Warning!  If you have dealt with a profound hurt or loss, this might be a difficult read.  I am just exploring my beliefs and ideas, but I don’t have the answers.  This is my “what if?” experiment and you are allowed to disagree (politely, please).

My spiritual self likes to challenge my scientific self – and vice versa.

I struggle with the idea that the Universe is indifferent to us.  Based on astronomical statistical odds, we shouldn’t be.  Or should already be gone.  Maybe we have cycled through this bubble before?  By “we” I mean the star dust that everything is made of.

Perhaps I am too much of an optimist – looking for meaning where there isn’t any – but my life is filled with synchronicity.  Carl Jung introduced the concept that there are meaningful coincidences.  Small bursts of incidents which at first glance appear to have no relationship with each other… yet, they do.  They are easy to miss.

Mine arrived on the faintest whisper.  A feeling.  Not something I can weigh, measure or calculate.

But when you are on the right path – whatever that may be – these events pop up more frequently.  It’s as if the Universe gives you green lights to keep going.  You are on the right track and everything is lining up.

It’s a transcendental feeling.

Which is what lead my scientific self into the spiritual side.  With my logical mind, I decided to “test” my theories.

“But, how do you test that theory?” the Scientist asks.

“You can’t.  Yet!” I reply.  “You just have to believe.”

That’s where I lost her.  Self-doubt crept back in.  However, I had promised that if I received a sign, I’d cast my doubt aside for good.

And it arrived the very next day.

When I feel doubt, I remember my promise and lean into my trust and belief, even though it goes against everything I have been taught.  My left brain rails against my right mind.  My heart and gut also jump into the ring, turning my internal struggle into a vicious cat fight.

How does all of this lead to Karma?

Karma is something I think about.  It’s something I dream about.  Hope for… but then sit back and wonder “WTF did I do to deserve this?”

Do people get what they give?  Is there a method to its madness?  One concept of Karma is that it exists in a vacuum.  There is a delicate balance which strives to find equilibrium.  In Sanskrit, it means “action”.  For every action, there is a reaction.  Cause and effect.  Actions we take now will affect us in the future.  Or look at the Chinese philosophy of Yin Yang:  While everything has an opposite, it is not separate, but connected.  The two halves complete the whole.  You can’t have one without the other.  There is duality to everything, like one coin with two sides.

Day gives way to night.

Yin goes down while yang goes up.

If we want less of something, we have to grow the other side.  We have to live in opposition to our fears.  Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and laziness get you where?  Anger, resentment and entitlement are born in fear.  Love, kindness and humble gratitude take courage.

Nothing is completely yin or completely yang.

It’s difficult to explain this without sounding like I am blaming the victim, which I am not.  Shitty things don’t happen to you because you are a shitty, worthless person or because karma kicked your ass.  Shitty things happen to everyone.  You are not responsible for the life you have been given, but are responsible for what you do with it.  You can’t compare your journey to someone else’s – because we are all at different levels of enlightenment, disillusionment and growth.  Your hell might be someone else’s heaven.

What if you are responsible for a future soul?  Suddenly the Biblical generations of curses make sense… You pay it forward to a future you, a future descendent, an innocent child.  What goes around, comes around.

Maybe “juju” is another way to look at it.  I do my best of avoid bad juju.  As an example, I forgot a small item in my cart while shopping.  Neither I nor the cashier noticed.  As I was bagging my groceries, I noticed this $20 item had slipped under the seat section of the cart.

Do you walk away with it and consider it a score?  Or do you hand it back?

I handed it to the cashier.  I don’t want the bad juju from pocketing something.

While travelling, I was given a bill in a restaurant that didn’t add up.  The bill was about $100 short, so I called the waitress’ attention to the error.  She was very grateful because that shortfall would have come out of her pay.

See… Karma doesn’t smack you back right in the face.  She goes around and hits on the other side.  The man who cheated on his women still loved his daughter, but taught her that women and love are disposable.  We never looked at karma that way, but that’s why we don’t see it coming.

People say Karma is too slow.  The struggling single mother wishes her millionaire ex would be a man and support his children.  The devastated father prays that his children will see through the alienation tactics and come back to him.  Karma isn’t slow.  She is sneaky and hits below the belt where you least expect it.  That’s why revenge appears to take it’s sweet time coming around.

I am not perfect.  If you’ve been on the receiving end of my sharp tongue, you know that I have a brutal mean streak.  Hurt me and I will hurt you back times ten.  That’s bad juju I put out there.  Stop it.

Who wins?  I do my best tame my Alpha Type-A ESTJ and remember that we all have an unseen battle.  I wish I could tell you that I am 100% kinder, gentler and wiser… but I am not.  I lost my shit on someone yesterday.  I am trying to find harmony with Do No Harm and Take No Shit.

But what if we all pay in the end?  Either in this life, or in the next – whichever belief system fits you best – we pay for our deeds.

While this doesn’t excuse rape, killing children and other horrors we see in our world each day, it may explain why they exist at all.

People dread receiving a diagnosis of high grade cancer, but Triple Negative Breast Cancer was one of my most challenging, yet memorable life journeys.  If God said “Fox, you can go back 2 years and do it without cancer” I’d say NO.

You’ve seen me write my fears that this is hell.  What if we don’t pay for our actions, but our children do?  Can you think of a more frightening “eye for an eye” curse?  Every deed you do in this life, will affect the life of someone you love more than yourself.

This lead me to an interesting internal debate on accountability.  Am I accountable for my thoughts?  While I am not always the sender, nor am I always the receiver.  Yet, we live in a closed system, and the lesson is transmitted somewhere.

What if your mean, angry outburst at the slowpoke in the grocery store combines with the hatred of others to create a collective force of evil?

In the end, we all answer for our sins.

We can’t change the past. What’s done is done.  Paid for.  But we can shape our future, and the lives of the other souls beside us and behind us.

Just something to think about…

The Fox