Is karma real? (Short answer: HAHAHA not for you, you stupid hippy.)

[P3nT4gR4m]

Luckily for me most of my enemies are the police

[Lies]

Luckily for me most of my enemies are the police

In that case, I can see how this would work to your advantage.

[BadBeast]

Luckily for me most of my enemies are the police

This is Britain, the Police are all of our enemies. (Except the chewed up ones, they're just bones)
But at least you can see them coming, since they gave up the "Boys in Blue" image, for the "Boys in Dayglo Yellow" one.

[Triple Zero]

You know, channel bad energy into usefulness by using it for good?

Like, for example, if someone raped a child, stabbing the rapist in the face and a couple of times in the crotch and then dumping them in the middle of the desert with a water bottle? (You know, in buddha's infinite mercy and all?)

if I understand it properly, this doesn't use the energy for good, this just sends the bad energy out further

the rapists parents, children, a lifetime of acquaintances, who did nothing wrong, now suffer a loss

and they will, in turn, go hurt others



I'm reminded of RAW's description of Karma in --Cosmic Trigger, I think?

he had a section about how his young daughter got her ass kicked really hard by some black thugs

they were still carrying around the injustice done to their ancestors, still paying back the white man all that bad karma


and RAW's daughter, innocent little girl, forgave them. She bore them no ill will. She refused to become afraid of black people, refused to retract and hide, because of this one injustice. She stopped the wheel- by not seeking revenge, by not embracing fear, she halted the cascade of harm being paid back and forth into the future

Sure, it's easy enough to forgive a group of former slaves who are still a bit pissy about havin been used and abused by white society, not to mention, they picked on a *girl* so it's not like the option of fighting back was *really* there, but someones just raped and abused someone you love and care about, and the rapist does this on a few more people for good measure.

Let's see you *forgive* this rapist and ignore him after he's mentally and physically destroyed your spouse/mother/sister.

that's what RAW wrote about. He was about to become really hardened to this world because of the terrible experience his daughter had.

And instead, he was astonished by his daughter's ability to forgive -- despite the enormous injustice that was transferred onto her.

That's what he meant by "stopping the karma wheel". When you've been destroyed, it's really really difficult to not rekindle that destruction and pass it on to everybody else. But if we want to live in a better world, (and I know, not everybody does) we have to transcend those basic revenge impulses because they will keep getting bounced back between one another forever.

Thanks Cram, I think I really needed to hear that.

I've been on a bit of revenge trip for a while now, not that I actually acted out any revenge (I was busy and had no good/original/funny/workable ideas ), but the feelings and thoughts were there.

You just convinced me to forgive some people (quite a few, in fact) and this will, I suppose, in some way make me a littlebit better of a person

One at a time. I think I'll start with the people at the hospital during the start of my burnout. The cardiologist and the apprentice psychiatrist.

[Triple Zero]

One idea I've been thinking a bit about lately is the idea of karma in a psychosomatic sense. If you do good things you feel happy, and when you feel happy people act positively towards you. Or something like that.

totally. which is why I said that forgiveness will somehow make me a bit of a better person.

that anger is with me all the time. it used to be that I actually started shaking as I told people about those hospital episodes. in fact, I just noticed I was furiously twitching my feet as I just wrote that*. and every time I ride past that hospital the mistreatment there, still, it often crosses my mind.

(FYI it wasnt that particularly bad, they just didn't help or treat me, at all, for months, meanwhile I was crumbling into a miserable heap of stressed confusion, and finally they prescribed me Ritalin, which being a stimulant, sent me over the edge into panic attack mode. then I went some place else and things got a lot better, but slowly)

* feet are rather sensitive to subconscious thoughts and feelings when it comes to body language

[Telarus]

Besides, you get a lot of good prank ideas _after_ you've truly forgiven some-one.   

[Doktor Howl]

I've been known to forgive, but rarely to forget.

On the other hand, forgiveness granted without redress of the original problem isn't a virtue, it's being a doormat.  If someone deliberately insults you badly enough to get under your skin, and you just forgive them without an apology, for example, then you're not being magnanimous, you're being a wimp.

[Cramulus]

169% agreed

[Triple Zero]

absolutely. in the hospital example, I will intend to avoid that particular hospital if I can help it, I just intend to stop getting angry and worked up every time I have to think about it, like when riding past it.

[GIGGLES]

I used to believe in Karma til I had a better look at the world and realized that good people can be punished for nothing, and bad people can flourish despite punishing all the good people for selfish and material reasons.

Now I Believe karma is what bad people convince good people exist so good people won't have an excuse to punch bad people whenever they get screwed over by them.

It's quite ingenious really. ...

So in answer to the question: Karma is a nice little fairytale for those who have been screwed so they have a reason to wake up instead of killing themselves if they knew the futile truth of reality or are just too big a hippy pussy to actually help push Karma in the right direction.

TL;DR

Karma exists, but only for those who choose to retaliate against injustice and inhumanity instead of running away and hoping a random and chaotic universe that doesn't give a fuck about hippies will do something to avenge the perceived wrongs against said hippies.

