I think I am a good person yet the universe treats me badly. I work hard and yet I don’t get anything I want. I do not understand why l am getting such bad karma.

Karma is neither good nor bad. Karma is the experience of what you have created. It is the compassionate dynamic through winch you learn to create responsibly. 
Karma is the law of cause and effect through which you shape your life with every Decision.  There are no good effects or bad effects. There are only effects. You choose the cause and that choice is also the choice of an effect. The cause and the effect are one. Neither can exist without the other. If you participate in the cause, you will always participate in its effect, also. There are no exceptions.

You feel that the Universe is treating you badly, but it is not. It is treating you the way you have asked it to treat you. You tell the Universe how to treat you when you make choices. When you create suffering, you experience suffering. When you create joy, you experience joy. Sooner or later you will make the connection between what you choose and what you experience. Then you will choose differently.

Karma draws your attention to what you have created. Is your attention not captured when you are in pain? Asking why the Universe is treating you badly when you experience painful circumstances in your life is like asking a mirror why you look the way that you do. Your reflection will not change until you change. Karma is your reflection. You can throw away a mirror but your reflection will be the same when you look into another one. You can blame the Universe for your pain, but your pain will continue. Only you can change that and, eventually, you will.

CAN VISUALIZATION AND AFFIRMATION CHANGE KARMA?
Can visualization and affirmation counter the effects of Karma? Are they in vain if they are contrary to the karma that I must experience?

You experience what you create. That is karma. Not even your nonphysical Teachers can change that. Nothing can. You are responsible for how you choose to use you energy. All else is wishful thinking. The Universe is wise and compassionate. Experiencing what you create is the Universe’s gracious way of assisting you in developing the ability to create consciously. How else could you learn to wield your power compassionately and wisely in all circumstances, at all times? That is what you were born to learn and karma is the tool that teaches you thoroughly and irrevocably. Once you experience a pain that you have created in another person and recognize what you have done, you will not do that again.

Affirmations and visualizations are ways of focusing intention. Intentions cannot prevent you from encountering what you have created. Each encounter with what you created is a lesson to be learned. You are the vehicle for this educational process. However, your intentions can alter the way you experience the consequences that you have created. For example, if you intend to see the circumstances of your life as the unfolding of karma, you will not be so quick to blame others for what you experience.

You will be able to detach from your experiences in ways that you would not otherwise.

You will not take things so personally. This will allow you to respond in ways that create karma that is not painful. When you see the people in your life with gratitude instead of resentment, you will not harm them or want to.

When you set the intention to respond compassionately to everything that you experience, you also allow your karma to open your heart rather than close it. When you hold the intention to see yourself as a student in the Earth school, you utilize your experiences as they were intended to be used — to expand your awareness of yourself as a powerful creator, and your freedom to create consciously.

Karma is a gift from the Universe. It is a gift that you cannot visualize or affirm away. As your awareness grows, it will become a gift that you cherish.

SHOULD I INTERFERE WITH SOMEONE’S KARMA?
If I watch as someone I love is being molested, do I simply say to myself “That must be his/her karma and I am not to judge or interfere?”

You cannot interfere with someone else’s karma. You can only make your own karma. If you see an act of violence and you say to yourself, “He must deserve this or it wouldn’t be happening. His suffering is not my concern,” what karma are you creating?

The indifference that you show to a fellow soul is the same indifference that you will encounter. Is this what you want?

An act of violence may not be as dramatic as a fight or a sexual assault. Indifference is a violent action. So is greed, jealousy, and every impulse to exploit another soul or the Earth. Do you want to give to Life? That desire is nurturing. Do you want to take from it? That impulse is violent.

If you decide that it is not your business when someone else suffers, don’t think your understanding of karma will permit your act of callousness to go without its effects upon you. The suffering that you see is fair. Every experience in the Earth school is fair but if you use your realization of this to ignore the suffering of your brothers and sisters, you create a world in which your suffering, also, is of no concern to others. That is karma.

Your future is yours to create in the same way that you created your present — through your choices. Compassion or indifference is a choice. It is natural for us to be compassionate, but we can choose “not to get involved.” Feeling warmly toward one another is natural for us, but we can choose to be distant and cold. Everything that you do is a choice and every choice that you make creates experiences that you will encounter. That is karma.

Getting involved does not mean judging. You may feel righteously angry at a sexual molester but beware if you do. You do not know enough to judge — this act or any other. You do not know what is being healed, or coming to completion. Molester and molested may be exchanging roles that were played in another lifetime. It is not your role to be a judge or a jury. If you decide to take on these roles, you create painful karma for yourself. Do you like being judged?

Doing what you can to protect the molested from the molester is appropriate. Judging the molester is not. Protecting the bullied and the oppressed is appropriate. Judging the bully and the oppressor is not. Do you have the courage to protect without judging? Can you be compassionate even to those who have no compassion? If so, there is no finer karma that you can create. You will live in a world that is compassionate with you, even when you forget to be compassionate. You will be supported when you are weak until you have regained your strength. You will be loved, even if you forget to love.

How would you like to create that?

WILL I CREATE NEGATIVE KARMA BY TAKING A JOB IN A COMPANY THAT SUPPORTS PEOPLE’S ADDICTIONS?
I’m about to take a job that will challenge me and give me new skills, but this company has practices that are in conflict with my belief system.  Will I create negative karma by participating in something that contributes to other’s addictions?

