The truth about Karma

I saw a story on FB awhile back, posted by a woman who would leave food in the refrigerator at her workplace overnight, saving her leftovers for lunch the next day, only to come into work and find the food had been eaten. She suspected someone from the cleaning crew had been eating her leftovers. This went on for a few days; every time she saved leftovers for the next day they disappeared by the following morning. 

So, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She brought in ‘special’ leftovers: a sandwich made of canned dog food. She added a leaf of lettuce, a couple of tomato slices, cut the sandwich in half, placed it in a plastic bag, and then into the refrigerator it went. The next day, as expected, the sandwich was gone. After that occurrence, her food in the refrigerator was never taken again. 

In her post, as she was detailing these events, she was absolutely ecstatic that the lunch thief ‘got what they deserved’. She was convinced that this was a result of Karma…you know, you do something wrong at some point in your life so Karma catches up to you to punish you. 

Well, that’s not really the way that it works. Here’s the truth about Karma: 

1. Karma is a two-way street. What you give out, positive or negative, does come back to you as all things in the Universe react to create a perfect balance. If you offer a kindness to someone, kindness comes back to you. If you offer hurt or negativity, hurt or negativity comes back to you. It’s all cyclical.  
2. Emotions, not only actions, can cause reciprocal Karma. If someone gets hurt or suffers an unfortunate circumstance, and you laugh about it, thinking that Karma has come back to bite them in the ass, the truth is your reaction causes negative Karma for you. Think about that for a moment. So, in the case of this story, the woman’s gleeful reaction to someone eating her dog-food sandwich caused negative Karma for herself. 
3. Karma is not meant to punish; Karma’s purpose is to teach. As I mentioned earlier in this article, every thought and action must have a counterpart to keep things balanced. In order to evolve spiritually we must learn lessons to foster our empathy, compassion, love, etc. If we, at some point for example, act as a persecutor toward someone else, we in turn will at some point be the persecuted. The purpose is for us to experience both sides of the coin in an effort to understand and learn empathy toward both the persecutor and the persecuted. 
4. People cannot dole out Karma, only Universal energy keeps things in balance. So, if you think about doing something negative to someone in an effort to teach them a lesson in the name of ‘Karma’, guess again. You’ll only end up energetically hurting yourself. 

Karma is a cycle of cause and effect and involves a balance of energy. Whatever energetic intent (cause) you release through words, actions, thoughts or emotions, a balancing effect will be created in order to create a lesson. 

Photo by Holger Link on Unsplash