The other day I overheard someone tell another person who had suffered a theft that karma would catch up with the thief and punish them. Karma a kind of universal police force of justice punishing the wrong doer. I joked if the person wishing bad karma on the thief as a form of justice wasn’t creating bad karma for themselves.

The joke begged the question:

Was Karma a force for justice, a way of balancing the score, a construct that allowed us to feel ok with the confrontation of the problem of why bad things happen to good people?

Was the idea of karma a reward punishment theology where as long as I did everything right and obeyed all the rules I would be rewarded and not punished?

I don’t think Karma is about justice or reward and punishment. My understanding of observation about the concept of karma is more like the filters through which we view our experiences. (Or that limit our experiences)

I believe we become the stories we tell ourselves and our karma greatly influence the stories we are able to tell and so the experiences we have.

My own experiences has been that it is very difficult to change a story we tell ourselves about who we are. Past lives, Nature and nurture, many of the filters through which we view life through were defined and influenced before we were born, or reborn, and more often than not remain unconscious.

I wonder could the theology for reward and punishment be an example of a karmic filter that needs to be overcome.

What if the “reward” of good karma wasn’t that only good things happen to us but that we become capable of seeing through the illusion of “the good” and “the bad”, reward and punishment, (the problem of opposites?) and doing so able to live life as it is, realizing that as it is, is good, and good, LOVE.

In your post you write about your expectation that being a good person meant that others would not disappoint you, in essence rewarding you for being a good person. (Disappointment becoming a filter shaping your experience)

I get it, I’ve been there, and it sucks.

I wonder if it’s possible to create some space and re-evaluate the reward and punishment thinking and how that filter has colored your experiences.

How would your expectations of reward and punishment been experienced by those you are in relationship with? Did they experience your love or your expectations?

What if the choices you make to be “good” were made not for any expectation of reward but because they were right (as best as you know them to be) in and of themselves? Decisions made because they came from your authentic sense of self and as such reason enough?
A way of loving yourself that allows for mistakes and wrong turns with the intention that when you learn better you do better. Image living life without such self-created tensions or anxieties of reward and punishment?

It is in my opinion that it is our karma, our filters, that make it difficult to authentically love ourselves and loving ourselves, love others, setting in motion the limits of our experiences.

There is a hermetic saying that as above so below, as below so above. We are influenced but also influence – the reality being that we are influenced (by our karma/filters/nurture/nature/others) far more easily then we influence.

It is my belief or maybe it is a hope, that learning to authentically love ourselves creates the space to reshape our karmic story and so create the relationships that we yearn for. A reward not for following the rules and doing everything right but because it is, life is, and we are.