Sharon Stone's Karma Confusion

Sharon Stone has been all over the news due to a comment she made that China's earthquake was karmic payback for Tibet.

It's hard not to want to sing (cue Boy George):

Karma karma karma karma karma confuuuuusion...
Oh Sharon Stone, Sharon Stoooooone...
Talking is easy when you're a celebrity
Celebrity...celebrityyyyyy...

OK, enough kidding around. Sharon's heart is in the right place, but she really doesn't get the concept of karma if she thinks peasants dying in China will somehow punish the people responsible for the mess in Tibet. Those people responsible (i.e., the people in power) are safe in Beijing (or wherever they live), probably ensconced in lavish homes with better building codes that won't easily crumble in an earthquake. They were not hurt by the earthquake, the poor people were.

I know it's tempting to want to create a meaning such as karmic retribution to feel better about a large tragedy such as the China earthquake, but it's not necessarily accurate...or even necessary.

If you follow the line of reasoning that we reap what we sow, and we live multiple lives (for karma goes hand in hand with reincarnation), karma is not necessarily meted out in a single lifetime. The bad people responsible for the suffering in Tibet may, in fact, live high on the hog this go around, but when they come back next time, it may be a different story.

This is not to suggest that everyone who is suffering was somehow a jerk in a past life. Some folks come here to suffer to teach others lessons, or to grow spiritually. And it's entirely possible that the people who died in China did not die out of punishment, but simply because they were done here, and had accomplished what they set out to do in this lifetime.

Of course, when you see someone suffering, it is possible that they are paying their karmic debt, but not always. The worst suffering is actually be the self-punishment we inflict on ourselves.

For example, I was receiving a past life regression during my past life therapist training, and the student who was hypnotizing me was someone who I had apparently had known in a concentration camp in a previous life - only I was a child victim, and she was a guard in the Nazi regime. (This is what I told her under hypnosis.) I had forgiven her, but she had not forgiven herself, which was why she was punishing herself in this lifetime through alcoholism and self-destructive behaviors. I told her the self-punishment was not necessary, since she had not actively tried to be evil in that past life, but got caught up in something bigger than herself that she could not get out of due to fear.

With an expanded view of life that involves many lifetimes, karma is a complex system of checks and balances that may not make immediate sense in the span of one lifetime. Over time, however, our souls do learn the lessons we need to learn...because that's ultimately why we're here in the first place.