How Do You Redeem Your Soul?

From Care2: “How Do You Redeem Your Soul?”

posted by Deepak Chopra Oct 21, 2009

“Finding the life answer to how you redeem your soul is a challenge. A redeemed soul sees itself as new and unblemished. To reach this state of innocence would be impossible according to the law of karma, for the cycle of sowing and reaping never ends. (Unlike sin, karma grips us even in the case of accidents and inadvertent mistakes – regardless of circumstances, an action is an action and has consequences.)

The problem is further complicated by the fact that each person performs millions of actions in a lifetime, and these overlap on all levels. Emotions and intentions are both tied in. The parsing of good from bad becomes extremely complicated, and the doctrine of karma makes the calculation harder rather than easier, because the mind can always find some tiny detail that was overlooked previously.

A redemptive God is the only being in the cosmos exempt from karma (or sin). Or to be more accurate, God transcends karma because he alone isn’t in the cosmos.

Clearly no one can repeal the law of cause and effect. In the East, using the terminology of karma, they say that evil acts pursue a soul across time and space until the debt is paid. Even death cannot abolish a karmic debt; this only happens by becoming a victim of the same evil you committed or by working off bad imprints through good ones.

At the level of second attention, however, this cycle is irrelevant. One doesn’t need to repeal the law of karma at all. Despite all the activity on the surface of life, a speck of awareness inside is not touched. The instant they wake up in the morning, a saint and a sinner are in the same place. They both feel themselves to be alive and aware.

This place stands outside reward and punishment. It knows no duality. When you have accomplished the task of finding this place, holding on to it, and living there, duality is gone. You are free from all bondage of good or bad actions.

Adapted from How To Know God, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2000).”

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