It hit me like a bus carrying illegal immigrants. We have totally gotten it all wrong, as usual. The concept of karma is not what the popular spiritualists propose, that “we reap what we sow”, otherwise known as the “agricultural interpretation of Karma”. If you look at this philosophical explanation of why things happen in the light of day, there are lots of inconsistencies with this belief. First, if you reap what you sow, why do bad things happen to good people? Reincarnationists would argue that it is a question of timing, that the bad stuff is karma from past lives. Conversely, do wicked people succeed in life because they were good in some prior life?  Second, if you reap what you sow, how do you balance out the good stuff from the bad stuff? Is it an issue of accounting? No one is perfectly pure or perfectly evil, so how does karma sort itself out?

Buddhists argue that karma refers to “intention” or the mental state that we allow to exist in our minds. In other words, only we know what we believe, think and desire. If our intentions are selfish and motivated by profit or greed, it doesn’t matter how good the deed. The ends do not justify the means. If we react to events in our life with victim consciousness, we will be doomed to be victims. If you follow that concept to its logical conclusion, karma is for losers. After all, when bad things happen to us, isn’t it simply victim mentality to blame it on some past life or past action that we don’t even remember? What good does that do anyone? Is the sum total of our existence doomed to a victimized lack of control?

I think we have much more control over what happens in our lives than many people want to believe. They don’t want to be responsible for the challenges that they face and would rather be victims of someone else’s actions (even if it was themselves in a prior life). I think that we are each very powerful beings that create what we experience not as some mindless result of prior actions but for the express purpose of evolution and spiritual growth.

I had a dream last night in which I was back practicing law and I had discovered that one of my staff had filed a court document that was inaccurate and probably malpractice. I then went through a lengthy review of all of the things I had done that I regretted in 27 years of practice and I was watching myself in my dream judging all of that as wicked and wrong and I would eventually be discovered as a despicable person and disbarred. I expect that experience would be what is understood to be the bardo or the post death review experienced by many who die and are resuscitated. On one hand I was not the person in the dream and on another hand I was wondering why I was having this dream.

I have had quite a process of letting go over the last three years. (I am so glad Saturn in now in Sagittarius). I have experienced loss of money, relationships, a parent, self esteem and pride. Someone who believes in karma would attribute this letting go process as punishment for something. I do not believe it is punishment. We create experiences to learn lessons that bring us closer to our divinity. I certainly have grown closer to my higher self and understand many of the lessons that these kinds of experiences bring. There is a huge difference between being the creator of a lesson and being the victim of karma. I believe that I created the loss for a specific purpose, it was not the result of some prior action or belief. I also believe that seeing the experience as a positive experience has certainly helped me in many ways as opposed to suffering as a victim of past deeds in this life or prior lives.

So don’t be so quick to pass off experiences as a result of something done in the past. We are more powerful than that. Look at your experiences as your creation for the purpose of being a stronger, wiser, more divinely oriented person. Karma has nothing to do with it.