I do believe in it, and I believe it’s not handled by a greater being but by yourself. As a simple example, if you’re always rude to people someday you’ll be rude to the wrong person and lose great opportunities because of it. If you don’t treat people with respect people who love themselves won’t want you near, and you’ll end up stuck with people with enough problems to agree to put up with your disrespect, and good luck building something good for yourself when all your building blocks are that fucked up.
I also think it’s not only about what happens to you, but about how you feel. Sometimes people’s “punishment” (I don’t like the concept, I like “universe’s response to your destructive deeds” better) is only in their heads, so you can’t tell they got what they deserved by looking at the facts because they’re supposedly getting all they want, but they’re actually not enjoying any of it. I mean, imagine being someone who’s always stabbing people in the back and taking what’s theirs. Those people usually convince themselves that EVERYONE is like that. So they do feel a bit less at fault, but imagine trying to sleep at night believing that EVERY SINGLE PERSON AROUND YOU is waiting for you to be distracted to tear you down. It sounds like a nightmare to me.
Also, I don’t want to get all dark and twisted with the personal anecdotes, but the greatest example I could give is this one: When I was 20 a very recent ex-BF raped me and tried to burn me alive. I never told the police (long story) or did anything else about it, so he never got “punished”. By looking at it like that, I guess you could say Karma doesn’t exist. But I don’t see it like that. I thought of killing him, at first, but then I didn’t not because I didn’t want to get caught, but because I realized that I would just be putting him out of his misery. I know him well. I know how paranoid he is, how he is always feeling inadequate for who he is, how he’s always believing everyone despises him and thinks he’s ridiculous and is laughing at him, how he hates himself. And he still contacts me sometimes in the same spirit, so I know it hasn’t changed. It fucking hurts being him. He feels that way EVERY SINGLE DAY OF HIS LIFE. I couldn’t come up with a punishment more cruel than that even if I tried very hard. And my life is so happy (even including the effort I had to put in to deal with the aftermath of what happened), I have so many great days, love and spoil myself so much, have so much fun, trust my friends so much and feel so safe and loved, that I honestly believe I got the sweet end of the deal. And I also believe that he did what he did to my head the two years we were together (lots of violence) to turn me into someone like him, because he could tell what state of being I was moving towards, and he knew he had no place in it. So he dedicated a lot of energy to breaking me. And he failed, and I got there anyway. And he knows it. That must hurt a lot too. So even though you could say that situation is a perfect example of evil going unpunished, I consider it karmically balanced and done. I don’t know, maybe it sounds like I’m just trying to convince myself that it’s ok, but I honestly believe this. I don’t know if it makes sense.
