Karma might not be as bad as we all judged it to be. Here’s what it really means. Photo: Pexels
When I read a book about the afterlife and our soul plan in general a little while ago (the book is called Life on the Other Side by Sylvia Browne – it’s amazing btw), I learned something that blew my mind. It made me realize that I got the concept of karma in general, but bad karma especially, all wrong.
What’s Karma again?
So, in short (short because I have written about the concept of karma before, namely here), karma means that what you give out to the world will come back to you.
Generally, that means that if you do good, more good will come to you and if you do bad, “bad things” are gonna happen to you too. Of course, karma is not always immediate, but can manifest itself in our lives at all times and go back to various lifetimes we lived before that one.
Bad Karma – What’s the drill?
So, bad karma, in my eyes, was like this perfect way of destiny to give you a taste of your own medicine. If you’re a bad guy – if you steal, lie, cheat, disrespect, etc. (of course, things can become much more drastic really fast), you will also be lied to, cheated on, disrespected, stolen from, etcetera etcetera. Of course, karma is not that direct and literal. But you know what I mean, no?
I always thought a hard life (or said differently, bad things that happen to you) is just a consequence of our own actions. What we did to others will also happen to us.
However, karma is not something that’s out to get you or mistreat you or even punish you. It’s just a reflection of how you chose to live life. Naturally, I used to look at hardship just as something that finds you based on your own previous actions, so that you get to learn from it and eventually “be better”.
Why “bad karma” is a blessing in disguise
What I then read in that book, and suddenly it made so much sense to me, is that what I understood as being bad karma is actually a blessing, a gift.
I have written about that before. I think that hardship and suffering is usually a blessing in disguise as it offers us opportunities to grow and learn like no other situation in life does.
We don’t develop or grow if we’re always doing well. Sometimes, life needs to be a little bit harder to make us stronger and help us advance in our spiritual journeys. And to give us some depths, some stories to tell 🙂
It turns out that so called bad karma is just a huge opportunity for growth. I have written about this several times too (here for example), that we chose our hardships before we come to life, according to the lessons we still need to learn through the challenges we will be allowed to face during this lifetime.
The harder the life, the bigger the growth.
Bad karma is for the strongest soldiers
Sylvia Browne mentioned in her book that usually the older and more experienced souls, or the ones who want to grow the most, accept the biggest challenges. Such challenges could be hunger, maltreatment, war, poverty, personal attacks, sicknesses, etc.
We think that bad karma happens to us as a punishment for bad behavior in the past. But really, only the strongest souls accept the hardest challenges as a result of their souls integrity and willingness to learn and grow.
The real misfortune in life
What would be really misfortunate is to live one meaningless and shallow life after the other, having to spend so much time away from home (from the Other Side, or the Spirit World, depending on which authors you have read), without having real spiritual growth.
The easier the life, the less challenges and hardship, the less experiences, the less meaning and the less spiritual growth. If you live a few of those, I would argue you would feel emptier and less accomplished as a soul than if you had hard times and serious challenges to face during this or any other life.
What do you think? How do you approach “bad karma”? Let me know 🙂
Love, Valentina
Written by Valentina – spiritual writer & founder of Valentina’s Diary
