Karmic Method

The karmic method for leading a successful life focuses on how our thoughts, speech, and actions affect our thoughts, feelings and perceptions. This is similar to the CBT model:



But you can add a circle in the middle called "Perception" with dual directional arrows to each of the other three circles.

In this method to achieve an ideal life, there are specific laws and rules which describe the interactions between each of these four aspects of experience (thoughts, feelings, behavior, perception). I am going to describe them, discussing the science that supports them. Let's get started by defining karma according to Buddhism.

A karmic cause is a movement of the mind and any speech or bodily action that results from that mental movement.

A karmic result can take four different forms:

1. Habit: When we think something a lot, we train our mind to think that thing more often. When we do something a lot, we train ourselves to do that thing more often.
2. Similar Experience: When we do something a lot, as demonstrated by the false consensus effect and general nervous system training (musical instrument), We perceive that thing happening to us more often because we have attuned ourselves to it. (holding a gun causes people to perceive others as also holding guns)
3. Future Experience: If I spend a lot of time playing a musical instrument I am going to find myself in situations where I and others are playing musical instruments. If I prioritize kindness, study it and train in it, at some point in the future I am going to find myself surrounded by people who also care about that thing. "show me your friends and I'll show you your future..." in a sense.
4. Environment: The way we perceive our environment is variable depending on lots of different conditions that we explained back in the section called "science of emptiness." Cognitive penetrability, expectation and perception, mood and perception, implicit attentional bias, selective attention all affect the way we perceive our environment. Our thoughts and moods affect the way our senses interpret and process data. Sad people perceive the world as more grayscale. Happy people, more vibrant. Anxious people perceive more dangerous stimuli in their environment. Alcoholics perceive more alcohol in their environment. Our perception of our environment is affected by our thoughts speech and actions.

Here are the laws that govern karmas as they transition from cause to result:

The Laws of Karma:

1. Karma is Definite. (meaning: Actions motivated by intention affect mood and perception in predictable ways that are subjectively similar to the original intention and action.) This law describes neuroplasticity and perceptual training. Let's start with
1. Neuroplasticity: What the first law means is that if I think a particular thought, I am training myself to think that thought. I am not training myself to think any other thought. Easy. This means that if I want to feel loved, I should training in feeling love and I should train in helping other people feel love (since humans are empathetic). Going to a bar is not necessarily going to help me feel loved unless I've already done the neural training. Now, let's see how this law describes
2. Perceptual Training: Studies on the false consensus effect show that we see that people who act in a trustworthy manner are more likely to perceive the world as a trustworthy place. Hunters who carry guns are more likely to perceive ambiguous photos of people as photos of people carrying guns. The way we behave affects the way that we perceive others and the world. Also, the way we think affects the way that we perceive others to think.
2. Karma Grows: If I carry a gun, I am only one person carrying a gun, but because of the false consensus effect I am going to perceive a lot of people carrying guns. If I do some small act of kindness, it makes me happier and happiness affects perception of multiple objects for a longer length of time than it took to perform the act of kindness. In this way, small things we do have a big effect on our perception.
3. If you do something, you will get a result: If you act in a trustworthy manner(as long as some other conditions that we will talk about later), you will certainly train yourself to perceive other people acting in a more trustworthy way. If you carry a gun, you will certainly perceive others to carry guns. Now, scientifically speaking, this hasn't been proven definitively, but there is enough evidence to at least say "if you do something, you are likely to get a result."
4. If you do not do something, you will not get the result: If you do not act in a trustworthy way, you will train yourself to not perceive trustworthiness. A lot of the studies I've seen are getting people to do things in order to get a result. I haven't seen many studies that talk about avoiding actions to train perception, so technically, the science isn't in on this one.

The Four Steps of Creating Karma: In the scriptures, this is called a "Path of Action" and these four steps describe the process we all go through before, during and after we undertake any action. Our mind is affected by the process

1. Deliberation: the first step to creating karma is thinking about what we want and how we want to go about acheiving our desire. Ways to make this step have a deeper impact on our mind and experience are practices like goal setting and value setting.
2. Premeditation: before we act on our goals, a number of practices we can use to increase the karmic consequences are planning, intention setting and visualization.
3. Action: When we actually act, this plants a seed not just for thoughts and feelings, but also perception. The false consensus effect gets a lot of its power here. This is also a big step for the results we get from engagement, flow, helping others etc. A lot of new age systems don't talk about this step directly, which is why those systems don't have statistically significant studies backing them up.
4. Reflection: after we act, the way we think about what we've done plays a significant role in the effect it has on our mind and perceptions. If we regret an action, we are less likely to do it again. If we rejoice in an action, we are more likely to do it again (classical conditioning). Journaling, gratitude journaling and finding more positive ways to process past traumas are three methods of reflection that show the efficacy of this step in improving a person's mind and perceptions.

You may wonder how something like gratitude journaling effects perception. I will get to it in more detail in the next section entitled "Karmic Perception."

The Four Powers to remove old bad karma:

1. recognize that we think and perceive things that we've trained ourselves to think and perceive.
2. Think about something in your life that you don't like through the lense of the first step, and regret that you've done things that are causing you to think about the situation in a certain way and perceive the situation in a certain way.
3. Decide not to do that thing for a reasonable amount of time (If your boss belittles you, resolve to stop belittling your children for an hour).
4. Do something to counteract the karma you're trying to get rid of (If your boss belittles you, praise your child for something). This way, you're not only hampering mental/perceptual habits, but you're encouraging new pathways to form.

Four Aspects of a Karma that make it affect our mind/perception more strongly:

1. Intention: Goal setting positively impacts goal achievement.
2. Object: This refers to an object having provided a lot of help for someone in the past. This has not been studied, (as far as I know). But a way to study it would be to have one group of people volunteer to help their parents and another group of people volunteer to help strangers (helping people has been shown to increase happiness) and see who has a greater benefit. This might be difficulty because people often have frustrated feelings toward their parents and things like regret and anger mitigate the postive effects of karma (obviously, because regretting and anger are both negative mental states).
3. Subject: The better a person understands the way their mind works, the better they are at getting the mental/perceptual results they want. I imagine this could be studied by testing the effect of a days meditation on a meditator vs. non-meditator... but there might already be research out there in terms of people learning new skills... like people who already have 3 languages find it easier to pick up a fourth or something like that... because they understand the process of learning language... people who understand how to change their mental/perception habits are gonna be better at it than people who don't
4. Repetition: The more we think something, the stronger result it creates for us mentally and perceptually. Obviously.