This page will be updated with more comments over time!
1. On “The Law of Cause and Effect” Chapter
I think I should probably have explored the literature on “karma” a bit more in this chapter.
This is because “karma” has too many meanings that were used by varying people over time in different areas:
- Buddhism: “Karma” is simply cause and effect, where every cause leads to an effect, whether positive or negative. This is the definition that I use in this chapter, because it is more secular. This means we repeatedly build positive or negative habits that reproduce themselves until we break them (like in the depression diagram example).
- Hinduism: “Karma” is more like “action.” Hence, we can conceive of karma as a cosmic or life curriculum to accomplish. Thus, you may have “karma in money,” which means you have unlearned lessons in managing money. You might also have “karma with someone,” meaning you and that person might have specific things to learn from each other. For instance, if you had abused that person in a previous life, your “karma” in this life is to work through it using other, more fruitful means instead, like love and understanding.
- Michael Teachings: “Karma” is like a form of neutralization. Hence, you burn “karmic ribbons,” past violations to another soul, as I described in the misconception sub-section.
- Dolores Cannon: “Karma” is a form of curriculum. Hence, if you have murdered someone in a previous life, in this life, you may choose to “restore” the imbalance by having a life in which you either do good to the victim or have the victim abuse you. This is not punishment. Instead, it is a voluntary way to gain perspective into the other’s choices in hopes of expanding your understanding.
- Others: Other sources have sometimes spoken of karma as some form of emotional “bond” or “tether” towards another. If we violated someone’s free will in a previous life, it could form a “tether” (like the psychic bond example in my misconception sub-section). However, in all my research, I found little information on this astral-level “emotional bond,” so I framed it as a hypothesis in the misconception sub-section under the concept of “psychic bonds.” In short, “paying back one’s karmic debt to someone” roughly means healing that person and yourself.
This concept of “karma” carries so much baggage that I cannot responsibly write much about it. People keep adding extra meanings to it and use it implicitly, so using “karma” confuses more than it clarifies. That is why I use “cause and effect.”
