On suicides

[Shadewolf]

Hey, spiritual experts....Sorry I'm getting into this discussion late. I was just wondering whether suicide can be karmic. I am talking about both sides....perhaps the unsuccessful attempts like Windy talked about 20 attempts without success. That sounds somewhat karmic to me, but what about the other way around? Could it be in someone's karmic profile to be suicidal or preplanned to carry out a suicide?

Ah, these are the nuances I was hoping to see discussed here! Since suicide is taking away God's greatest gift to us, life, I would agree with NH in saying that I don't think one would come back to commit suicide. Some actions are free will, which generates the karmic reaction, good or bad. As I've thought before, I think karma is more like a mirror of experience, drawing us towards our higher selves, if we are willing to read the signs. But I do believe that we should approach our experiences as life lessons. For example, my brother and I have never been close. Even as children I knew he didn't like me, although why was never clear. (I was the "good" kid, and that may have played a part, but this is something I've always just known). Now, the past could give a reason, but more importantly, I choose not to let it guide me. He chooses the negative path, and I choose the positive. It's always a personal choice. Now, I'm no angel, that's for sure. Someone cuts me off in traffic and you'd think I was a sailor on shore leave. I'm working on that one! But the point being, it's about progress, not perfection. There's a saying about how anger only burns the person holding it, and I believe that's true. More recently, it's been discussed that folks here seem to be experiencing more personal trials lately than usual. I lost my mom and my two sweet dogs last year. But I think that maybe we're being tempered, like steel. We have the opportunity to work at this and make a positive difference. OK, that's enough of me being long-winded!  

Being tempered is, I think, a good way to describe it. In my own experience there's been a few times right on the edge, thinking it would be so easy to "reboot" and step off the ledge or jump in front of a rig because life was too hard at the time. this was when I was much younger and had no life experience or better judgement to speak of yet. At the time all I had was alternating between being numb from the shock of being abandoned at birth by my family, and unbridled anger stemming from that. That's been a huge distraction for much of my life trying to balance those 2 things out from the rest of what life is supposed to be. Eventually I at least got to meet some of my blood relatives including my Mom who apparently never wanted kids and had a few and gave them all away (the irresponsibility of which also pissed me off). Never got to meet my Dad, he wouldn't answer the door when I showed up and I only got to talk to him for about 2 minutes on the phone once, I don't get what his problem was to continue to reject me even appearing to talk and ask questions.

So later in life, my body chemistry got really out of whack and I wound up severely depressed, and one day woke up so depressed that I never wanted to get out of bed again, it was literally a crushing darkness like I was drowning, and everything my family tried to do got an angry leave-me-alone reaction because I was sick and in pain and nothing was helping. I literally felt like there was no way out and there were some bad circumstances happening to our family as well with hugely high stress levels, so my husband dragged me into my office at work and I got into chat with our employee assistance people and into a doctor right away. I could tell, even when feeling that way, that there was something seriously chemically wrong with me (my thyroid had quit working at all) It took a year and a bit to get recovered from that. The scary part was when at the bottom looking up was the realisation of how easy to slip away it could've been, and the crushing part of it made that really attractive as -the- way out. Interestingly enough, every encounter with the rock bottom i've had, has also been accompanied by the knowledge that rebooting on purpose was not why I came here, and would just waste time and alot of effort on my and other peoples' part. Like seriously, did i really want to go through the experience of being a baby and a toddler again, it was bad enough the first time, and I wouldn't be guaranteed of getting a body that functioned any better than the one I've got which is injured and broken but still more or less works well enough to get the job done. So why not work to make improvements to this one so life gets at least somewhat easier as it were? Being able to get through the bad parts, however possible has indeed had the effect of tempering me against future instances, it has also taught me to ignore any perceived limits I have or that people try to put on me and just push through them whether it hurts or not.