Karma Yoga
Writer: Felix Quist Møller
12.01.23
“Good actions are like air bubbles through which our hearths can breathe”
Karma Yoga
Dear reader. Welcome to Healing Arts!
During the next months I will take you on a deep dive into the yogic philosophy as it relates to my own life and hopefully you will gain some insights in what yoga is all about.
Last week we talked a bit about what Yoga is and what it means. In this week’s article we will move forward and zoom in on one of the different approaches one can take on a yogic journey.
There are four different approaches or paths one can take as a yogi.
The first one is Karma Yoga. This path is a great way to realize your own divine potential.
When you are on a yogic path you're actually on a quest. A quest to melt into your natural mode of being and realize your True Self, the Atman. The Atman is not the ultimate state of consciousness, but it’s the part of your being where you still experience an I-sense, yet it is not confined by the restraints of the physical body – it can travel out of the body, a lot like the Christian understanding of the Soul. If you have read my last blogs you would understand that that is what happened when I had a near death experience and my soul was sucked out of my body. Yet, when I use the word soul it should more be understood as the famous psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung described it; a part of the consciousness but like right before it reaches the Universal Consciousness. A psychological inquiry of belonging to something divine. There is like an interconnected crossover between the raw nature of Ego (which means “I” in Latin) and the pure Universal Consciousness, and yoga is about practicing how to navigate in this crossover and perhaps even being totally absorbed into the Universal Consciousness.
Instead of practicing to become an astronaut and travel through space, yogis are psychonauts who journey within.
One of the ways is by focusing on how you contribute to the surrounding nature. This is done very actively through working and helping others. It is determined by directing the bergy outwards towards the world and by giving instead of taking. In many ways I enjoy this way of practicing yoga. I have found that it works as a really good remedy against self-pity, restlessness, irritability and dissatisfaction.
Whenever I find myself in a situation where I experience one of these stages of being I try to remind myself to kind of mentally detach myself from the situation and tap into this Universal Consciousness and ask for guidance on how to give something to my surroundings in that moment. It could for instance be I am at work, and I find myself impatient and just want the clock to ring so I can go home and watch Netflix. When I am in that stage it feels like time slows down and the shift feels like forever. Then I do my trick and start focusing on what I can give to my workplace instead of what I can get out of it. Then usually some intuitive thought pops up and I immediately engage in some service to my surroundings and just like that my self-centeredness is removed and I forget to feel sorry for myself.
My own experience about this law of karma is that whatever I feel like I don’t have enough of, be that money or love or entertainment, no matter how low I feel on the scale, there is usually someone out there who has less. I try to tell myself: I know you feel like you have literally no energy at all, but could it be possible that there might be someone out there who has just a tiny bit less? Even though you have close to zero sum. And usually that answer is yes. And being a white European male in the beginning of my thirties, there ought to be people out there less privileged than me the way that the world is put together right now. So, I turn myself towards that person, it could be right next to me or maybe just a phone call away, and I see how I might help that person.
Maybe they need money or a hug or just an ear that listens to them reaching out about something. At this point it seems like this universal law works so that when I give some of my extra energy to that person, I become a medium of that energy running through, like golden light running through me and some of that energy rubs off on me. A good practice can be trying to do a good deed for somebody without anybody finding out. Personally, coming from Copenhagen where we have a lot of bicycles, I like to find bikes that are tilted and lift them back up again. Or if somebody forgot to turn off their lights on their bikes, I turn them off again, so they don’t run out of battery.
There is no limit to how much good karma you can spend your life on doing, that’s why there are monasteries and temples where nuns and monks dedicate their entire time to just send out prayers and good vibes into the Universe, because the good vibes rub off on them too. If you’re not convinced, try and go out and do this yourself and see what happens. Call a friend and ask them how they feel and try to avoid talking about yourself, just listen. Or you can always just try and pray for someone.
That pretty much covers a short description of karma yoga. Next week we will take a look at the path of devotion which is called Bhakti Yoga. Stay tuned to learn more, and please feel free to write us an e-mail or DM us on social media if you have any questions. Or join our tribe by signing up for our newsletters if you haven't done so already.
Namasté,
Felix
