The Karmic Debt of Black Americans

I remembered that an old man told me, when I was about 4 or 5, that the plight of Black people in America is due to the fact that blacks owned other blacks as slaves in Africa, explicitly against God's will. He said that we are being punished for that, but soon we will have repaid our debt and rise above our oppression in the States. He also said that White America is going to have to pay some dues for the way this country was formed if it didn't clean up it's act, stating that it's not too late for them yet, but if some gestures aren't made to repair the wrongs done our society would suffer greatly.

That's some pretty heavy stuff to lay on a toddler!!!!

Then again, this guy also believed that whites were the devil, so I do now, as I did then, even at that young of an age, take his food for thought along with a HUGE grain of salt. I distinctly remember thinking "man, he sure is a little weird" but kept my mouth shut since he was a grown-up and I was always told to respect my elders.

His ideas relates to something I've read in books about group karma and collective consciousness, where small or large groups of people have karmic issues that have to be worked out. So that your wife in this life may be your brother or sister in the next, and people you've met in previous lives may encounter you again in different bodies and so on.

I have not quite settled on my views about karma yet. I strongly believe that we have the overriding power to control our own destiny and lives, and that even if we don't pick our situations, we can deal with them through our actions and overcome a lot of our adversities and such. Either way, it makes for interesting reading, and at the least, broadens my imagination for the day when I decide to do creative writing again.