, and how things pop up and you don't even know that they were there. They just visited, and there they are. And people call them volunteers or weeds, I just call them flowers, and they just, they're just there. And so what you're describing by sitting there and observing is really a part of yoga that we don't most people don't embrace, or don't realize they're embracing, and that's Yana yoga, because I think in Yani, yoga is probably the easiest place to recognize our attachments and all this that we're talking about, even when you talk to someone and have a disagreement, the disagreement is because you think your way is right, and as long as we hold on to that, our karma does not diminish. Our karma expands. And when I was talking about getting into medicine, it wasn't really end of life that I was involved with yet. Of course, there's always end of life involved, but these people came in with with very severe life threatening diseases. And what I saw, the main thing I keep seeing across all medicine, is the fear, and I spent long time getting into the fear. What? What is this fear? Is it a fear of pain? Yeah, there's definitely a fear of pain, and there's mostly this fear of lack of survival. Well, I live, and we all know, unlike the garden metaphor, where we know that the flowers are going to go at the end of the season, we know that the corn will be picked and the corn stalks will be mowed down. We know the vineyards will change. We don't really, really believe that as an individual person, although we see dying all around us, that we are actually going to die. But we hold this tremendous fear, and this fear impacts our karma constantly, whether we know it or not, we are always making decisions based on that, and sometimes we're trying to prove that we don't have the fear of death. So we drive cars fast. We drive jump out of perfectly good airplanes. We do all kinds of things to prove to ourselves that, no, I'm invulnerable. I'm going to live forever. It's the little things that we have to look at for karma. It's the little everyday things. Did you see your neighbor's trash can in the street, and did you go and pick it up and bring it back? Little things like that is what changes our life and the world, and it helps us not focus on this fear of death, but instead, and people said to me, Well, I learned all this, and then I die. What's the point? Well, that's where the continuum comes in, the understanding of going forward, like the garden. My favorite kind of plant is the perennials, right? I don't have to do anything next year. They just surprise me and come up again. That's what I like. That's my karma, to be able to sit there and and say, Oh, I'm ready for those roses, I'm ready for those petunias, I'm ready for that and to see them re reincarnate each year. It's like us. We're like bulbs. We're not seeds. We're bulbs, and we keep going. So all this has to be in Maya, understanding understood. So it takes, or at least lessens this fear, the fear of the unknown, the fear of death, the fear of whatever else it is, so we can move forward and serve without that fear. You know, I brings up to mind the story of St Francis and st Claire. And he was very much afraid of lepers and didn't want to go near them, whereas st Claire was the opposite. She just went and brought bread every day and fed the lepers. And he said, How can you do that? Aren't you afraid that you're going to catch it? It didn't even occur to her because of the love in her heart and because of her purity and her. Continual service. He then decided to try that too, and when he did it, it changed him also. So this fear that's keeping us back is also creating more karma.

Kamala Rose:

Well, that's a great example to see that these very, very deep, we'd call that a vasana, a deep, deep pattern, fear of death, same, similar to the that desire to succeed, the desire to be liked, right? These are deep. These are deep patterns. They're called vasanas, and we all have them, right? There's no one who is not afraid of death, and there's no one who does not hope in their core of themselves to, you know, to make, to create and to better themselves and those that they love, right? Even even the cow of us, right? We can have common humanity with everyone, right? The Good, the Bad, right? These are, these are common motivations to all people. And I think there's a real strength and just knowing that as spiritual as I am, as much as I have the answers, and I love that the sutra that speaks to that fear of death, right, the inherent even in the wise, yes, inherent even in the wise, right, that that deep crate craving or hoarding that we have of the body and of all the things that go along with the body, the mind, the emotions, The feelings, right, the Buddhist speak in terms of cherishing our our opinions and our identities to such a great degree that, you know, it's it's very difficult to overcome that sense of individuality, but for understand that that's Really what these teachings are about, and the Gita really starts on the battlefield and brings to the forefront the fear of death as a primary subject that is being addressed in this dialog. And I think in our in our experience as meditators and our work as teachers. I think we both try to help people understand that we can, we can see, we can understand, we can acknowledge and we can accept these parts of ourselves. We're not going to kill it or stifle it or drown it. But we can, we can know that there's a part of me that you know that that has fear in this area, and if you know, if you've been through anything on a health level that has scared you deeply, I have a couple times, and you really, you really confront a lot, and you understand how it motivates your actions, how the karmas that you take from that point are coming out of that. And I think it's a good place to be, to be in a place of acceptance of that, not trying to eliminate it, but maybe just holding space for the existence of these deep desires and fears that exist in all human beings. And I love the attitude that of the Dalai Lama who says, Every morning, I practice, I meditate, and then I start to think of prepare myself for my death and these are words I've taken very personally, and I will admit to no mastery of nothing but, but I when I say there has to be an acceptance of one's humanity, I think this is, this is part of it, or it or it has been for me to to understand that the ideals of immortality, maybe, or of heaven, and these things that we receive in our religious messages that are aimed to quell this fear, right? It's not that you're going to die. You're going to go to a beautiful place where all your dogs will greet you, yeah, yeah, right, all your friends and your parents, the angels, and the angels will sing,

Nischala Joy Devi:

what is the Muslim? So many Vestal virgins and yeah, they're promising all these things.

Kamala Rose:

I just want my dogs to be there so, but we can understand why, why this is such a big hold in religion, the afterlife and what happens, like a way of understanding this, what comes next. And, you know, whatever we make of these, I believe it to be very individual, right? We need different things at different times. Sometimes, right? And sometimes the idea of the pearly gates and dharma dogs is really lovely, right? And other times we need to just be a little more honest with ourselves about, you know, what, what? What am I? What am I doing today based out of fear? And is that healthy? Is it making the results that I'm looking for, or is this interfering with my present moment and the decisions that I'm making right now,

Nischala Joy Devi:

when the decisions are made, even after they're made, and maybe they weren't the right ones for that moment. Think about it, because even the going back and retracing and admitting that it wasn't the right thing at this time can lessen karma. So I think that it's more what we're looking for. We're looking at here is the idea that this karma that has been created from what we may not even know is now coming to fruition. How do we deal with that? And there's numerous ways to deal with it. There's not just one way to deal with it. There's many different ways to deal with it, and in that dealing with it, we can either create more, transform it into something positive, or many other ways to do things or that it can manifest. But I think the main thing we have to look at is our reaction. And it's very simple, how do you feel afterwards? How does it make you feel? And then, if you meditate, when you first sit down to meditate, what thoughts come up? What are the first thoughts that come up. And also, what are the first thoughts that come up as you're falling asleep and in the morning, that's what you really need to work on. That's where our point is. No one has to tell you it's there right in your mind to see and acknowledge and recognize. So spend the next couple days, next couple of weeks, just looking, observe your mind. Try not to judge it, just observe it. And how are you creating more karma or transforming the karma you already have?

Kamala Rose:

It's powerful. Morning meditation, evening meditation, the best times to sit. So I hope all of our listeners will join us first thing in the morning with your mantras and your meditations and your self inquiry. This is really what I think the Gita is trying to teach us, is give us the tools, the means, the worldview, to understand why we are the way we are and be a force for good in the world. So thank you so much for joining us today for a woman's Gita podcast. We'll look forward to being with you next time.

Nischala Joy Devi:

Namaste. Thank you so much. You.