Namaste and welcome back to davesyndrom.
What comes to your mind if you think about karma? Does the sentence “This is good or bad for your karma, do good so good will come to you, I hope that karma will hit you”, sound familiar to you?
Karma is actually nothing more than: good or bad luck, viewed as resulting from one’s actions. What goes around comes around.
Growing up as a Buddhist, karma was taught to me as a child: don’t do bad things in your life, or else in your next life you’ll suffer from disabilities, experience bad luck, and things like that.
Still, I don’t consider myself as a religious person. That doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in something. I truly believe that there is a higher power and a deeper meaning in life, but just not in the expression of God.
I believe that religion and believing in something is very important to the human being; it gives one hope and energy. Also a lot of teachings in various religions, do make a lot of sense and are easy to implement in daily life.
In my younger ages I thought that after i got hurt or something bad happened to me by another person, that karma would do its thing and give the other person a lesson, mostly in a harmful way: “I hope karma will hit you and that something bad happens to you.” I’m aware that that’s not a teaching by Buddha or something else, that was just thoughts from a little Dave; I had a lot to learn.
But I’m sure that there are adults, grown people, who still think that way.
One day, I came to the conclusion that karma was nothing more than a coping mechanism for my emotions and experiences with another person. So I could close a chapter and move on, by talking to myself and hoping that a higher power, like karma, would do its thing. That’s not a good way to manage difficult experiences, because I wouldn’t really close a chapter in peace. Instead, I felt anger in me. Closing a chapter in anger is mostly bad because they can be stuck in your subconscious until one day they come back to you and doesn’t bring peace at all – use your energy wiser.
And on the other hand, karma says that by doing good, it would bring one good luck in life in return, which isn’t true as well; it’s most likely ignorant and egoistic to think that way. Doing good actions so you get something in return is not the right mindset, in my opinion, because you may subconsciously expect that you will get something good in return, so your actions aren’t pure because you expect something in return.
Also, you could be the nicest person, the friendliest person, but still get hit by traumatic events every day that make you feel miserable; that’s what we call fate and this cannot be influenced by karma.
There are people, I believe, who do really bad things but will never experience any kind of consequences for their bad actions.
If you do good without any expectations, you have pure intentions; you don’t want anything in return; you just want to be there and help where you can. That’s better than expecting a better life or good luck in return for that. Karma has nothing to do with the law of attraction. If you do good, good will come to you in different ways; it’s because you understand, you understand the deeper things in life, you are grateful, and by thinking so, your brain, soul, and thoughts begin to change, and so does your view on life.
“The way we experience the world around us is a direct reflection of the world within us.”
You are aware that bad things happen, but you don’t let them ruin you anymore. You are aware that you could get harmed by other people without relying on karma for revenge, to close a chapter, or using karma as a coping mechanism.
You’ve learned to choose peace and balance in your life.
Cheers.