"Everything Happens for a Reason"

Originally Posted by blackraven

I've always hated the saying "Everything Happens for a Reason". If you think about it, a lot of really bad stuff in life happens to really good, innocent people that are just trying to live decent lives. What about being born with serious birth defects and spending your life in a wheel chair, what's the reason for that? An innocent woman was walking down the street and someone ran up to her and threw acid in her face, melting her entire face making her unrecognizable. Did that happen for a reason?

What are your thoughts on this?

Blackraven

what would make a father hold his daughter hostage in a hidden basement for 19 years raping her and producing multiple children, raising two upstairs and keeping the rest down with their mother?

Originally Posted by blackraven

Thank you all for your input. I actually didn't mean to imply that tragedy should happen to "bad" people either as I feel that human suffering is senseless all the way around. I'm just trying to come to terms with suffering in general and used a few examples that came to mind.

I like what you said, xxheatherxx, about words being wise according to their fitting with the context in which they were said. I took no offense when you said people learn the words long before they have the wisdom to use them in the correct context. I trust you weren't trying to be insulting to my ability to decipher cliches from reality. I've been through too much misery in my own life to poke at sayings for the fun of it. I didn't think that anything would be solved via the forum, but like I said, I was pondering the whole issue of human suffering today and thought I'd throw it out there for others to comment on. In the end I suppose I knew all along that this age old question (Why is there human suffering?) couldn't be answered. Thanks again for everyone's comments. :)

Blackraven

I wasnt being remotely insulting. I was commenting on past experience of hearing people use the words "its all for a reason" with some warped sense of good/bad karma being the cause. Thats what I read your op to be a comment on. Am somewhat confused that you might have suspected insult, but it seems to be the thing on this particular forum at the moment.

Stuff happens. Sometimes it hasn't a reason, sometimes it does. We can flesh out a particular reason for many things. But that meaning will almost always remain personal, and a mental painkiller (not to say it's bad). It's just important to remember that whatever meaning or reason you find in that event doesn't make it universally applicable.

One of the most trying and upsetting parts of human existence is the random suffering of people, simply because of circumstance.

Like the reasons or not, they're there just the same.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

Like the reasons or not, they're there just the same.

What are the reasons as per the OP's questions?

Interesting thread.

I find it completely unfair how some people can say "oh, it's his past life karma" when they see a person suffering with something, and that person 'cannot' be helped, such as in the case of being born with an ailment, or having permanent 'damage' done to them.
In my opinion this was never really the point of the concept of "karma".

Your past life karma should have nothing to do with the life you are living now. First of all, because it's unfair, and it would throw you into an eternal loop of suffering and frustration if it were true, and second of all because the person living this current life is in 99,9999% of the cases not aware of their mistakes in their past life/lives.

I do believe in karma, however, on a much simpler level, where you do good, and good comes back.

That being said, I have no remote idea as to why some people are born less fortunate than others, and I really wish to understand because I find it extremely unfair.

Originally Posted by blackraven

Did that happen for a reason?
Blackraven

You could find reasons in it, depending on how far you wanted to go. The person that threw the acid and the person that got it perhaps had an agreement - a Karmic Obligation. If you want to follow through the event itself and imagine how other people would react to someone whose face has been melted with acid, then you have your reasons. The reasons were for them to react in the way they did, or for the victim to deal with it in the way they did.

Reasons can be found if you look at it the right way, but are there any reasons behind it after all? Perhaps in looking for reasons all we're doing is making order from the chaos.

Greetings..

Creation is the continuous process of 'Now'.. it is the natural principle of 'self-organization', beyond which there is no 'reason' beyond that which is intended by the experiencer(s).. there are no Cosmic Puppeteers', we co-create, with each other and the holistic environment' the Human Experience.. its reason and purpose is the 'Experience' itself..

Be well..

[sound]

Originally Posted by blackraven

I've always hated the saying "Everything Happens for a Reason". If you think about it, a lot of really bad stuff in life happens to really good, innocent people that are just trying to live decent lives. What about being born with serious birth defects and spending your life in a wheel chair, what's the reason for that? An innocent woman was walking down the street and someone ran up to her and threw acid in her face, melting her entire face making her unrecognizable. Did that happen for a reason?

What are your thoughts on this?

Blackraven

Hi Blackraven
My thoughts are that extreme care must be taken when we make value judgments about someone elses experience, whether it be someone who is confined to a wheelchair or someone who has had acid thrown in their face and lost their looks and their eyesight perhaps. Perhaps those very people you use as examples may feel that their life is just as decent as any other life ...
The limitations experienced in one sense may be overridden by feelings of being liberated in another sense. How many times do you speak with people who have had extremely challenging experiences to deal with in their lives and yet they express that there is no way in the world they would change anything ... able bodied or disabled ... i have heard it from both camps.

I would like to share a story ...
I used to work with people who experienced a learning disability. Part of my role was to take them out to their weekly social functions, one of which included a disco dance night. One of my clients was in a wheel chair and had very little use/control of anything other than her arms. When the music would start up she would wheel herself out into the middle of the dance floor and let loose and I mean really let loose. She would end up screaming with delight as she rocked her chair back and forth and if one didn't know any better one would assume that she was having an orgasm right there in the middle of the dance floor ... how liberated is that! My bet is that she was :) and, although no one else in the room had contemplated the ultimate source of her joy, they all smiled and laughed along with her ... it was impossible not to be carried away by it needless to say she was always noticeably quiet and seemingly contented on the trip back in the car lol ...

The woman who has had acid thrown in her face ... I dont know how one would cope with that either however, i imagine that the realizations and revelations which may come with such a life changing experience as that could not be easily dismissed if one was able to 'backtrack' in time ...

After reading back over my 'off topic' post i realized that i didn't really address the main question, that being, 'Everything happens for a reason ... what are those reasons?' ... I think the reason is revealed within the experience ... as has already been expressed far more eloquently than I ever could ... the experience itself is the reason

I think we search for reason in everything - it helps us assimilate and relate to a world which often seems chaotic and random. I find it interesting that more often than not, we seek reason to explain a 'negative' or 'bad' event or situation while we rarely seek a reason for something wonderful happening.

I think... sometimes there may be a reason and sometimes... life is just that way. Sometimes the universe throws out an event just to see what happens. It's what you do with it all that's important, imho.