How we live within designates the fate and quality of our Karma. It lies within the things that we choose not see, that we turn a blind eye to in order to have what we want. We do not see life as it truly is. We prefer to limit our “vision” to our minds’ eye that is lost to illusion and delusion, believing that what we think we see, though tainted by emotional desire and bias, is actual reality. It is NOT!

Years ago, we shifted out loyalties to our emotions and by clinging to our DNA we allowed it to become a prison…formulating a psychology that does not allow for broader insight into ourselves or life in general. Everything was reduced to mere comfort and survival. This type of thinking causes us to become insidiously greedy and willful, which ultimately makes our Karma difficult rather than beautiful.

The “answers” we seek can never be found through the current psychology we have become subservient to. The answer is found within. When we refuse to allow ourselves to move inward, we miss the reveal of what truly confounds their lives.

Sadly, most of us prefer to keep our heads firmly planted in the sand, stubbornly sticking to the belief that all difficulties in life are from outer circumstances, not from within. Displacing all responsibility upon others and the outer world in this way allows us to rationalize the mischief we create to remain in the delusion of duality. This is a life killer.

All of our problems are due to the contusions caused by hitting our heads against the invisible wall of our own Karma. We make our lives the way they are – we have no one to blame but ourselves. The more we resist facing the illusion of our greatest fears, the more we bang our metaphoric heads against the glass ceiling of Karma in the belief that it is all so “unfair.” We use this belief to justify our feeble attempts to gratify away the pain through alcohol, drugs, sex or other types of folly. It is all so childish and incongruent to our Karma.

Perhaps a story from the Zen Master, Fu Tze, will help:

“Sometimes when I act, I think I am following the Way of Heaven, but I then realize I have followed the Way of the World in that action. At other times, I think I only follow the Way of the World, but find that I have followed the Way of Heaven,” said I Chu. “How does this happen?”

Fu Tze took a stick and in the dust drew a picture of a flight of stairs.

“Were you to set foot upon these stairs from this end that is nearest to us, would you then climb up or down?” he asked.

“That is quite clear,” answered I Chu. “I would walk up the stairs, for I look at them from a position to the right and above them.”

“Not so,” disagreed Shen Chiao, who was present. “It is plain to see that we look at the stairs from beneath, so that in order to enter them from this end it would be necessary to step first upon the top step.”

“You two are equally right and equally wrong,” said Fu Tze, “because you do not see real stairs but only a picture of stairs.”

It is that simple – yet it appears difficult, nigh impossible, to the emotionally corrupt human psyche.

Many years ago while living in an ashram as a disciple, devotee and authentic Sannyasin, I learned how to meditate to come to the space where Love could reach me in order to awaken the Heart of Being. You can make your living space an Ashram and live the lifestyle of a Sannyasin by making meditation and Love the essence of your home.

You do not need to go to India to find it…it lives within you. Your ashram is not a place in this world, it is within you as a state of Being. Your home should be a place where meditation and kindness rule.

Below are some suggestions for making your home your ashram. If you can do any of this, you will realize an energy that fills you with compassion and brings you to the depth of your own existence. A new world will open for you in which you can “hear” the unspoken Truth of Love and find your way…to the Way.