Research God, Karma & Freewill

Karma

When God created us, His intention was that we learn to love
Him and each other as much as He loves us.

Karma is a mechanism by which we learn to love.

Karma teaches us. It reflects back to us our thoughts, words and
behavior. It is an objective law of cause and effect. It does not
distinguish between good and bad. So, if you behave with love,
understanding, care and concern, it will be reflected back in how
you are treated by others. More importantly, if you behave in an
unloving manner towards others, this will also be reflected back
to you.

Our personal karma is the result of the choices that we make.
We make hundreds of these choices on a daily basis. Each choice
adds positive or negative karma, depending on what we choose
to think, feel or do.

In biblical terms, Karma is expressed as “You reap what you
sow.”, or "With what measure you measure, so shall it be
measured to you.”.

Karma provides feedback that rewards our loving acts and helps
us correct our mistakes. A mistake is unloving behavior.

Karma is a mechanism designed by God to help us to use our
freewill correctly. If we understand Karma, it provides an
incentive to behave well. Good behavior is loving behavior.

Karma is a key element of God’s perfect system of justice. God
set up this system so that He does not need to intervene unless
we ask for it. God does not punish us, but karma teaches us
lessons. If we choose to view this as punishment, we punish
ourselves by our misuse of freewill and the choices that we
make.

We can ignore all the teachers that God sent, but we cannot
escape negative karma.

God will help those who ask for help that is in line with the
Golden Rule. Those who do not ask for help are still subject to
karma.

Death is not an escape from the law of karma. You cannot avoid
the lessons karma teaches, because you are an eternal soul and
karma stays with you until it is resolved. If you understand this,
you will be motivated to think and behave differently. Sooner or
later, we all have to learn the lessons that karma provides.

When we have learnt our lessons, karma is resolved and we can
avoid further lessons!

God gave us a way to dissolve karmic debt. If we learn to
genuinely forgive the unloving acts of both ourselves and others,
we too will be forgiven and absolved from the need to pay off
karmic debt. This is not east to do. The process is referred to as
the law of Grace (or Mercy, or Forgiveness). It is an extension of
the law of karma. God has already unconditionally forgiven us,
and if we unconditionally forgive ourselves and others, we cancel
our karmic debt. This makes perfect sense; what is the point of
karmic debt if you have learned your lessons?

The law of Grace is a much better way to settle karmic debt than
to have karma teach you lessons.

It is important to remember that the need to forgive applies just
as much to forgiving yourself as it does to forgiving others.

Understand that through God’s perfect system of karma and
grace, karmic justice applies to those you feel have wronged you,
and you should not concern yourself with judging or trying to
punish them. If you do try to judge or punish others, all you are
doing is to perpetuate your own karmic lessons. This is a very
liberating concept, but it is difficult to understand and apply.

Indifference, apathy and inaction is not exempted from the law
of karma. Failure to do what we know is right is a choice we
make, and it will incur a karmic debt. If you are indifferent to
the plight or suffering of others, you will encounter indifference
to your own suffering when you need the help of strangers.

The majority opinion or behavior is frequently unloving and
inconsistent with the Golden Rule. When it comes to unloving
behavior, there is no safety in numbers, and often the majority
creates a karmic lesson for themselves. For example, if you think
that war or the death penalty is justified and you support it,
then you will be held accountable and have a karmic price to pay
for the resulting mayhem and murder, regardless of whether you
physically participated in the act. Our thoughts condemn us just
as well as our actions.

Freewill

God is not responsible for what happens to us during this physical
incarnation we call life. He established the ground rules for life,
but our experiences in the physical dimensions are directly tied
to the lessons provided by freewill, karma and our individual and
collective consciousness or intent.

Having “freewill” means that we have the freedom to choose our
thoughts, words and actions. We have the freewill to be the soul
we choose to be.

We, as souls, choose to evolve at different rates of progress.

The physical dimensions provide an environment where we can
practice using our freewill to learn our lessons.

The use of freewill requires awareness and choices.

Freewill gives us the opportunity to choose between right and
wrong, and therefore to choose to be loving souls.

Karma teaches us the consequences of our use of freewill.
These consequences depend on whether you choose to be loving
or unloving. You will experience the consequences of your use of
freewill until you have learned the lessons that karma teaches.

If we did not have freewill, God would not have created anything
except programmed servants. He will not interfere with our
freewill, but He will help us if we sincerely ask for His help.
Asking God for help is called “prayer”.

Use your freewill to love and accept people for who they are.
When people understand that they are unconditionally loved by
you, very often they consciously or unconsciously love or admire
you for the way you treat them, and in doing so they may resolve
to be more like you. The way to teach people unconditional love
is to demonstrate it!

