Karma Is Dead, Long Live Karma!

Back around 2012, there was a big hullabaloo about the End of Karma. That all seems forgotten now, but it was a big deal at the time. What does that mean to say there’s no Karma? Well, first I’ll define Karma, for there’s lots of different views of it out there. In essence, Karma is the reincarnationist’s version of sin and blessings, a metaphysical system of credits and debits that you accumulate throughout your life, which then are cashed in, for happiness, or suffering, in your next life. The main difference between sin and karma is that with sin, you get one chance to get it right, then you are judged and sentenced for eternity, but karma gives you multiple chances.

Another difference is that, with sin, God or some god, is your judge, where with karma, either you judge yourself or it’s like a cosmic computer program where all your actions are fed in, and out spits a life, outfitted with the proper amount of suffering and reward for to your particular case. This is really just an outline, there are more variations than you can shake a stick at, but you get the idea: In both cases, of sin and karma, we are told to behave ourselves because of a cosmic system of rewards and punishments.

The main problems with both of these systems is that what is sin, what is “good” or “bad,” is highly dependent on where your are born, who raised you, what religion you belong to, and current events. You could easily say that sin has be so overused in our cutler that it’s become meaningless. Depending on who you talk to, drinking the wrong drink, wearing the wrong clothes, being born with the wrong genes, or even thinking the wrong thought, are grievous sins requiring eternal punishment. This makes it a bit difficult to know exactly what values are “good” across all cultures. Heck, the notion of what is a sin, varies hugely among Christians in the United States alone, how’s anybody supposed to know what to do? Especially when we’re not talking about one culture, in one time, but across all eternity.

Could we do without this whole system? The argument against is “What prevents atheists from stealing and murdering to their heart’s content?” When I hear this, I can’t help but wonder about how good and moral someone is, if the only thing that prevents them from committing all kinds of amoral acts is a threat of eternal punishment? And, since you don’t have to look don’t have to look any further than the daily newspaper to find any number of sinful acts, including mass murder, committed by professed Christians, it seems that the system doesn’t seem to work all that well. And, maybe the reason it doesn’t is that the entire thing was made up by people to control people. I suppose you could say they had good intensions, but things have gotten way out of hand, driven by those, on one side, who want loopholes to allow them to do what they want, and those on the other who want a rule for everything.

In the end, it all boils down to one rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If we all followed that, in our behavior and in our justice system, we’d definitely have a different world. And, the thing is, in the light of eternity, what else really matters? Many religious are convinced that following arbitrary rules makes the closer to God. That’s all well and good, until the rules are hateful, hurtful and result in emotional, financial and physical harm to others. You know that vigorous proponents of racial and economic segregation would be incensed at the idea that they couldn’t live where they want, work where they want, have their children go to the schools they want. Perhaps the best justice system would be to treat people as they treat others, and that, in my view, is how karma is supposed to work. If you discriminate, you will be discriminated against, if you steal, what you have will be stolen, if you rape, you will be raped (regardless of sex), if you abuse, you will be abused.

But I don’t think that is how the cosmic system works, it’s not a balance-the-scales, the-good-get-rewarded-and-the-bad-punished kind of thing. Kama is “dead” because karma never existed, and neither does sin. Both are human inventions. I find that reincarnation, as a way to gain experience in all aspects of being human, fits the world much better than other philosophies. It answers the question “Why does a good God allow so much suffering in the world?” with the answer that God has nothing to do with it, we create the world we want, with the result that we have to then live in it. Near death experiences and past life regressions both show that we are not judged, ever. We decide what kind of life we intend to have, not God or anyone or anything else. We even decide if we are going to incarnate at all.

Some souls choose to be the Hitlers, Stalins, religious zealots, abusers and mass murders of the world for their own reasons. Perhaps to create opportunities for suffering, for acts of heroism and self sacrifice. Perhaps to gain an understanding of what it’s like to be that kind of person. Who knows? But it only takes a short look at the world to see that we all live by our own moral codes, sin and karma not withstanding, so it’s best to clean up your own “karmic” house before you set out to judge and set rules for others to live by.

It just seems to me that the way to a peaceful life is to treat others as you want to be treated and to have compassion for those who don’t, and are victims of those who don’t. This makes things simple and avoids a lot of convoluted mental and moral juggling to aline your ideals with what is actually out in the world, and in your head. Take a moment to recognize how you really wish to be treated and put that out in the world every day. It will come back to you in ways small and large.

Watching Paint Dry

I expect this to be a short post. I’m going to kick around my ideas about free will, karma and fate.

I one of my MeetUps, the other day, the other person there said that once a true psychic predicts something, it’s preordained fact, it will happen and nothing can change it. He didn’t believe in free will at all, apparently. (He wouldn’t directly answer that question, but he sure implied it.)

I find that so sad, to believe that you are locked into a meaningless existence that you can’t change. (I could say a lot of things at this point, about people using karma, fate or psychic predictions as way to avoid responsibility for their actions and as an excuse to not lift a finger to change anything, but that’s not the point. At least I don’t think it is.)

