Article
A MAD MYSTIC’S TAKE ON KARMIC CONSEQUENCES IN REAL TIME
Written by Joan Pancoe
To activate all LINKS: https://joanpancoe.com/2026/09/02/a-mad-mystics-take-on-karmic-consequences-in-real-time-whether-youve-been-naughty-nice-or-somewhere-in-between-there-truly-is-no-escape/
Listen along on YOUTUBE
SATURN/MARS CONJUNCT—Joan Pancoe
Channeled from the Lords of Karma:):
“Every breath you take and every move you make
Every bond you break, every step you take
I'll be watching you"
Dear ONE,
HAPPY FALL! I hope you’ve been remembering to act as lighthouses in your personal realities during this especially extreme time of witnessing the Kali Yuga (epitomized by Trumpism) winding down with acceleration, as it’s always darkest before the dawn of any New Age. Ain’t that the truth!
Here’s another good news reminder:
“From a soul-level perspective, we don’t have to waste any more time or energy worrying about Trump getting his karmauppance, just as all big-league abusers of power throughout history, from Caligula, Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun all the way through to 20th century ego-monsters like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot have all gotten theirs.
The Dalai Lama says it best:
“From the Buddhist point of view, the Chinese officer who is committing the cruel act against the young boy is initiating a new cycle of negative karma. In the case of the child, there is a closure of a particular karma that the child is experiencing. The perpetrator of the crime is in fact an object of more compassion and mercy than the child.”
From my experience with facilitating thousands of past-life regressions, what has been confirmed repeatedly is that in the lives where there was the most abuse of power, the most karmic poo-poo was incurred. And that some of the greatest karmic gains came from incarnations with the most suffering.
The wheels of karma grind exceedingly slow but exceedingly fine, and it all evens out in the end. Everyone, sooner or later, especially evil clowns, gets theirs, rest assured. So, that’s just one less thing to ever be concerned about! (Unless you’ve been veery naughty yourself:))”
Here we go:
I define karma as the immutable Earth School principle of cause and effect. Meaning that everything in 3D—once it is set in motion—is carried forward in real time until it is fully resolved.
Linear space and time are integral training wheels of Earth School, as is gravity. They’re here for our benefit as we learn how to be cocreators in all dimensions simultaneously and in real time, clearly defined by Einstein:
“For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
The earth plane is one of many dimensions for soul evolution. Here, each lifetime is ideally a different class, unless we’re having a do-over. And, as Ram Dass says:“You’ve got to take the curriculum.”
In-between incarnations, any unresolved karmic baggage weighs our souls down and keeps us from flying high in other dimensions as light bodies. In other words, we’re bound by the wheel of karma which pulls us back down into countless incarnations to learn the lessons which can only be experienced and brought into balance through lives in 3D.
One of my favorite meditations is to imagine:
“I’m sitting on the highest ledge in the Himalayas witnessing the karmic wheels of all souls spinning round and round in an infinite amusement park called Leela, Cosmic Play . . . and smile.”
Excerpted from: If This Were Your Last Incarnation, What Would You Do?
Imagine the earth plane as pristine and untouched before souls began incarnating here. Through time, each action of every soul has caused an equal reaction which needs to be brought into balance, so we ultimately leave the earth as unspoiled as we originally found it.
If we multiply this by an infinite number of souls incarnating, one catches a glimpse of the universal karmic law of cause and effect in action. With this concept in mind, cultivating a very long-range perspective on the whole Earth Game allows us to relax and enjoy the show to a much greater extent. For more of this philosophy: LEELA
Here’s an eye-opening Buddhist metaphor:
‘If there were a huge, deep ocean as big as this entire world with a golden yoke floating on its surface, and, at the bottom, there were a crippled, blind turtle who surfaced only once in a hundred years, how often would that turtle raise its head through the yoke? Such an event would be extremely rare, but not as rare as gaining a birth of leisure and fortune.”
For more on this theme:
Precious human life in Buddhism: ten fortunes and eight freedoms
TARA, A female Buddha or advanced bodhisattva known as the "Mother of Liberation." Green Tara: Symbolizes active, swift compassion and protection from fear and obstacles.
For convenience of labeling, there are three levels of karma: personal, ancestral and racial.
In terms of racial karma, we’re witnessing in real time the ongoing causes and effects of harms done by humanity to the planet and to each other on a mass scale. Consequently, the entire human race is reaping this whirlwind. And not only that: Each of us volunteered to be here at this exact time in history . . . we just forgot.
In terms of ancestral or family karma, we always sign up for our parents, environment factors and body karma in our soul contracts before entry. From this, we choose an allotted portion of pre-loaded causative potentials such as genetic predispositions and generational trauma.
But how much weight we give to genetics or family trauma—whether from this life or by karmic susceptibility—is almost entirely up to us. For, to the degree that we’re awake, we get to decide how much influence to give to this level of karma—whether it be a larger or infinitesimally smaller percentage, in terms of affecting our fate or destiny in the probabilities.
