We begin with Galaxian’s comment on “Jeanette:”
Schizophrenia is not a karmic matter. It is an organic disease just as much as cancer is. I don’t see how anything someone did in a previous life, or early in their current life, would bring this horrible thing on them. Anybody can develop this condition at any time, although it usually starts in young adulthood.
I gather we are both familiar with this disease.
It’s a mistake to condemn a person on the basis of his or her lot, and also can be highly misleading to say she or he “deserves” it.
Karma is generally thought of as cosmic justice — payback — “What goes around comes around.” That may not be the best way to think of it. It may be better to think of karma as the results of a person’s actions.
One’s genetic endowment is substantially karmic: tendencies that were merely spiritual in one life may become organic in the next. How one deals with these traits in the present life affects both one’s happiness in the present life, and the route those traits will take in the future.
For example, here is the fascinating story of a man who discovered he has the genetic endowment of a psychopath. He is diligently seeking to learn to care about others. He actually believes it can’t be done, but others tell him he’s doing it.
My genetic endowment includes type II diabetes, genetically-based depression, and adult-onset alcoholism. These come down from my mother’s mother’s line. Diabetes reflects certain habits in the processing of the life force; if so many of my family members have it, then we all have those same habits. I also have delayed sleep phase syndrome, an abnormality that can wreak havoc with one’s ability to function in society. I have no idea where this comes from.
In Twelve Steps parlance, a “defect of character” refers not to a single act, but to a pattern of behavior, any pattern of behavior that consistently creates problems for oneself or one’s community. These can take years of sustained effort to overcome.
I have posted before about the role my own karma plays in how I became homeless. Notable is the obsession with questions of injustice and abuses of power. My responses to recent events at McDonald’s and the shelter reflect an effort to live, learn and teach a different kind of response to injustice.
Part of me often asks God to let me see sure evidence of cosmic justice, so that it may no longer be a matter of sheer belief. Another part of me knows I actually don’t want to see it, as every incident of karmic “cleansing” appears as an instance of new evil.
If someone slaps my face, it is impossible to tell whether this is a new event of evil against me, or instead “payback” for something I did in a previous life. My task either way is to make peace with the new situation. If I retaliate, I will merely perpetuate the bad karma between us; which will bind both souls to events of abuse in the earth plane forever, until one person forgives and repents.
I have posted about people who devote their lives to destruction. In terms of justice, I want to believe they are reborn into circumstances that provide every occasion to learn better ways. However, that’s not what I see. They are born instead into circumstances most likely to recreate the same patterns as got them there in the first place. A child-battering parent will come back as a battered child, likely to grow up taking child battery for the norm.
It’s easiest to believe Jamarion Lawhorn never had a chance.
I will never know peace until I accept the fact that the world is as it is.
This is a hard teaching:
One is born into circumstances substantially of one’s own creation.
One’s karma does not mean one’s destiny is carved in stone. The application of free will potentially alters my karma — and destiny — constantly, from moment to moment.
John 9:1-3:
1As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
The disciples speculate that the man himself may have done something prior to this life that resulted, in this life, in his being blind at birth. Jesus corrects their seeking whom to blame, calling them to attend instead to the opportunities to do good here and now.
Each of us, at every moment, can be an instrument of healing, joy and light. This is our God-given work.
Related: The healing powers of a drug store cashier Related: I really have nothing better to do
Reblogged 2020-05-14.
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