A read­er wrote back with a very sim­ple yet pro­found request:

Please explain the statement:

Con­verse­ly, to the extent that you remain igno­rant of your true self (and there­by of your world too), to that same extent will your life be “fat­ed”; life will hap­pen to you and your free will equal­ly diminished.

I thought it would be use­ful to share my response:

This comes from the core teach­ing that we are all sub­ject to the law of cause and effects, known gen­er­al­ly as the Law of Kar­ma. When we are unaware or more igno­rant of our­selves and our world it will seem as if things “just hap­pen” to us, with no expla­na­tion as to where this good or bad expe­ri­ence came from. If we con­sid­er it at all we may just think of it as good or bad luck or believe in “gods” who play with us mor­tals by help­ing and hurt­ing us.

As we become more aware of our true nature and our cen­tral role in cre­at­ing the world around us we can take more respon­si­bil­i­ty for our life and the world that we cre­ate. Because the truth is: every thought we think, every feel­ing we feel, and every action that we take goes out from us AND ulti­mate­ly returns to us its author…As we become more aware of this we can begin to see that we have con­trol over what will hap­pen to us by begin­ning to exer­cise more self-con­trol. We can choose to con­trol our think­ing so as to reduce or min­i­mize fear­ful or bad thoughts, feel­ings and actions so that over time our lives will improve…as will the lives of those around us.

The good news is that you and I and all of us made the world as it is…and that means we can also change it!

If enough peo­ple begin to believe, think, feel and act in bet­ter ways then the con­di­tions for our world will dra­mat­i­cal­ly change for the better.

I have men­tioned this core ele­ment of the Ancient Teach­ings in ear­li­er post­ings, but it is always good to be remind­ed of it.