Why "bad" things happen to "good" people, re: accountability

So not every seemingly untoward event represents the effects of prior causes as an issue of accountability. Everyone who is here made the courageous choice to come to this school to learn something of value. Some folks sign up for the extra-intensive course, however, because they want to accelerate their growth. This is an agreement we make before we choose to embark upon this life. So while some folks are aware of their need to balance out past choices with new experiences, and enter upon a life with such a task in mind, others choose challenges which they know will supercharge their spiritual development and self mastery as they meet those challenges. So they volunteer for a particularly challenging body, or set of life circumstances, or project to undertake, or set of complex relationships, the mastery of which will represent a significant leap on the growth curve. So when seemingly "bad" things happen to "good" people, it may or may not provide you some satisfaction to consider three options: 1. they are meeting up with waves they introduced in the pond some time ago; 2. they are meeting up with waves they introduced in the pond rather recently; 3. they are encountering circumstances for which they volunteered knowing that by facing the challenge they would stretch themselves to new levels of perception and spiritual growth.

Now, we have touched on the first three options, but there is a fourth possibility: they may be doing service for someone else. This is something we must consider in terms of accountablility. It is possible, is some measure, to carry the burdens of another. Jesus offers the perfect example of this, but so do most parents. It is possible to bring one another along on the road, and this is a profound form of service. Folks who have addressed their own accountability issues can, by generating a "surplus" of positive and coherent elementals, contribute to the balance of the universe both in general, as well as in a directed manner.

We can in fact bear one another's burdens, to the extent that such service does not undermine the essential lessons for which a given person came to learn. So by all means, feed the hungry, cloth the naked, comfort the sorrowing, make peace, love your neighbor, pray for your enemy, do good to those who would harm you, heal the sick, pray for one another, lay hands upon one another, and even lay down your life for a friend!

When we render such service to one another, we accelerate growth all around by our experience, by our example, and by generating more of that in general (like attracts like.) Some skilled healers have mastered an otherwise dangerous technique of bringing the illness of another into themselves so as to work it out "locally" in their own body. This is not advisable without the requisite considerable knowledge to do so with relative safety: a person who too easily or unconsciously takes on the burdens of another in this manner without the skill or energy to handle it will find themselves burned out and of little help to anyone pretty quickly.

Some individuals may have chosen a life of a particular station or in a particular set of relationships with service as their main intention, taking up a role to facilitate the growth of someone else. Teachers do this on a regular basis. The life circumstances may appear to be such that "bad" has "happened" to a "good" person, when in fact that person chose the set-up as a means of facilitating another on hi/r path. This is a very real way in which one may "lay down hi/r life for a friend," not by giving up a body as a non-ultimate value, but by taking up a body and living out a life purely as a volunteer in service to another. Of course that servant will grow as well from their choice, but they do so as a matter of course rather than out of necessity to address their own issues of accountability.