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Short Story: John's conscience acts up, but he acts up against it too. Instant Karma results.

John Ironwill had a strong conscience, but he never followed it.

Just the other day, for example, John was in his local supermarket with his wife, Betsy.

They were pushing a trolley of their chose grocery items around, when Betsy said to John.

“We do not really need this apple juice just yet. We already have spent up to our budget for today now. Could you put this back, dear?”

John was a little peeved by this. They had already walked a further four aisles away from the drinks aisle.

Anyway, he took the offending juice, and he started to walk back to the aisle.

Halfway there though, John saw a shelf of Coca Cola drinks, priced on special, and so placed at the end of another aisle as a special display item there, to more catch the eye of a shopper.

John placed the bottle of juice there on that shelf, and walked back to where Betsy was still shopping, now in the ice-cream area.

It was then that John’s conscience sprung up in him.

It said to him.

“That was lazy. Now some poor grocery worker here, will have to re-shelf that themselves. Go back now, and put in in the right spot. That’s the least that you can do, especially, at this time of the year, at Christmas, when it is so busy, in the shops.”

John felt pinched by this. He thought about it first, though.

“Should I go back, and do the right thing now or not. Should I rectify, the shirt cut that I took. Nah, he said, why bother. My wife would ask me where I am going to now, and I would have to explain to her what I had done. I am me, not my conscience. Who does it think that it is to try to boss me around like that, and to make me feel guilty for a small inconsequential act like that.”

So, John ignored his conscience this time too, as he had also done many times before, as well.

John and his wife went to the cashier, and they paid for their goods. On the way out though, John was thinking about the change that that sleepy-looking sales assistant had just given to him.

He had paid for his groceries with a $100 note. The total bill had been $91.25. The change should have been then $8.75. John had just slid the coins into the coin pouch in his wallet. He knew that there had been no coins in there before at all. That was why he hadn’t given her the $1.25 to make the change easier for her. It would have been a straight $10 note change then.

John checked the coin purse then, and he only found three $2 coins, one $1 coin, one fifty cent coin, and one twenty cent coin, a total of $7.70. She had short-changed him the princely sum of $1.05, it seemed.

Then his conscience spoke up to him again.

“See that’s your karma. You made them do some extra work to reposition that drinks bottle, and now, you have had to pay for that.”

“Harumph, Ha, Ha”, said John to himself.

He was angry now. He told his wife how the girl had cheated him good and proper here. What a shyster, he called her.

John’s wife said to John,

“Let it go John. It’s only pennies. Come on, let’s go home. You could not prove it to the girl now anyway. It’s too late, we have moved well away from the counter now, as well. I have not got the time to get into an argument with them over that paltry amount.”

And so they went home.

What is our conscience? Is it a part of our soul, or our higher self?

Our conscience is the way of love, where the least harm is done to the least amount of people.

It is the right way, the kinder way, the loving way to go.

Anything else working against our conscience always involves us in adapting and taking on an element of selfishness, or putting your “me’ before the “we” in any situation, that you find yourself within.

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Written by The Dunce

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    • Jews believe in both reincarnation and karma. Their concepts of them are different than in the Indian based religions, or to Buddhism.

      “The Jewish understanding of reincarnation is different from Buddhist doctrines. It in no way leads to fatalism. At every point of moral decision in his life, a Jew has complete free choice. If not for freedom of choice, how unfair it would be of G‑d to make demands of us – especially when reward and punishment is involved! Reincarnation does not imply pre-determination. It is, rather, an opportunity for rectification and soul-perfection.”

      A quote from: Judaism and Reincarnation
      Kabbalah on Judaism and reincarnation Beginner
      By Yerachmiel Tilles.

      I did not know this before, but I was rather surprised to learn this from my studies of Jewish, and particular it’s branch, called Chassidism.

  1. Tzvi Freeman said in his article called, “Do Jews Believe in Karma?”

    “Karma is the idea that everything is within the system, and so everything bounces back eventually. You can play around with the system and even manipulate it, but you can’t escape it.”

    “Karma envelops us and all that exists. But there’s an escape hatch through our reaching beyond the system.”

    Can karma, or the law of cause and effect, be instant in effect sometimes, given that time is relative anyway?

    The laws of the “land” allow for all to rebalance itself, and this is what occurs, until one steps out of the laws, and creates our own, from God’s love, working above them, above all such laws, so that then love, only love, lives in us, as it does in God too, and such real love operates outside of all laws.

    And so, yes, sometimes the rebalancing is right away, at other times, it is at a later time.

    This all depends on God’s timing, not on our timing, unless we are also living within God’s timing too, by our living also only from his real love too.

          • Tzvi Freeman said in his article called, “Do Jews Believe in Karma?”

            “Karma is the idea that everything is within the system, and so everything bounces back eventually. You can play around with the system and even manipulate it, but you can’t escape it.”

            “Karma envelops us and all that exists. But there’s an escape hatch through our reaching beyond the system.”

            Can karma, or the law of cause and effect, be instant in effect sometimes, given that time is relative anyway?

            The laws of the “land” allow for all to rebalance itself, and this is what occurs, until one steps out of the laws, and creates our own, from God’s love, working above them, above all such laws, so that then love, only love, lives in us, as it does in God too, and such real love operates outside of all laws.

            And so, yes, sometimes the rebalancing is right away, at other times, it is at a later time.

            This all depends on God’s timing, not on our timing, unless we are also living within God’s timing too, by our living also only from his real love too.

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