Karma
The intent of this short essay is to explain my advanced ideas in understanding karma. For my purposes I use the word karma to mean the westernized version where the intent behind actions leads to spiritual consequences that thereby affect reality in order to teach something. The purpose of karma is as an impersonal teaching mechanism in reality for thinking beings.
And right off the bat this theory of things has progressed to the point where it seems to prescribe certain actions and behaviors, but karma is not so simple as to make people “good”. One fact that is highly influential as to the mechanism of operation of karma is that there is no solid Truth for which to base any concrete and ubiquitous philosophy which will apply to all people in all cases. You may think you know what the Truth is but advanced psychology has taught us that in order for a human being to have a thought about something they have first to have the intellectual scaffolding to understand the concept AND to have a direct experience of said thing. So, in order to even ask the question of what the Truth of all things is first a person has to be aware that there is some need for a spiritual prescription of how to behave and they have to have an experience which confirms such a concept. An example of this would be of a child who has been told about the consequences of their actions and then finds that the consequences to their actions are unpleasant. Such a scenario may cause the child to look for something beyond their physical drives and passions to guide them to behave in ways that don’t have those unpleasant consequences. Likely the first “Truth” will come in the form of what the parents tell them is the way of doing things. Later, maturity will tell them that their parents are not always right and look to higher forms of authority until they realize that nothing on Earth can tell them how to live well or right enough to always avoid unpleasant consequences. I believe most everyone progresses to at least this point for I do agree with the Buddhists that simply put, “life is suffering,” more or less. But once a person reaches this level of maturity the experiences in order for them to formulate more advanced ideas on what the ultimate Truth is and how they should live their life are much more subtle and harder to come by. These experiences require both an interest and the ability to suspend belief. These experiences are spiritual experiences; sometimes referred to as miracles, visions, out-of-body experiences, and the like. So what I’m saying is that karma isn’t exactly prescriptive in just the way it is typically thought of as because there is no absolute Truth that applies to every person equally in all situations.
Since the spiritual experiences we have are personally unique to our lives and our situations Truth varies from person to person. But that doesn’t mean it varies greatly. For our lives, our reality, is based in a physical world that for all intents and purposes is the same for all of us. It is the realities in our minds which differ. So while our observations of the world are basically the same our interpretations of the world will usually be slightly to widely different. Many factors go into the differences of our interpretations but it isn’t the differences that most people consider. Most people seem to consider their Truth to be everyone’s ultimate Truth and everyone else is in some way differing from them. This isn’t to say that this is wrong, it is merely to beg the question that if our Truths are different then how are we all treated equally and fairly by a spiritual karma system?
I believe that is where karma begins for us. We have a sort of set of rules (changing rules I should add) that we base off of our personal Truth of reality. This personal Truth of reality is informed by our experiences and is important for us to know what kind of person we are in society based on how we perceive the things we do. In as such, karma uses our Truth as the standard by which we hold ourselves to and then measures that compared to the intent behind our actions. Therefore, it is the difference or distance between the intent of our actions and our personal Truth which causes us to have or eliminate karma. Karma being a kind of auto balance to keep us in tune with who we ourselves want us to be. It is my theory that since most people seem to get along in the world being polite and conscientious to those around them with fewer unpleasant consequences that generally speaking people within a specific society tend to have the same sort of Truth so in a sense karma works towards the same ends of groups of people together. But it’s another story altogether when it comes to that karma affecting the world and reality for an individual to realign them with their own Truth.
For instance, two people may have exactly the same idea on how to raise their children. But one of persons grew up in impoverished conditions and another grew up having financial resources. Imagine that both of the two people make precisely the same mistake and gain some karma for that. The karma will necessarily come back differently for the two people because loss of money, being chastised, and almost any conceivable scenario will affect the two people differently simply because they grew up in such different circumstances and will interpret and react differently to the situations. And this isn’t to say that when a person goes away from their Truth that the karma necessarily needs to come back to them in a negative or unpleasant way. It doesn’t really matter how far a person may stray from their Truth, if they make amends enough to appease themselves in their reality and go back to behaving and acting with intent in accordance to their Truth then karma has done its job.
I believe this is enough for now, rather than preaching on in my own direction I’d prefer an essay like this to be a starting point to start a dialog in order to “hash out” the differences and similarities of personal opinions. However, true to form, my Truth is personal and too is highly mature at this point because I have invested a great deal of my attention and spare time working these things out. There’s a nearly zero percent chance that your ideas will be as developed or informed (via spiritual and mundane experiences) as mine are. ;)
The intent of this short essay is to explain my advanced ideas in understanding karma. For my purposes I use the word karma to mean the westernized version where the intent behind actions leads to spiritual consequences that thereby affect reality in order to teach something. The purpose of karma is as an impersonal teaching mechanism in reality for thinking beings.
