A man was portrayed on a 60 Minutes television episode back in the 1980s, who would dress like a bum and drive to his favorite spot in his own newer car, park the car out of sight, and work a freeway entrance ramp. He was observed by a reporter to leave the spot every couple of hours to make a call at a payphone. He was approached and asked who he was calling. Turned out it was his stockbroker. He confessed he made approximately $60,000 a year panhandling (in the 1980s when $60,000 was an above-average income) and had a very successful investment portfolio. When challenged, he failed to see any moral dilemma in what he was doing, but in managing a successful stock portfolio, he was clearly capable of performing successfully in a more traditional occupation. What are the karmic implications of that man’s occupational choice?

This individual is clearly living the life of a criminal. Anything you do to gain through using deception to take something away from others is immoral and will have a karmic penalty assigned through the Law of Karma. It might come swiftly, it might be delayed, but pay you will for taking advantage of others. After all, what has been exchanged here is tangible. It is not simply a smile in return for one that might be phony. It is money of some kind which has many potential uses and value, and you are literally depleting someone by enticing a donation from them. There are many kind souls who will give when it hurts simply because they are touched in seeing a person seemingly struggling who is less well-off than themself and willing to help. In such a circumstance the penalty is correspondingly greater. What the panhandler does not realize is that everything he or she does is being recorded for all of time and there will be no escaping a day of reckoning when the mistakes and exploitation are translated into a consequence returning to that individual wherever they might be and it might be just at the point where they have worked their way out of being in a lowly position, even though they are getting by just fine but wanting to do something more meaningful, and that ends up getting taken away because of the karmic debt that has been building. Every day you are alive you are investing energy in yourself for better or worse, and the consequences of that investment will be balanced quite precisely and will determine whether things go positively or negatively in your future.