KARMYSTERY

The Interface of Karma & Chemistry in Relationships
By Peter Woodbury 

I have been a psychotherapist focusing on couple therapy for over twenty years. I have also been a student of Edgar Cayce for about as long. In addition, I have been conducting past life regressions for about ten years. These have all given me a richer understanding of what we call chemistry and karma. I have coined the term, Karmystery, to highlight the deeper connection between chemistry, what attracts us to someone, with karma, the unconscious soul memory that drives our attractions. In addition, we all have seen how the field of science has come into an overlay with religion and spirituality. I see a similar overlay with the field of psychology and the realm of metaphysics. I perceive a “karmic mathematics” that underlies our relational patterns. Once you can understand where a person has come from relationally, and what they are dealing with currently, it is a short step towards deciphering what the soul is seeking for its growth.

People who have near death experiences come back to life with a desire to love more. I have never heard of a near death experience where the individual comes to understand that they should work more or make more money. On our deepest soul levels, we are incarnate to work out our relationship issues. The key is and always has been, Oneness. Not twoness. Not threeness. Oneness. Cayce advised that we study oneness not for an hour, not for a day, not even for a month, but for at least 6 months! In his own life readings, his essential five lifetimes had all been about bringing oneness into manifestation on the earth. All is one. We are our brother’s keeper. We are, in fact, our brother and sister.

The opposite of a oneness mind is selfishness. Selfishness is rooted in the idea of separateness. Me and mine and you and yours. The earth and body consciousness foster the experience of separateness. Oneness is spiritual truth and spiritual law. Cayce said that when Jesus said, “Is not everyone here my mother and brother?” that he was demonstrating the Law of Oneness. And when a law is broken, consequences must be met.

Since the beginning of our involution into the earth, we have been meeting the consequences for our actions. Cayce said that essentially all sin is selfishness! As far as relationships go, when we act selfishly with another person/soul, we have created the necessity of that action needing to be corrected. It is my view that oftentimes a great healing soul is partly meeting their own selfishness. Cayce was clear that Jesus had not been perfect in his past lives in the earth. Cayce made it clear that he died on the cross not just for our selfishness, but also for his own. Jesus had been Joshua and Joshua killed many people. It is my view, and the view of others, that he healed as Jesus, the souls he had killed, oftentimes in the same locations, as Joshua.

We know that Cayce had two lifetimes as a ne’er-do-well named James Bainbridge. Bainbridge was psychic, like Cayce, but without the benefit of a guiding spiritual ideal. He used his psychic ability to become a riverboat gambler. Seeing everyone’s cards made gambling successful and easy. He also used his psychic ability to seduce many women. He was told that his consciousness fell in those lives from his selfishness. It was the direct cause of why he needed to go into trance/unconsciousness as Edgar Cayce to access his full psychic ability. Since he had misused it as Bainbridge, it was taken from his conscious control as a karmic consequence. As Jesus taught, “If your eye should cause you sin, best you remove the eye! “ In this case it was his psychic gift that had caused him to sin or act selfishly.

We all know of Mr. Cayce’s legacy of selflessness and of helping others. But it is my opinion that he was meeting his karma in his healing. I believe that many of the souls he healed as Edgar Cayce, were the same souls he had injured as James Bainbridge. It may be part of all great healer’s experience that they are meeting their own karma and going beyond it as well.

Let me now show you some examples of “karmic mathematics” and how it works. I will use the Cayce soul group as the example. Let’s look at the life of RaTa. We know that RaTa had instituted the practice of marital monogamy and that he eventually violated his own law. He was married and had an extra-marital relationship with a dancer and they had a daughter. The soul of Gertrude had been the dancer and Gladys Davis had been the daughter. The King of Egypt at that time had been in love with the dancer and addressed the problem by banishing RaTa and the dancer, and keeping their daughter, who eventually died of a broken heart. The King reincarnated as Hugh Lynn Cayce. We can see that this period was a karma factory! So looking at the Karmic math, let’s take a look at how it adds up. RaTa is reincarnated as Edgar Cayce. The dancer reincarnates as his wife. The lost daughter reincarnates as Gladys. And the King, once again, comes in as Hugh Lynn. Karmic math teaches us that someone with a temper problem is oftentimes reincarnated from a lifetime as a ruler. When you are a king, queen or despot, people hop to it when you make a demand. Your need for patience is low. Karmic law necessitates that you operate under the law of oneness, so you will need to experience less power so as to correct the selfishness. Poor little Hugh Lynn must have tried to banish his parents when upset as many young children do! But he had to learn to better work with anger and learn patience.

We reincarnate to face issues again with the hopes that we overcome the temptations and face down the challenges. RaTa had faced a temptation with the dancer and he succame to that temptation. In his life as Edgar Cayce, he had a strong temptation with his twin soul, Gladys. Sidney Kirkpatrick dedicated a fair amount of his biography of Edgar Cayce looking into the complexities of that relationship. There were readings given looking into the possibility of their consummating a relationship. But if he had consummated that relationship, he would have fallen to the same temptation he had as RaTa. It is my belief, and that of Mr. Kirkpatrick as well, that he overcame that temptation and corrected that error from his past. On the other side of this is the soul of Gertrude Cayce. She had been the dancer. She knew that RaTa was married with children and she knew of the law of monogamy that RaTa had instituted. So she also succame to a temptation and lacked empathy for how this would affect RaTa’s wife. So as Gertrude Cayce she had to bear witness every day to the sparks flying between her husband and Gladys. This was her karma. She needed to grow in compassion for RaTa’s wife by “walking a life in her shoes”. You can see from the photographic legacy of the family that this was a challenging walk for her.

Hugh Lynn’s twin soul was his mother, Gertrude. As the King in Egypt, he had allowed his passions for Gertrude to influence his better judgement. His banishment of RaTa and the dancer, and his holding their daughter hostage, was a selfish act that hurt many. It divided the country and the consciousness and wellbeing of the country fell. In his life as Hugh Lynn’ he had to learn to manage his passions. Earlier, I highlighted how he had to learn to manage his power and control issues and learn to work through these matters. In Hugh Lynn’s biography, About My Father’s Business, he honestly and openly talks about his passionate feelings for his mother. He speaks of how at his big school dances, he wanted to dance all night with his mother and not his date! Sigmund Freud would have a field day with that! But understanding karmic math, we can decipher the past life underpinnings of passions like this. Hugh Lynn and Gertrude had not always been son and mother. But we need to treat each other, as Jesus taught, as mothers and brothers. So just as Edgar Cayce was learning to manage his passions in regard to the much younger Gladys and treat her like a “daughter”, so was Hugh Lynn learning to manage his passions and treat Gertrude like a “mother”.

This is oftentimes why the karmic math of families is so intense. Complicated past life relationships end up in families. We have not always been family and we certainly have not always treated each other like family. But our soul purpose in the earth plane is to learn to treat each other like family, to treat each other selflessly. And as Cayce often referred to in his readings and I paraphrase: “If you do not see whom you worship in the least, you have not even begun your spiritual path!” It is my hope that by appreciating karma, “karmystery” and karmic math, that can begin to accept the challenges set before us as vitally purposeful and integral to our progression as souls returning to the consciousness of God, the consciousness of Oneness.

Peter Woodbury is just awesome. He will be teaching past life regression in October 2013. He will also be hosting an advice column in Venture Inward titled Karmystery: Understanding Karmic Math & Relationships. He looks forward to hearing from you in his column or feel free to email him at peter.woodbury@edgarcayce.org