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Originally Posted by Lucky
For instance, if family members have made poor choices their whole lives and we pick up the pieces for them time and time again, can that be considered as our karma, life lesson, or simply just enabling them? Will these people ever face what they have done if someone is always there to save them and clean up after their mess?
I am not the enabler here, but I'm involved through marriage. I'm having a really hard time with this.
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It's not your karma directly, but
dharma which may be a result of your karma. Dharma means path, duty (among other things --- Sanskrit is a pip). And what you do on or with your dharma contributes to your karma. I can't directly address your situation but I'll relate mine.
I came out as gay at 38 years old. Not long after that I met the person I am now married to. It has not been the easiest 23 years of my life, primarily because of his family and choices he made. They all had the attitude "I'll do what I want when, where, how and why I want" with no regard for consequences ("consequences shmonsequences" as Daffy Duck said in a cartoon) because someone would always swoop in to rescue them.
You get one guess who was always there to clean up the mess. I considered leaving many a time, both leaving the relationship and leaving the world, if you know what I mean. But after thinking on all this long and hard --- meditating, if you will --- I came to the conclusion that in a past life (or more than one, I don't learn) I had a family and a good life that for some reason I walked away from. I think now I'm in a similar situation. If I walked away, would I come back into a similar, or worse situation?
Our subsequent lives serve several purposes, one of which is to finish what we started in other lives and to learn and spiritually progress. The joke is that we don't really know; we might
suspect it like what's happening to me. In my case, I thought my life as a gay man would find me settling into a relationship with another guy without family drama, just us in a nice house, pets, maybe adopted children. But real life turned out so much differently. Am I happy in my life? No. I have no friends anymore, I hardly see my family. As I said, however, if I walked away (again?) how might that set me back in my progress? I really can't know, it's just a suspicion, or maybe a rationalization. So I have to believe it's my dharma to do this.