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KARMA - THE MECHANISM
APPLICATION
comprehensive understanding of stage four automatically dissolves all our emotional attachment to the themes (karmas) of stage one to three, which then dissipate without manifesting much of an effect.
It is possible to reach this stable phase within one year. It only depends on the sincerity of our interest and the amount of energy we invest in this venture.
Yet this stable phase of stage four has a highly static character. We now can easily get trapped in a complacency that prevents our ascent to higher levels as intensely as the dense emotional cocoon that trapped us on stage one.3 We now know what feelings and activities we need to change, but decline to transfer this insight into action. Yet if we do not raise the additional energy required for further progress, our stay in the fourth stage will last eternally.
The rise to the fifth stage (desavirata) only becomes possible when a strong and dynamic desire for further development exists that is also transformed into action. ACTIVITY is the main key that will tilt our life towards the higher stages. Only when we concentrate considerable energy on transferring our insights into decisions and concrete action do we become able to break the karmic stagnation of level four.
3 This often manifests as the conviction that we are progressing well on
our path to liberation, - as a smug, self-satisfied contentment with the stability with which we seem to grow, - as a tendency to observe rather than to actively shape our life, - as a preference for techniques or ritual and symbolic action instead of facing the (possibly uncomfortable) challenges necessary for gaining real understanding, - as an adherence to well-know, established paths instead of actively and intelligently confronting inner and outer conflicts, - and as a reluctance to define higher goals for us.
Yet in reality this is stagnancy. What is lacking are the sweeping breakthroughs, the dynamic unfoldment of higher stages, the pronounced transition into far superior levels of our being. Though we might well gain insights in this static phase, we basically are unwilling to raise the energy necessary for any breakthrough to higher stages.
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