I used to think karma played out over a large time span, maybe over several lives.  And during my past-life regression in 2014, I certainly got to see how my bad behavior in one past life, hitting someone over the head with a stone (admittedly after they killed my baby), eerily played out in this life. Someone hit me on the head 12 years ago and I wound up in the ER with ear and head lacerations. Was it karmic comeuppance?  I don’t know. But it felt like a wake up call.   When the blow to my head happened in this life, it heralded the start of my spiritual and emotional searching to find a new way to be in this world.

But there is something that is even more exciting to me than these large karmic patterns.  It is this. Each one of our actions (no matter how small) creates a wave that comes right back at us. Open hearted kindness creates a wave of love and generosity that flows deliciously over us and warms the soul. And the reverse is true.  Any unkindness, meanness or even negligence comes right back at us too.

The first time this idea of everyday karmic energy hit home was after I had an incredibly bruising run in with a local restaurant manager.  I had popped in to take out a double order of my favorite dish. The details don’t really matter. But I was there for about 40 minutes and it felt like a scene from Fawlty Towers (the British hotel sitcom where the management are inexplicably rude). I left in a daze and as I walked home I looked for words to describe the manager’s behavior and what came to mind was; ‘arrogant, unlistening, rude’. And then the penny dropped.  I had modeled exactly these words a couple of hours earlier dealing with a call center agent somewhere in Asia.  Even before the woman spoke, I was certain she couldn’t be of any use repairing the problem with my phone.  And I wouldn’t listen when she said she could help. I cut her off and rudely and arrogantly insisted that she hand me immediately to a supervisor – and one in America! Yes, I got back what I gave – arrogant, unlistening, rude.

Now whenever I encounter rudeness or meanness I do a quick inventory of how I’ve behaved recently and there appears to be a perfect correlation. What I think we see around us is a reflection of our own energy – good and bad. I’ve even noticed that if someone isn’t responding to a call or text for work, if I do a quick inventory of my own communications, I soon realize that I’ve not responded to someone else.  And the moment I rectify emailing X,  Y emails back.

It is a wonderful thing to see that there is a flow to the universe, that we are powerful creators and that we have a choice about how we live. I can make life easy, or I can send out lots of bouncy energy waves that just slam right back at me. I am a novice at doing all this (it is a recent revelation)  but more and more I am choosing the shape of the energy I project out into the world and in so doing the shape of the energy I live in. And it feels great – great to be as conscious a creator as I can be.