Karma, the Five Bodies, and What Rock Art Taught Me Today (part two)

 

Standing in Sego Canyon today, looking at these ancient pictographs that once inspired me back in art school, something clicked. Some people like to describe these figures as “aliens,” but what if they’re early depictions of the energetic body — the subtle forms that ancient people sensed, felt, and lived with every day? When you see them in person, that possibility feels real. It’s like staring at an imprint of internal experience painted on stone.

That reflection tied directly back to what I’ve been learning about karma.

One of the most powerful lessons I’ve taken from Sadhguru is that karma doesn’t disappear through escape, not even through suicide. Ending this life only carries your unresolved patterns forward, with even more weight. In other words, the pain we avoid becomes the debt we carry. That understanding alone is a massive incentive to stay, to endure, and to grow.

I’ve felt that in my own life this year.
People have yelled at me more than they have in decades, and at times, I have resisted the lessons beneath it. I feared change. I feared losing parts of myself I had grown attached to. And when people sensed that fear, some tried to take control or twist the dynamic, especially when I stepped into the role of “teacher.”

But I now see that as karma, too.
When someone glimpses a path that could change them, and they’re not ready, they often retreat deeper into their own maze. They choose the comfort of familiar suffering instead of the vulnerability of transformation. That’s the “bartering” of karma: trading future freedom for present safety.

I’ve done it.
I’ve watched others do it.
And it’s always sad, because the maze only grows thicker.

Distractions as Karma Avoidance

Another trap: distractions.
Football games, Super Bowls, politics, endless entertainment, even worthwhile things, become escape routes when they pull us away from the deeper work. Nothing wrong with them by themselves, but if they become a substitute for introspection, then they feed karma instead of dissolving it.

Tai Chi showed me this clearly.
Once I stepped into real internal practice, I realized how many things I had used to avoid my own evolution.

Practicing Tai Chi in Sacred Places

One thing I’ve committed to is practicing Tai Chi in sacred places.
It feels like a way of accelerating the shedding of karma, like sweeping my past patterns out into the open air, allowing them to burn away under the sky and on the stone. Today, moving under the canyon walls, those pictographs watching over me, I felt a kind of alignment inside that I haven’t felt in years.

I felt unconstricted.
And that’s rare, society squeezes people into certain shapes, certain behaviors, certain expectations. I’ve long believed that this compression is one reason our country struggles with obesity: we lose our natural connection to the body. We store fear of our true selves as weight. We let norms dictate posture, breath, movement, appetite, everything.

But Sadhguru talks about something deeper, something I’m just starting to explore.

The Five Bodies: A Map for Karma and Growth

According to Sadhguru, each person has five bodies:

1. Physical Body (Annamaya Kosha)
   The flesh-and-blood shell, shaped by food, habit, movement, and environment.

2. Energy Body (Pranamaya Kosha)
   This is the field Tai Chi directly works with breath, flow, vitality, circulation, Jing/Qi.

3. Mental Body (Manomaya Kosha)
   Thoughts, memories, interpretations, a major container of karma.

4. Intellect / Discriminatory Body (Vijnanamaya Kosha)
   The part that can discern truth from illusion, the tool that cuts through the maze.

5. Bliss Body (Anandamaya Kosha)
   The quiet, inner core untouched by karma, the destination of all spiritual work.

When these bodies fall out of harmony, life becomes heavier.
When they align, transformation begins.

Tai Chi, practiced deeply and sincerely, works on all five.
And I think that’s why I felt the pull to practice here, because places like Sego Canyon remind me that humans have always known the depth of the inner world. They carved and painted what they sensed. They documented the invisible.

Seeing these pictographs today, truly seeing them, made me realize that what I’m working through isn’t new. People thousands of years ago were wrestling with the same internal bodies, the same energetic movements, the same karmic patterns.

Change is hard.
Growth is uncomfortable.
Karma demands participation.

But standing there today under the canyon walls, feeling the wind move through the gap where ancient hands once painted their inner world onto stone, I felt something like gratitude.

This trip is shedding something.
A layer, a weight, a pattern,  and more importantly, I see a way out of the maze instead of deeper into it.