With all the discussion of Karma going on, I searched the Heavenletter archive to find what God would say on the topic. Below are some excerpts, and in some cases the entire Heavenletter, for those of you who are interested...

Quote:

Free Will
13 Nov 2000

... Those who feel helpless in life and under the yoke of karma have a scapegoat. That is their free will to do so. They can attribute the ups and downs of their life to karma or astrology and shrug their shoulders, or they can, at any moment, decide to get up and make other choices in life.

Some see God's Will as karma. It was God's Will that they succeed or fail or whatever.

I am not indifferent to anyone's life, but My vision is far greater than most everyone's, would You agree, and I, like you, intervene as little as possible.

If I gave you free will, I gave you free will. I did not give you free will some of the time and not the rest. I did not give you free will to follow only what I think. I gave you free will to follow what you think, even if it be folly. Otherwise, free will would be a false name.

Soon or late, you find out that your will and My Will are inevitably entwined. Your will is for goodness and mercy and peace and joy for all as is Mine.

Quote:

Good Is for All
Heavenletter No. 0745 - 3 Nov 2002
God said:

As you sow, so shall ye reap does not quite mean what it is taken to. It is not karma. It is not tit for tat. All it means is that if you go Route 66 West, you will be going west. If you take Route 66 East, you will go east. All it means is that when you go in a certain direction, that is the direction you have taken. If you take a graveled road, you are going to find gravel. If you take a sunny path, you are on it. The decisions you make are the decisions you make. You can, of course, change them. When you get off a certain road, you are off it. You can turn around. As ye sow does not mean you are being punished or rewarded for the past. Get out of that thinking.

When you smile, it is more likely you will receive smiles.

When you are friendly, it is more likely you will find friendliness.

When you are happy, it is more likely you will attract happiness.

But it is not inevitable. You can be going down a self-defeating road and still meet inspiration and favors from Heaven. There are flowers everywhere, whichever road you take. There are rocks in most roads too, whatever path you are on.

Whichever road you choose at a given time, there are other people on it, and they carry their own cargo with them. You are not responsible for every action of those you come across. Just as you, even on the high road, sometimes some are cross. That doesn't mean that the person you meet is responsible for your crossness because they happen to be near you when you express it.

No matter what path, no one deserves crossness. Everyone deserves kindness and beauty, whichever path they take, and they shall have it.

Do not begrudge those who have chosen a difficult or, to your eyes, wrong path. Do not begrudge that they also receive goodness even when, according to you, they don't deserve it. Do not think, by their receiving a blessing, that you are denied.

By the same token, do not think that you who are only good are mistreated when something untoward befalls you. Your life is not always a question of what you deserve or what you do not. Life is not a counting system. Beads are moved as on an abacus. There is an impartiality. It is best not to take anything personally, neither the bouquets nor the rocks. No matter who you are and what you have done, all the seasons come.

Do not feel that you are carrying a heavy burden of the past. And I mean all past. I mean your ancestors' past and the history of man.

You do not need absolution. There is nothing to absolve you from. If you feel that you must be absolved, then I absolve you. Life itself is absolution. Life is a clearing. Life is this moment of non-time.

Quote:

This That Is Called Karma
Heavenletter No. 1440 - 14 Oct 2004
God said:

What is called karma is not as described. It is not payback. It is a continuation of something unfinished. That's all.

Most of your relationships are unfinished. No divorce is final. Even death does not end your relationships. You just haven't gotten to the good part of the story yet, that's all. But, of course, at some point, the story as you knew it, the story as you wrote it, goes up in smoke. It turns out it was only a story, after all. Then perhaps you are finished with it.

It may give you some comfort to know that you are at the beginning or middle and not at the end of your relationships. You are given another chance. You are given as many chances as you need to come to the place of love supreme.

Seen from a distance, there is little difference between hello and goodbye. The embrace is the same.

Perhaps goodbye is the greeting.

When people's bodies die, you realize the insignificance of all the toil and trouble that went on. They and you perhaps took to toil and trouble more than to anything else.

