My client [name withheld] has been struggling for years from repeated curses launched by her ex-husband’s girlfriend and his sister. Recently, they targeted her daughter. She tells us: “I believe in righteous justice. I believe there is room in the divine to help ourselves in these situations. We should not always turn the other cheek. Sometimes we are the karmic payback and should not be as sheep to the slaughter. I am a single parent. I struggle. I really struggle, and prayer only does so much. I feel justified in doing everything I can to protect her. I don’t think the divine binds my hands from protecting my daughter. It seems wrong to think prayer is all that’s needed.” What would you say to her and other victims who suffer so long without seeming to get help?

We are sympathetic to all who are in this situation. This is one of the most difficult of circumstances when there is a relentless perpetrator intent on harming another. There are many aspects to free will and sometimes the hands of the divine realm are tied because we cannot go against the free will choice of humans in what they do, good or bad. This does not mean there is not a consequence because karma will pursue them relentlessly and will return to them all the wrongdoing and harm they caused. And it will be greatly amplified because the hurt created by them grows inside their victim and touches the lives of others as well, all of which is compounded and returns to the perpetrator with a vengeance, and they will pay dearly for their transgressions. This is a cautionary tale for the victim who seeks retribution. We understand you are not just wanting to punish these people for their perceived wrongdoing but to make the attacks stop by giving them a taste of their own medicine. Which after all, is a tried and true strategy many times in human dealings, that when one stands up to a bully and gives them like treatment, they may well back away and prove to be cowards, not able to stand up to a difficult opponent who acts in earnest. There is a time to be strong and to not back down, but it is one thing to have someone acting in the moment confronting you in your presence and someone who is doing something from a distance when it is not so clear who is responsible and who may be presumed to be the culprit. This leaves open a lot of room for error. To seek retribution against an innocent party accomplishes nothing but creating ill will and a karmic liability for the victim seeking retribution, if only for defensive purposes. But even when you have the right target, we can tell you with authority that attacks against them will usually backfire and that is because such individuals are not only unethical but are at a more severe level of depravity in their thinking and will almost certainly return fire and will up the ante, and this escalation of negative intensity can greatly worsen things. You may well have an effect on them, seeking to cause them trouble, but that will not spare you at all from what they launch against you. It is much like two opposing armies engaged in battle launching artillery barrages against one another with fire answering fire. Each may feel some satisfaction they are causing casualties to the opponent and inflicting pain that seems well-deserved, but meanwhile, their own troops are being killed and, in the end, this has served no one. Both sides have lost because both have suffered. Both have lost warriors serving their cause in noble fashion or at least being loyal, and following orders, and displaying courage. But nonetheless, they end up not only suffering the losses to them personally but the losses that are indirectly going to influence them from the deaths of their compatriots as well as the suffering of the enemy forces and all of their family members. It will be a karmic burden hanging over whoever fired those rounds or contributed to the event in a chain of command bringing it about. This is always the major cost of war—the aftermath being more profound and often more deadly than the initial event. There will be a legacy of shortened lifespans and potentially multiple lifetimes of great suffering and early death as a karmic consequence of contributing to the deaths of others in a non-divine action they have chosen. This needs to be thought about very carefully by anyone considering how to respond to an attacker. This is not to say we advocate passivity. There are many reasons to defend one’s self from harm and loved ones and to defend one’s home and homeland in a world of physical interactions when there are evildoers and many who are out of alignment seeking to control and subjugate others. There are many pressing circumstances when it is a lesser evil to acquire a military superiority so that a show of strength can be a deterrent from frivolous attacks that could be devastating or are risked because of the likelihood of little consequence for the attacker. But we can tell you, in the grand scheme of things, when parties fight, both parties lose, and in the big picture sense, it is better to die young as a victim than to die as a warrior with blood on your hands. You may well have some karmic consequences because of the victimhood, but that is a lesser transgression than abandoning divine principles through choice to cause the death of another. That will cause a much more grievous consequence from the negative karmic legacy. The soul will benefit greatly from avoiding such an eventuality, even if one gives up a portion of one’s life that would otherwise be enjoyed. Considering that you are immortal, you will simply go elsewhere for a time and can return into a new lifetime and have that entire experience yet again available to you. You can do so without incurring a penalty that hangs over you like a Sword of Damocles, that can come crashing down at the worst possible time, so that just when you have reached a life of great joy and accomplishment, you are met with catastrophe as a karmic repayment for causing harm to others in a prior life of war or personal conflict. The best defense for a perpetrator acting through the use of non-local consciousness as a weapon is for divine intervention. There are always reasons for such conduct and it always represents a need for healing in some way or other, and that is the best possible solution—to raise up the perpetrator so that it becomes undesirable to them to take their time doing something mean-spirited and destructive. That is not only an improvement for them, but it will spare all victims from future difficulty and becomes a win-win solution. The person who otherwise would be a victim, not only is spared further attacks, they gain extra good karma from an act of divine wisdom in requesting healing for their perpetrator. If they choose a path of retribution wanting to lash out and punish the offender, they indeed become more and more like them in the energy of their action and its consequences, and this will give rise to a need to rebalance their action as an act of a perpetrator. Even though in your mind the original perpetrator deserves what they get and is only being repaid in kind, two wrongs do not make a right. And in reality, both are perpetrators, and both will receive a karmic retribution regardless of their motivations. One might be more harsh than the other, but why go through that at all when it is possible to not only sidestep any negative consequence from actions against the perpetrator but, in fact, gain new blessings and a complete healing of the ongoing drama that otherwise can keep a vendetta going, not only for a lifetime but across multiple lifetimes in some cases? It is not unusual for prior grudge matches to resume in a new incarnation when the parties will find one another, and the karmic energies will begin to boil up and they will find themselves at one another’s throat and going to war again. And they will be right back where they started, or worse, fighting in an escalating series of blows and counter blows. This is especially unfortunate because it can have very grave consequences and lead to very practical and severe losses, not only of happiness, comfort, and safety, but can lead to early death, not just at the hands of the perpetrator when things escalate too intensely, but more indirectly through a severe chronic illness or accident that befalls one of the parties—because the karmic energies demand such a repayment or rebalancing because of the size of the debt accumulating from the attacks they have made. The final benefit in avoiding a confrontation and an act of retribution is that by seeking a loving solution through prayer, you will be raised up. By being in a mode of loving kindness, you will be on Creator’s wavelength and you will receive a soothing and healing energy in the course of doing the prayer outreach, so the blessings will start immediately. We understand that prayer is unpredictable. There are many reasons for this and many times it is in the fault of the one praying who does not appreciate the need for 100% belief as well as belief in the self. There may also be the repayment of karmic debts underway and there must be, in some cases, the allowing of the present circumstances to continue, at least for a longer period of time, in order for the lesson to be fully felt and learned adequately for the rebalancing to be complete. Healing will not be offered by divine realm if there is a karmic lesson underway that requires a further obligation by one of the parties, that must be allowed to run its course. There are many circumstances where healing is possible even though the dilemma is karmic, because the person may have already learned what they need and repaid the debt sufficiently, and so this can be healed, and the time of suffering shortened considerably. These things are highly variable, and each case is different, but we recommend not looking for trouble, because if you do, it will find you.