Miseries in life are not always due to bad karma!

Most of the times we take misfortunes related to bad karma, be it of this life or our previous one. Even I used to feel the same. One day posed the question to my guru. She explained how this is not so true.
A bad karma is not always the reason for misfortune; same a happy person does not always mean he never ever committed any bad karma. It is not correct to think every suffering person to be a sinner or every happy person to be a virtuous one” she explained.

It could be a blessing from one above or even result of our past good karma that we face misfortune. Does is not sound very ironical? We don’t know what we are meant to do on this earth. What is the purpose of our life, what our soul is supposed to follow, is not known. The one above who sent us knows this too well. If he feels the soul needs to be released from bondages of materialistic life, he might create such stressful situations. These unhappy and stressful events at times act as the push for that individual to think beyond materialistic world. He then tries to now break free from all such bondages.

The materialistic world is so alluring that it can be really difficult to come out of that “Maya”. The worldly attractions can pull us and distract us from the aims and objectives of our life. True happiness lies with surrendering ourselves to that one above. But the alluring materialistic world can act as a hindrance many a times. God when feels you are the chosen one who need to follow some specific task, create such situations in order to pull out the devotee from this “Maya” or illusion and put him on path of truth. As Lord Krishna says in Bhagavat Gita – “The man who thinks about the objects (of the senses) gets attached towards them; from attachment longing arises; and from longing, anger. From anger comes delusion; and from delusion loss of memory; from loss of memory, the ruin of discrimination; and on the ruin of discrimination, he perishes”.

There is another reason which was explained to me. In Chapter 2 of Bhagavat Gita we hear the Lord telling us about rebirth and how it is the law of nature. In chapter 8, verse 16 the Lord explains how this rebirth carries on like a cycle and one can escape it only when they surrender to him selflessly.

a-brahma-bhuvanal lokah;
punar avartino 'rjuna;
mam upetya tu kaunteya;
punar janma na vidyate.

“From the highest world the Brahmaloka, to the lowest one the Patalloka, all souls here are bound to return again and again and thus go through misery. But one who takes refuge in me, O Son of Kunti, has no rebirth”.

And to reach this state and free ourselves from misery, sadhna is required. One single birth might not help you get free from this entire rebirth cycle. If you have been following and doing sadhana in your previous life, God might make you go through this stressful situations so as to pull you out of the materialistic life attachment and put you on a course to complete the sadhana you started with in your previous birth.

Hence while going through miseries in life you should not be under the impression that it’s only because of your bad karma, that you have sinned and so being served divine wrath. It could be a boon in disguise which we might be unable to see immediately.