Karma means consequence, that is all.

Consequence is what happens as a result of freewill.

There is physical consequence, emotional consequence, mental consequence; long term and short term consequence; individual, mutual, group, social, national and racial consequence; foreseeable and unforeseeable consequence.

Look around the room, at yourself, at the world, all that we see is either consequence or freewill exerting itself to create further consequence, and doing so either consciously or naively. Freewill and consequence, that is all there is, whether on mental, emotional or physical levels.

Why think and speak in foreign terms and confuse ourselves when we have words and thoughts in our own language with which our brains are wired?
Debating such foreign terms tends to make people look like pseudo-spiritual-intellectuals, stumbling about while missing the obvious.

If we would understand karma then we should not study it, but rather, study the law of consequence. For already and deeply, we understand consequence, for its understanding is already deep and back within our mental wiring. We then need only expand our understanding of it. 


As for learning from consequence - we may forget the occasion that we made that choice and exerted our freewill in that direction and experienced the consequences thereof, but we don't forget the re-arrangement of our values that our experience of consequence produced, and our values dictate our reflexive thinking, emotions and behaviour, so the lesson is fixed, whether we recall it or not.

Hi Alan,
What do you think about everything being interconnected, and cyclic/spiralic, including our personality with all our thoughts, emotions and behaviour (what we think being what we tend to think again and then again, and emotions and behaviour follow), so that like a whirl pool we are, our freewilled self the initiator in the middle, struggling to control the circulating mental, emotional and behavioural currents of our own surrounding makeup. And with those circulating currents come the consequences of having set them into motion, having to deal with them and the repercussions and entanglements they drag back with them, on all levels of our being, mental, emotional and physical, all teaching us the lessons of the currents that we initiate.

cb

Yes, the ocean is an apt analogy.

Biker_Chick wrote on Jun 12^th, 2014 at 12:57am:


Thanks you lady, assuming you are a young lady re you atavar.

Love

Alan

Biker_Chick wrote on Jun 27^th, 2014 at 12:56am:


It wasn't concern, it was a prompt to bring forth openness. 

There is a human tendency to hate most in others what we are battling against within our self or have only recently overcome. That is an attitudinal trap though, and our awareness of that trap can help us avoid it.

The DIDs and other PDs need not be life long debilitations; they are manageable and even curable. But there must first be recognition of the existence of the problem by the afflicted individual. Then even with acknowledgement of the problem it can still be difficult to overcome due to the sense of satisfaction the problem provides to the afflicted individual, even though the satisfaction is an unhealthy one. Most PDs are a form of addiction to an outlook that is unreal or out of true perspective, and the subsequent thinking and behaviour becomes maladjusted. 

Therefor, as well as self-honesty, there is required an adjustment of values and perspective. From there, thought, feelings and behaviour can settle into improved patterns.   

Personality disorders can cause much suffering and limitation to the individual, and to those around them as well. As humans, our freewill is not easy to wield, and our mind and personality is not an easy thing to control, even when the mind and personality is healthy and reasonably well adjusted. Anyone can lose perspective and develop mental-emotional illness or a personality disorder. In fact to some degree we are all such afflicted because no one has a continuously perfectly adjusted perspective. Those who's minds and personalities give them great struggle and conflict and even render them ill are not more than a step or two away from where the healthy minded stand. So easily anyone can go off the rails, so to speak, and struggle to find their way back to a healthier outlook and path. The key to a healthy mind is the heart. Like the physical heart nourishes the brain, so the heart centre nourishes the mind, although it is the head that directs the heart - the two work together.         

There are medications that can take the edge off a personality disorder and weaken its energy/impulses so as to make it easier for the individual to control the condition. And counselling/therapy can help - providing the therapist has sufficient understanding which unfortunately is often not the case, so shopping around can be required. And potentially the most helpful therapy is self help peer support programs, which naturally vary from organisation to organisation and from one group to another. The twelve step mental health programs are probably the best I think. They are modelled on the AA model but modified to suit mental disorders, including PDs. Much progress can be made through involvement in such groups.   

I, for one am not the least bit interested in poster's researching someone's personal or psychiatric history.  This is an open public forum, and to get so involved in digging up "dirt," on another poster is disparaging and mean-spirited.  And, well rather boring.  It also has nothing to do with the topic (My objections with reincarnation and Karma).  Let me say that again; it has nothing to with the topic. 


If anyone, including Alan, or others such as Carl/Karmalars/?Bikerchick posts something I find over-the-top, I usually won't respond to the thread.  Others do the same, and it gets buried in the flow.  No reason to get into personal slights or insults.  Having a psychiatric history of an illness does not disqualify anything a person will ever say.  What, am I supposed to nod my head and say "ah yes, a history of mania, well his posts should be ignored?"  Nonsense.  And yet, we have posts like the last few!

Forums like this really pop when everyone is chiming in on what they think about an issue.  You get different perspectives, and most people like that.  Threads end up getting offensive and uninteresting when some mean-spirited person starts attacking another poster's character, intelligence, etc. without addressing the main topic of conversation.  Most of the time, this is done anonymously and has nothing to do with any topic of the afterlife. 

I'm of the "live and let live school," and initially I was against the idea of banning anybody from a website.  I've come around now, thanks to repeated offenders who poison the well here.  If you don't like a particular poster, then leave the thread alone.  If you have a point to make about the topic (reincarnation and karma), please let us know.  If you insult or disparage people directly, I am all for you being banned.  There is enough pollution in cyberspace.  To tolerate it for no good end would be insane.


M

In a sense that's consequence, what some call karma.

DocM wrote on Jul 2^nd, 2014 at 11:18am:


Freewill and the law of consequence do not oppose each other, they work together in perfect harmony.

Every decision has consequences which form a ring of limitation around freewill which corrals freewill. Freewill can venture anywhere within that ring and in any direction within that ring out to its border, for the length of time that the ring lasts. The decisions that freewill makes within that ring dictate the direction of the next ring, and so freewill then crosses the boundary into the confinement of the next ring, and so on, ring after ring. This is the thread of freewill and the chain of consequence. The thread and the chain advance or meander together; the thread advancing with each decision within the rings of limitation forming around it as it advances. Thus each decision is limited by the consequences of previous decisions, but freewill is always free to go in any direction it chooses, but always surrounded by the consequences of its previous decisions.

cb