"Karma is a bitch!" That is what we hear when someone seems to get what is coming to them, but karma, as I understand it from my own experience, isn't like that at all. Karma is not punishment. Karma is a gift. Karma helps us to see the parts of ourselves that need healing, and though the realizations are often painful, if we open our hearts to loving ourselves unconditionally, we grow exponentially from the experience.
My first understanding of karma came when I was a young mother of three boys. My oldest son started playing soccer at the age of six and was on a team with a boy who exhibited extremes in behavior, angry outbursts, crying fits and sulking. He dominated the volunteer coach's attention, and many of the mothers, including me, talked about how we wished he would just quit the team. The coach would patiently try to reason with the child, moving him from position to position trying to appease him. Sometimes this worked, and I was in awe of the man's patience.
One Saturday at a game, I saw this young boy's father. He was a physically imposing figure, very large in stature and quite intimidating in his mannerisms. He walked furiously up and down the field yelling at his son, telling him how stupid and lazy he was. At the time, I remember saying to myself, "Now I understand this boy," but that thought would be lost the next time our paths crossed.
A few years later I had just finished earning my master's degree in education and was hired to teach third grade at a local elementary school. One day in the teachers' lounge, a group of teachers was discussing the behavior of a particularly unruly boy. I recognized his name, and I quickly jumped in and added to the story by telling the other teachers about his behavior on my son's soccer team. Being the new kid on the block, I had a sense of being part of the group as I added in my two cents. In my time at the school, the teachers had an increasingly difficult time with the child, and I remember feeling resentful of him because of his deviant behavior.
Fast forward two years, my youngest son had joined a soccer team. During one of his games, he was taunted and teased by the boys on the opposing team. When the game was over and both teams were to pass each other and give friendly high fives, he systematically punched each of the opposing team members in the stomach. Within minutes we were surrounded by angry parents. Luckily, his coach was able to calm them down, and we left the field. Soon parents were talking to other parents, and my son got the reputation of being a bully. That news spread back to our neighborhood, and the alternate bullying, as I call it now, began. My son was shunned by parents and prevented from playing with their children. Confused and angry, he lashed out by fighting with kids who taunted him. Once when a little girl of three fell off her bike, the other kids told her parents that my son had pushed her down. Even the children knew that the parents would believe them because of my son's reputation.
I knew that my son was not being treated fairly, and that his reputation as a bully was created more by gossip and rumor than by his actions. However, as the hostility in the neighborhood towards him grew, he grew more angry and frustrated, thereby leading him to become more hostile. One Saturday afternoon, when he was riding his bike around the block, he stopped to play with two little boys, brothers. They were a few years younger than he was, but the parents let him play. Then, according to the father, my son, without provocation, hit one of the boys on the back with a toy gun.
While the phone with my friend, I heard the front door slam. I went to investigate, but before I could reach the door, there was a massive pounding as if someone was going to break it down. Once there, I found my son breathing hard, standing behind the door as if holding it closed. The pounding increased, so I moved him out of the way to find out who was on the other side. As I opened the door, I saw a 250 pound man who looked like a body builder, whose face was beet red, sweating and full of fury. I only half-opened the door because he scared even me. Through the half-opened door he proceeded to tell me what had happened.
I talked to my son and found out that after he hit the boy, the man had picked him up by the shirt and carried him across the neighborhood to the house until he managed to wiggle free. Terrified, he ran into the house and slammed the door. It was a living nightmare. After putting my children to bed that night, I went out into the yard and looked up at the stars. With my arms outstretched and tears flowing down my cheeks, I asked God, "Why me?"
Well, when you ask a question, especially to the divine maker, you are going to get an answer. Into my head popped the image of the boy I had spoken of to the other teachers that day a few years earlier in the teacher's lounge. Though some people might believe that I got a dose of my own medicine and was being punished for my past actions, that is not how I experienced it. I had now been given the privilege of seeing life from another person's point of view. I knew my son was not a bad child. His reputation had grown so viral that people had changed the way they approached him. It then grew into a larger problem because he felt excluded from other children. He had acted out, but there was no understanding, only judgement, just like I had judged the boy on my oldest son's soccer team.
What I learned from experiencing my karma was even greater than to not gossip about people. Since I am a teacher, my students come to me from other teachers. There is a file kept on every student with comments from their teachers since elementary school. I refuse to let myself judge a child based on other people's perception of him or her. This has served me well, and students who seemed to be heading down a dark path have found success in my classroom, simply because I did not label them as their other teacher's had labeled them.
Most of all, karma helps me grow in love. Instead of standing out under the stars asking God, "Why me?" I now know the answer to that question. When I stop judging, the judging stops. Everything in my life is being reflected back to me, as if I am looking into a mirror. Karma is teaching me unconditional love, and that starts with me. When I am judging others, I am judging myself.
I see karma is a beautiful gift, and I welcome it. What am I going to learn next that will help me experience more love? That is how I understand karma, and I am grateful for what it teaches me.
photo credit:
Kaloudis, Jasmine. "Yoga-for-beginners-synergy-by-jasmine." Flickr. Yahoo!, 07 June 2012. Web. 07 Feb. 2015.