And right off the bat this theory of things has progressed to the point where it seems to prescribe certain actions and behaviors, but karma is not so simple as to make people “good”. One fact that is highly influential as to the mechanism of operation of karma is that there is no solid Truth for which to base any concrete and ubiquitous philosophy which will apply to all people in all cases. You may think you know what the Truth is but advanced psychology has taught us that in order for a human being to have a thought about something they have first to have the intellectual scaffolding to understand the concept AND to have a direct experience of said thing. So, in order to even ask the question of what the Truth of all things is first a person has to be aware that there is some need for a spiritual prescription of how to behave and they have to have an experience which confirms such a concept. An example of this would be of a child who has been told about the consequences of their actions and then finds that the consequences to their actions are unpleasant. Such a scenario may cause the child to look for something beyond their physical drives and passions to guide them to behave in ways that don’t have those unpleasant consequences. Likely the first “Truth” will come in the form of what the parents tell them is the way of doing things. Later, maturity will tell them that their parents are not always right and look to higher forms of authority until they realize that nothing on Earth can tell them how to live well or right enough to always avoid unpleasant consequences. I believe most everyone progresses to at least this point for I do agree with the Buddhists that simply put, “life is suffering,” more or less. But once a person reaches this level of maturity the experiences in order for them to formulate more advanced ideas on what the ultimate Truth is and how they should live their life are much more subtle and harder to come by. These experiences require both an interest and the ability to suspend belief. These experiences are spiritual experiences; sometimes referred to as miracles, visions, out-of-body experiences, and the like. So what I’m saying is that karma isn’t exactly prescriptive in just the way it is typically thought of as because there is no absolute Truth that applies to every person equally in all situations.
Since the spiritual experiences we have are personally unique to our lives and our situations Truth varies from person to person. But that doesn’t mean it varies greatly. For our lives, our reality, is based in a physical world that for all intents and purposes is the same for all of us. It is the realities in our minds which differ. So while our observations of the world are basically the same our interpretations of the world will usually be slightly to widely different. Many factors go into the differences of our interpretations but it isn’t the differences that most people consider. Most people seem to consider their Truth to be everyone’s ultimate Truth and everyone else is in some way differing from them. This isn’t to say that this is wrong, it is merely to beg the question that if our Truths are different then how are we all treated equally and fairly by a spiritual karma system?
I believe that is where karma begins for us. We have a sort of set of rules (changing rules I should add) that we base off of our personal Truth of reality. This personal Truth of reality is informed by our experiences and is important for us to know what kind of person we are in society based on how we perceive the things we do. In as such, karma uses our Truth as the standard by which we hold ourselves to and then measures that compared to the intent behind our actions. Therefore, it is the difference or distance between the intent of our actions and our personal Truth which causes us to have or eliminate karma. Karma being a kind of auto balance to keep us in tune with who we ourselves want us to be. It is my theory that since most people seem to get along in the world being polite and conscientious to those around them with fewer unpleasant consequences that generally speaking people within a specific society tend to have the same sort of Truth so in a sense karma works towards the same ends of groups of people together. But it’s another story altogether when it comes to that karma affecting the world and reality for an individual to realign them with their own Truth.
For instance, two people may have exactly the same idea on how to raise their children. But one of persons grew up in impoverished conditions and another grew up having financial resources. Imagine that both of the two people make precisely the same mistake and gain some karma for that. The karma will necessarily come back differently for the two people because loss of money, being chastised, and almost any conceivable scenario will affect the two people differently simply because they grew up in such different circumstances and will interpret and react differently to the situations. And this isn’t to say that when a person goes away from their Truth that the karma necessarily needs to come back to them in a negative or unpleasant way. It doesn’t really matter how far a person may stray from their Truth, if they make amends enough to appease themselves in their reality and go back to behaving and acting with intent in accordance to their Truth then karma has done its job.
I believe this is enough for now, rather than preaching on in my own direction I’d prefer an essay like this to be a starting point to start a dialog in order to “hash out” the differences and similarities of personal opinions. However, true to form, my Truth is personal and too is highly mature at this point because I have invested a great deal of my attention and spare time working these things out. There’s a nearly zero percent chance that your ideas will be as developed or informed (via spiritual and mundane experiences) as mine are. ;)