Karma is about our actions in this and in other lifetimes. Most people don’t remember past lives because it is enough that we focus on this life. Many times we can’t even remember our actions in this lifetime. So memory and karma do not necessarily connect.

But there are times when we remember our actions in this life that make us feel uncomfortable about ourselves. We know those actions accrued karma that needs to be cleaned up. For example, I remember when I was about four years old. I was cruel to another child on the playground. That has stayed with me my entire life. It was unnecessarily mean and even to this day I regret it. So now I go out of my way to not make that mistake again.
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I can also remember times when I was charitable and forgiving as a little child. Those were actions that generated good karma. I was kind to a child who felt she was an outcast. I comforted a crying child. So even though those actions were more than a half a century ago, I still feel good about them.
The only connection between karma and memory would be that memories help us to refrain from repeating actions that bring bad karma. And memories can also remind us of how good it feels to do kind things for others and ourselves.

Being blessed is a state of grace that lasts a lifetime. Being lucky is just of the moment.

If you win the lottery, you are lucky. But so many people who win the lottery end up worse off than they began. Uncanny numbers of people who won the lottery have committed suicide, ended up broke, or were the targets of murder plots. A few of them are noted here:

Curse of the lottery: Tragic stories of big jackpot winners

It makes us wonder if luck is really “lucky” after all. The money isn’t earned and often the winner doesn’t understand finances. That is one of the reasons they bought the ticket to begin with. They thought that luck would bring them what they didn’t have the confidence in themselves to earn.
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Being blessed feels like peace and satisfaction that comes from within. It has more to do with talents and abilities, gifts that are special or brilliant. These are not necessarily earned but they can be cultivated. Lots of people are blessed with talents and just let them go to waste. But those who embrace and develop their blessings find the highest fulfillment, for they are the ones who have given so much to others.

Our past and all the moments we have lived are philosophically important because they teach us so much about who we really are. We are constantly changing beings and our pasts attest to that. Yet, on another level much of our past memories have no real importance at all.

We are the same person we were when we were eleven years old. Yet all our cells have completely changed, grown, and renewed themselves to take us from childhood into adulthood and old age. Actually, nothing is left from when we were eleven except our Eternal Souls.

We can gain wisdom from our past. Wisdom is one of the goals of Philosophy. But this is wisdom from just this lifetime. It doesn’t take past life patterns into account. So which life are we talking about when we talk about our past?

On an even deeper level, the past really does not exist. Can you put your hands on it? So many of our memories may be colored by what other people have told us. The present moment is, literally all we have to live in. Obviously we cannot live in the future, which has not arrived yet.
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Furthermore, our minds are fallible and easily forget things. We forget the majority of the moments we have lived. How many people remember the name of their Kindergarten teachers? Do you remember what you had for lunch three years ago on Thursday? Therefore, apart from practical wisdom so we can avoid mistake we already made, and a few delightful memories that are fun to revisit, our pasts are not important.

Many humans would like to think that life makes sense. That there is a beginning, middle, and end. They believe if they just follow all the rules they will be rewarded at the end of their lives and everything will be revealed to them: The meaning of their struggles, losses, and heartache.

Then many people look at their lives and think they blew it. They missed their chance to have a great or perfect life because of their faulty decisions and character traits. Or they didn’t grab the golden ring when it was dangling right before their noses. They blame themselves and everyone else because they did not construct the ideal life. They did not create the final draft that would be approved by: God, cherished institutions, and belief systems.

“There is no final draft,” means we cannot get it wrong and our Souls are eternal. Each life is on a path that unfolds at it own rate, has its own lessons and revelations. And if we feel we blew it this time around, we have the opportunity during our next birth to continue with the growth of our Souls.
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Our lives are in a constant state of change. Our Souls remain constant yet ever changing at the same time. This paradox is difficult to grasp yet it is at the root of why there is no final draft. We are not here to earn good grades and pass the exam for, fundamentally, we are eternal and constantly flowing energy fields.

Nothing is a coincidence. It all happens because something happened before it and is happening with it. So many things are operating at the same time when we think something is just a coincidence.

But I wouldn’t say it happens on purpose. I would rather say, “It is inevitable that anything happens and everything is dependent on everything else.”

Some people would like to impute meaning to why things happen to them. They personalize the Universe. They were bad in a past life and that is why they slammed their hand in the car door today. The human mind feels better when it can make a story out of what happens. But in doing so, it is limiting its view of what is really going on.

What is really going on is far more than our limited minds can grasp. Forces that we cannot see that are operating all around us. Physical forces such as gravity, laws of motion, and magnetism as well as spiritual forces combined with our own choice. Who put you there when you slammed your hand in the car door? If you don’t move your hand fast enough many laws of physics come into play. And it hurts.
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When we look at life with the eyes of the Soul, there are no coincidences and there is no specific purpose for every little thing that happens to us. But there is an overarching purpose for why we are here. It is a soul-chosen purpose to grow and expand in our ever deepening love of the Universe and all its complexity.

Both soul mates and twin flames are very rare. They do not occur in every lifetime. Here are the essential differences:
Soul mates have been with each other from lifetime to lifetime and cycle through many different roles with each other. They are brought together to complete something left undone in a past life. Often there is a spiritual lesson involved.