Lastly, in terms of personal karma, we each have a certain amount of allotted karma that we’ve signed up for in our soul contracts before entry. Our job is to allow it to unfold and unwind naturally over time.
However, if we engage with whatever is arising in the curriculum of our experience—with attachment, aversion, self-pity, anxiety, resistance, judgment, annoyance or any other forms of anger or fear—then we’re winding our prearranged karma deeper, and the chains keep getting heavier the more reactive we become.
This brings us to the three stages of karmic bondage, which some of us have going on simultaneously in any given lifetime:
1. Iron chains: Which allow us to experience the balancing karma from past misuse of our energies towards others.
2. Silver chains: Which allow us to experience the balancing karma from past misuse of our energies towards ourselves.
3. Golden chains, which allow us to experience reaping the fruits of our good deeds, but with attachment─no matter how subtle. This also keeps us on the wheel, because we still have to come back into incarnations to receive the benefits of our good karma, as we claimed it by allowing it to feed the ego.
Iron chains bind us to unresolved karma in which we’ve consciously harmed others. This creates the most egregious and heavy bondage as it is considered a sin of commission.
For example: If one has been a Trump supporter out of greed and/or racism, without a care for those that are harmed, the ties that bind are the most oppressive. However, if one is merely ignorant (aka unconscious or asleep), then there is some amelioration of the effects that will come.
Next: Silver chains bind us to unresolved karma in which we’ve had great potential gifts or talents—well-earned as well as gifts from the Divine—and harmed ourselves by being afraid to develop or use them. This is considered a sin of omission.
It means that in future incarnations our access to these gifts or talents may require much more time and effort, so that we’ll learn to appreciate them more when they finally do arise.
Also, having limiting beliefs about our own worthiness for abundance on all levels creates scarcity and loss down the line.
These effects are so, even if our fears or limiting beliefs arose based on legitimate circumstances at the time. Now there’s the kicker! This is where the inner work is: To unwind karmic ruts of beliefs, even though they may feel like the truth.
For example, if one had great psychic gifts at a time in history where it wasn’t safe to go public with any healings or predictions as one could easily get whacked by the political or religious powers that be. At that time, it was justifiably safer to hide these gifts. But now, not so much.
Lastly, golden chains bind us to unresolved karma in which we’ve been very very good but allowed our benevolent selfless actions to feed the ego no matter how subtly. These abide until we can figuratively walk on sand without leaving any footprints.
For example, if you could imagine Mother Teresa metaphorically adorning herself with shiny medals for each of the lepers’ sores she bathed rather than just viscerally being in Bliss. That’s the shadow side of what I call the “Mother Teresa karmic rut” because it’s so common.
For gurus and prophets: spiritual hubris is the crack cocaine of addictions on the higher-center levels, and psychic power runs a close second. Heavy golden chains indeed for those that wear this type of crown and obviously challenging to unwind, especially if there is also abuse of power towards those in their care (adding iron chains into to the mix).
More on this some other time perhaps, as I’m still in the midst of unwinding my own prophet karma at all three stages through an ongoing manifestation of mobility issues. For more: On Spiritual Teachers: Buyer Be AWARE!
FYI: There is actually a board game called Leela, which is a sacred divination system rooted in 2,000 years of Vedic wisdom where you can play out your karma by a roll of the dice on a board with 49 squares over 7 planes of consciousness representing the earth plane:). For more:
The Yoga of Snakes and Arrows: The Leela of Self-Knowledge—Harish Johari
The good news is that there is a way for our allotted personal karma for this life to be naturally unwound organically in real time. This involves staying conscious and awake, having faith in the Flow and appreciating what is—just the way it is.
But first we’ll get tested when our karma arises through challenging circumstances in our life. If we react with angst, avoidance, denial, acting out, drama, or being royally pissed off, etc., then—guess what—we end up winding our karma deeper rather than unwinding it. And that is by far the norm.
This process is based on the ancient Vedic concept of samskaras, aka karmic grooves of habitual patterning wound into our energetic, emotional, mental and psychic bodies. Each of us comes into an incarnation with tens of thousands of samskaras, and with each choice we make—and there are many on a daily basis—we are either unwinding or winding.
It's important to keep in mind that our samskaras are not infinite, so we can get to the bottom of them if we consistently focus on not allowing life’s challenges to trigger us into judgement, repression, indulgence or acting out—but rather see them as opportunities (FGOs:)) to release them, one layer at a time.
At this time in the evolution of consciousness, 98% of souls incarnate are asleep, so they are not aware enough that they are winding their karma deeper and deeper by default. But, the good news is that, as Chogyam Trungpa noted over fifty years ago, only 1% of souls incarnate at that time had even the potential for awakening, so progress IS being made. (As even 1% of over eight billion human beings is eighty million).
In fact, in the board game of Leela, the last square you land on before full enlightenment is named tamas, meaning darkness, ignorance, laziness, heaviness, inertia and sleep in Sanskrit philosophy.
And, if one rolls the dice and lands on tamas, it is represented as a giant serpent that takes you all the way back down to square one in the game.