This is not to say that their life was insignificant. Or yours. Oh, no. But the toil and trouble were. The life of those who have left the Earth plane could have held more fun and joy. Opportunity was wasted. But the life was not for naught.

It's just you act as if life on Earth were forever. You think it is very serious. All the while it is an interlude. It is a little expedition. It is a walk around the block.

What could have been made of the life was not. It was not made the most of. Some of it was made. Some of it was unmade, like a bed you got up from.

You can consider life on Earth as a night's sleep. You might as well sleep well and have good dreams. Why not? In your dream, you can make life easier for others. You don't have to make it hard. You don't have to have a performance rating or demand the same of another. Why not have a good sleep?

This life on Earth is so temporal. It is the blink of an eye. But in that interim, you can bless. You can make the interval blessed. It is such a little thing to do. All you have to do is to not take it so seriously and take it joyously instead.

What if life was meant to be fun rather than serious?

What if you were like the little child? Oh, there might be a little tug between you and another over a toy truck, but in a moment, it would be forgotten, and you would make up and return to play. You might go outside and dig holes. Digging holes is hard work, but it would be play.

Well, then, consider life more as helping each other dig holes. Life is not a contest you are in. It is to help each other make the best of what they've got. It is to share your pail and shovel. It is to help your friend. It is to play in the sand. It is to laugh and laugh. Is there something better to do in life than to enjoy it? Laugh at its folly, and stand up in love.

In this blink of an eye, you can be less ambitious.

So, karma can be considered like playing cards. You are just finishing a hand that, one way or another, you were dealt, or dealt yourself.

Quote:

No Excuse for Anything
Heavenletter No. 1792 - 1 Oct 2005

... There is no karma nor childhood or improper upbringing to use as an excuse. You are not to excuse yourself now because of anything. There is no one to blame, no matter how blameful they are according to everything you know and everything the world knows. It may not have been right by any standard you know, but that doesn't mean you are to justify your own position in life because of it. No matter how wrong the past was, no matter how inexcusable, it is a fence post you passed by. There is no need for your fingers to keep touching it. It is reverie now. It always was a passing thought. It is not more now.

Quote:

Live Life Today
Heavenletter No. 1796 - 5 Oct 2005

Looking for cause and effect is a limited view. Looking for cause is living life backward. Tracing from cause to effect, or effect to cause, is cutting off your vision. What will happen to your thoughts when you no longer believe in cause and effect? Are you afraid you will feel ungrounded?

Its counterpart is: As you sow, so shall ye reap. But it is not always certain that if you plant corn, that corn will grow. Sometimes it won't, due to one condition or another. It will grow somewhere but maybe not in your plot at this time. Life is not always an even exchange.

You may agree that it is good to let go of the past, and yet you hang on to cause and effect.

What is the concept of karma but an unending cycle of cause and effect? It is a nice theory but one you are better off not going by. It does not do honor to expansion of life. It is closed-circuit television.

Past lives may have existed, but you are free to transcend them. Whatever transpired once is in the past. It does not have to be in the present. It is not true that you have to have been a marauder in another life anymore than it is true that you had to be a saint.

No longer think of making up for things. There is nothing to make up for. You begin equal now in that you have your life, and it is before you, not behind you. In any case, like Lot's wife, it behooves you to not look back.

If you were unkind in a past life, be kind now. If you were kind in a past life, be kind now. When you come down to it, what is the difference?

When you believe utterly in the past and that it is recycled, you give away your God-given power. You are quick to say that I visited misfortune upon you, but reluctant to say that I gave you great power of choice and great power of evolution. How much can you evolve when you think it is all spin-off from the past? What drudgery it is to keep pushing the same wheel of life!

I suggest you let go of it. Be new-born today, not to expiate, not to atone, but just to be. Beloved, take a deep breath, and live life today from a new height. You are arisen.

