Complicated Karma Case Study

The metaphysical definition of karma is a direct and clear action, then reaction, such as diligently striving to be a successful performer in several lifetimes, then finally succeeding in a subsequent lifetime.

Many people toss around the word karma, even those who don’t believe in reincarnation (though you can’t have one without the other). For example, if a cheater gets burned, they say it’s his karma. But our experience with past life regression and reincarnation research tells us karma is much more complicated than that.

The evidence in the book ”Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History” illustrates the point that karma is usually more than just a superficial tit-for-tat.

The Comanches were the most war-like tribe in the region of what is now Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. For more than 200 years, they wiped out countless Indians from other tribes. Horse trading, as well as slave trading, were their major sources of revenue. They also pioneered many forms of torture.

Perhaps not liking the fact that settlers were traversing their territory and, in some cases, occupying it, the official record is that the Comanches attacked Texans first.

The Comanches were so fierce that Mexico wanted American settlers to settle in Texas to create a buffer between them and the Comanches, who were a major threat to Mexico (the Comanches had destroyed the Spanish army).

Many other Native American tribes in the south and southwest were peaceful, but were attacked by settlers. The settlers didn’t attempt to distinguish between peaceful tribes and war-mongering tribes (e.g., Comanches). Often times they didn’t have a choice; it was kill or get killed in the west of the 1800s.

Colossal amounts of negative karma were likely generated on both sides. Early in the Comanche-settlers dispute, one Comanche raid kidnaped 10 young women, new settlers in Texas, and turned them into slaves because this is the way it had always been done for centuries between Indian tribes. Texan settlers retaliated, and so the continuous battles began, until the Comanches were finally almost wiped out.

Massive amounts of karma may have been balanced as well. It may sound cruel, but it may have been a young woman’s karma to be kidnapped and sold into slavery. Remember, slavery has occurred on this planet for thousands of years and if the notion of karma is valid, negative actions must be balanced according to universal law. Note: we aren’t condoning slavery. We’re simply relaying our findings and theorizing from a spiritual perspective.

Cynthia Ann Parker, a settler kidnapped by the Comanches at age 10, completely assimilated into the tribe’s ways. She married a Comanche chieftain, Peta Nocona, and one of her three children was the last Comanche chief, Quanah Parker. She lived with the Comanches for 24 years and was forcibly taken back to the settlers, but then escaped and was forcibly brought back again. The settlers refused to acknowledge that she was much happier with the tribe that kidnapped her.

In her case, and perhaps many others, it could have been her bad and good karma that dictated those key circumstances of her life.

Alternatively, it may not have been someone’s bad karma to be kidnapped and sold into slavery, but instead her soul’s decision to experience it to eventually help others avoid that nightmare.

In theory, the honorable settler families who stayed away from Indian territory and didn’t cause problems, but were still targeted and devastated by Comanches, may have had a date with destiny, just as a lot of the Comanches who were slaughtered may have had a date with destiny.

Many Comanches, including chief Quanah Parker, eventually, willingly assimilated into American west culture, adopting many settler ways, even while select Comanches refused. They really didn’t have a choice in the end since their main source of sustenance (bison) was dying out.

From the standpoint of predetermination, warring tribes eliminating each other, the bison dying out, and the arrival of settlers in the American west suggests civilization was predestined to develop and perhaps even progress to where it is today.

Through the rough karma on both sides, the settlers’ ways contributed to the remaining Comanches’ survival, just as myriad explorers and cultures all over the globe have shared and benefited from each other’s unique ways of survival for eons.

Copyright © Scott Petullo, Stephen Petullo