Understanding Karma—A Neutral Guide to Our Personal Power
Art Direction and Photograph by: Catie Menke. Model: Darby Ball.
Copy by: Alison Brownell
Model: Darby Ball
Editor: Jeni Fjelstad
Creative Direction by: Catie Menke
I grew up in a household that eschewed anything “witchy” or “new-age,” but loved the absolute shit out of Jesus. My mother was especially fond of the Golden Rule. You know the one. The old, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.”
Ironically enough, this rule would always be trotted out in fights with my siblings instead of helping to keep the peace. My brother would hit me, I’d hit back, and of course, I’d be the one in trouble. “But mom!” I’d say, “He did unto me what he wanted done unto him, so I did it unto him! Why am I in trouble?”
Unfortunately, that defense didn’t fly, but it was my first introduction to the idea of karma, whether my mom meant for it to be that way or not.
I find that a lot of people perceive karma in the way that my eight year old self did. You do something bad; you get it back. Repeat cycle. And as a society, we view karma as punishment. When we see bad things happen to bad people, we say, “HA! That’s your karma for being a shithead!” Wiccans take it a step further in that anything you do “negative” comes back to you three times as awful. No thank you to that ideology.
We seem to think that karma exists as a punishing entity, not unlike the biblical God that my mother adored so very much. That its sole existence is to wait for us to screw up and then swipe the rug right out from under us. And we’re so afraid to make mistakes or act *gasp* human for fear that karma is coming to get us.
But...what if karma didn’t actually care?
Yeah.
Karma isn’t lurking around every dark corner, waiting to jump out at you. It isn’t prowling the heavens, waiting to strike you with lightning. Nor is it grabbing a beer at your favorite bar, waiting for you to sit down next to it so that it can get you sooooo wasted that you text your ex things you shouldn’t. It isn’t out of our control, and it isn’t to be feared.
Karma doesn’t care if you do bad things. Karma doesn’t care if you do good things. Karma doesn’t care.
So, if karma is so disinterested in us, what is it?
The idea of karma comes from both Hinduism and Buddhism. It’s the idea that how you’ve behaved in current and past lives is indicative of your fate in future lives. You may or may not believe in past lives, but you don’t need to. Karma is showing up in your life right now regardless.
Look at it from this angle: You likely have patterns that have been repeating themselves in your life. We all do. Some are good, and some are not so good. Going to bed at a consistent time every night: Good. Eating too many Crumb’l cookies: Not so good. Both of these actions have responses associated with them. If you go to bed at a consistent time every night, you likely have good sleep habits, can fall asleep easier, have deeper sleep, and as a result, be more alert during the day and have healthier hormones. Eating too many Crumb’l cookies likely means that you’ll have an upset stomach with a severe sugar crash. Both of those responses are your karma, reflective of possible futures from those actions. And even if you eat too many cookies, the “consequence” isn’t bad for the sake of being bad — it just is — because that’s what happens when you’re out of energy balance in your body. It’s science, not punishment.
And if you let your good sleep hygiene go, or eat fewer cookies, then you’d probably have opposite responses because you were taking opposite actions, hence flipping your own karma. But again, karma itself is doing nothing. It’s simply the response to your behavior.
When we look at karma in this way and take away the reward-punishment axis that we seem to have it on, we realize that we actually have more control over our karma than we think we do. And from here, we free ourselves from the idea that karma is associated solely with negative consequences. Sure, if I speed and get a speeding ticket, I brought that on myself. But if I get hit by lightning, it isn’t because last week I accidentally sneezed on some random person in line at Starbucks and didn’t say “excuse me” afterwards. I just was unlucky in that moment, and sometimes, shit just happens. It’s good to look at our behaviors and see where we can do better. It’s useless to label all negative experiences as punishment for mistakes we’ve made.
Karma isn’t coming to get you, it won’t punish you, and it doesn’t hate you. It’s neutral, and you’re the one in control. You don’t need Jesus to take the wheel. You’ve got this.
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