....and people get what they deserve. Right? I need this whole karma thing explained to me. I understand it to a degree, but is it controlled by spirit guides or something else?
PHP: Cause and effect. Whatsoever a man soweth, that he shall also reap. For each action there is an equal and opposite reaction. There are a lot ways to describe karma, but it is essentially the belief that your present circumstances are the product of previous actions, and what you do today will affect what happens tomorrow. Karma is also associated with past lives -- each time you're reborn, the energies from your previous lives influence the conditions of your current life.
I think saying "you get what you deserve" is a harsh and judgmental way of thinking about it, but that's the general idea. The idea of karma has different nuances in different religions and philosophies. I see it as a cause-effect cycle with every thought or action having a natural consequence, either "good" or "bad." Of course, the terms "good" and "bad" immediately connote a judgment, and Buddhists say that as soon as you judge something to be "good" or "bad," you separate yourself from heaven. This ties in with the allegorical Hebrew story of the Garden of Eden, in which Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and were therefore exiled from paradise. When we say, "I prefer this," or "I don't like this," we create a duality between ourselves and the universe, instead of just accepting and being, which puts us in unity and harmony with the universe - and reduces karmic affects. Personally, the whole idea of karma pisses me off big-time. LOL Some people think of karma as mediated by God or spirits. Buddhists don't see any need to bring God into the picture, they see karma as a natural law of existence that needs no mediator. I can see it both ways. Simultaneously, even.
a bit of a different take..... what one gets, they get...what one does with that, determines the new opportunities presented ahead. Judgments are from assigned emotional values ....guess who does the assigning...and who can change them. The choices one makes will determine by the very nature of those choices what one gets to focus on in the near or immmediate future...guess that's a kind of karma. Empower you Self....and remember that miracles happen every day everywhere....some see them as natural...and as you allow yourself to believe so you set your own parameters on what you bring into your own world...for you are your own creator...and with each breath can and do create anew...either by reinforcement of existing programs or by Changing - and O what that can mean ! ! Take a deep breath and go deeper Grow on Enjoy ! Namaste (my spirit bows to your spirit)
So, Zengizmo, do you not believe in Karma or reincarnation? Old Wolf, so do you mean you're just born with certain things and it's just up to you, ultimately, how you deal with it? The reason why I brought this up is because there have been certain situations that have happened to me that were almost the complete and total mirror of what I'd done to someone else. It was like "okay you treated this person one way, now you'll be treated that way". Is that inaccurate or is it just circumstantial?
At some point on your journey in awareness you realise that people are unconcious and ruled by their ego and can't help behaving the way they do ... it's just the way it is for them ... the way they see the world. In waking up to this you will probably realise that you yourself have also been unconcious and ruled by ego to some degree and that you also couldn't help behaving the way you did. So you forgive others and yourself internaly and stop judgement, "Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone" slowly you step out of viewing the world in black and white, good and bad, right and wrong and slowly you step away from ideas of reward and punishment and you find internal peace with the words and actions of others (and yourself) ...slowly karma slips away quietly because you're not feeding it anymore, not believing in it anymore. Karma isn't worth believing in, and as for reincarnation, i've yet to see any proof but i keep an open mind, although i'm not gonna start believing in it just because loads of other people do or because it says so in a book. Experiencing Oneness ... the one life that lives in all, tends to make me understand that ultimately i have lived all lives anyway and 'could' ultimately recall any of them.
Mysterious Night, I believe in both karma and reincarnation of some sort... What I was trying to say with being pissed off is that I'm not much good at practicing the harmony with the universe thing. I AM however extremely good at getting pissed off. We need to go with our strengths, don't we??? But I also believe as LL states that we are what we are, and need to forgive ourselves and each other. I was explaining to my parents one time how, even though my stepdaughter Esther (not her real name) has done some really awful things and treated me like shit at times, it's really just a product of her bipolar condition - brain chemistry. The psychiatrist fixed her brain chemistry, and now she's like an angel. She just couldn't help being what she was. My mom said, "Well, I think we have a choice of how to behave. YOU choose to be decent." I said, "I choose to be decent because that's the way MY brain chemistry works. The longer I live the more I think that, really, NONE of us can help it." (For a really good novel illuminating this and other ideas, read Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut.) Now as to your mirroring thing - I have experienced this as well. Sometimes I experience being treated a certain way, I get pissed about it, and then I'm put in a situation where I realize that the best thing for everyone is for me to treat somebody else that same way. Ironic. And then I think, maybe it was best for me to be treated that way, too... I think this falls under the category of life lessons. In any particular life, we're here to learn particular lessons, which revolve around particular themes. These themes can involve us as the givers AND receivers of certain actions and treatments, to help us thoroughly experience and grasp all aspects of this theme. Is this karma? Maybe...I do think that the lessons we live in one life may be brought about to balance our experiences and actions in another life. Speaking of which, I think the word "balance" is the true crux of karma - it's all about balance. And gradually the see-sawing of a spirit eases up from one life to another until there's hardly any swaying at all, and then finally...no movement at all. Nirvana. End of karma.
