Refining the Soul

From the Divine perspective, we are embodied souls having all kinds of experiences in the physical world in order to facilitate our growth and work through our karma. The business of evolution is the refining of the soul, and part of that refining process involves learning right from wrong and developing a conscience to guide us. In this way the karma we create as we go forward will be positive and accelerate our evolution rather than impede it. If we don’t develop a strong ethical nature, we run the danger, much like Richard Nixon did, of being chronically stuck in destructive patterns that will continue to create negative consequences and bad karma in our lives. Without a moral compass to steer us we will generate more karma and imbalances in our lives and add to the overwhelming problem of imbalance in the world.

The Law of Consequences , or karma, is not a law of retaliation, although it might seem that way. Rather, it is actually a way of teaching responsibility and accountability. Life gives us free will. Within certain parameters we can do what we want, but we are also accountable for our actions. That’s where karma comes in. What better way to learn the difference between right and wrong than to be forced to suffer the same fate we may have forced on someone else?

Mirror Images

Karmic experiences then, are often the mirror images of what we once did to someone else. Karma reflects our lessons back to us. Though it may be difficult to find the hidden cause of our dilemmas, painful experiences that come into our lives unexpectedly are often the result of a past karma of commission or omission. The reverse of course, is also true. Helping someone in need will bring help to us in the future when we need it most. That’s how we create good karma.

Wherever we go and whatever we do, the Law of Consequences always accompanies us, registering all that we do. The Law doesn’t create our karma. We do that. The Law makes us responsible for what we do, whether or not we want that responsibility. We create our future by what we do now, by how we treat other people as we move through life. Karma is the vehicle that activates our responsibility.

The Law of Consequences and the Soul

Since the Law of Consequences deals more with the soul than the personality, it is not limited to working out someone’s karma during the lifetime in which that karma occurred. The law is patient and may wait for another incarnation before it brings the  soul the karma it had created previously for itself.

I once had a client come to me, a psychotherapist, who had recently embarked on a new relationship with a wonderful woman. He came to resolve issues of long standing that had little to do with his new relationship. Despite the issues that he wanted to address, when he got on my healing table the spiritual light that I channeled into his body brought to the surface an unknown strand of karma that had been hidden in his soul for hundreds of years. This karmic strand was from a lifetime in the fourteenth century of which he had no previous awareness. In that life he had been a soldier in charge of protecting a village from the attacks of roving marauders. One day he and his men were out on patrol when the thieves sneaked around them and attacked the village. They killed all the men and carried off the women and children to sell into slavery. When my client and his men returned to the village they encountered a ghastly scene of death and destruction. My client was devastated. Not only had he failed to protect the village, but the raiders had also carried off the woman he loved and was betrothed to marry.

He regrouped his men and at dawn the next day they followed the thieves to their stronghold in the mountains. They arrived late in the afternoon and hid in a nearby forest waiting for the cover of night to attack. Unfortunately, the bandits had anticipated the soldier’s plan and sent several scouting parties into the woods to search for them. The sol- diers were located almost as soon as they arrived. Whatever element of surprise they might have had was now lost. Their attack was a complete disaster. My client was killed during the battle. He had tried to rescue his beloved and failed, sacrificing his life in a vain attempt to save her and the other women and children from the village.

When my client returned to normal consciousness he was overcome by emotion. The past life he had just experienced explained the deep love he had felt immediately on meeting the woman he was now involved with and the terrible feelings he experienced whenever they parted. Each time she left him he was sure that he would never see her again. She too had fallen in love with him immediately and shared the same terrible feeling of loss whenever they parted. Now he knew why his feelings were so powerful and why his fear of losing her was so strong. She was the woman he had loved and lost long ago. The Law of Consequences had brought them together again to live out the love they had not been able to experience and complete more than six hundred years earlier. A lost opportunity had come full circle, becoming a new chance to complete the past and heal an ancient wound. That’s also karma.