Some soul mates are difficult for us because we need to clean up our karma with them. Not every soul mate brings peace and love. Nevertheless, you will always recognize your soul mate. Sometimes you can be in different locations on the planet and may not encounter them. When you meet them you will know!

Twin flames are actually the same person’s soul split off into two bodies. This configuration is much rarer than the already rare soul mate. They share many of the traits of soulmates, such as finishing each other’s sentences, thinking the same thing at the same time, and sharing many uncanny characteristics.
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Sometimes twin flames can even be born at different times but still be twin flames. That even throws more complexity into the mix. For example, I know a twin soul that recently incarnated as a baby in California. Her counterpart will be born in Texas in a few months. Many things account for this and they are beyond our human comprehension.

Actually, the quote is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

This may sound good on the surface. A dying flower may look sad to some and to others have a certain kind of beauty. Some people might think it is bad that flowers have to die at all. Others think that their very ephemeral nature makes them even more precious in their beauty.

But when it comes to human behavior, we must have standards of what is good and bad. Cruelty, brutality, bullying, child molestation, and all manner of torturous behaviors are not good and cannot be justified by simply saying that “good” and “bad” is merely in the mind of the individual.

Intentional cruelty that damages another living being and inflicts physical and psychological pain can never be called good, no matter how many mind games we play. We can play clever semantic games and twist the language around so that nothing means anything anymore. But we are fooling ourselves if we believe that there is nothing right or wrong, good or bad.
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The karmic consequences of intentional human debasement are severe as well. Let’s not play intellectual games with moral relativity. There are things that go beyond the human mind and its limited thinking capacity.

Spirit guides do not lead us to anything horrible. They are there to offer unconditional love and comfort. They have been with us for eternity before this birth and will be with us after we leave our physical existence.

If we have karma to resolve, they can help us choose the right path. But they will never lead us into anything frightful or disturbing. Their whole raison d’etre is to be of peaceful assistance to us as we navigate through our lives. They await our call upon them and stand ever ready to be of service.

We do not plan what we are going to do before we incarnate. It is determined by many variables that are way beyond our individual control. We are part of a huge dance of the Universe in which are souls are never destroyed but continue to grow and evolve in accordance with the laws of the Cosmos. Spirit guides are part of this, though most people ignore them until their backs are up against the wall.
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Then they call on their guides and angels. But the guides have always been there. We just need to open our consciousness to them. They are there to be consulted any time of the day or night. I use them all the time and greatly appreciate their loving assistance.

Sometimes people who pursue an explicitly spiritual path box themselves into a mold of the ideal peacemaker. They want to be non-violent and live a karmically clean life. They walk away from any form of conflict and would rather live in tranquility. This makes sense if we want to live a tranquil life.

The unfortunate part of this is that they are human and are equipped with emotions for a reason. And if all our emotions aren’t given their proper outlets, our spiritual path may be stunted.

Some of these emotions are unpleasant, such as fear and anger, but they are also part of our well-put-together systems. When I was growing up I was taught that Jesus was the Lamb of God: Meek and mild, blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers. But I also had several example of Jesus’s anger.

He tossed over the tables of the money changers and threw them out of the temple. He rebuked the barren fig tree. He rebuked his disciples for deserting him and turning on him. He was not meek and mild at all. But notice that he wasn’t standing up for his personal self. He was standing up for his mission.
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If he had stood up for his personal self, he would have fought the Roman soldiers who crucified him. He would have protested. But no. It wasn’t about his personal survival. He was on a mission that was bigger than that. All truly spiritual people are not interested in their own physical survival but they can be very fierce when it comes to the world of the spirit.

I have talked to people who have clinically died and later revived. They share certain experiences up to a point. Depending on if they have been raised with Buddha, Christ, or other enlightened beings, they tend to see that being at the very end of the process. This is because the mind is still with us and it needs to place a label on the transcendent feelings that are flooding the consciousness.

If you ask a buddhist monk, such as Geshi Tashi Tsering, he would explain what happens in the afterlife in terms of karma and the emotions we go through when we are actually in the stages of death:

“If one is going to take a lower rebirth, very strong, fearful appearances will appear to your mind during the dissolution of the four physical elements. Conversely, in a fortunate migration, more gentle appearances occur and there is a happiness in the mind. During the radiant white sky, red sky, etc, visions there are no particular fears because the coarse conceptions do not arise.

“The way of dying affects your emotional state at the time of death and this determines which karmas are activated. For example, if someone was killing you, you might become angry, and this would activate a negative potency, a condition for a bad rebirth. It would require a very strong practice of tolerance not to get angry. In general, we should make efforts to help the sick, elderly and dying to generate a very healthy, positive state of mind before and during death. This, in turn, will benefit us, helping us to continue our work towards helping others.”

But as far as people’s personal beliefs about heaven and hell—they are just that. Nothing more than beliefs (have not been proven) and personal (based on their fears of the dissolution of the person they believe they are). No one whom I’ve talked to, who has ever had a death or near-death experience, has ever mentioned hell. Particularly the version of hell with the devil poking them with a flaming pitchfork.
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Conversely, no one mentions the bland version of heaven, with angels playing harps all day in the clouds, that certain cultures indoctrinate into their people. So, despite people’s beliefs that they have “earned” this sort of heaven, anyone who has returned from the grave has not vouched for this depiction of the after life. It is a much more dynamic process that goes beyond the petty conjectures of the human mind.