Mysterious Night, sometimes we need to realize that what confronts us, just is...without trying to find out the whys and wherefores....we can get lost in our headspace and lose the Now. So often our own programs, most of which we took on unaware, determine how our individual reality unfolds. Kind of as you believe....
Mysterious...I'm not that great with words or explaining things, but if you look up karma on Wikipedia, it gives a really good explanation.....
The doing or not of something is really it's own karma. You are the being who lives with that deed and not many here believe that really ends your consideration of your actions here, do they? Reviewing your life story. Do people believe that's fiction? Hmmm. perhaps they do But sometimes the reviewing can be more painful that the deed itself (or any possible action on earth), may it not, in full(er) consciousness with no way to, to change, the, the outcome because now is not the deed, Now is outside Time. Do accidents happen? No, really, do they? each outlook produces a different set of follow on assumption about what karma is. If there are no accidents, then karma pervades all aspects of newtonian physical reality. However, if karma rides on top of the probabilities inherent in human free will, then , jazz happens and random events happen, punctuation happens. Black swans, happen. Which is what consciousness is, the rarest pearl of wisdom is doing the asking for it. Hmm. Karma. How does it all fit, artistically? Can some things just be terrible tragedies with no fault? (If you want to try to figure out reality to amuse yourself, it's perfectly fine to wildly speculate! ) I try to live the "in lifetime" karma model. Pay your debts early, and pay them often. On an equally serious note, Karma can be a great model. I can describe my relation to the universe in terms of karma going over my past. Or I can start to. And then, new patterns pop up that I hadn't seen, and are useful outside the model (<-the important part!). New ways of seeing relationships, relations. As to whether it actually exists, ask me after I have full remembrance of numerous previous lives to see the pattern. If you ask me if I think it exists I would have to say - "in some form", and even I am not totally sure what I mean by that other than 'not no'. namaste, moonchilde
Karma is the cosmic distribution of all your actions. Basically, for every "good" deed you do, a good deed will happen to you. Every "evil" thing you do will also manifest itself into your future. It is important to remember that right and wrong are just words, what matters is what you do. There is no reality except in action.
the way it was explained to me, is that karma's like this. If you're at the edge of a lake, and you reach down and strike the water's surface, and you will get wet...that is your karma. If you reach down and take a drink, you'll quench your thirst, that is also your karma. If you're careless and don't mind your path, you'll fall into the water, and that is your karma. If you find a beautiful woman and she seduces you, that is not karma, that is a lake I need to visit. seriously...our every action causes ripples, like ripples in water, and bounces, jostles and works for and against the waves of others. the waves cancel out some others, and reinforces some others. If you start your day poorly, and scowl at someone, they may scowl at another, and another, and eventually, that scowl will find its way back to you in some form or another, even in the most unexpected ways, because this is a closed system, like a lake. If you send out a wave, if it's strong enough, it'll return off the far shore. Do I believe in karma as some sort of cosmic payback? no. I believe in it more like gravity. You drop a book, it falls. The sun rises. The wind blows. These are natural things. If I'm careless with my words or actions, then emotionally, mentally, spiritually, it would be the same as if I were careless with a stone and dropped it on my foot. It's something that could have been prevented. People talk about bad luck, or bad karma as though it's something like going down a dark alley and being mugged. No. We make the choice to walk down that alley for whatever reason, and we deny that being robbed is a risk, just like we deny that things that we do affect other people, or that they come back to us in an impersonal matter.
I just want my life to be good and I want to do good. That make sense? I don't want any bad "karma" however interpreted.
MsyNight - It's not so much as "people get what they deserve" as it is that we all create a certain behavoir, treatment, attitude from others based on our own behavior. Hence, if you have given unconditionally at some point in your life, then you too will receive some unconditional giving from someone else. If you have been unfair to someone then someone will be unfair to you at some point. It's a very complex concept and needs much more explantion. But I felt compelled to give a very simple explanation of this when I read your post. If we treat others the way we want to be treated we are in essence creating our own future based on karmic laws. I'm sure you've heard the expression "What goes around Comes around", well this too comes from the same thought of karma. Hope this helps Funny but, I too asked that very question one time in my life. No accidents. Peace,
Life seems to be a series of spirals that touch on the same themes to greater or lesser extent whenever the spiral comes around the the same angle in the arc again, depending maybe on the extent to which we have absorbed the necessary lessons on prior visits to that vicinity. I'm still absorbing, and appreciate your thoughts on this.
So this phase of my personal message from the universe seems to be saying: Be the change you want to experience...
To put it simply, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That's all I believe "karma" to really be.
