The Twelfth Insight - James Redfield [25]
“So I’m the poster child for it.”
“Well, take a look at what has happened. You tried to steal food from someone, and that created a karmic response from the Universe that resulted in some guy stealing your knife.”
I began resisting again. “What about him? Maybe he’s just a serial thief.”
“Maybe, or maybe he’s a nice guy and he decided to move up the trail somewhere or go back to town, and he just forgot to give back your knife. Either way, you have to ask why this happened to you right now, just when we’re talking about all this and right after you tried to steal from someone.”
“Wait a minute. Stop saying that. I wasn’t trying to steal from anyone.”
“No? Didn’t you tell a lie in order to try to manipulate someone out of his food? Trying to do it and doing it is the same thing karmically.”
“The Document says that?”
He nodded and then stared at me for a long time.
“Look,” he finally added. “These laws seem hard to believe because we’ve all been trained to think the Universe only has physical laws. And the reason people are slow to put this together is that we all shade the truth at times, especially in business, or to save face, and we all have things happen to us that are bad. So there seems to be no relationship between the two. We think it doesn’t matter if we lie a little bit, because bad things happen to everyone anyway.”
He looked at me hard. “But according to the Document, that isn’t true, and anyone can prove it to himself by just being observant. Because Karma is speeding up, the consequences from an untruthful manipulation come back very quickly.”
“But why is it speeding up?”
He stopped. “I don’t know. I asked the Hopis the same question, but they said the Document didn’t say. They only hinted it may be part of the energy that the Calendar is pointing to.”
“You mean the Mayan Calendar? What do the Hopi know of that?”
“The classical Maya were Native Americans, too, you know.”
“Anyway,” Wil continued, “prove it to yourself. The Document says that when enough of us realize this is the way Karma works, it’s going to lead to a new era of Integrity to replace the corruption we have now.
“And there’s more. It’s important to see that the Law of Karma is designed not for punishment, but to affect a positive correction. It apparently works this way: the Universe is set up spiritually to support and encourage our spiritual growth. If you center yourself in truth, then your Synchronicity will soar. If you participate in untruth, then you draw into your life a person who does the same thing to you, again not as punishment but to show you how it feels, so you can move back toward truth.
“What happens,” I asked, “if we don’t get the message?”
“The Document says the response of Karma gets more extreme in an effort to get our attention, something, again, that we can also prove to ourselves at this moment in history. All we have to do is pay attention to what happens in relation to our own behavior.”
“Okay, what if one is randomly selected and murdered by a serial killer? Is that payback for something we did earlier?”
“No. Remember, Karma has nothing to do with payback. It reflects back to you what you’re doing. If you are an armed robber, for instance, you are standing for the untruth that says that behavior is okay. It’s the same as a lie or deception to get the money, only worse. And you will have money taken from you to show you how it feels, so you can change. The problem is that some people just use the Karma as an excuse to keep the same behavior going, thinking everyone is doing it to me, why shouldn’t I do it to them as well? They’re missing the fact that they are being shown something so they can change.
“When someone becomes the victim of a serial killer, unless the person is a serial killer himself, it’s a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s the result of chance, not Karma, and happens because of the current state of the world’s imperfection. We know psychologically and genetically what’s going on with serial killers, from studies of childhood trauma and genetics.