I think most people have gone through such existential crises.
My persepective, that humans are ambiguous creatures, helps. I am both good and bad, simultaneously.
Taken further, the concepts of good and bad become somewhat fuzzy - for these are relative to intent. What is good in one context is bad in
another.
(like taking a life is bad...but if you catch a person in the middle of killing a child, and your only chance at stopping that knife from descending
is to shoot them immediately... is it still under the "bad" catagory??)
So the dark and the light take the place in my mind, of good and bad... yin and yang. Everything is ultimately both in potential.
Integrity becomes my goal - which is something like the assertion about guilt, yet I don't attach a divine judge/entity to that. I strive to make my
actions and words walk together. Sometimes that means I choose the so-called "positive" desires and drives, and speak them, and make my actions fulfil
them.
Sometimes the "negative" drives or desires are so strong, I choose instead to speak those and have my actions reflect them.
For someone caught up in good and evil, that second choice sounds horrible - but look at it this way - even if you have a desire or drive that is not
good, and you decide you shall go with that side in act, if you speak it and acknowledge it openly to those around, you are accepting the consequences
that shall go with it.
Whether they be purely natural consequence, or the result of other humans judgements and individual contrary intents. It is taking responsibility and
standing for yourself, whatever you may be in that moment.
The higher questions of morality and divinity are hopeless to question - you cannot know and will not know today.
Let the unknown remain unknown (you haven't any other choice). What matters is what is before you, here and now, and how you shall respond and assert
yourself in relation to it.
And the concept of Karma does not actually refer to reward or punishment for good and evil acts, in it's origin. THat is more a vulgarisation of it
being fit into other religious bases. Erasing the good and evil concept, it places all things, all actions, as having two sides - being a giver and a
reciever, for example, so that if you choose to experience one side you will eventually experience the other. Just as you cannot have in your hand a
one-sided coin.
Like giving or recieving a gift - neither side is "bad" in most ethical systems.
Even killing someone, or being killed, can be positive as much as negative. Imagine you have killed someone in a past life, so you shall experience
being killed in this one (you already have that coin in hand).
Trying to run from your karmic debt, might make the experience "bad" - it might be a violent and painful one.
Accepting it could make it much more comfortable - like maybe you'll be in one of those nordic countries in which euthanasia is legal, and then you
find out you have an incurable disease, that will pull you into an extreme amount of suffering over time, you can go to an establishment that will use
drugs to help you pass into a comfortable and peaceful death instead.
These are extreme examples. But if you want to consider the concept of karma, look at it that way. It isn't about being punished, and it isn't to be
feared.
Life is about
experience of all kinds.
edit on 12-9-2015 by Bluesma because: (no reason given)