Becoming a Conscious Co-creator of Reality

Form is emptiness and emptiness is not other than form.

-    The Heart Sutra

To create reality: Focus beyond the outcome - as if it already happened.
- Gregg Braden

You and I live in a world of outcomes.  We tend to forget that they are the outcomes of our thoughts and emotions.  Our world is not given or inflicted upon us from outside but created within us by our conscious and (mostly) unconscious choices.  The idea of creating our reality is recently popular.  However we have been unconsciously manifesting our reality all along.  Our level of consciousness determines our experience of reality. 

According to yoga psychology we do not come into this world as “blank slates.”  Instead we are already “seeded” with the karma accumulated in past lifetimes.  As Patanjali states in the Yoga Sutras, “As long as the root of karma exists there will be various fruits: the birth of different species of life, their lifespan and experiences.”  In other words, our life experience is the outcome of our previous thoughts and actions (and I will add on to Patanjali here in light of our modern understanding of the cosmos) going back to the Big Bang 14 or so billion years ago. 

What we experience in this life – what we enjoy and what we endure – is indeed given to us – by ourselves.  According to Chagdud Rimpoche our life experience is like reading a book which we wrote but then put away and forgot.  Although we may struggle with the way seemingly “innocent” beings suffer, the real message is about taking personal responsibility.  In order to end suffering we need to look seriously into how we continue to create it.  Often the best way we can help others is to encourage them to take responsibility for themselves.  As Paul Ferrini writes, “It doesn't work when you take responsibility for how others feel or make others responsible for how you feel. It doesn't work when you ask others to fix things for you or when you try to fix things for others. These old patterns do not empower you, nor do they empower others.”  Does that mean you shouldn’t try to say someone who is drowning?  Of course not.

As we awaken, as we become more conscious, we can take control of our karma.  We can’t really go back and change the past and we sometimes have to endure the present circumstances of our lives, but the future is up for grabs.  Through awareness and through a commitment to positive thoughts, feelings and actions we can overcome negative karmic seeds before they ripen in our experience.  Through commitment to the spiritual path and the goal of awakening we can overcome karma altogether.

Desire is not necessarily a bad thing.  It depends again on the level of consciousness from which it originates.  The desire for personal wealth and pleasure is natural but if we seek to fulfill it at the expense of others we perpetuate our own ignorance and suffering.  If we suppress our desires and let others take advantage of us that doesn’t work well either.  A higher level of consciousness tells us that we need to balance our needs and desires with that of others, our communities, our world, our planet . . . We are all in this together as one being. 

A powerful Sanskrit mantra to help us develop this level of consciousness is:

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

(May all beings everywhere be happy and free from suffering.)

lokah: location, realm, all universes existing now
samastah: all beings sharing that same location
sukhino: centered in happiness and joy, free from suffering
bhav: the divine mood or state of unified existence
antu: may it be so, it must be so (antu used as an ending here transforms this mantra into a powerful sankalpa, or intention.)

We can use this mantra as a tool to develop a higher consciousness and to consequently create a better reality for ourselves and others.  Recite it daily as you meditate while entering into a state of oneness and feeling waves of peace flowing throughout all existence.  Try it and see what happens.