That’s why the ancient seers in the Vedic tradition called the earth plane, Leela, aka cosmic play, as it’s chutes and ladders all the way home to Source in this convoluted, multi-layered Earth Game.
The most important factor to remember when dealing with our personal karma is that in actuality there is no outside higher authority that determines when our karma is paid, as “the Lord of Karma,” is merely a fantastic projection, even though deeply ingrained as a stubbornly persistent illusion. But rather, at the higher levels of the truth, we are our own judge, jury and parole board and only we can ultimately determine our release from karmic prison.
Ram Dass’s guru, Neem Karoli Baba’s final words as he dropped his body in hospital of heart failure were:
“Today I am released from central jail forever!”
Because human nature tends toward extremism, many of us carry karmic debts —long after they’ve been paid in full—because we can’t forgive ourselves for harms done self or others. Then we overcompensate by keeping ourselves in karmic prisons of our own making from lifetime to lifetime.
If our debt is paid in full in the overall balance, then this bondage can disappear as soon as we forgive ourselves, as it is the master erase of Leela. Accordingly, we get to experience true freedom and liberation from our own self-judgments and extremist natures while still embodied.
There is more than a little cosmic humor in this, as Mind is ever the builder and liberation is always an inside job as it is the essential nature of Self or Being that we have been seeking all along.For more: A MYSTIC’S TAKE ON KARMIC DEBTS: Only the Giver Can Stamp the Record “PAID IN FULL” Because the Receiver Never Will
Karmic Extenuating Circumstances
Here’s a personal case study on meat-eating:
Did you know that: The Dalai Lama was prescribed meat by his physicians to maintain his health since the 1960s after a bout of hepatitis.
And most importantly (for me):
“In the Hindu religion, where harmlessness is the ideal and flesh-eating is prohibited, Shiva has allowed meat for psychics, for the very reason that psychic power is power of the mind and the body must be strong enough to sustain it.”
Spiritual Dimensions of Psychology—Hazrat Inayat Khan
This is perhaps one of the best books I’ve ever read on psychic development, especially Part IV: The Mind of the Seer
When I first read this book in the early 1980s, and especially the above quote, it reconfirmed what my body had been telling me since birth.
The back story: I came in kicking and screaming after a weeks-long ordeal of false labor and then prolonged labor by my poor mother. I cried continuously the first year, wouldn’t eat and wouldn’t sleep. My mother and our live-in cook and caregiver, Pako, were at their wits end, as I was severely undernourished and anemic.
When I did more than 10 rebirthing sessions in my early 30s, including underwater ones, I relived what was going on in the womb just before birth: I was terrified to be born, as my core belief (called the personal law in rebirthing) was that the earth plane wasn’t safe (which is an inescapable fact at the level of the relative truth of the body) and thus my behavior pre and post birth.
I had to have speech therapy at age five to learn how to speak and didn’t learn to read at all until I was age eight and had a desire to read the tv guide.
Once all the above kicked in, I was off to the races on all levels. And my love and need for eating meat accelerated with each passing year. By age five, my favorite word was “cheeseburger” as it was what I always answered when asked what I wanted to eat.
At age 19 in 1972, I did my 1st LSD trip. During this trip, the Universe cracked open my Mind and I did a spontaneous psychic reading from the Galactic plane. Since then, my Mind has stayed completely blown open—as those close to me will attest—and has never since closed up. Meaning that I’m still on that original trip—as it only takes one good one if you’re ready.
My psychic partner/soul mate Jim Rush, who was present at that first reading, was quoted in an interview as saying: “Joan’s psychic abilities emerged completely intact from that trip.”
As I started doing readings more and more through my 20s, my need for meat to keep me in my body (as well as sex, but that’s another karmic tale) moved to the level of consuming two pounds a day. But fortunately, by my late 30s, I had discovered and was practicing daily water-method standing chi gung to help ground me, (thank goodness!), so I only needed several pounds of meat a week, but needed is still the most appropriate term.
In the early 80s, when I first read the ancient Vedic quote about psychics needing meat, I felt so vindicated that I shared this quote with all my vegan and vegetarian clients who judged me quite harshly for needing meat.
Nowadays, in my 8th decade, I enjoy my cheeseburgers at least monthly (grass-fed from trusted vendors at the farmers market, of course) and only eat other meat from happy pasture-raised animals, whenever possible.
As long as I take care of my dietary needs for meat in moderation, meaning only as much as is needed to keep me in the body enjoyably while operating as a trance channel, then there is no karma incurred. As it is only my judgement which determines this.
Karmic correctness (on a case-by-case individual basis of need) is the determining factor here, as political or cultural correctness are as ephemeral as the wind.
And while MEAT EATING is a factor in global warming, and only about 20% of the planet is vegetarian at present, it’s important to distinguish between a desire for meat purely for sense pleasure or by habit, rather than a true need for it to survive and thrive.