You create karma whenever you make a choice. Every choice you make is a cause and every cause has an effect. When you encounter the effects that you have caused, that is your karma. Your moment to moment experience is a series of consequences that you have created, and your response to what each moment brings to you creates more effects — more karma.

Effects are neither positive nor negative. They are consequences that your choice of causes creates. If those consequences are wholesome and life-supporting, we call them positive. If they are painful and destructive, we call them negative. Those labels are ours.  The Universe does not judge. It compassionately provides for us the consequences that we create with our choices, whatever those consequences are. That is how karma works.

When you participate in a cause that brings suffering to others, you will participate also in the effects of that cause. That means you will encounter the same suffering in the intimacy of your own experience. This process is complex and exact. If you choose, for example, to take a job in an industry that thrives on the addictions of others, you draw to yourself people who will thrive on your inadequacies. As you choose to profit from the suffering of others, others will seek to profit from your suffering.

Is this the world that you desire? If so, take the job. The Universe will not judge you. Do you seek to create another world. Pay attention to your choices, choose wisely, and you will create another world. The Universe will not judge you in that case, either. The power to create your experience is fully in your hands. That is the lesson of karma.

COMPASSION AND KARMA
What you sow, you reap. What a collective sows, the collective reaps. What the human family sows, the human family reaps. These overlapping dynamics combine to form the experience of individuals, collectives of individuals, and the human experience. Within these dynamics, individuals, collectives, and humanity encounter the consequences of choices that they have made and are offered opportunities to choose again. With each choice, more consequences are created and more opportunities to choose again present themselves. A year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the consequences of the choices we made in response [were] becoming visible. The brutality of the attacks shocked millions and gratified millions. Around the world, individuals who were able to feel the pain of others grieved. Those who could not watched numbly or celebrated the humbling of an evil people. Those who could feel the suffering of others cried for them. Those who could not rejoiced in the pain of villains. This is an ancient pattern. It has repeated itself countless times and the sum of these experiences is the chronicle of human history — brutalities imposed upon humans by humans.

The individuals who attacked us could not grasp our humanity — the humanity of those they attacked. They could not step into the horror of a family suddenly without a father or a mother, a loved one gone without good bye, or terrible thoughts of those who were dearest in terror and pain. They saw instead inhuman, unholy infidels, blasphemers of the Holy, scourges of the Earth, and enemies of Good. They struck mercilessly because they believed themselves to be superior, to be right, to be good, and to be warriors with the Divine on their side.

They celebrated because, at last, revenge was theirs. They rejoiced because, at last, the pain of others was great. They laughed because, at last, the humiliation of others was deep. They danced because, in their powerlessness, they found a brief moment of relief, of bringing righteousness to the unrighteous, of imposing themselves.

They could not feel the pain they created, but we did, and so did many others around the world. In the tender weeks following the attacks, Americans opened to each other and the world opened to America. Deep bonds of mutual suffering replaced impoliteness, competition, and animosity. The impact of so many souls suddenly gone from the Earth, and the malicious intention behind their deaths, made us vulnerable. Our arrogance disappeared. That was our moment of hope. That was our opportunity to change the course of American history, international relations, and human evolution. It was the opportunity to see our brief collective experience of grief and loss — of the consequences of brutality - as another wave in the ocean of grief and loss that has washed over millions upon millions of humans, including those who struck us without mercy.

This tender moment was our opportunity to return compassion for violence, kindness for brutality, and humanity for inhumanity. It called to us in our pain and our honor. It said to each of us, in the intimacy of our inner lives, “This is what revenge feels like to those who receive it. This is what cruelty feels like to those who experience it. DO NOT INFLICT THESE TERRIBLE EXPERIENCES UPON OTHERS. DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN THE EVOLUTION OF VIOLENCE. CREATE ANOTHER PATH THROUGH HISTORY. DO YOU HAVE THE COURAGE?”

If we had heard that call, the consequences that we are now encountering would have been very different, if we had the courage to feel our pain, our humiliation, and the agony of our losses we would not have been able to create those same experiences in others. Instead, we saw ourselves as victims. We sought revenge. We imposed ourselves righteously upon the unrighteous. We perceived ourselves as right, as good, and as warriors with the Divine on our side and, in the process, we created more families without husbands and wives, more loved ones gone without goodbyes, and more terrible thoughts of those who were dearest in terror and pain. We became like those who attacked us.

The tender moment after the attacks is gone, but another tender moment can be created. It can be created in you by you. It requires the courage to feel your pain instead of hiding it from yourself with rage, to feel your humiliation without concealing it from yourself with righteousness, and your humanity. It requires that you see with compassion even those who have no compassion, because if you have no compassion for those who have no compassion, you become one of them....

Now is the time to create the tender moment again. Now is always and forever the time to create it, to live in it, and to act in it.

GARY ZUKAV is the author of The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, winner of the American Book Award for Science; The Seat of the Soul, the celebrated #1 bestseller in The New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, and others; and The New York Times bestseller Soul Stories.  His books have sold millions of copies an dare published in sixteen languages.  He is a graduate of Harvard and a former U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) officer with Vietnam service.

Excerpted from:  Soul to Soul: Communications from the Heart by Gary Zukav.  Copyright © 2007 by Gary Zukav.  Published by Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

This article is from the November/December 2007 issue of Unity Magazine. Subscribe now!