Karma Chameleons

I dated a girl who looked like this.

Well, I thought she was a girl...

Karma

You've heard all about Karma.  For most, it's the good or bad one engages in during their life.  For most, continuing on blissfully unaware or deliberately ignorant of the impact they have on the lives of those around them and of the world they live in is their way of dodging the Karmic payment that will come due at some point.  At least, that's what most people think.

What's it really all about?  Well, what seems to be the most accepted is it's about recognition of your personal impact and awakening to your interconnection with the world with compassion and understanding - which are things the leaders of the Academy for Psychic Studies have never been willing to accept and are likely to not understand.

What about the teachings?  Didn't the head psychotic Bill Duby continually say "I dated Karma and she was a bitch.  Now I date Grace and she is divine."?  At the same time, didn't Bill also talk about Karma in terms such as "Karmic debt" and "the laws of Karma" and so on as if he was dating Grace downtown while doing the wild thing with Karma in his Winnebago?

As he was with all things, Bill Duby had little real understanding of Karma.  Or Grace for that matter.  I guess he really didn't understand much more than how to run a con.  Anyway, current thought ties the belief in Karma to a belief in reincarnation.  I won't go into details but if you understand Karma is a Buddhist belief and that reincarnation is a key belief of the Buddhist faith that's pretty much the basis for what I'm saying here.

Bill being the psychotic con man who would sell his own mother a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge, tried to tie Karma to whatever crackpot Scientology theories he thought he learned from Lewis Bostwick and the free crap Scientology printed on a book of matches.  Of course that didn't pass the smell test but he crammed it down our throats anyway.

Bill tried to tell us there is a Karmic debt for your misdeeds (which is somewhat true) and that you have to atone for that debt (which is utter crap).  At the same time, he said Grace was the pathway to forgiveness - and since your path to Grace meant you had to fill up Angela's payola envelope, display your empty pockets to Robin's scowling face and endure the tantrums from Bill's deranged mind, you might find that path pretty damn rocky.

Near the end of Bill Duby's reign of terror, he claimed there was no real reincarnation but you do hang around as a spirit in someone's body unable to control actions but able to influence thought and emotion unless you have achieved his level of enlightenment - and you can't work out your Karmic Debt without a body to do it.  Essentially he was telling us we were all Karmic-ly Screwed.

So, all that talk about Karma and your need to repay your Karmic Debt didn't have a meaning since there was no way to restore balance in your soul.  

Even after Bill's psychotic rant that reincarnation was not linked to Karma, that notion of Karmic Debt still remained.  However as Bill dropped as dead as a poisoned rat by then, there was no one who cared enough to keep ramming that point home but Angela and Robin kept rummaging in people's pockets to collect another Karmic Payment anyway.

What's this all about?

Well, like a chameleon, Bill changed his message to suit his own perverted purposes.  When his purpose changed (like maybe Robin wanted another vacation in Europe or Angela wanted to take another shopping spree at Macy's) his message changed to create more interest and raise more money.  He took what little he knew about what little he read about and played it against our own ignorance in those areas (and his own warnings to stay away from those teachings, if we knew what was good for us) and built a tall tale so elaborate, arcane and utterly impenetrable, it looked exactly like the thing it was not: the truth.

That kept us all in a state of confusion and instilled with us the desire to learn more so that someday, somehow, we may attain the level of knowledge Bill had attained.

Obviously, we never knew the spiritual brass ring kept getting moved farther and farther away.

You don't have to believe in Karma, Grace of anything else.  Really, you don't.  However, if you do teach it, at least get the fundamentals right and teach with an honest heart.  That's what the guy who inspired Buddhist thought - and the notion of Karma has been saying for a long damn time now.  If Bill had bothered to listen - aw crap, Bill never listened to anyone, did he?  No wonder his notion of Karma is all messed up.

For Bill and the Witches of Ellsworth Street, you have to wonder: if they do believe in Karma and all the crazy and weird concepts they concocted from the toxic waste in their noggins, you have to wonder what kind of Karmic restoration is waiting for them, what will they have to do to correct it and how long will that take?

Damn good thing Karma requires reincarnation - something tells me they'll be at it a long time.

So maybe Karma really is a bitch?