In addition, because we only have physical senses in the physical plane, (Duh), if one has an overly ascetic or judgmental view of enjoying these gifts in moderation, then karma is incurred. As, once we drop our bodies, there is sincere regret in most cases if we’ve been overly into self-denial and not enjoying the gift of the sense pleasures more.
And, yes, sincere regret, if combined with attachment and unrequited desire, still keeps us on the wheel. So, for me, every mindful bite of my extra-rare juicy cheeseburger is orgasmic!
For more: On Pleasure, Joy and Bliss
Next, here’s a case study about the use of air conditioning in this time of global warming at all three levels of karma.
Many more human beings on the planet will be dropping their bodies sooner over the next few decades as global warming makes some regions’ temperatures uninhabitable and unsurvivable and climate migration is not a viable option for all the millions who will need it. For those of us fortunate enough to have access to AC (and be able to afford running it), we may survive longer than those not so karmically lucky.
But by utilizing AC to survive, even if we exercise restraint in its use, we are adding to the warming of the planet. What to do? It’s a karmic conundrum!
My view is that, just as I eat meat in moderation to help me fulfill my destiny in this life, so too do we need to utilize AC to survive, thrive and fulfill our destinies, as a human incarnation is too precious an opportunity to waste. That is until something much less harmful for the environment is created to survive the heat—hopefully sooner rather than later.
So, we’ll need to forgive ourselves for harms caused to the planet and those suffering beings on it in our quest for survival amidst unrelenting heat. Sincere regret does ameliorate karma if done with an open heart. That means, besides daily gratitude and appreciation for our good karma, also wishing that we could extend our good fortune of having AC (among many other things) to all suffering beings and find other ways to alleviate suffering that we feel called to do.
In this New Age of Aquarius just being birthed, with Transformer Pluto in Aquarius and, for the next 18 months, with the north node of destiny also in Aquarius, we must recognize that no single one of us may have the complete solution for healing the planet.
But Aquarius rules humanitarianism and unity consciousness (aka ONE Being with billions of faces) and, as such, there is immense cocreative power percolating as the mass consciousness is filled with more and more AWAKE LIGHTHOUSES.
As more of us become channels of light, we can consciously choose to surrender and align with Divine Will and allow downloads of Divine grace (aka the gentle rain by Taoists) to flow through us daily in our practices to help mitigate humanity’s karma of climate change, as it is bigger than any one of us, so we really need some Divine juju here!
In allowing ourselves to be channels for Divine grace to enter the earth plane with this gentle rain, the next stage is in allowing the Higher Forces to descend through us to heal our racial karma through the hearts and minds of souls incarnate.
Specifically now, Awakener Uranus (rule of the higher mind) is in (lower-mind) Gemini, giving us signs that these downloads from Divine Mind are coming to channel ingenious solutions to heal our karma with the Earth, Gaia, as a living Being, beyond what the rational mind could ever come up with. And specially chosen souls are already incarnate to receive these downloads as part of the Quickening (aka the ongoing acceleration of the evolution of consciousness).
These downloaded solutions will help alleviate the Earth’s response to the harms done to it over millennium, most recently seen in Nepal as we witness the Earth’s reaction to global warming ringing all the alarm bells.
This harm to the Earth began to speed up since the start of the industrial age and the use of fossil fuels in 1760.
But now, in the information age, new karmic harms are being done to the planet by Al, data centers and such (all being developed from massive greed) and all adding to the sum of human misery through exacerbating climate change even more.
Consequently, we’re currently witnessing humanity’s karma of harming the Earth approaching a tipping point. With data centers proliferating at a distressing rate, diminishing water resources as well as by the egregious use of fossil fuels.
In closing, our faith in the Divine plan for all souls (even and especially if we don’t understand where all this is leading to now) and our surrender to appreciate Earth School reality just as it is without resistance or judgement, is also the very same skill set to allow our allotted personal karma to unwind and dissolve into the Flow without effort. As only attachment and/or aversion—or variations of this—to What Is wind it deeper.
And finally, even though Ram Dass requoted the channel Emmanel by famously saying: “Death is absolutely safe,”
Most of us play at forgetting this, because:
“The more surely the future is known, the less surprise and the less fun in living it.”—Alan Watts
Wishing us all joy in BEING in real time as we simultaneously delight in the ride of this life,
J O A N
“All madmen may not be mystics, but all mystics are mad. By mad, I mean they have gone beyond the mind. The madman may have fallen below the mind, and the mystic may have gone beyond the mind, but one thing is similar. Both are not in their minds.”—OSHO
Listen along on YOUTUBE
SATURN/MARS CONJUNCT—Joan Pancoe
Channeled from the Lords of Karma:):
“Every breath you take and every move you make
Every bond you break, every step you take
I'll be watching you"
FOR MORE LYRICS AND
TO LISTEN ALONG:
Dear ONE,
HAPPY FALL! I hope you’ve been remembering to act as lighthouses in your personal realities during this especially extreme time of witnessing the Kali Yuga (epitomized by Trumpism) winding down with acceleration, as it’s always darkest before the dawn of any New Age. Ain’t that the truth!
