[Uma]

[quote=LoveWater]If karmic action from past lives dictates our current life, then we have no control over what happens to us - it's fated and it's destiny.

I believe I had negative karma from a past life, and I am paying for it in this lifetime.



I like how your signature says that you bring meaning to your life! :)

Okay you don't want to continue this conversation but now you've raised some interesting points (bolded, underlined) that speak to some common misunderstandings about karma so this needs a response. I can only speak from my point of view and what I know from experience.

Karma means action and consequence. The Universe is like a wish-fulfilling tree and karma is a basic operating system behind that.

The Universe is designed to help us or push us into evolution of consciousness - seeing more, being awake to more, the more of who we are, the truth of who we are as divine beings etc...

If you accept that you are an immortal soul and not the physical body, and therefore you are not the roles that you play (mother, sister, daughter, employee etc.), then perhaps you can be open to the idea that life is a kind of therapeutic game in which we have powers to invoke the law of karma (all the things we are attached to is what the universe responds to). If we aren't aware of our powers then we feel helpless, doomed, punished etc.

And there is support in the field. You are never alone.

The Universe is benevolent and supportive and our true nature is love and bliss but we're so insane (I mean everybody who is not a Christ or a Buddha or a Krishna) that we think we're being punished, when in fact we asked to come into this world with precisely those challenges and challengers that will bring out our own "non-truth" so that we can see them and change them because these are patterns that bind us to this wheel of birth and rebirth.

We also choose to see our strengths so we can use them to overcome our weaknesses.

Karma is a kind of mechanism that helps us do that.

When you really understand karma it becomes your best friend because you discover your power to change it or dissolve it or dissolve its power over you (which is the same difference).

Much more to say about karma but I will stop here.