Karma and the desire for spiritual growth
I would like to understand what Karma is, in the most general sense of this concept.
Karma is a mechanical law designed to support people's desire for spiritual growth. Everything else is just the consequences of this definition and the essential mechanisms that ensure this very purpose of Karma.
In the East, a person unencumbered by philosophy perceives karma as a kind of tribute to life, and not as a punishment, Karma is something that he has to put up with, to go side by side through life (but this is not fate in the European sense at all).
Karma comes into our lives not as a punishment for past sins, but as a result of a previous life, as some equivalent of its completion.
There is a deep philosophical meaning here...
The way we live determines only how we die (who we die as), and the imprint of death is, as it were, the yardstick that passes into the next life (we are forced to compare our current life with what we achieved in the past). Hence the calm attitude towards karma (after all, past death cannot be changed, nor can anything greater be achieved).
This is the most ancient understanding of karma, and from this follows a reverent attitude towards death along with an indifferent attitude towards life in the East.
If we recall the Japanese, then for them to act evil means to lose face (mostly), and not to be burdened with karma, you can do anything, but after that you need to commit hara-kiri (simplified). Harakiri (as well as female suicide) is in most cases an escape from life, when it can change so much that there will be no possibility to die with dignity.
Now we have an Indo-European understanding of the laws of karma as a trans-life punishment (or pressure, incentive).
Karma is a kind of obligation that a person takes before "God" when being born again, it is a "promise" to maintain a certain speed of spiritual development throughout life, and the ways to achieve this can be different (can be determined to some extent). This speed is determined by the degree of development at the time of the previous death.
What happens in the course of a given life - as it were, realizes Karma, forces to maintain the declared speed, and this is where the law comes into force as a mechanism for this realization.
Suppose a person succumbs to black envy. It is clear that this state cannot be considered divine (again, simplified), and it does not contribute to spiritual growth, therefore, a person is slowed down on his way to progress along the spiritual ladder, the "declared speed" is not maintained, and the same skating rink of Karma begins to catch up with the person. I will note that the "skating rink" moves exactly at the "declared" speed, and as soon as a person begins to make the slightest effort and accelerates, the rink is left behind and Karma, as it were, loosens its grip.
Such a strange statement of the Almighty as "whom I love, I punish" can also be interpreted from the point of view of Karma. High speed is a covenant with God, but it is difficult to keep it, and therefore it turns out that "God's little darlings" very often suffer.
There are many examples of people doing dishonest things and getting away with it. The thing is that their declared speed is so low that their personal skating rink has long since rusted before they can leave the garage.
In addition, any dishonest act can be "neutralized" by the next good deed or anything that will allow you to accelerate and jump out from under the rink at the right moment.
You can also take care of yourself in advance, for example, "run ahead", and while the rink reaches the place (that assessment, that level) where you are, selflessly "extinguish the candles".
There is also "preliminary survival of Karma", when you first suffer, and then you already account to the Higher Powers for the "unjustly" experienced suffering, usually "general luck" is taken as atonement.
I suppose that many people consider this article to be a guide to avoiding punishments, or a harmful guide for beginning sinners. But I must disappoint them. Those whose declared speed is low do not need it, and those who were careless in a past life to make a Buddha out of themselves and declared supersonic speeds, "even gamma-berry juice will not help."
Anyway, in order to use the means of "deception" of Karma, one must be quite advanced, at least in order to distinguish punished actions from unpunished ones. And this level of advancement already implies some understanding of the mechanisms of action of this law. So there is nothing terrible in this article.
Strictly speaking, what happens to a person who reaches such a level in understanding the mechanisms of action of Karma that the influence on a person from Karma is no longer possible... such a person usually dies.
More precisely, he is killed. Angels/bodhisattvas/mediators come (it all depends on the person's worldview) and say that he is ready to stand before the Almighty. Most often this happens in a dream (so that the person would be less restless), eyewitnesses claim that they heard short cries (refusal to go), and the person dies of cardiac arrest.
The fact is that "manually" following such an unpunished creature is quite troublesome, and here the reasoning "it's easier to shoot than to feed" comes into play. Depending on the forces that make the extraction, the argument is as follows: the "good" claim that the person is far ahead of his time, has achieved everything he was supposed to achieve, and now it would be good for him to rest. If the worldview supports the idea of reincarnation, then the following reasoning follows: "let's wait until the average person rises to a given level, when the laws of society and the morality of society change, when criminal acts become irrelevant, and we give birth to this person again, then society itself will not leave him unpunished in the event of anything." In short, "every vegetable has its own term."
Since people are most often born "at their own time," and the level of simultaneously incarnated people is approximately the same, it seems that the laws of karma are the same for everyone, but this is not at all the case. What is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to the bull. Everyone has a personal skating rink.
"Bad" people do not explain anything. They simply say, "it is not beneficial for us to have this person among those currently living."
Often, a long wait "when society rises to the level" is presented as some kind of nirvana-like state that a person has earned by honestly and tirelessly moving along the path of perfection of soul and body.
Actually, I don't want to talk about the mechanisms of Karma, such as the causal connection, the mechanism of ascension, the law of sacrifice, and so on, enough has been said about them.
Karma is just a mechanical law that is as easy to deceive as a soda machine by inserting a metal plate into the coin acceptor instead of a coin. And instead of trying to understand the complex intertwining of laws that implement the mechanism of Karma, it is much easier to "process" its original principle and its original purpose.