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In Galatians 6-7 St. Paul says: Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Karma is simply the process of cause and effect. If you do A, then B will happen. It can be as simple as - if you plant tomato seeds, and water and tend them, tomatoes will grow. It can also be slightly more complex. Before we are born in this world we, along with our higher guides, while still in the realm of Spirit, decide the experiences we’ll pursue here. Spirit helps us obtain these experiences by creating the conditions necessary for us to receive our chosen involvements and lessons. Karma is not about punishment. In Spirit there is no absolute right or wrong. It is about experience and fulfillment of purpose. The idea that we are punished for sin is a man-made form of social control. In 1999, an English soccer coach named Glenn Hoddle was fired for a remark he made about Karma. By the reports I’ve read, Hoddle is a genuinely Spiritual man, but he said that disabled people were paying for the sins of past lives. It seems, though, that he’s misunderstood Karma. A highly advanced soul might choose to incarnate into a crippled body, or as a homeless person, or an adict, if that is beneficial to their progress. But it isn’t a punishment. Karma influences our current life in two ways. First, we carry karma as part of our life conditions, but certainly not all of our conditions are karmic in origin. Karma is the part of our conditions that represents unfinished business and other residues from the past. Second, we create future karma continually with every thought and action. Parts of our Spirit require particular areas of growth regarding our personal evolution. There are also areas in which we may best contribute to the growth of Spirit in its totality - universally. Sometimes karma thrusts us into completely opposite conditions than we ever experienced specifically so we can gain knowledge from something we’ve missed – keeping in mind that with Spirit there is no good or bad. So, if we’ve missed out on how it feels to have LACK, we will eventually experience that in some lifetime. However, if we’ve experienced the discomfort of lack, but have never experienced PLENTY, we will have all we need in another life. It isn’t punishment and reward – it is the need to experience all there is to experience in its many forms. This extends into the emotional realms as well. It isn’t all about physicality. It is mental, spiritual, and social too. The first step in dealing with existing karma is awareness and acknowledgement of it. Are there any themes that seem to recur throughout your life? Over and over you run into some form or another of the same thing! A broken heart, job loss, anger issues… Nothing happens by chance. Recurrent themes suggest the hand of karma. These recurrent themes are telling you that, by your choice, Spirit is providing conditions for some necessary life experience. This experience may be obvious to you, but where it isn’t you should ask Spirit for guidance - through prayer, through meditation, or through your dreams. Once you understand the karmic themes of your incarnation you can start working with them. You can start to swim with the tide rather than against it. If you find it hard to acquire or hold money throughout your life, you need to learn to respect money and practice good money management. People have been taught that the root of all evil is money. If you hold that attitude, lose it! Great good can be done with money. If you find it hard to make friends perhaps you need to make an adjustment to your behaviors or to your feelings about friendship. Perhaps your lack of trust repels people without your even being aware of it. Look inside what REALLY IS creating the lack of friends in your life. What part of you is creating your reality – a reality of LACK. It’s hard to admit to yourself that YOU have created, by choice, in union with your Spirit Guides, every tidal wave against which you swim. If you're not sure how to work with your karma, ask for guidance and be OPEN to the answers. The human part of you may not like the answers that the spiritual side of you comes up with. The second aspect of karma is that it is being created all the time. Every act of will, every thought, is a karmic act. By acting in accordance with our Spiritual purpose in particular (our chosen goals) and Spiritual principles in general ("God’s will be done") we create "good” karma for tomorrow. By "good karma” I mean Spiritual progress and making one's soul available to more advanced lessons. It’s kind of like passing to 2nd or 3rd grade in school rather than continually repeating 1st grade over and over. Matthew 7-12: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Karma also works on an immediate level by returning to you what you give to others. There's nothing particularly mystical about this. If you're friendly to others, you receive friendship. If you're generous, people are more inclined to be generous to you. If you want people to be angry at you all the time, have a nasty temper and uncontrolled aggressiveness. If you want people around you to be peaceful and loving . . . hmmm . . . let’s think on this! What might you do to make that your reality. Luck and karma - luck seems to attract good things to some people and repel good things from others. But is luck real? Luck is an illusion - simply a matter of how you look at life. Say someone won $10,000 on the lottery, but just missed the jackpot by one number. Some would consider themselves lucky to get $10,000, while others would be cursing their misfortune for not winning a million. If you find yourself cursing your luck, take time to count your blessings. There’s a young man at work who admits that his glass is always half empty. He knows that about himself. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that if that’s how he looks at life, for the next 50 or so years that’s how his life will always be. He’ll never quite have what he wants. The "other man's grass is greener" syndrome also distorts our perception of luck. Human nature tends to notice others' good fortune and our own bad. In fact everyone has their share of problems, burdens, challenges, and blessings too, to lighten the load. The key here is to focus upon your own path. Don’t worry yourself over the unfairness of what someone else has while you do not. I’m not talking just about financial things here. I’ve seen spiritual people turn green with envy over another spiritual person’s "greater gifts” – envious to the point of losing their own spirituality. It wasn’t LUCK that won the other person what they have. It is karma, choice, hard work, studies, and determination. Shakespeare wrote, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Having said all that, luck as a manifestation of karma, is real. Some people do attract money jobs, the right partner, the lovely home... That is part of their conditions for this particular lifetime. All we can do is try to recognize our own particular conditions and to operate to the fullest within them. Know your limits, or be prepared to do the work to change those limits. Be mindful that this life, this world, is not the totality of our existence. In fact, it is just one small part of something much bigger, just one tiny step along an infinite journey – a journey propelled by choices, lessons, and spirituality.