Karma Yoga

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Karma Yoga,"KARMA YOGA"//////////////If you were to follow the instructions of Krishna in Bhagavad Gita, you would "do whatever you do, but consecrate the fruit of your actions to me". Every act you perform, all day every day, would be done as an offering to Krishna. If we recall that Krishna is synonymous with Love, with Highest Consciousness, with Eternal Witness, with Spirit . . . and that He is actually our innermost Self, then we can understand that by consecrating an act, we are indeed offering our every action into the service of higher consciousness. Our every act becomes an act of waking up. Using the stuff that makes up your daily life as a vehicle for comming to Union is called karma yoga. It is a most available yoga for all, and at the same time a most difficult one. It is difficult because it starts with an action which you are initially performing for an end of maintaining your individual ego, and it overrides or converts that motivation into one of service to the higher self which transcends ego. In order to perform karma yoga, there is a simple general principle to keep in mind: bring a third component into every action. If, for example, you are digging a ditch, there is you who is digging the ditch, and the ditch which is being dug. Now add a third focus: say, a disinterested person who is seeing you dig the ditch. Now run the entire action through his head while you are digging. It's as simple as that. Through this method you would merely see a ditch being dug. The difficulty with adding just any third party is that you might attribute to that other person certain motives or values. In order to avoid that, it is useful to pick the third focal point with an eye towards your goal of enlightenment. That is, pick someone who is already enlighted, such as Krishna or Ram or a Buddha or Christ. They see it all. They are beyond it all. They understand how it all is. As they watch you digging the ditch, they see the act in all its cosmic significance . . . it's the first and last digging of a ditch. They understand why you are doing it and all the thought in your head, all your history, and they even understand the future-how it is when the ditch is all dug. And from this vantage point they have total compassion, total appreciation for all that is involved. To run the act of you digging a ditch through one of their heads allows you to get free of the ego-centric predicament, "I am digging a ditch". Baba Ram Dass