Karma Isn’t Punishment or Cosmic Justice: Here’s the Truth You Won’t Hear from the Mainstream

In the West we look at Karma as a cosmic law of justice — cause and effect, what goes around comes around, etc. You may be of the large majority in the West that look at karma as the balancing scale of justice that distinguishes right from wrong. Esoterically we look at karma as something that will affect you lifetime after lifetime, as in, the actions that you make in this life will affect the way you live in the next life. I don’t have any knowledge of what is beyond the here and now; with regard to this present moment, living in the now, you and I are still here, and that is as much certainty as we can get. It is for this reason why I will not talk about karma with regard to its effects on the next life. What I will talk about is the way in which karma affects you in this lifetime.

There are a lot more subtleties and layers of the human psyche involved in the way karma plays out. Your reality is your perspective, and over time your perspective of yourself is going to change based on your memories of your past actions and intentions. This will project an identity of who you think you are, which will enhance or diminish your sense of self-worth. One thing that is for sure is that who we are at the present moment is not who we will be in the future. As we live life and collect wisdom in our library of experience, we become more conscious of ourselves. Whether we choose to use this ever-growing consciousness to guide our actions is up to us (bearing in mind the consequences if we don’t). The simple awareness of your ego, past actions, and intentions gives you the freedom to carve a new destiny that will release you from your karma.

“No matter what happened to you in your past, you are not your past, you are the resources and the capabilities you glean from it. And that is the basis for all change.” – Jordan Belfort

Awareness is the first step when it comes to removing karma. If you are not aware of your actions, intentions, and feelings, you will continue to make free choices that are heavily influenced by these same feelings–>intentions–>actions. People who are unconscious do not evolve. They are forced to learn things the hard way in life, and the more stubborn they are the more difficult it becomes for them to break free of their karma. Living an unconscious life, even if you get away with your choices, puts you in situations that don’t allow you to be free. For example, greed will attract the most fickle and conditional friendships and relationships in your life. Your ego will be built on a false identity of fleeting possessions which can lead to status anxiety. You will attract situations in your life where people make unconscious greedy decisions against your best interests. There is a wide spectrum of less than optimal scenarios that can and likely will occur as a result of living an unconscious life.

Again, this isn’t a universal punishment or a cosmic law of justice. The universe is indifferent, and the notion of good and bad are constructed in our own minds. The more selfless you become, the more chaotic you become to humanity. The more selfish you are, the more disharmonious you become with humanity. This person has a total lack of empathy for the situations they cause and in time they will increase the likelihood of running into situations that reflect their behavior towards them. This is the aspect of karma where the external environment that you attract becomes your karma. When you take from someone or harm someone, you are adding chaos and causing more disharmony in your life and in the collective. When you are empathetic and selflessly contributing to the collective, you are more in harmony with it.

People who have awareness of themselves are in a much better position than the unconscious person. This person may still continue to make selfish, ego-based decisions, but they are far more likely to be slapped in the face by the guilt. This guilt may even become further magnified if a psychedelic is taken. The guilt one experiences should not become your identity, but rather a wake-up call to rise to the occasion toward becoming a more evolved person. This is the type of karma where you’re feeling judged from within; your own mind is telling you that you are out of sync with your higher self. A bad trip can be nothing more than a look in the mirror, seeing all the ugly sides of yourself that disgust you to the point where you feel very uncomfortable with yourself. This is how psychoactive substances force us to break out of negative patterns of behavior; they show us our shadow side, which ultimately scares the shit out of us. You become aware of the two fighting wolves inside you, one which is good, the other which is bad. From this point on you know that you are responsible for the wolf that wins, which is the one that you feed.

“Karma is real, part of it starts with how you’re starting to feel.”

Karma is not just about bad deeds but it is also about how you feel about yourself. Your feelings and emotions have a lot to do with your karma. Eckhart Tole talks about the “Pain Body,” which is another identification with the ego. It makes us feel like victims whenever we don’t get what we want, feel misunderstood, or victimized. There are legitimate times when we feel wronged, but the degree to which we wallow in sorrow and/or anger can create bad karma for ourselves, even if we truly were the victim. Continuing to identify with these emotions will affect your perspective, adding a negative filter to your world. You will then take actions based on this perspective, which could lead to more circumstances that caused the initial sadness/anger. You will begin to cause problems in your reality that don’t even exist, all because you are identifying with your pain body all the time.

Related Article: 17 Friendly Gestures That Create Good Karma

When working on your karma, everything on the radar is just a tip of the iceberg. Karma is often a lack of awareness of how your patterns of behavior (which often come from your emotions) are holding you back. This is why psychedelics are popular among some people, as they have a way of showing you the karma that you’re not aware of. Emotions can cause a lot of misunderstandings because they filter your ability to process reality when in an emotionally charged state of mind. Subconsciously, unresolved emotions navigate our Ego through potentially destructive terrain. This can leave karmic imprints that create a repeat cycle of more unhappy circumstances. Emotions that we hold onto can manifest into stress which can cause all sorts of physical symptoms. It can even change the way the brain is hardwired. This is what is called in Vedic and Buddhist philosophy as “Sanskara.

Sanskara is “mental impression, recollection, psychological imprint,” and this meaning in Hindu philosophies is a foundational element of karma theory.