Here’s another good news reminder:
“From a soul-level perspective, we don’t have to waste any more time or energy worrying about Trump getting his karmauppance, just as all big-league abusers of power throughout history, from Caligula, Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun all the way through to 20th century ego-monsters like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot have all gotten theirs.
The Dalai Lama says it best:
“From the Buddhist point of view, the Chinese officer who is committing the cruel act against the young boy is initiating a new cycle of negative karma. In the case of the child, there is a closure of a particular karma that the child is experiencing. The perpetrator of the crime is in fact an object of more compassion and mercy than the child.”
From my experience with facilitating thousands of past-life regressions, what has been confirmed repeatedly is that in the lives where there was the most abuse of power, the most karmic poo-poo was incurred. And that some of the greatest karmic gains came from incarnations with the most suffering.
The wheels of karma grind exceedingly slow but exceedingly fine, and it all evens out in the end. Everyone, sooner or later, especially evil clowns, gets theirs, rest assured. So, that’s just one less thing to ever be concerned about! (Unless you’ve been veery naughty yourself:))”
The above is an excerpt from: SPRING 2017 SOUL-LEVEL CURRICULUM: The Karmic Consequences of Entitlement (and it might not be what you think)
DISCLAIMER: For clarification, please be advised that it is only on the SOUL LEVEL before entry that there is a conscious choosing to be born into a challenging incarnation involving possible trauma. ON THE PERSONALITY LEVEL of THE LITTLE SELF/EGO THERE IS NEVER A CONSCIOUS CHOOSING OR VOLUNTEERING FOR ANY FORMS OF SUFFERING.
Here we go:
I define karma as the immutable Earth School principle of cause and effect. Meaning that everything in 3D—once it is set in motion—is carried forward in real time until it is fully resolved.
Linear space and time are integral training wheels of Earth School, as is gravity. They’re here for our benefit as we learn how to be cocreators in all dimensions simultaneously and in real time, clearly defined by Einstein:
“For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
The earth plane is one of many dimensions for soul evolution. Here, each lifetime is ideally a different class, unless we’re having a do-over. And, as Ram Dass says:“You’ve got to take the curriculum.”
In-between incarnations, any unresolved karmic baggage weighs our souls down and keeps us from flying high in other dimensions as light bodies. In other words, we’re bound by the wheel of karma which pulls us back down into countless incarnations to learn the lessons which can only be experienced and brought into balance through lives in 3D.
One of my favorite meditations is to imagine:
“I’m sitting on the highest ledge in the Himalayas witnessing the karmic wheels of all souls spinning round and round in an infinite amusement park called Leela, Cosmic Play . . . and smile.”
Excerpted from: If This Were Your Last Incarnation, What Would You Do?
Imagine the earth plane as pristine and untouched before souls began incarnating here. Through time, each action of every soul has caused an equal reaction which needs to be brought into balance, so we ultimately leave the earth as unspoiled as we originally found it.
If we multiply this by an infinite number of souls incarnating, one catches a glimpse of the universal karmic law of cause and effect in action. With this concept in mind, cultivating a very long-range perspective on the whole Earth Game allows us to relax and enjoy the show to a much greater extent. For more of this philosophy: LEELA
Here’s an eye-opening Buddhist metaphor:
‘If there were a huge, deep ocean as big as this entire world with a golden yoke floating on its surface, and, at the bottom, there were a crippled, blind turtle who surfaced only once in a hundred years, how often would that turtle raise its head through the yoke? Such an event would be extremely rare, but not as rare as gaining a birth of leisure and fortune.”
For more on this theme:
Precious human life in Buddhism: ten fortunes and eight freedoms
TARA, A female Buddha or advanced bodhisattva known as the "Mother of Liberation." Green Tara: Symbolizes active, swift compassion and protection from fear and obstacles.
For convenience of labeling, there are three levels of karma: personal, ancestral and racial.
In terms of racial karma, we’re witnessing in real time the ongoing causes and effects of harms done by humanity to the planet and to each other on a mass scale. Consequently, the entire human race is reaping this whirlwind. And not only that: Each of us volunteered to be here at this exact time in history . . . we just forgot.
In terms of ancestral or family karma, we always sign up for our parents, environment factors and body karma in our soul contracts before entry. From this, we choose an allotted portion of pre-loaded causative potentials such as genetic predispositions and generational trauma.
But how much weight we give to genetics or family trauma—whether from this life or by karmic susceptibility—is almost entirely up to us. For, to the degree that we’re awake, we get to decide how much influence to give to this level of karma—whether it be a larger or infinitesimally smaller percentage, in terms of affecting our fate or destiny in the probabilities.
Lastly, in terms of personal karma, we each have a certain amount of allotted karma that we’ve signed up for in our soul contracts before entry. Our job is to allow it to unfold and unwind naturally over time.
However, if we engage with whatever is arising in the curriculum of our experience—with attachment, aversion, self-pity, anxiety, resistance, judgment, annoyance or any other forms of anger or fear—then we’re winding our prearranged karma deeper, and the chains keep getting heavier the more reactive we become.