KARMA EXISTS IN THAT YOU WILL BE PEOPLE LIKE SHIT THEY WILL GET PISSED OFF. NAO BEND OVER HIPPIE! I GOT SOME PATCHOULI I WANNA TRY OUT!

[BadBeast]

I suppose there is a link between Karma and forgiveness, but not in a cause and effect way, in that if you forgive so & so, then this will happen, and happy times will occur because of it.
Feelings of anger and resentment that you carry, should really be offloaded as soon as you are able to do it. The risk of holding onto these negative feelings, is that we become so familier with the  rush of righteous anger, and the accompanying bursts of stress hormones that we end up incorporating it into our personalities. Then we hold it close, like it's a dear thing, feed it, keep it burning, and it sublimates into hatred. So before we know it,  instead of having some unresolved anger issues with someone, you begin to hate them. And Hatred is a very high maintenance, and consuming thing. The closest thing, in fact to love.

But love is a workable, expressable "day to day" emotion, and the reciprocating dynamic of it is beneficial to our wellbeing, and emotional developement. There are socially acceptable ways of beaming it out to the world, that are noticeable, generally pleasant, and good for everyone concerned.

But Hatred, is often a private indulgence,  that we immerse ourselves in, revelling in it's turgid potential for redress and having no way to safely express it, it consumes us, and grows bigger and more toxic, the longer we hold onto it, until it would tear our very lives apart to lose control of it.
It spills out into our motivations, and colours our actions, like a leaky 45 Gallon drum full of toxic waste.
It adds a flavour to every breath we take, and every other emotion and process eventually become orbital things, as the hatred becomes the hub of our wheel.

At these extremes, going postal, and killing everyone around you in an explosion of red misted rage, pain and death, starts to look like a possible option.
In extreme cases it becomes the only option, and that's why people go on killing sprees, and why these events so often end in suicide. When the hate has been answered with a orgy of killing, the person becomes empty. Realise what they have done, and take their own lives as the coup de grace. 

The only way to offload, (other than the above)  is to forgive people. Not because they learned their lesson, but because you can no longer afford to invest what it's taking to keep it burning.

The people you held the original issues with, won't necessarily benefit from your forgiveness, and, truth be told, may have been totally unaware of the way you've  been feeling towards them. You are not doing them a favour by forgiving them, you are not condoning what they did. Anyway, by now the level of hatred may well be so disproportionate to the original offence, that any kind of revenge you take, is so very over the top, that it would no longer redress the balance, but break the scales, and set off a whole new cycle of destruction.

You don't have to suddenly announce to anyone that they are now forgiven. But you do have to deal with the original issue. Let go of the destuctive thing you've been carrying around, for so long.
Send them a letter maybe.

"Look, what you did to **** all that time ago has been burning inside me like a fire, ever since you did it, to the extent that I've lost weeks of my life, just planning revenge, and destruction to be visited upon you, by me, at the first opportunity, you fucking nasty evil motherfucker"
"I have walked through a red mist, of your spilled lifeblood for so long, it became a constant scream that never stopped, not for a minute, and even now, is baying for me to take your life."  I hope against hope, the consequences of what you did, have not been gentle with you. I like to think you have suffered greatly because of your actions, as have your victims. However, I'm telling you this because I've decided that I'm no longer seeking your death, or going to kill you. You know what you've done, and you know I have every reason to strike you down in vengeance and retribution."

"But I can no longer be bothered with it, and I'm writing this, to you, just in case you were unaware of how much your actions have affected my life." 
"I trust next time you want to want to drive too fast around a corner, you'll think of my poor dead, squashed Tigger Puss, and slow down, you Cat murdering bastard!"

"OK, I'm done.,the cat is long dead, I'm not consumed with revenge anymore, but you are still a cat killing motherfucker!"


Then 25 years of hatred, disturbed dreams, vengeance fantasies, all gone! just like that. Now maybe the systematic and ruthless murder of every family member that he had, in needless, humiliating acts of violent and elaborate cruelty seem a little excessive. OK, so you loved that fucking cat! But it was quarter of a century ago! And an accident. And you're just lucky they never found the bodies.

(Totally fictitious scenario,btw, but those Cat people are just about crazy enough to fit the bill)

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I agree with BadBeast's view here...


Monkeys do terrible shit to each other... the question is, when terrible shit is done to you, do you allow it to create new bars and bricks in your BIP, or do you deal with it, process it, release it and move on?

I think its less a question of forgiving the person that caused you harm, and more a question of what you're doing to yourself as a result of that harm. I have a friend who was devoted to his wife, married for 12 years and found out yesterday that she's been cheating on him for a year and a half. He could allow that to affect his relationships in the future, he could forgive her and take her back,

BUT more importantly, forgive or not forgive, he can not allow her actions to color his perceptions in the future. The first option continues 'the wheel', the second option may just be letting himself get stepped on, the final option though is 'stopping' the wheel... irregardless of what he and she decide to do about their relationship.