What is the definition of karma? For every action, there will always be a reaction. Your thoughts and actions are powerful because they carry energy.  Whatever you do will always come back to you.  You are the one constantly changing your world, little by little.

Karma is a term from Hinduism and Buddhism.  It is defined a the sum of a person's actions in this and previous existences, which decides their fate in future existences.  Kardec thought of karma as injustices.   Our injustices from one lifetime must be repaid in our current lifetime - or another reincarnation.

 

How can we avoid karma?  We 

are spiritual beings in a physical body.  We incarnate from our spirit form into a physical form. Once we are here, we create karma by our deeds and actions.  After the death of our physical body, we return to the spirit world to learn spiritual lessons and look for ways to resolve any karma that we previously created.

 

There are no coincidences. A man and woman may choose to have a baby, but it is the choice of a spirit (if evolved enough) to become the soul of that child, so it can learn the spiritual life lessons necessary to resolve any injustices from the previous incarnations.   Not every spirit has earned the right to choose their parents.  And the parents also have free will to accept or reject that spirit. This can happen by miscarriage or abortion. In some instances the parents may even discard the newborn infant, or end the parent/child relationship.  Any of these choices would create new karma for the parents and the child, resulting in the need to reincarnate together again (possibly into different roles) to resolve the karma.

 

So how do we know when we are doing the right thing instead of creating karma for ourselves or others?  We have a conscience.  This allows spirits, both incarnate and discarnate, to pass moral judgment over their own thoughts and actions.  In other words, we know better.  We are our own judge, because we have been given the tools to discern good from bad.  During our transition from being a spirit, we may have forgotten or misunderstood these rules of good and bad. When we incarnate in a physical body, we preserve an intuitive memory of the rules, but how much we remember depends upon our moral and intellectual advancement. 

Our material body need to be educated through our memories, revelations, intuitive suggestions from good spirits, and our own experiences over multiple existences.  Our ability to discern good from bad also depends on our level of evolution. This memory of good and bad may also be influenced by our lower instincts, and it is through the process of reincarnation that we gradually work to lift that veil of imperfections.

 

Although there are many types of spirits, there three main classifications are:

- Pure spirits, who have attained the highest degree of perfection

- Good spirits, characterized by their ethical nature over their material instincts

- Inferior spirits, with a predominance of material instincts and a possible tendency for harmful acts  

 

As Kardec wrote, "it would be illogical to assume that the spirit of a savage or criminal suddenly becomes wise and virtuous. It would also be illogical to suppose that, contrary to God's justice, they continue perpetually in a state of inferiority."  So there are humans at all levels of knowledge and ignorance, and the same is true for the spirits who populate the spirit world. From one incarnation to the next, and also between the incarnations, all spirits maintain their individuality, including the level of moral and intellectual advancement they have achieved at any given time.  So the spirit world reflects all the vices and virtues of human beings living on Earth.  In fact the scale is even greater in the spirit realm, because it includes spirits that come from other worlds, and they may be at levels far higher than the most distinguished of men, or far lower than the least advanced person on Earth.

Resources:

Kardec, Allan. "Spirits." The Spirits' Book.  Trans. Allan Kardec Educational Society (translated from 2nd edition in French). Philadelphia, PA. p:35, and 50-54.

Kardec, Allan. "Elementary Principles of Spiritism." Christian Spiritism (a compilation of two Kardec books: Spiritism Reduced to Its Simplest Expression and What is Spiritism).  Trans. Allan Kardec Educational Society (translated from original French editions, published 1860 and 1859). Philadelphia, PA. Allan Kardec Educational Society. 1985. p:125-129.