Karma

If Karma is a reality I have not reached nirvana! I am still experiencing the life cycle of samsara because I have not escaped the trappings of everyday suffering at the hands of earthly desires.  The question is which lifetime am I in right now?  My first, second, third, possibly tenth?  Either way I wonder how my previous life or lives where?  The fact that I have not brought an end to the cycle is an indication that I have not achieved enlightenment.  How did Siddhartha Gautama discipline himself to denounce worldly pleasures in pursuit of joy and peace?  Adopting the life of an ascetic is far fetched in my frame of thinking.  However, I can see how accepting the life of a cleric or monk can be a possible alternative of staying in the cycle of longings and cravings of the earthly realm.  Monasticism seems so restrictive but we constantly live in the prison of wants and desires.  The warden of this personal prison is our conscious and the mental shackles of entitlement. 
Maybe the Buddha was right after all!  True joy and peace are attainable once one finds true enlightenment, I guess.  Maybe the enlightenment is coming to grips with the fact that you will never satisfy the insatiable appetite for success, power, material wealth, and superficial love.  Perhaps the Apostle Paul spoke of this same peace and joy in the Pauline Letters, found in the New Testament of the Bible, where he writes that he has found contentment no matter whatever state he finds himself in.  I am wrestling with the idea that contentment can be a nemesis to ambition.  I wonder is ambition connected to the pursuit of worldly desires?  Does one who seeks nirvana lose any ambition or do they just shift it to the pursuit of enlightenment?  So many questions and no clear answers!  I guess that's why becoming an ascetic becomes a lifetime commitment.
 Deepak Chopra writes in his book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success that there are three things an individual can do about past karma.  "One is to pay your karmic debts...The second thing you can do is transmute or transform your karma to a more desirable experience...The third way to deal with karma is to transcend it." (Chopra, 45-48)  He recommends that an individual become a conscious choice maker by seeking to learn from the moments one is repaying "karmic debts." By doing that one is able to make better choices later and transcend pass the effects of karma and carryout actions that positively affect self and others.  I will try Chopra's advice over becoming an ascetic and pursuing monasticism.  Responsibilities and my current state (mentally, spiritually, economically, physically) will not allow for the latter.  Let's see where applying the law of karma gets me.