A STUDY IN KARMA/PART 23

 

OUR ENVIRONMENT

                The nation and the family into which a man is born give him the field suitable for the development of faculties he needs, or for the exercise of faculties he has gained, which are required for the helping of others at that place and time. Sometimes a strenuous life passed in the company of superiors, which has stimulated latent powers and quickened the growth of germinal faculties, is followed by one of ease amid ordinary people, in order to test the reality of the strength acquired and the solidity of the apparent conquest over self. Sometimes, when an ego has definitely gained certain mental faculties and has secured them as part of his mental equipment by sufficient practice, he will be born into surroundings where these are useless, and confronted by tasks of a most uncongenial nature. A man ignorant of karma will fret and fume, will perform grudgingly his distasteful duties, and will think regretfully of his “wasted talents, while that fool Jones is in a place which he is not fit to fill”; he does not realise that Jones has to learn a lesson which he himself has already mastered, and that he himself would not be evolving further by repeating over again that which he has already done. In a similar situation, the knower of karma will quietly study his surroundings, will realise that he would gain nothing by doing that which it would be easy for him to do – i.e., that which he has already done well in the past – and will address himself contentedly to the uncongenial work, seeking to understand what it has to teach him, and resolutely settling himself to learn the new lesson.