You are always better off if you try to take the loving path. Try to
make your choices based on what you think will be the most
loving outcome, without trying to control others. Even if what
you chose does not turn out as planned, your “intention” was
loving and you should move on with a clear conscience. You
cannot control outcomes and you should not try to control
others, but you should try to act with loving intent.

Because we have freewill, we make mistakes. Mistakes are an
expected and acceptable part of being human. God knows that
and so should you! We are not expected to be perfect; we are
here to learn from our mistakes.

If we use our freewill to make bad choices, we will suffer the
karmic consequences. We learn lessons from suffering. If there
was no suffering, there would be no lesson. Failure to consider
how our choices affect others is an indication of selfishness and
indifference, which will generate karmic lessons.

If we choose to forgive others, we too will be forgiven and our
karmic debts will be negated. This is known as the Law of Grace.
If you can forgive others, you have developed an ability which
will serve you well.

Try to be aware of your own mistakes so that you can forgive
yourself, apologize to others, and move on.

You alone are responsible for your thoughts and actions. People
can pray for you and they can forgive you, but only you can take
responsibility for your soul. Other righteous souls can petition
God on your behalf, and He will respond to their prayers and
provide opportunities for your soul growth, but it is up to you
whether you benefit from the prayers of others.

Respect the freewill of others, and try not to impose your will on
them. If you do try to impose your will on others, it frequently
end up being unloving behavior. We all have lessons to learn and
the best we can do for others is to give them unconditional love.
Others will never meet our definition of how we think they
should behave, and to make things worse, we frequently set
impossible or unstated goals for them!

The exercise of freewill frequently involves difficult choices. We
instinctively know the difference between loving and unloving
behavior, but we are constantly subjected to pressure to
condone or participate in behavior that we know to be unloving.
God expects us to use our freewill to make the loving choice,
rather than bow to the pressures of a world that often demands
conformity of opinion and thought in order to be accepted. The
short term benefit we receive from being loved conditionally is
not worth the karmic price we pay for it.

Do not blame God for the sins of mankind; freewill is the culprit.
It is the misuse of freewill that creates unhappiness, hate and
the horrors of war.

Suffering and hardships help strengthen us if we choose to learn
the lessons they provide. Suffering helps our soul grow faster.

If you fail to use your powers of discernment, and you subvert or
delegate your freewill to the decisions of others, you will share
karmic responsibility for the choices they make. “I was only
following orders” is a poor excuse that inhibits soul growth.

You have the freewill to choose your actions, but freewill does
not extend as far as having right to exercise your freewill to give
up eternal life and cease to exist. You are and will always be
eternal, and God lets you decide how to use your freewill to
determine where you fit into His creation.

Many people reject God because He does not keep us from harm,
and they find this very difficult to accept. It is important to
understand that God is not a puppet master, and we are not
programmed servants. However horrific the ills and misfortunes
of some people may seem, they have not been caused by God,
and He does not punish us in this manner.

The pain and suffering of the innocent is used by some to
support the contention that God does not exist, or if he does, he
could not be a loving God if He allows such things to happen.
These are judgments that we are not able to make accurately
from our limited earthly perspective. We are here to learn to
react to pain and suffering with unconditional love.

Jesus Christ was innocent, but he was willing to suffer in order to
teach us to love. Many advanced souls willingly incarnate and
accept suffering, because they know that their suffering is
temporary and that it brings out the love in others.

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord
your God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with all
your mind.’ 38 This is the first
and greatest commandment. 39
And the second is like it: ‘Love
your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All
the Law and the Prophets hang on
these two commandments.”
Matthew 22

If you help others, you will be
helped, perhaps tomorrow,
perhaps in one hundred years,
but you will be helped. Nature
must pay off the debt...It is a
mathematical law and all life is
mathematics.
George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff

The process of forgiveness --
indeed the chief reason for
forgiveness -- is selfish. The
reason to forgive others is not
for their sake. They are not
likely to know that they need to
be forgiven. They're not likely to
remember their offense. They
are likely to say, "You just made
that up." They may even be
dead. The reason to forgive is
for our own sake. For our own
health. Because beyond that
point needed for healing, if we
hold on to our anger, we stop
growing and our souls begin to
shrivel.
M. Scott Peck

The game of life is the game of
boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds
and words return to us sooner or
later, with astounding accuracy.
Florence Shinn

It is the Law that any difficulties
that can come to you at any
time, no matter what they are,
must be exactly what you need
most at the moment, to enable
you to take the next step
forward by overcoming them.
The only real misfortune, the
only real tragedy, comes when
we suffer without learning the
lesson.
Emmet Fox

How are we saved? By unselfish
love. If we do only good things
we will eventually run out of bad
karma and only good things will
happen to us, and vice versa. The
purpose of karma is to force us to
learn life's lessons whether we
want to or not. The only way to
bypass karma is to develop so
much unselfish love that paying
for bad karma will serve no
purpose - much like a college
student challenging a course he
already knows. We evolve faster
through unselfish love.
Arthur Yensen

