On karma. This is how I've come to understand it... fwiw.
Like other energetic basics, human religion as a governmental construct (and superstitious BS) made the biggest mess possible of the topic. At this
point there are sects that believe if you do X you come back as a cockroach, or that a religious leader has the ability to specific this (don't piss
off the local version of priest).
In practice we all see it as the "what comes around, goes around" truism. But it gets impossible to justify it as just-that when you look at a six
year old with a terrible disease.
It's easier to understand if you temporarily "de-personalize" it. In other words, forget for a minute that this is about humans and experience.
If you put a certain group of atoms and molecules together, and you send them into a given environment, certain things will happen based on their
nature. Some components will bind to others. Some will degrade others (steal their components). Some will add to others. Some things seem naturally
attracted or naturally repelled from one another. Some things are inert, most things are not. (For some fun examples of chemical reactions, visit
here.)
If you send audio sound of any kind into a given area, of it will affect any other sounds in that environment. The same with light. Generally this
goes for anything in our world: we don't exist in a vacuum here, and whatever "vibrating energy" a given thing might be made of, is going to have
certain effects when it encounters other energy. Whether those seem good or bad, passive or explosive, strengthening or degrading or just subtly
influencing, depends on both energies and the environment they're in together.
Humans are a big conglomerate of energy. When we are in a given environment, and other energies are around, we will attract, repel, interact with
those no differently than everything else in our universe interacts with other energy, from the stars to the soils.
The energy of which a human is composed, outside basic biology, is where human experience, choice, and so-called karma come in. We hold or release and
modify energy as part of our "relationship" with a given energy. There is us (a bit black-box as spiritual beings) and the-other energy, and what we
"experience" is the "interacting interface between" those two things.
That energy and ours interacting are a dynamic that cause "effects" in what we consider reality. Those effects may create or impact elements of the
body, the environment, the circumstance, singular or recurring events, etc.
Our holding, releasing, modifying ourselves (our energy) amounts to our self-definition, as well as our definition of other things. For example if we
think we are not safe from X-energy, we may hold a lot of Y-energy that we think will protect us, or a lot of Z-energy that is aggressive. But as we
are holding it, it is part of us. And maybe because we hold Z energy, we're going to naturally attract Q energy that is competitive or even combative
with Z. Events or circumstance in our life will reflect the chronic battle or stalemate (or whatever) between Q and our Z.
Understand that in this analogy, "Z" energy could manifest as tons of different things. It's more like a cloud of influence than a specific thing. So
it might manifest as breaking a leg or it might manifest as a total jerk boss for 8 months, or it might manifest as something injust that hurts one
financially, and so on.
We call that karma. Because things exist for or happen to a person that may not with others and it seems like there must be a reason why. There is a
reason why, it's just not as specific and childishly-simplistic as some models try to make it.
It wouldn't even be reasonable to think that we could be a bundle of energy existing in a universe of energy and have NO effect or interaction with
what is around us, or something identical to everyone else even though their details differ. Karma is not a good or bad thing. It merely reflects the
awareness of "whatever relationships and interactions" we happen to have.
To modify so-called karma, we have the ability to change the energies we hold -- our relationship with the larger universe around us. Many spiritual
practices (some meditations), metaphysical efforts (such as meditations on i Ching and Tarot) and psychological ones (such as jungian archetype work)
are basically doing this: attempting to connect, develop, and "improve the relationship" between energies we hold (the part of the universe we choose
to pay attention to as "of" us) and energies we do not (the part of the universe we choose to not pay attention to and hence consider "outside" us).
The shift in "reality experience" is thought to be the feedback evidence on whether those efforts are actually working.
RC