Do you find you’re struggling despite committing to a life of loving-kindness? Many people rightfully believe that lightness will be present if they live with intentions oriented toward helping others. And while this is true, sometimes struggles are a result of a karmic negotiation from a previous life. If you lean into that negotiation without resistance, you can facilitate the process and move through the karmic wheel gracefully, receiving from it all that was intended for your soul. Unsure what karma is exactly? Below, I offer insights from the Sumerian Goddess Inanna on understanding karma and knowing how to meet it in an empowered way.
Karma Creates Our Life
Most of us generally understand that karma is the infallible law of cause and effect. Karma stipulates that what we put forth (positive or negative) is what comes back to us. Significantly, however, karma is not inherently “good” or “bad”. It just is. Karma is a mechanism by which we can learn, expand, evolve, and practice living consciously from the heart. Through negotiating our karma, we experience that everything has an effect, thus demonstrating that we have creative license in our own life.
What kind of life do we want? Karma reminds us that it serves us all to create intentionally. While karma will never dissolve and disappear without offering its lesson, there is an ideal time for revealing what that lesson is. That time is unique and individual like the readiness of a flower to bloom. It may take a while, and as such, the karma being played out in your life now, may be lifetimes old. But when it blooms and reveals itself with emphasis, the possibility for evolution and liberation also come into view.
Inanna’s Karma
In the Descent of Inanna, the Goddess reveals herself as an exceptional teacher for humanity. The story enacts Inanna’s karmic process with which she interfaces gracefully and with courage, yielding to the potent healing and transformation that reconciling our karma enables. As we have explored in other blogs, prior to her descent, Inanna hears an inner calling to journey to the underworld. She makes the trip to the realm from which no one may return. The gatekeeper asks her to state the reason for her presence. Inanna purports to being there to attend the funeral of her sister Ereshkigal’s husband. Upon hearing this, Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, is furious and instructs her gatekeeper to lock each of the seven gates and force Inanna to strip off one of her royal garments at each one. She must enter naked and humbled.
When Inanna finally approaches Ereshkigal’s throne, her sister turns her into a corpse and hangs her from a nail on the wall. In responding to her inner calling, she consciously walks right into her own death. While the back story is not present here, in the myth The Epic of Gilgamesh, we learn that Inanna had an indirect connection, fueled by anger and pride to the death of her sister’s husband. Her descent can be seen then, as a chance to balance her karma with those she hurt. In this process, Inanna performs a teaching of grace, demonstrating an empowered, accepting, and courageous way to consciously meet our karma and evolve through doing so.
Be an Artist of the Heart
Indeed, as we balance our karma, we access more freedom and hopefully become more aware about our future thoughts, words, and actions so they may be chosen in alignment with the heart. In this way, karma is art. We actively create the here and now through the impact of our actions. As such, it is possible to paint a world where all beings are safe, loved, happy, peaceful, and free. If we engage from the heart, then we draw heart-centered energy towards us. Like an artist at her easel, free yourself by using brushstrokes of love, kindness, compassion, and positive intention for the highest good in every action. Let the art of karma inspire your living masterpiece.
*Inspired by the wisdom of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna, this blog is an invitation to live as she does, like an Unapologetic Heroine.
Seana Zelazo, LICSW is a psychotherapist, spiritual coach and intuitive channel committed to helping us live unapologetically, by restoring balance within and without through the wisdom of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna. Look for her upcoming book The Return of Inanna: The Unapologetic Heroine in 2022. seanazelazo.com
