Openhearted Rebel has become Karma Yoga Daily. In this article, I explain why I made this change and why I think karma yoga is important for our world today.
“I believe in Karma. If the good is sown, the good is collected. When positive things are made, that returns well.” – Yannick Noah (source)
Karma yoga has little to do with yoga but everything to do with karma. It is a lifestyle predicated on service to others as the purpose of an individual’s life. If you take up this path, then you dedicate your life to helping people as much as possible.
This simple ideology can be instrumental in changing the world. It brings about positive change on a personal level, and if more people follow it, then more will be kinder. More will have empathy. More will engage in openhearted activism, sacrificing their comfort to help those who’ve never been comfortable.
Because of all this, I’m dedicating my corner of the internet to karma yoga.
For me, the Openhearted Rebel blog has served its purpose. The original intention behind it will remain with Karma Yoga Daily. The idea was/is to support a revolution of love – a global change of values that brings us away from hate and self-centeredness into love and empathy. I still believe this is possible, but I’d like to shift my attention from creating it to living it.
One reason karma yoga fascinates me is that despite its religious roots, you don’t have to be religious or spiritual to practice it. If you dedicate yourself to this path, you live for others. That’s all. You don’t have to pray, praise God, or meditate. It’s a simple path with as much or as little spirituality attached as you desire.
I see karma yoga as the foundation on which I can build a better life. It will help me to be kinder, more empathetic, and more willing to help others. I’m aware that you shouldn’t need a belief system to be a good person, but if it works, then I see nothing wrong with it.
I find it perfectly acceptable to look to science for answers and spirituality for lessons on how we can create the best possible world while we’re here.
Karma yoga’s central message is to spend your life doing good work humbly for the benefit of others. This will be the theme running through many of the posts on this blog, and my intention is simply to help. I hope you get something positive out of it.
“Give up your selfishness, and you shall find peace; like water mingling with water, you shall merge in absorption.”- Sri Guru Granth Sahib (source)
“Although a man has not studied a single system of philosophy, although he does not believe in any God, and never has believed, although he has not prayed even once in his whole life, if the simple power of good actions has brought him to that state where he is ready to give up his life and all else for others, he has arrived at the same point to which the religious man will come through his prayers and the philosopher through his knowledge; and so you may find that the philosopher, the worker, and the devotee, all meet at one point, that one point being self-abnegation.” ― Swami Vivekananda (source)
By Wes Annac, Karma Yoga Daily, June 16, 2018 – httpss://tinyurl.com/ybhevrxf