Let’s take karma. Call it what you will: “What goes around, comes around,” or “What you do unto others will be done unto you:” Who and what you are today is the result of what you did in the past. The classic version of karma says that you work your way up from low life forms, (bugs) to higher, (humans) and then you work your way up the social classes, through good deeds and spiritual enlightenment. But poor choices will put you in a worse condition next time around. My biggest problem with this is it’s only a short step from “You get what you deserve,” to “I’m well off, so I must deserve it, and he’s poor or lame, he must deserve it also, so there’s no reason to have compassion for the less fortunate, it’s their own fault. Ouch! There are other tweaks to the idea of karma, but I don’t buy any of them for they all have suffer from the same problem of saying that your lot in life is, in one way or another preordained. You realize that this idea comes from a culture with a ridged cast system, you can see why this belief would be popular among the upper casts to give justification for the subjection of the lower.

The concept of Fate makes me equally uncomfortable. Here, your life is planned out and you’re just along for the ride. You don’t get to make any choices, because, no matter what you do, everything will come out the same. In other words, no free will at all, just a illusion of free will. To me that says that nothing you do matters: You don’t deserve any credit for any success or blame for failures. It’s all just a video game where, no matter how you play, you always end up in the castle, marrying the princess, like it or not. One thing that fate never makes clear, is who or what decides you fate in the first place? Who writes the script that you are living out and how is it done?

So, with fate, you are just a robot, playing out a script, but with karma, your actions can actually have some meaning, but only in another life. They both seem born out of static societies and designed to keep them that way by telling all the classes the things are supposed to be the way they are, do don’t rock the boat.

What I do believe in? Well, I believe that we come into this life with certain goals, talents and challenges, that we chose for ourselves. What we do with those is up to us. All that I’ve read, heard from my clients, and from fellow practitioners, tells me that the biggest problems we have in life, tend to come from not working towards our goals. It’s not because we don’t achieve them, it’s because we’re not working on them. That’s an important distinction. If, when all is said and done, we don’t achieve our goals, there is no punishment involved. it can mean the we choose to take the lesson over again, perhaps tweaking the parameters a bit to have a better chance of success. Or because we did partially get it, so that part of the lesson needs to be changed.

Repeating the same lesson until we get it can look like karma. But it’s neither punishment or reward, and more like retaking a class you didn’t do well in. And it’s important to remember that our human values of wealth, social class and the importance of being human verses a cat or a dog, are completely meaningless outside of this existence. Your station in life really has nothing to do with your “past performance,” because you can chose anything you want, when you’re planning your life from the other side. It’s all Monopoly money. Beautiful, ugly, plain, healthy, sick, weak strong, smart, dim, all the same. It’s like playing D&D, you pick your characters’ attributes and play the game. When the character dies, you pick another set and go at it again. Most of us have lived so many lifetimes that it all blurs together, all the matters is the experience and the wisdom gained.

Which brings us back to free will. Without the ability to make meaningful choices, we have no reason to exist, we are no more than little robots running our programs. I believe that it’s up to us to make the meaningful choices to discover and honor purpose, overcoming our challenges in the process. I find that is the only way to achieve true peace and a sense of accomplishment. I found this especially difficult because it really seems that I wondered quite far from my path, and it’s taking some wrenching changes to get my self heading in the right direction.

That sounds quite different than how it actually went down. What happened was that I was waking up, bit by bit, and making changes on the inside. Over time, I noticed that parts of my life didn’t fit any more, like outgrowing your clothes, I eventually found it impossible to continue on doing the same things, on the outside. I ignored it as long as it could, but I reached a point where I could no longer adjust, and I had to break the old paradigm, resulting in those wrenching transitions I mentioned. Transitions that I’m still weathering. It’s easy to look back and see how necessary certain trial were and how getting through them seemed the inevitable result of your efforts, but it sure doesn’t look that way when you’re in the middle of the mud, up to your neck in alligators and swim’n for the shore.

I sure wish I had a magic marker that would tell me I’m on the right path, but I don’t. as strange as my life seems at times, I’m getting that it’s only going to only get weirder, in ways that I’m not comfortable speculating about in public just yet. The possibilities are exciting, but I’ve noticed that every jellybean comes with some broccoli. To put that another way, every opportunity and insight comes with a price: responsibilities and obligations. I’m seeing now that no responsibilities means little freedom to do and be what you want. Take on more responsibilities and you get more freedom. I’m speaking in general here, because simple taking on obligations can easily tie you up rather than give you freedom. True freedom requires some personal responsibility, and taking on some obligations, and, if you don’t you soon lose that freedom. One way or another.

I want my freedom, but I’m still balking and squirming at the accompanying responsibilities. My insight for today could be that I’ve spent most of my adult life avoiding responsibility. I wanted the perks but not the obligations of being in charge of my life, and that painted me into the corner that I’m trying to get myself out of today. I wonder if the paint is dry yet?