As you are aware, there are many reasons why bad things happen. We often hear that we must have done something bad because we are being punished. At least that is what we are often taught. We are told that it is our Karma and is our own fault when bad things happen. But what about a small child being sexually abused or beaten to death? Was it the child’s own karma that caused that?

What about the nice person who always did right by people and worked extra hard to do the right thing but bad things still happen to them? Why do bad things happen to good people? It isn’t always Karma or the fault of the victim.

Sometimes, when we go through the bad times we often ask why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Sometimes we didn’t do anything to Deserve something bad to happen to us. As we go through the unpleasant experience that is a huge opposite of what feels good we think of it as a punishment. We are taught as young children that bad things are a punishment and good things are a reward.

What if that isn’t always true? If we stop and step out of the experience and look at it from a different point of view we can see that everything we experience is a lesson. It teaches us something and helps us grow. Sometimes it is to teach us karmic lessons and sometimes it is just happening to help us learn from the experience. Touching a hot stove isn’t karmically bad but it is an experience that teaches us that if we touch a hot stove, we are likely going to get burned which is not a pleasant thing and if we do something a certain way, we will have a pleasant experience.

Good and bad things happen for the same reasons. They happen to help us grow as individuals. If we didn’t have both good and bad experiences we would not grow as a human being. We would never learn and become our full potential.

Many believe and so do I that before we are born we choose the life experiences that we have. Our higher self or spiritual self knows what we need to learn before we are born. I often refer to this life as a roller coaster because of its ups and downs and ebbs and flow. I imagine my spiritual self prior to being born going through and picking the highlights of my life so that I can have a full experience that one can only experience through this physical existence. I imagine it is like getting on a ride at an amusement park. Maybe not in a literal sense considering I am comparing an abstract existence to this concrete physical existence.

As I experience plenty of bad things in my life, I used to think that god hated me and I was born for the purpose of people to abuse me and hurt me. I began to wonder if I had been a bad person in a past life because so many bad things happened to me as a small child through adulthood. I have come to realize that yes, something that happens is a direct result of my own choices and actions but I stopped thinking of them as punishments and more of life lessons that teach me and help me grow.

I used to think that if I knew then what I know now I would have done things differently. Of course, I would have. Duh, I wouldn’t have needed to learn that lesson. The big point that I was missing was that what I experienced was the lesson that I needed to learn. We don’t come into this world knowing everything or we would never need to experience life. We learn through our life experiences.

I remember when I was about 9 years old, I decided to bring flowers to a neighbor. The first was out of the sheer joy of giving just to make the neighbor lady happy and see her smile. I went around the neighborhood and gathered the flowers. I went to her door with the bouquet in hand and knocked on her door. When she opened the door I proudly presented her with the hand picked flowers.

She smiled and thanked me then handed me a delicious fresh baked chocolate chip cookie. I learned at that moment that if I gave the neighbor lady flowers I got a yummy cookie. That was a very pleasant experience. My positive action was rewarded with a positive response. But 10 minutes later when I appeared at her door again to repeat the experience she caught on that the second time I didn’t bring her flowers to make her happy but to get the cookie. Needless to say, it backfired on me. That too taught me a lesson.

Even the compilation of experiences over all taught me a lesson as I look back over my life. Lessons that I didn’t understand when I looked at them individually but when I combined them with other experiences and looked at them as each a piece of the puzzle once I looked at them as a whole I am beginning to see the whole picture.

Over my life with all of my life experiences, my point of view has changed repeatedly and with that so has my opinions about things.

To answer the question of why do bad things happen? It helps us grow into the person we are today and who we will become tomorrow. Karma is a reward system and sometimes things happen that have nothing to do with Karma. These things are neither good nor bad but just IS.

So, when bad things happen to you, think about what lesson you are learning and how this experience is helping you to grow. Sometimes we don’t see the lesson until we are no longer in the middle of the experience. Sometimes we have to use a little hindsight.

I wish you well on your current and future experiences.

In Love and Light,