As I grew up, I had a lot of anger over what I perceived as a massive lack of fairness in the world. From a deep level in my being, I needed there to be a cosmic system of accountability, where good people were recognized for their goodness, and bad people faced consequences (because it was obvious human law enforcement weren’t exactly doing the whole job, to say the least). My frustration whenever I saw bad people getting away with lots of awful things only intensified as I got older.
For me, this stemmed from my abusive childhood, and seeing my abusers get away with whatever they wanted because they were white, and had money, and bullied their way to powerful positions. In fact, everyone around me believed them and not me, so as far as I could tell, they continued on utterly without consequence for treating me terribly.
And then I began to learn about karma.
I find reading about karma, theories on karma, ideas on how it works, etc., to be profoundly soothing. I highly recommend this activity! My current understanding of karma is as follows:
This is a self-running system that balances forces in the universe. It is not controlled by a judgmental “god”. It polices itself without any need for interference. It pays attention to every thought, word, intention, and action you produce, and you accrue either good karma or bad karma accordingly. Bad karma cannot be escaped. It can take more than one lifetime—or hundreds, or thousands, etc.—to correct your balance and pay off all of your bad karma. This is why when we see bad people doing bad things, their consequences are not always noticeable. Have no fear—karma plays the long game.
The process works like this:
- We do bad stuff
- We experience bad stuff happening to us
- (If we experience our suffering with grace and a loving heart)… Freedom!
Did you notice that condition in there on step 3? It’s important. None of us are perfect. When we just started off living as a humans, during our very first lives, we were kind of a mess. We made lots of mistakes. Then we learned from them. Then we made more mistakes. It’s a process. Now, you’re facing the consequences of your earlier actions, made before this life started. (And you’re probably still making some mistakes. That’s okay!) But the key here, to the whole “life” thing, is to accept what’s given to us with humility, and a willingness to learn from it and do better somehow.
No matter what you may be going through, ideally you want to get through it without incurring more bad karma. If someone robs you, and you go around screaming at the people trying to help you at how unfair it is that you got robbed, you’re going to get bad karma even though you were technically the victim. Suffering is not a justification to act like a jerk.
Repeating that one again, because it’s a big one: Suffering is not a justification to act like a jerk.
We are always responsible for our actions. We are always living under the watchful eye of karma. Even if you think no one sees what you’re doing, trust me, karma sees. Imagine how different the world would be if everyone understood they’re going to be held accountable for everything they do, even the things they did without “getting caught”. Even the things they think were justified.
The only way to climb out of the karma debt you find yourself in is to make better choices. Listen to your conscience, your gut feelings about what the right thing to do is, and then do them. I’ve faced some horrific moments in my life. When I faced them with a mindset of “okay, this is a nightmare, but it’s temporary and if I just do my best, and try to do the right thing here”, I was always astonished at how things seemed to fall quickly into place. My pain eased faster. Solutions appeared quicker. Peace came sooner.
The universe doesn’t want us to suffer. It wants us to learn and do better. It will support you if this is your goal. You will literally feel the support, love, and guidance coming your way, even if you are alone in your efforts.
In that 3-step process outlined about, you want to be in step 2. If bad things are happening to you, it’s a good thing! It means you’re being given chances to pay off your karmic debt and move closer to step 3—freedom. Our freedom doesn’t come in this world. Freedom means you won’t need to incarnate here on Earth again. You get to progress on to somewhere else—somewhere suffering doesn’t exist.
Yes, I know it’s awful to be stuck in step 2. But resist the any urges to rebel against the pain in ways that will send you back to step 1.
This is an unpopular opinion, but I do believe that everything happens to us for a reason—even things like abuse. I believe we have a say in what our life will be like before it begins, and we plan the things we will face during it, and we agree to go through it with the intention of trying to grow from the experience. Everything we face is something we agreed to face. No one else forced it upon us. We just don’t remember the agreement right now (well, it would spoil the surprise, right?) I believe nothing happens TO us unfairly. Nothing. Every experience helps us balance our karma, and helps us to grow into stronger, wiser souls. Like I said, we have all made mistakes along the way in previous lives. And everyone (on the other side, at least, when we do not have an ego to protect, or experience fear) wants to balance their karma.
People who die young knew they were going to die young. They signed up for it in advance. People who go through unimaginable tragedy do not do so accidentally (read the books Journey of Souls, Destiny of Souls, and Memories of the Afterlife by Michael Newton, Ph.D. for details accounts of his patients undergoing hypnotic regression for stories to support this, including reports of the advanced souls who volunteered to experience the concentration camps during the Holocaust in order to assist the rest of the world in learning from what they endured).
Your tragedies are not unnoticed. They are not the product of a chaotic and cruel world. If you let them, they are your chance to break free of the cycle of life after life. Embrace them and be transformed.
It does bring me peace to know everything I’ve ever suffered was seen, that every time I tried to do the right thing no matter what, it was noticed and made a difference. When I look at the news, it gives me hope and peace of mind to understand that those who act with brazen cruelty can never, ever escape the consequences speeding their way, even if it takes them all of eternity to right their wrongs. Race, privilege, gender, money—karma doesn’t care. Karma doesn’t hear excuses. All karma understands is balance. It’s how everything in our world runs. When a pendulum swings wildly in one direction, it will always swing back.
So be brave, believe in yourself, and have faith in the intention and wisdom of our loving, conscious universe. Love and blessings, friends.
