Why do bad things happen?

[toba122]

Hopefully some one hasn't already asked this, but why do bad or unfortunate events happen in our lives?

Is it because of karma?

Is it so we can learn something on our journey through life?

Is it to balance out light and darkness?

Is it because we attracted it?

Which one is it? I'm confused

[Xanth]

When bad things happen in our lives, it's easy to make excuses and blame it on something else.  Generally, I find that's what a lot of people do these days... they end up trying their hardest not to take responsibilities for their own actions.

Yet, there are also times when bad stuff happens... just cause it does.  Take them as learning experiences.  Don't look at them as bad... try to see any good that has come out of what happens.

So no... I don't believe karma has anything to do with it.  I don't believe it has anything to do with balance or because you attract it.
Generally, it's because you or someone else just did something really stupid.  LoL

Learning to live with the bad is part of being in this physical reality. 

[NoY]

the universe is 50%light 50%dark

light waves
sound waves
emotions

all waves have positive and negative peaks and dips

so expecting life to be positive in the first place is unnatural and unrealistic
things happen because they must so that it all resonates

:NoY:

[Summerlander]

Because the Devil wants to spice up our reality.

[CFTraveler]

Hopefully some one hasn't already asked this, but why do bad or unfortunate events happen in our lives?

Is it because of karma?

Is it so we can learn something on our journey through life?

Is it to balance out light and darkness?

Is it because we attracted it?

Which one is it? I'm confused

All of those options mean the same thing.
karma means you get what you create.
Learning is what you can do with what you experience.  Experience doesn't happen without variety.  Variety doesn't happen without the separation of qualities so that they can be perceived.  Whether it 'has' to happen or not, a point of view requires a place to stand, and a place requires the separation of the I to the 'everything else', even if it is only a trick of perception.
Light and darkness are an accident of this perception, this point of view, existence.
The law of attraction is another way of saying 'you get what you create', which is the same as karma.  The only difference is that in the ideas of the LOA you can change it to what you want, instead of thinking of life as something that happens to you.
So, it's all the same.  No need to be confused.

[Stookie]

Some of the very best things in my life came out of horrific circumstances. So whose to say what's "bad"?

[personalreality]

Bad things happen because you invite them to yourself and then choose to perceive them in that way. 

That question is the telltale sign of either a naive, but genuinely curious person, or someone stuck in victim consciousness, which is someone who chooses to always see their lives as happening to them instead of them happening to it.  this is the state of powerlessness.  instead of asking why bad things happen, ask why you see things as bad.  furthermore, ask yourself if you weren't really requesting such a "bad thing" to happen in some way.  metaphysics aside, we tend to find what we look for.

[blis]

Smooth seas make poor sailors.

[EscapeVelocity]

Good judgement comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgement.

[personalreality]

And I think that's kind of my point as well.  Even "bad" things are necessary.  I certainly wouldn't be who I am today without the "hard times" i've gone through and I wouldn't have it any other way.

[beavis]

Bad things happen because of thermodynamics.

In a closed box with 10 particles, if all the particles are on the left side of the box, they will tend to spread out even if repelling/attracting is not involved, because there are simply a lot more ways for them to be spread out than there are ways for them to all be in the left half of the box. You double the number of possible positions of each particle, so there are around 2 exponent 10 (1024) times more ways for 10 particles to be spread out than for 10 particles to be in any specific part of the box that totals half its volume.

Similarly, there are much more ways for bad things to happen than good things. Most of them are your atoms moving in random directions. Some are normal "bad" events in life. And the most rare are events that make everyone happy.

Your question implies that there are an equal number of ways for bad and good things to happen.

Even if you have enough psychic energy to push events around in subtle ways on a global scale, it would still be a puzzle as hard as getting all the air particles in the box to move on their own to the left half of the box.

Adding to that difficulty, everyone has a small amount of psychic ability which they subconsciously use to influence events, and the many contradictions in how Humans evolved to think make the puzzle impossible to solve without changing what it means to be Human.

In Buddhist philosophy, losing your desire/attachments gets you to higher levels of consciousness where these problems tend to happen less often. That's because subconsciously it removes some of those contradictions by allowing more flexibility in how to solve the puzzle.

