Yeah, I wasn't meaning so much karma as just ways to learn our needed lessons in general. If you have to learn how to embroider, you can do so under different circumstances. You can feel inside that you really need and want to be the best at this and try your hardest from day one, occasionally pricking your fingers, but pretty much in the flow, or you can not want to deal with it and have a strict father who beats you into doing good, or you could do a half-ass job and turn out poor work and repeatedly jab your hands with the needle because you won't pay attention, or you have someone beat you despite trying your hardest... as just some examples, lol. So do humanities lessons have to be so horrific? I think they don't have to be, but it's probably up to the level of mass consciousness. The thing that can always get me about shadow and light is that it implies that the worst you can imagine simply must be, which leaves us in a position wondering what the hell we're supposed to do then with criminals, for example. Like, did that loving child came here planning to be murdered by this vicious psychopath? If it all happened for a reason, so the parents could deal with the death, so society could deal with the death, then what's the big deal? If it was planned and the brightest light must have the darkest shadow, then why don't we just pat the criminal on the head and say "Good job, psycho! How sweet that you made little Suzy suffer so much. It was such as great lesson for us all. Are you planning to kill more?" If we accept light and shadow, then we shouldn't be judging either since we know they're co-dependent. But we seemingly, at least at humanity's current level, HAVE to judge it to keep it in balance. If left unchecked the corporations screw millions, the dictators commit genocide, the villagers rape and pillage. But as I said... does your soul have to learn that raping and pillaging is wrong and terrible and hurtful by being raped and pillaged? Or can you learn the lesson in a softer way? Is there a point where the brightest light and darkest shadow start to move inward toward the center of the spectrum, away from the duality? Or is physical existence just irrevocably stuck with the extremes? Not that I expect you to answer these questions :lol:, but these are the tip of the giant iceberg of wtf :doh: