Karma is a form of payback or punishment and therefore something to be feared . . . or is it?

Karma is a bitch! Or is it?

The accepted definition of karma is: the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.

Karma is essentially the law of cause and effect, yet we perceive it to be some form of punishment, payback, chastisement or retribution, and as such that it is something we should fear.

How often do we hear people say when someone does a bad thing – “don’t worry, what goes around comes around”, or “karma is going to get them”? Or if something bad happens to us we blame it on karma, hence ‘karma is a bitch’. And yet, even if you speak with those of the Hindu or Buddhist faiths, where reincarnation and karma are accepted as the norm, they will also tell you that karma is held as something to be afraid of as they believe that if you don’t live a good and devoted life or you do bad things you will come back as a slug or an eel or some other seemingly lowlife creature in your next reincarnation, or you will have a terrible and hard life as a form of punishment.

But what if we have our version of karma all wrong?

What if karma is not a punishment, something to be feared or a way of controlling people to have good and right behaviour so that they can come back better next life? What if karma was and is the ultimate form of love? Yes – that is what I said; what if karma is the most loving gift we have been given?

Karma is intrinsically and irrevocably intertwined and connected to reincarnation – both afford us the opportunity to come back and revisit what we have left behind in our wake, so as to learn from and hence correct past transgressions in order for us to evolve.

Karma is not a punishment, it’s an opportunity to experience a harm or wrongdoing that we have done to another or others so we can understand and learn that this is not something we would ever wish to repeat again.

Oh no, there’s that karma is a bitch thing again surely? But karma is not about retribution, it is an offering so we can learn and know that doing things that are harming others, or expressing anything that is less than loving, of truth, or holding another as an equal, is not our true way.

However, karma is not all about being subjected to unpleasant things, reliving past transgressions or enduring suffering because our evils come back to get us: yes, this is part of it as we need to feel what harm we have caused, not as a penance but as a correction so we can rebalance that which we have done to another. Our karma is everything that we have lived coming back to us and hence we get to re-experience everything! This includes revisiting our loving imprints and past harmonious ways of living so we can be confirmed and supported to know who we are in our innate Divine nature. By retracing our past loving acts we can acknowledge that love and develop it in our body to support us to return to a way of life that is full of nothing but love.

Karma is simply a rebalancing or a correction of anything that is harming of others, and yet at the same time it can bless us as we re-experience all that we left behind that was true and loving.

Thus karma is not retribution or punishment, karma simply offers us a choice –– a choice to continue our harming and unloving ways, a choice to discard and say no to that being a part of our make up and, at the same time, a choice to say yes to love, truth and harmony as our way of life.

So it would seem that karma could be applied in both a positive and negative sense.

However, karma is not negative or positive, karma is love, and love is neither of these things.

Karma is simply our returning to or re-experiencing the imprints and choices we have made so that we are offered another choice to repeat it until we learn that this is not the way, renounce it – having felt its impact on others via our own immersion in it – or to re-embrace it knowing it is an expression of love, and hence who we truly are.


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  • By Dr Rachel Hall, Dentist

    Dentist, business owner, writer, author and presenter. Family woman, guitarist, photographer, passionate about health, wellbeing and community. Lover of Vietnamese food, fast cars, social media, café culture and people.