Instant Karma Isn’t Karma (Or Instant) | INFJ Coffeehouse | CS Joseph Coach Jay
CS Joseph Coach Jay discusses how instant karma isn’t karma (or Instant) in the INFJ Coffeehouse
Transcript:
Morning, everyone. Welcome to the CSJ podcast, the INFJ coffee house, and I’m your host Jay. Normally I like to draw from Chora topics for this podcast. And I was actually scrolling through some, some questions that were posed to me, one of them.
The question was, Is it bad? That I’m an ambivert? Although I really want to be an extrovert. And that’s kind of triggering to me, actually. And I just felt like I don’t have the energy for this one. It I just don’t have the energy.
So we’re not going to talk about anything from Chora. Today, I thought we’d do something a little bit different. And but first, since this is coffee house, coffee houses, usually associated with a little bit of music. I thought we’d do a shout out to se hero, extroverted sensing hero, our ESTPs and ESFPs.
And who better to do that, and what song better for that than Lady Gaga. And applause and a line in her limit lyrics is, I live for the way you cheer and screen for me. So it’s seems appropriate for se hero, you know, SC likes to give an experience, sensory experience, trying to gain some loyalty in the process. But another thing about SE and the not just heroes course, but se in general, is that they tend to live in the moment and don’t always consider the consequences of their actions.
And it’s really that aspect. And why thought about Lady Gaga, too, kind of introduce the topic for today’s podcast. So have you ever gotten on YouTube and watched Instant Karma videos? You know, those ones I like are where, you know, you have some erratic driver speeding, weaving in and out of cars running a red light and boom, suddenly, the there’s a there’s a cop there and turns on the flashers and pulls him over immediately. Or, or maybe somebody is, well, they’re usually the car videos that I like to watch.
You know, somebody’s weaving in and out of traffic, and then wrecks because they’re erratic, you know, and everybody’s Instant Karma. That’s really not what karma is. Not at all. Karma is not, you know, most people.
Most people don’t understand karma. I didn’t until you know, I started studying Eastern religions. And this is, you know, in I’ve been a student of Eastern religions, Taoism Hinduism, a little bit of Buddhism. Since I was in college, I lived in Taiwan for a couple years, as a as a young man doing missionary work.
And it was there that I was fully exposed to many types of inter Eastern religions and Eastern ways of thought, not necessarily religions per se, but Confucianism for example, and others. Anyway, back to the topic of karma. So karma is, is a Sanskrit word meaning action, and it’s most typically associated with Hinduism and Buddhism. But karma is not punishment or reward, it is not some poetic justice or mystical vengeance that happens to come into play because of a specific action that or event that has occurred.
You is the action itself its cause and effect. So you can see maybe the relationship, why people can get confused as to its meaning, its cause and effect, it’s not the effect, it’s the action. And so essentially what it means is, is what we think about what we do our words, our deeds, over time, lead to our circumstances. Okay? So it is, you know, those if those actions or deeds or, or whatnot are bad, then the consequences will sooner or later be bad.
If they are good, then the consequences sooner or later will be good. I mean, you you know, an evil person, let’s say, I know a lot of this, you know, we’re talking good and bad, subjective, but still an evil person is not one who has been honest and full of integrity all of their lives. And likewise, a good person, a man of principle, a woman of principle, has not gotten to that place by being deceitful, and lying their whole lot. It just doesn’t work that way.
So we create, by our words and our deeds, how we talk to ourselves, our self talk. All those things, ultimately create the kind of person we are the kind of life that we have the circumstances we find ourselves in. So that’s karma. Karma is the action.
It’s those words, it’s those deeds, it’s those things that we do and say. That’s the karma. It’s not the instant punishment, or the reward. Like, like winning the lottery, winning the lottery does not come from good behavior.
Right? Nor does the police pulling over a driver who had been driving erratically. That is not karma. We don’t you know, why was the person driving erratically? Maybe, maybe, maybe? I don’t know. Maybe it was a man driving and his wife is in the backseat in labor.
He’s trying to get to the hospital, who knows. So it’s, it’s not the judgment is the action. And so, you know, I think you get the point. And I don’t want to belabor it.
But it’s important because people don’t understand karma. And if we understand what it really is the cause and the effect and that we develop, it’s, it’s a way to develop ourselves, improve ourselves. And that’s why we’re all here at CSJ. Right, to improve ourselves, improve our relationships with others.
And so karma is very much a part of that. You know, it, it come comes to mind. The passage in the Bible scripture, James 217. Faith without works is dead.
And I think this is really what that scripture references is cause and effect. It’s it’s not that the the good works, that people do will guarantee them a place in heaven or not, regardless of whether they have faith, but it’s that they are creating for themselves a circumstance or as a desired way of living or being based on what they do day in day out in the end. And whether they try to live a good and honorable life now or not, and what what will that ultimately lead to so that’s my interpretation of faith without works is dead, it’s not a it’s not that you get to heaven by faith alone, or you have to the only way you can get to Heaven is by doing specific works, that might be acceptable to God, I don’t see it that way at all, I see it as day in and day out the actions that we take will have their consequences naturally. You know, in with a lot of my coaching clients, I assign them some optional reading.
And it’s a book called As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. And the entire book is, is essentially based on this concept of whatever consequence we find in our life now, or what we would like to see in the future is all driven by our actions up to this point, and then what our actions now will create for us in the future. So, you know, a lot of times we will, will judge a person’s entire character, or their condition in life based off of a single single event. And maybe that is what those instant karma videos are really focusing on.
But you know, you can have someone who is you can have an honest person, a morally good person in poverty. And you could have a dishonest person, someone who’s morally corrupt, be quite wealthy, but to make a judgment, that says well that the one person in poverty is, is there, because he’s he or she is entirely good, or to make a judgment that the the dishonest person is wealthy, because he or she is entirely dishonest. It really misses the point, because making those instant judgments, and what you do is, is you assume that there is nothing else about the honest person in poverty, that could have could have led to that person being impoverished. Or you assume that there’s nothing else except that person’s dishonesty that led them to be wealthy, you know, what you’re ignoring is, well make sure you’ve got an honest person, that maybe they don’t have the skills, the education, that that could have helped them come out of poverty, of course, we’re talking about things within our control, right.
Some things just are not in our control. But if they are in our control, we of course, need to take responsibility for it. And likewise, with the, with the, with the wealthy person, you know, they may have that those skills, the education that allowed them to grow their personal wealth, and achieve some, some great status and plentiful illness in their life. So, the point is, is that, you know, good comes from good, bad comes from bad.
And if there are situations where you see or want to make a judgment that a person is, is poor, because of their goodness, they’re so good that you know, or vice versa, it’s just you’re just not taking into account the full complexity of their life. And you’re judging on insufficient data, basically. So anyway, you know, maybe a little bit of a A little bit of a soapbox I don’t know. But I think I think the the topic was is worthy to discuss about karma cause and effect you know, some types as he users to one degree or another especially have a harder time thinking about consequences and will immediately act and but those actions do have consequences whether we are willing to recognize them accept them at the time so think about it and you know, think about your actions your self talk where you are in your life right now what has led to that led to you being in these circumstances right now and how can you change them going forward and it’s not just circumstances around you it’s your own health it’s your your mental well being it’s your it’s everything about the world in your relationship to it, your relationships so, what is it what is it that you are doing now that may be sabotaging those things and what can you do to change that’s what karma is taking the action and the actions today and going forward will determine where you will be at any given point in the future.
All right. Enough for that. Thank you for watching. Be happy to offer some coaching if you’d like but appreciate you all being members of community and we’ll see you next time you’re stone silver, so can you.
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