ASC and attracting married women

[Shannon]

This is what I mean. Suppose you can be at peace with everything, and go through life completely "Zen-like". Does that mean you'll never achieve anything? No, but it also means you're outside the karma reward system. If you don't value material things, you cannot be rewarded that way, because it won't "work" on you. Same with suffering. If you take things as they are (simply events) you are effectively beyond the influence these carrot/stick dynamics would entail.

My understanding is that if you are alive here on Earth, you are here to learn something, and in what you have done so far, you have made mistakes which have caused you to in some way or at some level become misaligned from your path towards your ultimate goal. As you discover the "way it is", you increase these misalignments, and after discovering the "way it is", you tend to re-align yourself more than misalign yourself.

In either case, if you're alive, you are not outside the reach of karma. To be alive in physical form is to be engaged in a karmic reality. The question is, are you acting in alignment, or acting out of alignment?

Karma is not a "reward system". It's a way of making sure you get to your ultimate goal by making it impossible for you to stray too far for too long. The potential for "reward" exists only in that the benefits of doing things the right way are pleasing.

I assure you that the concept of disconnecting is not the end-all be-all. You may come to understand that "what is" is not what others think it is, and that it is what you make it, but so long as you exist within perception of what is, it can and will affect you. The question is as to what degree you understand "what is", and thereby how and to what extent it affects you.

Those who are unaffected by karma exist outside the reality that includes karma as a law. This world is within that realm, and so long as you are on Earth in a physical form, you can make choices that incur misalignment and the need for realignment. That is the nature of this reality - to allow us to make mistakes so that we may understand and outgrow them.

For example: bad things happen and have happened to me. I accept it as other people's craziness, not my own karma, OR as bringing it on myself through a faulty action.

I got hit by a car once. Was that karma? Very unlikely. I also fell into a bonfire once, and got burned severely over most of my body. Was that karma? Very unlikely. I've also been poisoned, fallen out of second story buildings, died on the operating table, and a wide variety of other things that should have put me in the ground.

That doesn't mean they had anything to do with my karma, although some of them did. For instance, my having cancer was karmic for me. I had to use that experience to understand what it is to be truly helpless, and discover by contrast just how strong and capable I really am. Any other reasons for it I am not currently aware of, but having the experience of cancer has shown me that I am much stronger than I previously believed, and that I can do anything I choose to do.

What you don't seem to understand is that not everything has to do with karma, and that everything you experience IS a direct result of what you believe and what you think because those things directly result in your choices and actions. Just because you cannot see what is going on at a subconscious or superconscious level, does not mean it is not having its effect.

Everything you experience is a result of your beliefs, choices, actions and responses, at some level and in some way. Whether you have the capacity to see and understand how and why just yet, does not diminish that truth.

I continue to go towards my goal in life without stopping because of a "bad" or "good" situation. I find a way to reach my destination, and take responsibility for everything that I can.

Taking responsibility for everything you can includes your beliefs, ideas, responses, choices and actions. But personal responsibility is good, and desperately needed in this world.

I am not a victim of karma, so I believe that karma (if it even exists) has to bend around me.

You are right, you are not a victim of karma. Nobody is a victim of karma, because karma is just a system of assuring that what is misaligned out of ignorance is eventually realigned while ignorance is replaced by wisdom and experience. There are no "victims of karma". You are the one who chooses what you will experience in realigning your past mistakes. You therefore are the one who chooses how to "pay off your karma". Nobody ever made progress by blaming their choices on someone or something else.

I suggest you make an effort to read the books I suggested. That should help you understand karma much better.

[SargeMaximus]

I suggest you make an effort to read the books I suggested. That should help you understand karma much better.

Yeah I will, sounds like karma is different than I previously believed.

But that brings me to a sticking point: if what we believe influences our reality, doesn't believing that I am beyond karma ALSO influence my reality so that I truly am?

[Shannon]

I suggest you make an effort to read the books I suggested. That should help you understand karma much better.

Yeah I will, sounds like karma is different than I previously believed.

But that brings me to a sticking point: if what we believe influences our reality, doesn't believing that I am beyond karma ALSO influence my reality so that I truly am?

The nature of reality is such that one may shape it as desired, but only within the laws that make it what it is. One can go anywhere in a room, for instance, but walking through walls is not going to happen because the walls are what makes the room what it is.

The nature of the physical reality in which we find ourselves is bound by laws that include karma. Maybe other physical realities are't; but we're not in other physical realities. We're in this one.