This brings us to the three stages of karmic bondage, which some of us have going on simultaneously in any given lifetime:
1. Iron chains: Which allow us to experience the balancing karma from past misuse of our energies towards others.
2. Silver chains: Which allow us to experience the balancing karma from past misuse of our energies towards ourselves.
3. Golden chains, which allow us to experience reaping the fruits of our good deeds, but with attachment─no matter how subtle. This also keeps us on the wheel, because we still have to come back into incarnations to receive the benefits of our good karma, as we claimed it by allowing it to feed the ego.
Iron chains bind us to unresolved karma in which we’ve consciously harmed others. This creates the most egregious and heavy bondage as it is considered a sin of commission.
For example: If one has been a Trump supporter out of greed and/or racism, without a care for those that are harmed, the ties that bind are the most oppressive. However, if one is merely ignorant (aka unconscious or asleep), then there is some amelioration of the effects that will come.
Next: Silver chains bind us to unresolved karma in which we’ve had great potential gifts or talents—well-earned as well as gifts from the Divine—and harmed ourselves by being afraid to develop or use them. This is considered a sin of omission.
It means that in future incarnations our access to these gifts or talents may require much more time and effort, so that we’ll learn to appreciate them more when they finally do arise.
Also, having limiting beliefs about our own worthiness for abundance on all levels creates scarcity and loss down the line.
These effects are so, even if our fears or limiting beliefs arose based on legitimate circumstances at the time. Now there’s the kicker! This is where the inner work is: To unwind karmic ruts of beliefs, even though they may feel like the truth.
For example, if one had great psychic gifts at a time in history where it wasn’t safe to go public with any healings or predictions as one could easily get whacked by the political or religious powers that be. At that time, it was justifiably safer to hide these gifts. But now, not so much.
Lastly, golden chains bind us to unresolved karma in which we’ve been very very good but allowed our benevolent selfless actions to feed the ego no matter how subtly. These abide until we can figuratively walk on sand without leaving any footprints.
For example, if you could imagine Mother Teresa metaphorically adorning herself with shiny medals for each of the lepers’ sores she bathed rather than just viscerally being in Bliss. That’s the shadow side of what I call the “Mother Teresa karmic rut” because it’s so common.
For gurus and prophets: spiritual hubris is the crack cocaine of addictions on the higher-center levels, and psychic power runs a close second. Heavy golden chains indeed for those that wear this type of crown and obviously challenging to unwind, especially if there is also abuse of power towards those in their care (adding iron chains into to the mix).
More on this some other time perhaps, as I’m still in the midst of unwinding my own prophet karma at all three stages through an ongoing manifestation of mobility issues. For more: On Spiritual Teachers: Buyer Be AWARE!
FYI: There is actually a board game called Leela, which is a sacred divination system rooted in 2,000 years of Vedic wisdom where you can play out your karma by a roll of the dice on a board with 49 squares over 7 planes of consciousness representing the earth plane:). For more:
The Yoga of Snakes and Arrows: The Leela of Self-Knowledge—Harish Johari
The good news is that there is a way for our allotted personal karma for this life to be naturally unwound organically in real time. This involves staying conscious and awake, having faith in the Flow and appreciating what is—just the way it is.
But first we’ll get tested when our karma arises through challenging circumstances in our life. If we react with angst, avoidance, denial, acting out, drama, or being royally pissed off, etc., then—guess what—we end up winding our karma deeper rather than unwinding it. And that is by far the norm.
This process is based on the ancient Vedic concept of samskaras, aka karmic grooves of habitual patterning wound into our energetic, emotional, mental and psychic bodies. Each of us comes into an incarnation with tens of thousands of samskaras, and with each choice we make—and there are many on a daily basis—we are either unwinding or winding.
It's important to keep in mind that our samskaras are not infinite, so we can get to the bottom of them if we consistently focus on not allowing life’s challenges to trigger us into judgement, repression, indulgence or acting out—but rather see them as opportunities (FGOs:)) to release them, one layer at a time.
At this time in the evolution of consciousness, 98% of souls incarnate are asleep, so they are not aware enough that they are winding their karma deeper and deeper by default. But, the good news is that, as Chogyam Trungpa noted over fifty years ago, only 1% of souls incarnate at that time had even the potential for awakening, so progress IS being made. (As even 1% of over eight billion human beings is eighty million).
In fact, in the board game of Leela, the last square you land on before full enlightenment is named tamas, meaning darkness, ignorance, laziness, heaviness, inertia and sleep in Sanskrit philosophy.
And, if one rolls the dice and lands on tamas, it is represented as a giant serpent that takes you all the way back down to square one in the game.
That’s why the ancient seers in the Vedic tradition called the earth plane, Leela, aka cosmic play, as it’s chutes and ladders all the way home to Source in this convoluted, multi-layered Earth Game.
The most important factor to remember when dealing with our personal karma is that in actuality there is no outside higher authority that determines when our karma is paid, as “the Lord of Karma,” is merely a fantastic projection, even though deeply ingrained as a stubbornly persistent illusion. But rather, at the higher levels of the truth, we are our own judge, jury and parole board and only we can ultimately determine our release from karmic prison.
