There's always been the struggle between the 'spirit and the flesh'. As Laura discusses in "From Paul to Mark", people were too physically focused to easily understand what Paul was talking about. So Pauline Christianity got converted into a version that worked well with the goals of the state and helped control people but essentially short-circuited any spiritual growth past a certain point of spiritual maturity.Karma is not always punishment. As Ryan implies, it’s more of an indifferent cause and effect thing.
But that said, I get the concern: why should all Americans suffer for the sins of Dick Cheney, Joe Bidenstein, Obummer etc etc? It’s a deep question. Why should good folks suffer the fate of the psychopaths?
Avoiding the valley of the shadow in 3D STS is not possible. It’s a Gethsemane realization. Suck it up and accept it, I guess. We’ve had a good run. So many nations are going to gloat and point with glee as Amurrika goes down.
So, Walk with stoic dignity through the chaos and degradation if and when it becomes necessary. Knowledge will protect.
So we are all guilty of choosing this physical focus and focusing on the self instead of others, and that is a karmic debt that begs a payment or a lesson or both. Another painful lesson for many is putting trust in authority and/or asking what the government can do for me instead of the other way around. Additionally, there is the Karmic debt of feeling righteous and deserving of any and all abundance, even at the expense of others. So it seems that the Karmic load will vary according to what an individual believes and what he or she has done, or has not done, in their life. America has been focused on serving self while shirking responsibility to the Common Father for too long and to such an extreme degree that we have become a symbol of excess in the world.
This brings me to a quote from Castaneda in "A Separate Reality":
and from Matthew 6:19-21 NIV:... a man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly. Thus a man of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a man of knowledge chooses any act, and acts it out as if it matters to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn't; so when he fulfills his acts he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn't, is in no way part of his concern.
I don't have many dogs in many races these days.Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.