Whose karma is it anyway

Are people who are close to me contributing to my karma? If yes, how do I deal with this? Don’t think it is your family that needs to be cleaned up! Who knows who is suffering whose karma. Maybe they would say something else! If you feel your family is bad — they may have become like that, but they may not stay that way. They have phases like the moon — pleasant and unpleasant ones. This happens because there is a lot of proximity in a family.

Your life, your responsibility

Whatever happens in your life is your responsibility. That means it is your karma, your doing. When you are on the spiritual path and utter the word “karma,” it should always refer to yourself. It is a completely wrong approach to judge someone who is going through something nasty and think it is his or her karma. You will lose your fundamental humanity. Someone else’s karma is never ever your business. It is your karma that you have to witness something unpleasant happening to another human being.

The moment you refer to someone else’s karma, you will become an evil force. Evil does not always mean by intent. Evil means you are such that it will turn out negatively for people around you no matter what you do. The moment you start thinking about someone else’s karma, you are moving in that direction.

This is what we are trying to fix in spirituality, that you realise that no matter what happens, it is you. It happens in your life, so it is your karma. Whether you are suffering or enjoying people around you, it is your karma.

So do not worry about karma that comes from your family — there is no such thing. “Family” is only in your mind. The idea of who is your family and who is not, who is dear to you and who is not, is entirely manufactured in your mind. If you did not have a mind, the concept of family would not exist for you. That means they are your doing, your karma. You need to realise that whatever happens in your life, it is you. Once you are aware of that, you become an individual. Otherwise, you remain scattered. Because people are so scattered, so identified with so many things around them, it takes them a long time to gather themselves into one organic whole. Once that happens, what you are seeking can be yours in an instant.

(Ranked amongst the 50 most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. Sadhguru has been conferred the “Padma Vibhushan”, India’s highest annual civilian award, by the Government of India in 2017, for exceptional and distinguished service.)