Ram Dass’s guru, Neem Karoli Baba’s final words as he dropped his body in hospital of heart failure were:
“Today I am released from central jail forever!”
Because human nature tends toward extremism, many of us carry karmic debts —long after they’ve been paid in full—because we can’t forgive ourselves for harms done self or others. Then we overcompensate by keeping ourselves in karmic prisons of our own making from lifetime to lifetime.
If our debt is paid in full in the overall balance, then this bondage can disappear as soon as we forgive ourselves, as it is the master erase of Leela. Accordingly, we get to experience true freedom and liberation from our own self-judgments and extremist natures while still embodied.
There is more than a little cosmic humor in this, as Mind is ever the builder and liberation is always an inside job as it is the essential nature of Self or Being that we have been seeking all along.For more: A MYSTIC’S TAKE ON KARMIC DEBTS: Only the Giver Can Stamp the Record “PAID IN FULL” Because the Receiver Never Will
Karmic Extenuating Circumstances
Here’s a personal case study on meat-eating:
Did you know that: The Dalai Lama was prescribed meat by his physicians to maintain his health since the 1960s after a bout of hepatitis.
And most importantly (for me):
“In the Hindu religion, where harmlessness is the ideal and flesh-eating is prohibited, Shiva has allowed meat for psychics, for the very reason that psychic power is power of the mind and the body must be strong enough to sustain it.”
Spiritual Dimensions of Psychology—Hazrat Inayat Khan
This is perhaps one of the best books I’ve ever read on psychic development, especially Part IV: The Mind of the Seer
When I first read this book in the early 1980s, and especially the above quote, it reconfirmed what my body had been telling me since birth.
The back story: I came in kicking and screaming after a weeks-long ordeal of false labor and then prolonged labor by my poor mother. I cried continuously the first year, wouldn’t eat and wouldn’t sleep. My mother and our live-in cook and caregiver, Pako, were at their wits end, as I was severely undernourished and anemic.
When I did more than 10 rebirthing sessions in my early 30s, including underwater ones, I relived what was going on in the womb just before birth: I was terrified to be born, as my core belief (called the personal law in rebirthing) was that the earth plane wasn’t safe (which is an inescapable fact at the level of the relative truth of the body) and thus my behavior pre and post birth.
I had to have speech therapy at age five to learn how to speak and didn’t learn to read at all until I was age eight and had a desire to read the tv guide.
Once all the above kicked in, I was off to the races on all levels. And my love and need for eating meat accelerated with each passing year. By age five, my favorite word was “cheeseburger” as it was what I always answered when asked what I wanted to eat.
At age 19 in 1972, I did my 1st LSD trip. During this trip, the Universe cracked open my Mind and I did a spontaneous psychic reading from the Galactic plane. Since then, my Mind has stayed completely blown open—as those close to me will attest—and has never since closed up. Meaning that I’m still on that original trip—as it only takes one good one if you’re ready.
My psychic partner/soul mate Jim Rush, who was present at that first reading, was quoted in an interview as saying: “Joan’s psychic abilities emerged completely intact from that trip.”
As I started doing readings more and more through my 20s, my need for meat to keep me in my body (as well as sex, but that’s another karmic tale) moved to the level of consuming two pounds a day. But fortunately, by my late 30s, I had discovered and was practicing daily water-method standing chi gung to help ground me, (thank goodness!), so I only needed several pounds of meat a week, but needed is still the most appropriate term.
In the early 80s, when I first read the ancient Vedic quote about psychics needing meat, I felt so vindicated that I shared this quote with all my vegan and vegetarian clients who judged me quite harshly for needing meat.
Nowadays, in my 8th decade, I enjoy my cheeseburgers at least monthly (grass-fed from trusted vendors at the farmers market, of course) and only eat other meat from happy pasture-raised animals, whenever possible.
As long as I take care of my dietary needs for meat in moderation, meaning only as much as is needed to keep me in the body enjoyably while operating as a trance channel, then there is no karma incurred. As it is only my judgement which determines this.
Karmic correctness (on a case-by-case individual basis of need) is the determining factor here, as political or cultural correctness are as ephemeral as the wind.
And while MEAT EATING is a factor in global warming, and only about 20% of the planet is vegetarian at present, it’s important to distinguish between a desire for meat purely for sense pleasure or by habit, rather than a true need for it to survive and thrive.
In addition, because we only have physical senses in the physical plane, (Duh), if one has an overly ascetic or judgmental view of enjoying these gifts in moderation, then karma is incurred. As, once we drop our bodies, there is sincere regret in most cases if we’ve been overly into self-denial and not enjoying the gift of the sense pleasures more.
And, yes, sincere regret, if combined with attachment and unrequited desire, still keeps us on the wheel. So, for me, every mindful bite of my extra-rare juicy cheeseburger is orgasmic!
