“Every moment of your life and everything happening around you is the result of some past karma.” (Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar)
I should know by now that karma always comes back around at some point. Sometimes it happens quite quickly and sometimes it takes a while to manifest. But, it always does rear its face at some point, as it did for me recently. For those who don’t know what karma is, it’s a term used to describe the principle of cause and effect, where the action of a person in one moment directly influences what they’ll receive in future moments. (I.E. Good intent and good deeds bring good karma and bad intent and bad deeds lead to bad karma.)
I do my best to generate good karma in my life by remaining honest, accountable, and kind, but I do fail at that at times with this, as I did recently when my rental car door I was temporarily in for a few weeks flew open one day while in a parking lot, when it caught a huge gust of wind. The result was the edge of it hitting the car next to me, leaving a nice white scuff down their passenger door. I tried to rub all of it off and was only partially successful. I looked over the rest of their car and saw noticeable scuffs elsewhere, so I justified I didn’t need to do anything and left. A week later, I picked up my car after the warrantied repair was complete and was super happy because it looked quite new now on the outside, as there were no longer any visible dents, rust, big scratches or dings anywhere anymore. The next day day though, after parking my car in a local shopping center where I went into a restaurant for dinner, I discovered when leaving there, several big scratches were now on my rear bumper. It was apparent someone had backed into it just enough to have their license plate scratch it pretty well. The first thought I had after seeing it was this was karma playing itself out.
When things like this happen, I often find myself wondering if my long gestation of physical pain and ailments I’ve battled and endured over the past decade of my life is also a result of past karma. The number of people I’ve hurt through many addictions in both my words and actions is countless if I include both this life and several of my previous ones. But, the thought of that even being true is actually quite comforting, because maybe there is a reason for all this pain, that eventually it will restore balance to all the imbalance I created in this world.
Regardless, I believe karma is a real thing and have a number of examples from my life that can support that belief. So, I’m thankful at least for the reminder of karma with my vehicle’s less than perfect look now and pray I’ll handle it far better the next time something like this happens.
Dear God, thank you for helping me to remain accountable for all my actions in life, no matter how big or small they are, or how positive or negative they are, through karma and the lessons it continues to provide me.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
