THE LAW OF KARMA and THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Shinn, Florence Scovel
For example: I knew a man who wanted to buy a fur-lined overcoat. He and his wife went to various shops, but there was none he wanted. He said they were all too cheap-looking. At last, he was shown one, the salesman said was valued at a thousand dollars, but which the manager would sell him for five-hundred dollars, as it was late in the season.
His financial possessions amounted to about seven hundred dollars. The reasoning mind would have said, “You can’t afford to spend nearly all you have on a coat,” but he was very intuitive and never reasoned.
He turned to his wife and said, “If I get this coat, I’ll make a ton of money!” So his wife consented, weakly.
About a month later, he received a ten-thousand-dollar commission. The coat made him feel so rich, it linked him with success and prosperity; without the coat, he would not have received the commission. It was an investment paying large dividends!
If man ignores these leadings to spend or to give, the same amount of money will go in an uninteresting or unhappy way.
For example: A woman told me, on Thanksgiving Day, she informed her family that they could not afford a Thanksgiving dinner. She had the money, but decided to save it.
A few days later, someone entered her room and took from the bureau drawer the exact amount the dinner would have cost.
The law always stands back of the man who spends fearlessly, with wisdom.
For example: One of my students was shopping with her little nephew. The child clamored for a toy, which she told him she could not afford to buy.
She realized suddenly that she was seeking lack, and not recognizing God as her supply!
So she bought the toy, and on her way home, picked up, in the street, the exact amount of money she had paid for it.
Man’s supply is inexhaustible and unfailing when fully trusted, but faith or trust must precede the demonstration. “According to your faith be it unto you.” “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen—” for faith holds the vision steady, and the adverse pictures are dissolved and dissipated, and “in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
Jesus Christ brought the good news (the gospel) that there was a higher law than the law of Karma—and that that law transcends the law of Karma. It is the law of grace, or forgiveness. It is the law which frees man from the law of cause and effect—the law of consequence. “Under grace, and not under law.”
We are told that on this plane, man reaps where he has not sown; the gifts of God are simply poured out upon him. “All that the Kingdom affords is his.” This continued state of bliss awaits the man who has overcome the race (or world) thought.
In the world thought there is tribulation, but Jesus Christ said: “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
The world thought is that of sin, sickness and death. He saw their absolute unreality and said sickness and sorrow shall pass away and death itself, the last enemy, be overcome.
We know now, from a scientific standpoint, that death could be overcome by stamping the subconscious mind with the conviction of eternal youth and eternal life.
The subconscious, being simply power without direction, carries out orders without questioning.
Working under the direction of the superconscious (the Christ or God within man) the “resurrection of the body” would be accomplished.
Man would no longer throw off his body in death, it would be transformed into the “body electric,” sung by Walt Whitman, for Christianity is founded upon the forgiveness of sins and “an empty tomb.”