The Source of Karma

I sold my business many years ago to a man who kept my wife on as an employee until he squeezed every possible concession out me. Then, he fired my wife. It was a horrible experience, which I contemplated until discovered a past life with him. He was just as devious and unscrupulous hundreds of years ago. However back then, people handled their own affairs rather than relying on attorneys.

In that previous life, I killed him, took his possessions, and no one blamed me. Still, as I the pondered how this present life must be payback for that past one, a message came to me: “The problem isn’t that you killed him in the past. It’s that you want to do it again now.”

I didn’t think that was a problem as long as I restrained myself. However, that’s when I learned that karma doesn’t work that way. It’s the attitudes we carry with us that determine our future, not our past actions. Actions build attitudes, but our whole linear dualistic thinking about the justification of punishments for crimes is childishly innocent in the real world.

Actions are just motion in a dream world. Thoughts and attitudes, which most people think of as existing only in their own private world, aren’t private at all. They touch others and change our world in ways we can’t imagine. So, the invisible is what really matters, and the visible, which is what most people think matters most, is mostly just dead images, smoke and mirrors.


We all work with exterior circumstances and people, and we tend to think our exterior goals are the only ones. Still, successes pale and failures disappear when we realize that all we see in this world are just tools, and that we are all but actors trying out various roles and attitudes -- until we find one that really works.