The Wisdom of the Inner Freedom

by Frank M Wanderer

We, who strive to achieve spiritual development, often have the feeling that certain people or situations impede that development. There is a number of things that may hamper us in our progress along our spiritual way.

Sometime people find bad karma as the gravest obstacle in their spiritual progress. We were born in the wrong place, under the wrong circumstances; we should deal with those circumstances first, and start our spiritual development only afterwards. Is that really so?

If we want to answer that question, we must examine one of the most effective defensive mechanisms of our Mind, that is, finding a scapegoat. It means that whenever we encounter difficulties in our life, we tend to look for the reason of the problem outside ourselves. We blame the responsibility on external factors or persons which or who may cause our difficulties.

When we believe that our bad karma prevents us from making progress and spiritual development, we are relieved, since we cannot help it, it is not our fault, things just work out that way. We have all the good will but, unfortunately, adverse circumstances interfered and curbed us in implementing our great intentions. We therefore wait for a more favorable occasion, and tend to put ourselves in the position of the victim.

This attitude appears to be logical, but it is not. May whatever happen to us in life, may we face whatever difficulty, that, in most cases, comes about as a consequence of our previous actions and choices. No matter what is happening to us in the present moment, that is the outcome of our previous, unconscious actions, we sowed the seed from which our present difficulties sprang up. We are not the victims of circumstances; on the contrary. We create and operate the bad karma we complain about and on which we wish to blame responsibility for our bad luck.

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