Quote:

Enjoy the Movie
Heavenletter No. 1807 - 16 Oct 2005

... There is no karma, but you are creating energy right now. Right now create the energy you want to find. The past does not create this moment. You create it. Carry the energy you want to receive. You have choice. So, choose. Choose the energy you want to give. You have free will. Free will means free choice. Do not consider that anything is foisted on you. In every moment you are choosing your life. You are the chooser of it.

There is no cause and effect. Accept this. You see an effect, and you keep looking for the cause. Yet what you see as the effect may not be accurate. In any case, get beyond the question of why. Get beyond the question of why, and you will move forward.

If there is no past and no karma, why persist in accounting for the present? Explanation is not the name of the game. If you have been playing Explanation, cease now. Do not explain your life away. Live instead.

The cloth has already been woven. You are not going to unweave it. Looking for the past to explain the present makes you a pawn.

For those of you who believe in karma, don't make yourself a victim. I would not have you be victim. I would have you wrest the present from the past. And now, the present is already passed. Drop off the concept of present and past and any connections you make between them.

Only in the relative world, does time take a bow. It is hard to understand how time does not exist when it is underfoot all the time. Let go of time, and you let go of restrictions. The past, whether ignoble or meritorious, is a restriction. Whatever has been is irrelevant. What energy are you fostering in this moment of timelessness?

In Eternity, would you concern yourself with a passing fault observed on the relative plane? Relative life does not exist. It is a movie you are watching. Observe the liveliness of the movie rather than the obscurity of what you see amiss. Enjoy the movie.

Quote:

Karma and Choice
2 Sep 1999

Karma is a balancing act, but karma is not necessarily your own. Maybe that was Margaret's husband's karma.

I want to tell you that karma is a word in great favor right now, but often it is seen as a philosophical defeat or as a lucky fluke over which you have no responsibility.

Better to think of karma as the choices you have right now. You have the choice to be happy. That is up to you. No matter what befalls, you can rise above it. That is karma.

Heaven awaits you. Just look up. That is karma.

Angels guide you. What karma!

Translate the word "karma" into blessing.

Say: "I have God's blessings. This is God's blessing. This is an offering from God. No matter how it seems to me, it is mine to do with as I like and then await other blessings."

As incredible as it may seem, each child of Mine has chosen his hand of cards. It was not foisted on you.

You chose it for a reason, not for no reason, and now you play the hand you dealt yourself, and have fun.

It's only a game of life, the sport of kings, a play on Earth.

The world's judgment says it is bad that a husband leave. The world clucks and tut-tuts, but how do you know it is bad?

What if the world had written a different script, and it was considered bad that a husband stayed and good when he left?

I am a God of Heart and not intellect. Be you a child of heart and not intellect. Intellect imprisons you. Heart frees you.

Consider the possibility that most of your beliefs are self-righteous and incorrect.

Consider the possibility that the events in your life don't have that much to do with you.

Consider the possibility that you wrote your own script and now you can rewrite it.

Consider the possibility that I love and guide you and always have.

Consider the possibility that you have been mistaken in everything you thought.

If you can imagine that, then you can start anew, and take off that sack you have been carrying on your shoulders and replace it with none at all.

You can remove that dark cloud you carry, and replace it with a lovely crocheted shawl that lets light in.

Consider that today your whole deck of cards is scrambled, and you get all aces, and everybody else does too!

Consider that you misread your cards before.

Consider that you chose to see the cards you did.

Consider that no hand was dealt to you, that you pulled out the cards yourself.

Consider that maybe you are not on Earth here for yourself, but are here to build a pyramid to Heaven.

Consider that I enjoy you.

Consider that I am benevolent.

Consider that I am a Caster of Blessings, and you are a catcher of My blessings, and that your karma is to catch them!

Look today for the love letters I send you in the form of people. Each person you meet has a love letter to give you. Perhaps, if you look in your pocket, you will see love letters that are yours to give.

How many? How many can your heart contain? These love letters from God, given to you to deliver, bear no name on them. They are earmarked for everyone you meet, for you are a deliverer on Earth of My messages from Heaven.