For more: On Pleasure, Joy and Bliss
Next, here’s a case study about the use of air conditioning in this time of global warming at all three levels of karma.
Many more human beings on the planet will be dropping their bodies sooner over the next few decades as global warming makes some regions’ temperatures uninhabitable and unsurvivable and climate migration is not a viable option for all the millions who will need it. For those of us fortunate enough to have access to AC (and be able to afford running it), we may survive longer than those not so karmically lucky.
But by utilizing AC to survive, even if we exercise restraint in its use, we are adding to the warming of the planet. What to do? It’s a karmic conundrum!
My view is that, just as I eat meat in moderation to help me fulfill my destiny in this life, so too do we need to utilize AC to survive, thrive and fulfill our destinies, as a human incarnation is too precious an opportunity to waste. That is until something much less harmful for the environment is created to survive the heat—hopefully sooner rather than later.
So, we’ll need to forgive ourselves for harms caused to the planet and those suffering beings on it in our quest for survival amidst unrelenting heat. Sincere regret does ameliorate karma if done with an open heart. That means, besides daily gratitude and appreciation for our good karma, also wishing that we could extend our good fortune of having AC (among many other things) to all suffering beings and find other ways to alleviate suffering that we feel called to do.
In this New Age of Aquarius just being birthed, with Transformer Pluto in Aquarius and, for the next 18 months, with the north node of destiny also in Aquarius, we must recognize that no single one of us may have the complete solution for healing the planet.
But Aquarius rules humanitarianism and unity consciousness (aka ONE Being with billions of faces) and, as such, there is immense cocreative power percolating as the mass consciousness is filled with more and more AWAKE LIGHTHOUSES.
As more of us become channels of light, we can consciously choose to surrender and align with Divine Will and allow downloads of Divine grace (aka the gentle rain by Taoists) to flow through us daily in our practices to help mitigate humanity’s karma of climate change, as it is bigger than any one of us, so we really need some Divine juju here!
In allowing ourselves to be channels for Divine grace to enter the earth plane with this gentle rain, the next stage is in allowing the Higher Forces to descend through us to heal our racial karma through the hearts and minds of souls incarnate.
Specifically now, Awakener Uranus (rule of the higher mind) is in (lower-mind) Gemini, giving us signs that these downloads from Divine Mind are coming to channel ingenious solutions to heal our karma with the Earth, Gaia, as a living Being, beyond what the rational mind could ever come up with. And specially chosen souls are already incarnate to receive these downloads as part of the Quickening (aka the ongoing acceleration of the evolution of consciousness).
These downloaded solutions will help alleviate the Earth’s response to the harms done to it over millennium, most recently seen in Nepal as we witness the Earth’s reaction to global warming ringing all the alarm bells.
This harm to the Earth began to speed up since the start of the industrial age and the use of fossil fuels in 1760.
But now, in the information age, new karmic harms are being done to the planet by Al, data centers and such (all being developed from massive greed) and all adding to the sum of human misery through exacerbating climate change even more.
Consequently, we’re currently witnessing humanity’s karma of harming the Earth approaching a tipping point. With data centers proliferating at a distressing rate, diminishing water resources as well as by the egregious use of fossil fuels.
In closing, our faith in the Divine plan for all souls (even and especially if we don’t understand where all this is leading to now) and our surrender to appreciate Earth School reality just as it is without resistance or judgement, is also the very same skill set to allow our allotted personal karma to unwind and dissolve into the Flow without effort. As only attachment and/or aversion—or variations of this—to What Is wind it deeper.
And finally, even though Ram Dass requoted the channel Emmanel by famously saying: “Death is absolutely safe,”
Most of us play at forgetting this, because:
“The more surely the future is known, the less surprise and the less fun in living it.”—Alan Watts
Wishing us all joy in BEING in real time as we simultaneously delight in the ride of this life,
J O A N
“All madmen may not be mystics, but all mystics are mad. By mad, I mean they have gone beyond the mind. The madman may have fallen below the mind, and the mystic may have gone beyond the mind, but one thing is similar. Both are not in their minds.”—OSHO
Article author
About the Author
JOAN PANCOE is a gifted trance channel, karmic astrologer and spiritual teacher in private practice in New York City since 1976.
She is the creator of psychic therapy, ™ a ten-session intensive that utilizes altered states to help release karmic blocks and experience and integrate the soul level of consciousness.
Joan is the author of Openings: A Guide to Psychic Living in the Real World and Cosmic Sugar: The Amorous Adventures of a Modern Mystic, under the pen name, Leela Jones.
In addition, she is a teacher of Tantric and Taoist energy arts and has had three solo shows of her art in New York City.
She is the creator of psychic therapy, ™ a ten-session intensive that utilizes altered states to help release karmic blocks and experience and integrate the soul level of consciousness.
Joan is the author of Openings: A Guide to Psychic Living in the Real World and Cosmic Sugar: The Amorous Adventures of a Modern Mystic, under the pen name, Leela Jones.
In addition, she is a teacher of Tantric and Taoist energy arts and has had three solo shows of her art in New York City.