Greetings Reader -

In case you’re wondering, our nation’s capital has not been overtaken by violent gangs, bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, or drugged-out maniacs.

But parts of Washington D.C. have been overtaken by federally-appropriated police officers, FBI, DEA, and ICE agents, and members of the National Guard.

It’s another bogus emergency straight from the authoritarian wanna-be playbook.

And an example of the difference between executive power in the hands of someone who is dharmically unqualified to wield it and power in the hands of one who personifies dharma:

As opposed to

It boggles the mind to see people occupying positions of power despite being so conspicuously unqualified to do so. And a plethora of pundits have spilled gallons of ink trying to explain how our current situation, once unimaginable, should have been totally predictable.

Yoga wisdom offers a different explanation: karma.

Or, in this case, karma without dharma: destiny without qualification.

Which also boggles the mind: you would think that karma and dharma would go hand in hand.

Well, sometimes it does.

But not this time.

Here’s how karma and dharma can end up acting more like saltpeter and sulfur than sugar and spice:

Our dharma is the path we’re meant to travel or the work we’re meant to do, based on our inborn temperament, natural aptitudes, and instinctive inclinations.

Our karma is the path we’re going to travel or the work that we’re going to do, based on reactions to past actions calculated in accordance with an objective cosmic standard of measure.

Which means that just because someone is karmically destined to acquire wealth, power, and fame, it doesn’t mean they’ll also be karmically blessed with qualities like refinement, good judgement, and integrity.

And just because someone has bad taste, poor judgement, and a predilection for deception, it doesn’t mean they won’t acquire wealth, power, and fame. If that’s their destiny, you can count on another tacky McMansion littering the landscape.

Our karma and our qualities aren’t cosmically obligated to match. which is how we get someone who is better suited to be a low-brow pop culture entertainer than the leader of the free world sitting in the Oval Office.

The dharmic qualifications for someone to accept a position of executive leadership are courage, courtesy, fairness, and determination to do whatever it takes to protect people, especially the most vulnerable members of society.

Cowardice, crudeness, dishonesty, selfishness, scapegoating, and cruelty in the course of making inconvenient people disappear are, to put it mildly, dharmic disqualifications.

Our dharma points us toward the social position we’re best-suited for but our karma determines what position we actually attain. And when people attain positions positions of power for which they are karmically destined but dharmically disqualified, troublesome facts become fake news, election interference is called “election integrity,” and make-believe emergencies appear out of thin air.

What can we do about it? Insist on factuality. Call out deceptive language. Don’t just defend truthfulness: throw it in the face of purposeful lies.

The foundational principle of dharma is truthfulness. If we all think, speak, and act in alignment with truth, the other principles of moral excellence will surely follow, and make-believe emergencies will slither back into the thin air from which they came.

Wishing you all good fortune,

- Hari-k

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