Bad things happen because of the combination of thermodynamics and your fear of those bad things tangling the possible paths to avoiding them.

There are many life forms out there that are skilled at solving such puzzles, but if you make the puzzle impossible to solve, theres no reason to play. In physical reality like here on Earth, the odds are stacked against you solving such puzzles. I recommend moving on to a part of the universe less contradictions. Then less bad things will tend to happen.

Also, a theory... The idea of going to a place of fire if you do bad things HAS BEEN VERY MUCH EXPLAINED THE WRONG WAY, or maybe it was made up from the start. I don't know. In the context of thermodynamics, when observing from a higher level of consciousness, physical reality would appear very similar to fire because of the way most progress in solving any problem gets destroyed over and over again as history repeats in different ways. Its a matter of perspective. What we see as physical fire, quantum chaos would see as a more organized and logical way to exist. It's not entirely higher/lower directions. The universe is a fractal, so no part of it is above any other part from all angles/positions of observation. This physical reality is getting too hot for my preference. Why do all you people stay here?

[CFTraveler]

I'm just here for the beer.
No really, because, then there's the good stuff.  And when it's good, it can be very very good.

[skiax]

I'm just here for the beer

[Psan]

Hopefully some one hasn't already asked this, but why do bad or unfortunate events happen in our lives?

Anything that happens to you is a result of all other choices you have made till that thing happened.
In other words, if a thing X happened to you today, it was because of the trillion choices that you had made till today. Well, sounds far fetched, but a good brain storming session should clear it up.

Now, some choices affect the outcome more than others. It should be obvious that you failed your school tests today not because you chose to eat a burger last year, it was because you chose to watch TV instead of studying this month. So if a particularly bad event has occurred, there were a few major reasons, not a trillion tiny ones.

You may say that road accidents happen randomly, and these type of events are not dependent on our past choices/actions. That's a good point, but if you see it deeply, you will see that road accidents happen more to irresponsible/newbies/drunken people than to experienced and stable guys, they are not equally distributed as randomness would require. (Or more precisely in a bell curve manner)

Then, there is a need to understand what exactly is *bad*. Whats the real meaning of that word.... ?
Are the events bad ? or is our perception of it bad ? or does it means something else?
As far as I know, events are always neutral, they are natural, as natural as sunlight or gravity or rain. Events are a product of physical laws (thanks beavis !), that should be obvious. Where did the bad-ness came from? Have you ever thought about it ? Or were you too busy suffering them....

Is it because of karma?

I guess so. Karma means actions. Actions result from your choices. Choices are a result of your mental condition (the way you tend to think about something). Mental condition is sum total of all your past experiences.

So you see karma is ultimately a structure in our brain (a non-physical structure, a kind of information network). When you are born, there is very little of it initially, so you must have noticed that for a very young child death of a relative is merely a curious event, not a sad/bad one. He doesn't go in chronic depression, instead asks (silly) questions. But as you grow old, your experiences color everything, and a rigid structure is formed in your mind. This is karma. It governs you in your adult life. You accumulate a lot of it, so much so that you become (spiritually) ignorant. It obviously colors the events, and you began to see them as good or bad, instead of mere happenings.

What happens when you dissolve all the karmic stuff? You see things as they are, you are free....This is the meaning of cleaning up the 'Samskaras', the unlearning process.

Is it so we can learn something on our journey through life?

No, bad event do not happen for the purpose of teaching you anything. Its not that someone has set all this up to teach you stuff. You and you alone are 100% responsible for whatever is happening to you at this moment. Moment by moment, the *Now* where life happens. Its not wise to project the cause of events to 'something' else. Only an ignorant person thinks anything happened because of others/external things.

When something had gone wrong, the only thing to learn is that nothing was wrong, it just was.

Is it to balance out light and darkness?

These are already balanced. Its you karmic tendencies to get more and more of good stuff that make you bump into bad stuff so frequently. If you desire to stand on a mountain and the land was flat there, you will see that after you find yourself on a mountain, you have dug a deep pit just behind you. Its just a matter of time, fall happens.

Is it because we attracted it?

