We know that we have negative or bad karma,
but most people don't know how to get rid of it, or know that they have
to work at it. One way of reducing the amount of negative karma
that we have is through our dharma, through service. Every
time that we help someone, we are also helping ourselves because we balance
a part of our karama through that act of service. Some examples of
balancing karma through service are: parents raising children, people
who teach, heal, and protect, people who do social work and volunteer work,
and people who pray a lot for others and for the world.
The best and fastest way of balancing karma is with God's help. How does God do it? Do we simply ask Him to do it and - poof, it's all gone? Hundreds of lifetimes and thousands of years of karma is instantly erased? No, it's not that easy, because while God can help us, we must do our part. We made the karma, and we must pay our karmic debts. We must "bear our own burden" (Galatians 6:5). To get rid of the great amount of karma that we have, we must discipline ourselves to do the work of balancing our karma.
What do we do, and how does God help us? One definition of God is that He's "a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29). Since God is a consuming fire, He can consume your karma with His fire, the fire of the Holy Spirit. God consumes it by changing it from negative to positive energy. Karma is energy. One definition of karma is that it is "energy/consciousness in action".* If karma is energy, bad karma is negative energy. If you can change the energy, you can get rid of the karma, because it there is no negative energy, there can be no negative karma. That's where God's help comes in. God's fire can transmute or change energy. It can consume karma, therefore, by changing the negative, human energy to positive, divine energy.
100% of your bad karma will return to you,
but not all 100% has to manifest as some kind of problem in your life,
or cause that much pain and suffering. Some karmic problems can be
totally prevented if all the karma that would have caused the problem is
balanced. For example, a person may not have an accident and be seriously
injured, or be a victim of violence, if the karma that would have caused
those things is completely balanced. We would be amazed if we knew
all of the bad things that did not happen to us because we balanced all
of the karma. Some karmic problems can't be totally prevented,
but they can be made much smaller. 100% of our negative karma returns
to us, but if we have balanced a lot of that karma, the percentage that
manifests as a karmic problem can be greatly reduced (ex., 25%, instead
of 100%). This, for example, may mean having a very minor, instead
of a major, health problem.
* The Human Aura, dictated to Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth
Clare Prophet by
Kuthumi and Djwal Kul, Summit University
Press, 1996, p. 391