"As ye sow, so shall ye reap."
Galatians 6:7

"With what measure ye mete, it
will be measured to thee again."
Matthew 7:2

We should not seek revenge on
those who have committed
crimes against us, or reply to
their crimes with other crimes.
We should reflect that by the law
of karma, they are in danger of
lowly and miserable lives to
come, and that our duty to them,
as to every being, is to help them
to rise towards Nirvana, rather
than let them sink to lower levels
of rebirth.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama

One of the secrets of a long and
fruitful life is to forgive
everybody, everything, every
night before you go to bed.
Bernard M. Baruch

Sometimes we have to "step
over" our anger, our jealousy, or
our feelings of rejection and
move on. The temptation is to
get stuck in our negative
emotions, poking around in them
as if we belong there. Then we
become the "offended one," "the
forgotten one," or the "discarded
one." Yes, we can get attached to
these negative identities and
even take morbid pleasure in
them. It might be good to have a
look at these dark feelings and
explore where they come from,
but there comes a moment to
step over them, leave them
behind and travel on.
Henri Nouwen

The world is a dangerous place to
live not because of the people
who are evil, but because of the
people who don't do anything
about it.
Albert Einstein

God loves us and believes in us
and has done and will do
anything he can to help us, but
he will not impose on our free
agency.
Marion D. Hanks Ensign

It matters not how strait the
gate,
How charged with punishments
the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
W.E. Henley

Joy is what makes life worth
living, but for many, joy seems
hard to find. They complain that
their lives are sorrowful and
depressing. What then brings the
joy we so much desire? Are some
people just lucky, while others
have run out of luck? Strange as
it may sound, we can choose joy.
Two people can be part of the
same event, but one may choose
to live it quite differently than
the other. One may choose to
trust that what happened,
painful as it may be, holds a
promise. The other may choose
despair and be destroyed by it.
What makes us human is
precisely this freedom of choice.
Henri Nouwen

Cowardice asks the question:
"Is it safe"?
Expediency asks the question:
"Is it politic"?
Vanity asks the question:
"Is it popular?"
But conscience asks the question:
"Is it right?"
And there comes a time when one
must take a position that is
neither safe, nor politic, nor
popular but one must take it
because one's conscience tells
one what is right.
Martin Luther King

God created the law of free will,
and God created the law of cause
and effect. And he himself will
not violate the law. We need to
be thinking less in terms of what
God did and more in terms of
whether or not we are following
those laws.
Marianne Williamson

There's too much tendency to
attribute to God the evils that
man does of his own free will.
Agatha Christie

Man is a being with free will;
therefore, each man is
potentially good or evil, and it's
up to him and only him (through
his reasoning mind) to decide
which he wants to be.
Ayn Rand

The purpose of problems is to
push you toward obedience to
God's laws, which are exact and
cannot be changed. We have the
free will to obey them or disobey
them. Obedience will bring
harmony, disobedience will bring
you more problems.
Peace Pilgrim

God isn't about making good
things happen to you, or bad
things happen to you. He's all
about you making choices--
exercising the gift of free will.
God wants you to have good
things and a good life, but He
won't gift wrap them for you.
You have to choose the actions
that lead you to that life.
Jim Butcher

I'm a true believer in karma.
You get what you give, whether
it's bad or good.
Sandra Bullock

There was just such a man when I
was young—an Austrian who
invented a new way of life and
convinced himself that he was
the chap to make it work. He
tried to impose his reformation
by the sword, and plunged the
civilized world into misery and
chaos. But the thing which this
fellow had overlooked, my
friend, was that he had a
predecessor in the reformation
business, called Jesus Christ.
Perhaps we may assume that
Jesus knew as much as the
Austrian did about saving people.
But the odd thing is that Jesus
did not turn the disciples into
strom troopers, burn down the
Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the
blame on Pontius Pilate. On the
contrary, he made it clear that
the business of the philosopher
was to make ideas available, and
not to impose them on people.
T.H. White, The Once and Future
King

Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free
to resist, reject, and rebel against God's ways for us. We can have all
the hell we want.
Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every
Person Who Ever Lived

God created things which had free will. That means creatures which
can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a
creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I
can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free
will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them
free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the
only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth
having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like
machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God
designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely,
voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and
delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man
and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that
they've got to be free.
Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom
the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...) If God
thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free
will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real
good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead
of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we
may take it it is worth paying.
C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

Destiny is variable, not fixed; it is forever changing depending upon
your free will to make choices for what you want your life to be.
Steven Redhead, The Solution

The sin both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact
that God gave us free will.
C.S. Lewis