Keep in mind that I don't claim to know absolutely or everything. This is all my best understanding so far. It forms a pretty complete system, and it makes very solid sense. But every time I think I know enough to be content, along comes more information that I didn't know before, and it adds on to or advances what I understand.

[SargeMaximus]

Well yeah, I totally get that physical laws are constant, for sure. But karma is more of a belief-bound law I would say. Based upon my experience, I have not seen karma at work after I worked on my shadow and took responsibility for my actions.

[Shannon]

Well yeah, I totally get that physical laws are constant, for sure. But karma is more of a belief-bound law I would say. Based upon my experience, I have not seen karma at work after I worked on my shadow and took responsibility for my actions.

There are no "belief bound laws". If they were belief bound, the would be suggestions, not laws. Karma is not visible to you because you don't yet understand what it is or how it manifests or works.

[SargeMaximus]

There are no "belief bound laws". If they were belief bound, the would be suggestions, not laws. Karma is not visible to you because you don't yet understand what it is or how it manifests or works.

Yes, that could very well be the case.

[Shannon]

I observe that it is the case for a very large percentage of the world's population.

[Leonidas]

Shannon, the books you recommended above, I was wondering what's your stand on them.

[SargeMaximus]

I observe that it is the case for a very large percentage of the world's population.

What do you mean? Like, you've personally observed a large percent of the world's population's lives for a long enough period of time to make sure that they have indeed been influenced by karma?

I find that unlikely.

[Shannon]

Shannon, the books you recommended above, I was wondering what's your stand on them.

I found them both fascinating and very eye opening and mind expanding, regardless of whether or not you take them as being true. Perhaps the most worthwhile books I have ever read.

[Shannon]

I observe that it is the case for a very large percentage of the world's population.

What do you mean? Like, you've personally observed a large percent of the world's population's lives for a long enough period of time to make sure that they have indeed been influenced by karma?

I find that unlikely.

I have personally observed that the majority of the world's population does not understand karma, or see it's effects.

If you are alive at all, you are being influenced. That's just the way it works. Go read those books.

[SargeMaximus]

I have personally observed that the majority of the world's population does not understand karma, or see it's effects.

If you are alive at all, you are being influenced. That's just the way it works. Go read those books.

Reading them as we speak, as a matter of fact. Not too helpful, though I'm only 32 pages into the first one. Been reading it most of the day, however.

I'm in the part where he's relating the case studies about people remembering past lives/the spiritual plane between lives.

I'm reading it with both eyes. I both believe it (pretend it's true) and don't believe it (compare what he's saying to my own experience that I can remember).

What is striking me as odd is how much people are talking about escaping physical pain and how peaceful and free of physical pain this spiritual world is, while I myself have no aversion to physical pain beyond it's discomfort. My own thing I'd rather be free of is emotional pain.

Then there's the spiritual guides, the soulmates, and the friends or close souls.

I have none.

I am, at this point in my life, becoming ever more reclusive and have only 2 people I consider to be friends. Even then, only so long as they are in line with my own life's purpose. Should they become set on another path, I would not be sorry to be rid of them.

The people in the case studies seem comforted to be around people that they know, while I myself imagine that if this were true, I'd enter the spiritual world, hang up my coat, and greet my guardian:

"Alright." I'd say, "Done that one too, what's next?"

And we'd get set up for the next life.

Whatever I am searching for, or whatever comforts me, it is not companionship. I have known since I was a boy that I am looking for something beyond anything this world has to offer, and now (if I could guess) I'm getting bored with it (life on earth).

I think, to be honest, that reality is what we make it, so me not believing in karma naturally has created a reality for me (or "bubble" around me perhaps) which does not include it.

What puzzles me is how you, and you must know what power beliefs can have on a person's reality, can possibly believe or "know" that a one-all inclusive "karma" force exists beyond the power of ourselves. Just reading it in a book can't be the reason, otherwise you'd probably believe everything you've ever read before. So what is it? There's got to be something more, near death experience I'm guessing, from when you were sick.

[Shannon]

We're getting too much into religious topics for this to not be n violation of Rule 4, so we have to get back on topic. I didn't suggest the books for you to believe or not believe, but to consider the ideas within them. And, I didn't want to go into violating rule 4. They're going to take some contemplation after you're finished, so don't worry about truth or what's what yet. Just read and become aware of the new ideas as food for thought.