The Three Selves Approach to the Karmic Pattern
The work we do in the Fellowship takes a very specific approach to past lives and to the way the Subconscious, like a memory bank, brings forward that which is the Karma and Dharma of one’s life Plan. Karma is that which one is paying off and Dharma, in this school of thought, is what one has earned. Therefore, it becomes very important for you to recognize that something within you, within your Karmic Plan, has chosen whatever is happening to you.
Sometimes a person is involved with energies and actions that seem to be overwhelming, causing the person to be unhappy, depressed, and unfulfilled ... situations that are nevertheless parts of a Plan; and individuals—entering into life and looking at the contract the High Self placed before them on the Subconscious level—accepted this kind of heavy overlay.
If people can understand that it is part of their own Plan, that they chose it, that they chose the parents and whatever the parents taught—that which was good, happy, and balanced and that which was badly overshadowing with memories of having been unloved and unwanted—then through the original Edgar Cayce energy, it is pointed out that everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen is part of a Plan to complete unfinished business in this lifetime.
Each action is a lesson, a challenge, but sometimes humans find it difficult to accept the heavy load that their Subconscious has agreed to fulfill.
(EC 3-1-96)
Question: Once a Karmic pattern has started, can it be halted? Or can the Basic Self be made to decrease the intensity of the pattern?
EC: Definitely to decrease the intensity—and this is the one gift that the highest spirit or deity-form gives you as human beings upon your planet. No one must continue a pattern they feel they cannot and will not continue—will not... note this—for in regard to the patterns you bring forward, each of you has formulated a contract, as we have stated before. This contract is what you yourself have signed and sealed. If you accept it and worked through it successfully, you will not have to come back and pay this debt again, or even a portion of it, so the choice is yours whether you wish to pay it in this lifetime or in another.
The Basic Selves are often sublimated by the Consciousness and frequently will follow whatever you ask them to do. Many times they will—in their own knowledge that you must return and continue working with the same pattern again at another time and place—ask or plead with you in various ways, saying that if you continue the pattern, you will fulfill it and not in any way be sorry, as you call it, that you have continued. Many times it is like the cross that the man Jesus carried up to Calvary, which grew heavier as He climbed the hill. But if you will note, there was always someone present to help Him, to lift it off his shoulders occasionally, so He reached the top by his own choice of crucifixion. For He knew that in so doing, He would help salvage many others, not only those in his time and place but those to come. It was a carefully planned pattern of Karma that was brought forward, not as His own, for He had no Karma such as others have brought with them, but Karma He chose to handle, to continue, to fulfill, and then cause others to reach through Him and continue to complete their own Plan.
Definitely you can change your Karma, but doing so is not always to your highest benefit or your own fulfillment, however free will is your own gift that you may use or not use at your own choice.
(EC 5-31-69)