It appears so only in retrospect. After all , most of your life is spent in repelling bad-ness and attracting good-ness, then how come you attracted bad-ness so often ?
Its only in your mind, you are playing this game of attraction-repulsion. On the outside, life is happening.
Most of us have lost touch with life, and identify ourselves with this game instead.

Which one is it? I'm confused

That's a good thing really. You are asking questions. Only a fool is totally sure of everything.

[Summerlander]

Anything that happens to you is a result of all other choices you have made till that thing happened.

So, if my house is burgled and I am murdered in my sleep...it's my fault?

[SomeRandom]

Because everything will happen

[Psan]

So, if my house is burgled and I am murdered in my sleep...it's my fault?

You should not see it in terms of anyone's faults. If someone gets injured in an earthquake whose fault is it ?
As I said, events happen, they are neutral, it's not that an event is waiting for you to commit a fault and then jumps in ...

Judging events in term of faults of self or others is denying the responsibility that it was your own choices. As soon as you color your choices as faults, the ego kicks in -- how can I be at fault, I'm perfect, its not my fault, its not my choice, its *his* fault.... It is an error in thinking, you see.

Of course you did not choose to be burgled or murdered, but you chose to overlook the security and you chose to not to learn the art of self defense (to fight, to kill if there is a need). The criminal chose you, because you were an easy target. This is so simple, so natural. The ego makes it complicated - why me? I always did good of others. Nature is cruel ... etc etc. This is the veil of ignorance and is the cause of suffering.

Now, we are not perfect, so we often make wrong choices (not morally wrong, spiritually wrong). And so suffer the consequences. A person who is asleep (=ignorant = not so evolved spiritually) will immediately color the result in terms of faults/guilt/shame/anger/whatyouhave and twist his mind in so many ways to effectively deny what has happened. He again makes wrong choices and overloads his karma in the process. This is a vicious circle. A person who is awake, accepts what has happened, sees the real cause, rectifies his choices in future and sheds his karma, unwinding the twisted thinking.

Some people wrongly think that the phrase 'accept your responsibility' means to accept the fault you made, like in ' you are responsible for this'. This is just social conditioning. In spiritual terms, that phrase simply means to acknowledge the causal chain that lead to an event, see how you were involved in it, and to untwist, ease out, feel light as a feather.

[ether2]

So, if my house is burgled and I am murdered in my sleep...it's my fault?

yes in cases (consciously no...unless ya consciously induce it various methods) ya heard of people dreaming winning lotto and bought a ticket and then they win/won...
a big percentage of dreams themselfes are the script of the physical world of our daily lifes sometimes days later or less sometimes alot longer...
Nostradamus predicted the world towers collapse many centuries ago it's all scripted...even from back that long ago...
most of the time high 90% of the time when we remember a dream it erases the processes...
if one puts enough thought in to a process (remembering the dream) it plays out in the physical world...but it was meant to happen anyway as it is just that particular (process) to show us the abilities one can have if allowed to by those above Guides etc...to teach us
i've remembered dreams seconds after broken bones from motorbike accident/s
we are to take over these processes consciously (not lucid in this area) we have the abilities to take over (erase and or rescript) even the oldest of scripts...complicated process...
the main reason for bad things is the supply of energy to run the world/s system/s...SCRIPTED...just like raising energy to do what ever one does...but this world energy system requires the emotions of fear/devastated and the like=emotions=energy...which now we have a New way of duplicating/reproducing this energy now without the emotions we don't like...it's just we have not as yet changed the scripts that bring out these emotions...wont be long!!!
all deaths 100% controlled except of since late 2009 in the area only of disasters since late 2009...as they were preventable, long story

so remember the bad dreams and forget the good ones

good luck

love all

[Summerlander]

Damn it!

I should have bolstered up my security! I envited it in really. I should have also been awake at that time instead of sleeping to restore my physiological systems and maintain my health.

It was my fault!

[personalreality]

seth answers this question quite well in:
The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events

good book.

[CFTraveler]

Because everything will happen

...eventually, in an infinite system.  And if it's not infinite, mostly everything will happen that can.

[Summerlander]

It's so infinite that I can't be burgled and not burgled at the same time but I can be burgled and murdered in synchronicity. Astounding!