It is quite interesting to see how much the subject of the Law of Karma arouses a certain fear and sometimes even affliction in some people.

In many cultures, the Law of Karma is interpreted as a kind of punishment for something wrong we have done. A “divine punishment” for misbehavior. On a more complex level, a punishment for something serious that we may have done even in a past life, and even without knowing about it, we are burdened with our past failures in the present life.

A burden is most often the interpretation that most people associate with the meaning of the Law of Karma. And that is exactly the question we will explore in this text.

For a better understanding, it is worth studying the meaning of the word. Karma is a word of Sanskrit origin meaning “action”. And thus, with a slightly lighter touch, it is also called the Law of Cause and Effect or the Law of Action and Reaction in the field of science.

A good word to summarize the whole concept of the Law of Karma meaning is “consequence.”

In this scenario, I invite you to ponder what would be the reason for having a Universal Law governing the consequences of our actions.

But before giving the answer, let’s consider a very common example that many people associate with the Law of Karma.

Imagine a daughter and a father who had relationship issues from an early age. The daughter became an adult, moved to another city and for many years was far from the conflicting relationship with her father.

One day, the father discovers that he has a serious illness and the only person who could take care of him would be his daughter.

In the interpretation of many people, the sick father then becomes the daughter’s karma, that is, a burden. But there is a very sensitive issue in this situation. People forget that besides Karma – and I would say it is totally associated with Karma – there is also free will, even conceptually, because many lines of thought do not consider that we have any kind of choice.

Undoubtedly, during this process of change and acceptance, the daughter, even though she would never leave her father helpless in her consciousness, internally knows that her other option would be to forget him.

What then causes the daughter to change her whole life to care for her father instead of abandoning him? This second question contains the answer to the first.

This is exactly where you need to understand the situation. Karma does not lie in taking care of her father. The father is not a punishment for something terrible she may have done in her past life. Taking care of the sick father is a choice of a more conscious soul. Karma is just the opposite of that. The Law of Karma is activated the moment she is not moved by the situation of the father and abandons him.

Then the father dies and, for another twenty years, she lives a normal life, until at a certain age, with more mature consciousness, she looks back and feels great pain for leaving her father.

Karma is exactly this pain. This pain is the punishment in the form of guilt that the soul projects into our consciousness when we reach a certain level of maturity. And then this process of guilt can unconsciously manifest itself quite dangerously as certain self-destruction. Abuse of alcohol, food, work, drugs, even anxiety, and depression. And for those who believe in past lives, it is precisely this awareness of guilt that will generate somewhat punitive choices for the next life (but this is the subject for an entire book).

This is because the soul, which has realized its past mistake, also needs to learn in a certain way one of the most important lessons about the Law of Karma: self-forgiveness.

So, to answer the question mentioned earlier:

What would be the reason for having a Universal Law governing the consequences of our actions?

The maturation of the soul.

The Law of Karma is not a burden.

The Law of Karma is the law that teaches us to love others and also to forgive ourselves.

Photo by John Bakator on Unsplash