Karma is usually considered something that has to do with past lives, lives that were lived before this incarnation in this body. I’ve never fully gotten on board with this idea. I didn’t grow up thinking about reincarnation but moreso that I don’t think that it’s someone’s karma to show up in this life and have heaps of challenges to overcome, or to have tragic things happen to them, or to be born poor in a poor country without a clear pathway out.
My lived experience in this body tells me that karma is really all held within my body. During a long meditation stretch I had the insight and awareness that everything I’ve ever experienced, all memories from all the sensations I’ve had are all stored in my body. I had images populating my mind with each sensation I would discover in my body scan and I saw each of my own incarnations, each of my own moments of life over the years.
Karma is held in the body from this life. I believe now that if I go into a new experience with good intentions, good vibes, optimism, then that’s what I’ll end up experiencing. If I go in not with the highest of intentions, feeling overly critical or doubtful, then that will happen too. Perhaps it’s that the end matters so much in the experience of how we remember things but that the start of it is really to beginning of the karmic moment.