Is there such a thing as Karma?

My earliest understanding of Karma was that it was sort of like God keeping score, and this score would follow us from one life time to another, and therefore have an impact on the joys and struggles that we would encounter.
 
But if God is that Source of love that loves us more than we can possibly love ourselves, that never finds fault with us and always holds us as perfect, then it does not make sense to me that this entity would keep score of our actions and dole out rewards and retribution based on our performance.
 
So then, is there really such a thing as Karma? And what does it really mean?

Is there a connection between one lifetime and another? What is the nature of this connection?
 
I have always found it impossible to accept the idea that souls in physical form are subject to pre-determined events, and come to this world in order to learn lessons.  In fact, this was probably my pet peeve with the religions that I grew up with: Catholicism and Islam.  I could not resolve the idea that a loving God could send people to a place as horrible as the fire pits of hell.  I grew up with friends, teachers and relatives of both faiths and could not understand how one group of them could believe that the other group was bad or wrong in any way – from where I stood there were good people everywhere – people who loved other people, and loved the world we lived in.
 
Anyway, that is probably a subject for another discussion.
 
My logical mind would question the fairness of a God (of any faith) who sent us into the world with pre-determined destinies and then judged us on the basis of our behaviour.  If everything was pre-destined then why hold us responsible?  After all, it seemed to me that we did not decide what faith and what sex, and what economic status we would be born with.  So why should one person who has it easy be compared with another whose circumstances are more difficult?
 
I know better now – I know that we choose to be born in precise circumstances so that we may continue our journey of growth across lifetimes.  I also know that our intentions are broad based and not as specific as it seems from our vantage point on Earth.  I have come to understand that there is a common goal for all of us and that common goal is to reach for a place that allows us to live unconditional lives, and express unconditional love in everything we do. Living life from that unconditional place is the only place of complete joy.  The more contrast we experience the more joy we find when we are able to reach that place of living unconditional lives.  So the goal is to experience varied contrast and to rise above it to find a place of unconditional loving and living.  You would agree that this is a very general goal – right?

There is no pre-determination of what actions we will take and what specific things will happen as a result, because there are so many variables at work in every moment.  A slight shift in our thoughts can lead to completely different results – our thoughts create the version of reality we experience.  Therefore, nothing can be pre-determined.  Not only that, but every time we emerge into an Earthly existence, we let go of all past experiences from past lifetimes so that we can fully enjoy our now existence.  Think about it.  If you still remembered what carrots tasted like from your past life, would you still be excited to taste them as a baby?  Life would be pretty boring and there would be no new joy to be birthed if we remembered all that we have lived before.  It is when we lose interest in life that we make our transition.
 
That which we call God has an extremely fair and precise system for organizing all events that take place in this time space reality, and this system is what we have started calling “the law of attraction” in our present times.
 
We all emerged into our Earthly bodies and Earthly consciousness with a complete knowledge of how the law of attraction works so that we may be able to enjoy life’s journey while contributing to the growth of the Universe…but somewhere along the way we forgot this knowledge, and things started going wrong.  

God’s system is so precise that there is never any need for “karma” to follow us into our next life – we receive the fruits of it right here, right now, right away.  There is a lot of truth to the adage “what goes around, comes back” – it’s law of attraction in a nutshell.  In other words “karma” is the same principle as the law of attraction.
 
The emotion we feel generates a vibration and the events, people and things that come into our lives and the actions we take are all a result of this vibration.   Therefore, if we want to achieve a certain, specific result, we have to find the vibration that leads to it.  If we feel anger, and act from a place of anger, only those people, events and things that correspond to the vibration of anger can be available to us.  If we feel love, and act from a place of love, then only those people, events and things that correspond to the vibration of love and joy can be available to us.  If we don’t change our emotional response so that we move from anger to love, then we will keep calling people, events and things to us that correspond to the vibration of anger, again and again and again.   I don’t know about you, but it sure sounds a lot like karma to me…
 
A special thank you to Mike for inspiring me to write about the subject of Karma.
 
Much love and appreciation,
Zehra