Being consciously unloving.

[Louisabell]

The restitution part probably gets harder everyday for someone wanting to poison themselves on purpose everyday.

That's a great point. Is it possible to have true forgiveness without an equivalent change in behavior? I don't think so. If one wants to alleviate karma, I think it must have a corresponding change in behavior with behavior seeking restitution, which is the opposite behavior of the harm that was caused, being the best option. Perhaps this is the essence of spiritual bypassing and being ungrounded... not changing how one thinks and acts in response to negative consequences and simply choosing to ignore the consequences (believing this to be forgiveness) rather than understand and integrate the consequences into one's understanding of reality (what I call true forgiveness).

I like to think of karma as a form of momentum towards a way of living that lends itself to a set pattern of consequences. One may think that forgiveness is simply a change of perspective, but if this change of perspective does not lend itself to undoing the negative momentum, then it is not a change of perspective that is true forgiveness and only the illusion of forgiveness. People may think they've forgiven something when their actions show that they have not actually changed their perspective properly to stop producing negative karma.

Linking back to the poison example, someone who truly forgives themselves for drinking poison will then seek to stop drinking the poison and move the momentum in the opposite direction towards only drinking healthy drinks and undoing the harm of the poison. But if someone has built up so much momentum (such as alcohol addiction), it may take significant time and effort to fully undo the momentum even if true forgiveness or change of perspective is the first step. In contrast, an alcohol addict who believes they've forgiven themselves each time they drink in excess each day but do not change their behavior are spiritually bypassing and not actually balancing the karma.

Welcome to Bring4th MonadicSpectrum! I really liked what you wrote here, and it made me think of the below quote from the LOO, especially the bolded part below.

34.5 Questioner: If an entity develops what is called a karma in an incarnation, is there then programming that sometimes occurs so that he will experience catalyst that will enable him to get to a point of forgiveness thereby alleviating the karma?

Ra: I am Ra. This is, in general, correct. However, both self and any involved other-self may, at any time through the process of understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness, ameliorate these patterns. This is true at any point in an incarnative pattern. Thus one who has set in motion an action may forgive itself and never again make that error. This also brakes or stops what you call karma.

I wanted to elaborate on your poison analogy. People consciously ingesting poison everyday out of compulsion, addiction and/or to self-medicate happens all the time. Cigarettes come to mind as the negative health implications of smoking is now well known. This behaviour however is often the symptom of a much deeper problem in one's life. We only have so much willpower in a day, and when dealing with very stressful situations, we may have no motivation for self-care left. Perhaps forgiveness in these other areas of life, including forgiving the blame we often put on ourselves when we feel unable to cope in life, will result in the cessation of the poison habit automatically.

Thinking about these kinds of unhealthy habits, usually the focus is on the effects on the body, but there is also a lot of mental suffering that goes a long with it. Examples of this would be the cognitive dissonance of willingly causing harm to one's body in order to seek comfort, to ignore the self's needs as though they are not important, reinforcing the belief that the self has poor willpower, etc. So, there are many aspects to forgive in order to find one's true power again beyond just the physical act of stopping the behaviour, I believe. This definitely takes a shift in perspective, usually quite a dramatic one depending on how entrenched the negative behaviour is.