I smiled at the length of this post. grin I adore your passion! As usual, I totally understand where you are coming from and have had most of these thoughts, too.

Originally Posted by jimjam6702
...are we stopping Karma from serving it's purpose, by killing or torturing others that have done something wrong? Or are we in fact helping to create the Karma that comes back to bite them in the *ss, by being the catalysts for their Karma by being part of their demise?


Excellent point. yes

I, also have struggled with the concept of justice and self-defence and whether there is ever a time when killing is okay. The first thing I turn to is the voice I choose to believe as most true--as an outer voice, aside from my own inner voice--and that is Seth as channelled by Jane Roberts. It might be hard to simply accept the following if you are not familiar with Seth's books, but virtually every word I have read from his numerous books strikes a chord of truth in me so I give it lots of weight.

Quote
Doing violence to your body, or another's, is a violation. Doing violence to the spirit of another is a violation--but again, because you are conscious beings the interpretations are yours...

Killing another human being is a violation. Killing while protecting your own body from death at the hands of another through immediate contact is a violation. Whether or not any justification seems apparent, the violation exists.

Because you believe that physical self-defence is the only way to counter such a situation then you will say, "If I am attacked by another person, are you telling me that I cannot aggressively counter his obvious intent to destroy me?"

Not at all. You could counter such an attack in several ways that do not involve killing. You would not be in such a hypothetical situation to begin with unless violent thoughts of your own, faced and unfaced, had attracted it to you. But once it is a fact, and according to the circumstances, many methods could be used. Because you consider aggression synonymous with violence, you may not understand that aggressive--forceful, active, mental or spoken--commands for peace could save your life in such a case; yet they could.

Usually there are a variety of physical actions, not involving killing that would suffice. As long as you believe that violence must be met with violence you court it and its consequences.

(Personality Reality, Chap. 8, Session 634)


Originally Posted by jimjam6702
And so you have to again ask, if a soul has chosen to die through murder let's say, is the person who murders them going to suffer negative Karma for committing this negative act, or should the murderer be held in reverence for helping the murdered person reach & fulfill the death, that that particular individual chose to experience? In the human scheme of things it could be said that the murderer should be punished for this act, but in the spiritual aspect of things, these two souls actually agreed to live out this murder for each of their soul's growth, & each have contracted the roles that they will play to achieve this. So is it really punishable at all on any level when a "wrong" act against another human being is committed? Since on a soul level, we have all agreed on & actually picked the obstacles that we will overcome here on earth such as the people that will wrong us while we are here, the people we will wrong, the lessons we will learn, & the specific pains & losses that we will suffer while here? When thought about in that way, why would we punish the very souls that agreed to help teach us these lessons, I mean we are the ones who in fact recruited them in the first place, right?


You think such wonderful thoughts, ask such good questions and think so clearly and deeply. allhail

My twocents based on my latest fav writings The Impersonal Life, I would say with confidence that all that occurs (murder, etc.) is God's will in order to hone our imperfectness of body. If we chose to punish criminals, that is a vital learning experience for those being punished and those doing the punishing, otherwise it would not be happening at all in our reality. It is something that has to be experienced over and over in order to realize the futility and to thus turn our desire-to-control over to God.

I now see that all the messages I received of death were pertaining to my ego/personality (which desires to control). It is the only way to become one with God (to lose that individuality - which is pretty frightening to the ego/personality)!

Originally Posted by jimjam6702
Then when we do punish these individuals here on earth for their acts, are we in fact creating bad Karma for our selves?


If we are compelled to kill or punish those that kill, etc., I do not believe it creates karma. I believe that it is God's will. How I interpret what happens is this...when you get to a point through the many life lessons and honing by God's will that you no longer feel desire to participate in such things, then you stop, because your will is now aligned with God's purpose and desire to manifest perfection through physical humanity. And that is when you begin to "ascend" for lack of a better word. In other words, you don't really have to try (It's more like you have to endure the painful process of shedding ego, facing fear, letting go). It will begin to feel distasteful participating in body-fear actions such as violence. Then you will begin to overcome reactions of fight/flight. Eventually you will radiate a calm and peace in which you will not experience the violence very frequently...or not at all (I dare say and hope).

My current thoughts. clink