It’s difficult to come to terms with karma possibly being the reason an abuse victim suffered at the hands of another. On one hand, you know that they did nothing to bring about this situation and it’s a horrible act done upon them.
But on the other hand, if you believe in karma, then you may wonder if someone who puts money over other humans will be reincarnated as someone forced to live on the streets. Or someone who treats waitstaff poorly coming back as someone who can only find work as a waiter/waitress.
I guess the trick is to apply this thinking in a way that betters your life. You don’t necessarily need to dwell on what you did in your past life that got you here; it happened, you’re trying to work through it in this life. You can say to yourself: “Ok, so this bad thing happened to me, and it sucks and I suffered. But I survived. Maybe what I can do is seek out others and help them get through their troubled time, or at least get myself to a point where I can continue living my life and be a good person.”
I hear you. I really think it all depends on perspective (and I also think the ‘why did this happen to me’ is another karma challenge for us to see if we’ll cling to ego and hurt, or if we’ll do the work to move beyond that).
It’s important to always keep in mind that we will never know the context of the events of our life while we’re still living it. We’re basically opening the novel to page 700 out of 1000 and thinking how unfair all of the hero’s trials are at that stage, but we have no idea what preceded them earlier in the book. It’s impossible to say what’s fair or not without the entire story. Literally anything could have gotten us to where we are.
And it’s really beside the point anyway, because in the present moment, all we have control over is our own decisions and actions as we move forward. We control our intentions—if we’re going to accept our lot with humility, an open heart, and confidence in ourselves. If we choose instead to fight against what we imagine is unfair, we only accrue more bad karma and stay stuck in the same cycles. We repeat our lessons, no matter what they are, until they’re learned.
It’s very common to get stuck in a victim mindset (the woe is me thing), but people who use victim status as their excuse for bad behavior are responsible for some of the worst crimes in our world. We’re never responsible for the actions or feelings of abusive people, no matter who they are to us. The biggest revelation of my life was understanding that my abuser’s entire messy existence was all on them. Their choices created their consequences, trapping them in a cycle of their own. Being stuck in it—remaining stuck in it with them—was MY choice to make. Everything they tried to put on me was only reflections of their own pain. Of course we need to protect ourselves, but it’s also empowering to see that understanding/healing pain will always be more rewarding that spreading it.
One of the hardest things to do as a human being is to free oneself and heal oneself from abuse, seeing the abuser as a soul lost in pain rather than an enemy to be punished. But the biggest challenges can also have the biggest rewards. The ‘why’ is much less important than the ‘okay, what’s the safest, healthiest way forward from here’.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments! 🙂
I’m so glad I found your blog – thank you for sharing your wisdom. I’m having a difficult time with the idea of karma and the bringing of that into future lifetimes. So much of what you said makes sense and are things I also believe in but I struggle with believing that we are reincarnated with certain karma that we need to work through. I believe that there are life lessons we are meant to learn and that we are put on this earth by choice – but not that once we clear up all our karmic lessons that we then no longer have to come back to this earth and therefore go through more suffering. To me it implies that we are put on this earth as punishment rather than as an opportunity to make this world a better place by sharing our wisdom. I’m not as familiar with the research on karma so I’m just curious what set of beliefs these beliefs around being reincarnated in this lifetime to pay karmic debts before being released of having to be incarnated again is primarily based on – is it buddhism? I’d love to hear a bit more of your thoughts on this topic as I’m super curious.
Hi Mari,
It’s nice to meet you! Welcome! I really appreciate you taking the time to comment and share your thoughts/beliefs with karma. Karma as a concept is present in a bunch of religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Jainism. It kind of varies a little within each, but my understanding of it is mostly distilled from reports of people with near death experiences, those who have undergone hypnotic regression with a professional, or from those who channel higher spirits. (Who all weirdly agree with each other!)
I see it as very much a part of nature (like the way rock is gradually smoothed by water’s current), where we come to the school of Earth to work on smoothing out our little rough spots. I don’t see it as punishment, but a way to untangle a dark spot in our energy, so we can be happier, healthier, and to raise our vibration (thereby helping to make the universe a better place for everyone).
I’m a big fan of the work of Michael Newton, who founded the Newton Institute for Life Between Lives Hypnotherapy. There are some great books out by him, compiling the detailed results of what people from all walks of life, all over the world, have reported during hypnotherapy not just about past lives but what happens between them on the other side. There’s a mind-blowing level of agreement in what these people say happens.
We each get stuck in these repeating patterns, which karma helps us resolve by pushing us to make different choices. We can’t grow and empower ourselves without progressing through our karma. We do eventually move beyond incarnating in this world (which is widely referred to as one of the most challenging places to incarnate). We don’t actually know what comes after that point, though acting as guides and helping other souls through the process seems to be part of it. The gist is that we become closer to God/Source/Nirvana to become one with all that is.
I’ve read countless stories of how peaceful and joyous existence is on the other side (and have actually briefly experienced it myself in an out of body experience). That’s our norm. That’s our real home. Our default state when we’re not here in a body is bliss. We have no fear on the other side, and we’re invincible, immortal energy beings. We don’t punish ourselves with earthly lives—we challenge ourselves with temporary adventures with our loved ones that will make us stronger souls. We’re all trying to raise the quality of life here on Earth by coming together as souls whose driving force is love rather than fear and suffering. We can’t do that without learning from our mistakes first.
I hope that makes sense and helps you with your question! Sending good vibes your way!
Makes absolute sense. Thank you so much for taking the time to respond!