For anyone interested in spirituality (especially the Hindu and Buddhist varieties), in 'spiritual light' literature ("spirit-light-lit"?), or even (gasp, dare we say it) mainstream hip lit, we hear a lot about karma, karmic destiny, karmic cleansing, karma this and karma that...
Most of the reading and thinking I have seen on karma has been something like if you had your karmic act together in the past you get a better karmic deal in the present and future... or something to that effect. My very personal theory, it is personal at least because I have never seen it expounded elsewhere, is that karma works backwards as to how most of us understand it.
Let me explain.
But before I do, I would like to make an admission, according to this theory, I am most probably a karmic wimp! And the bad news is that most of you who are reading this are in the same situation, as are most of the people you know...
Basically my idea is this. If we believe in reincarnation, which is more or less a prerequisite for believing in karma, we probably also believe that we have something to learn in our lifetime(s) here on Earth. So my thinking is quite simple in this regard, learning is positively correlated with challenges, i.e. the more difficult the material and existential details of our lives the more we learn. Which also means that the opposite probably holds true. So for those of us, like me, who were born in houses with rooms, heat, electricity, running water, a full fridge, car pools, after school activities that don't involve survival, probably have thinner karmic skins than those who were born without... Or to say it differently yet again, Maslow's pyramid is a karmic map, it's just upside down.
Furthermore, many traditions who believe in karma also believe that we choose the conditions of our birth, including material comfort, existential challenges, who our parents are, geography, etc. And since we are here to learn (and/or to remember our divinity, which we could semantically or philosophically argue is quite similar), my intuition is that we learn a lot more about humanity, divinity, grace in the face of difficulty, generosity and love when life is short, difficult and very little can be taken for granted. Granted, some lessons are probably easier or more difficult to learn depending on circumstance, but it just feels like spiritual learning must be accelerated when comfort is not part of the equation...
Personally, I don't know if I would last long in an existence that many denizens of the third-world must face daily and just don't know how much humanity would shine through. I have a hard enough time expressing my humanity in my cushy little existence.
Maybe this approach to karma helps explain why the Psalmist announced that "the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace."
If anyone knows about someone who has written about this or attempted to explain it differently, please let me know.
Any other thoughts/comments/ideas?
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