The afternoon sun streamed through the windows of Mario's Pizzeria, casting long shadows across the red-checkered tablecloths.

Eileen stopped abruptly as they approached their usual spot near the back corner. "No! Not that table," she said, her voice sharp with unexpected emotion. Ella paused, pizza tray in hand, and followed her friend's gaze to the innocuous wooden table.

"Oh. I forgot. I didn't realize you were still so sensitive about that." "Well, when you have to shoot someone and watch them bleed and die, that sticks with you. You know?" Eileen's words came out quieter than intended, but they carried the weight of nightmares that still visited her sleep.

"It's called PTSD," a gentle voice said from behind them. The girls turned in unison.

"Who are you?" Ella asked, studying the tall man with kind eyes and graying temples. "You look sort of familiar." "Sorry to eavesdrop on your conversation, but I've been meaning to talk to you girls for some time now." He extended his hand with a warm smile. "Hi, I'm John Lehrer. I'm the pastor at the local community Bible church." "Oh yeah," Roxanna said, recognition dawning. "You're the preacher man where Jenna and Janice go."

They settled at a different table, the atmosphere still carrying the tension of Eileen's memories. Ella leaned back in her chair, studying the newcomer. "So what can we do for you?"

"Well, you already have," Pastor John said, his voice carrying a note of genuine gratitude. "I know about the visitation under the bridge, and I know it's a secret that I won't tell. I wanted to thank you, and as a preacher, I wanted to especially thank those who work in the spiritual realm as well as this physical one."

Ella let out an exaggerated groan, throwing her hands up. "Ugh! I'm so tired of all the spiritual crap, and the inter-dimensional stuff, and the demons. The Angels are cool, but I wish the rest of them would just leave us alone. Is this bad karma from some past life? What did we do to deserve all this drama?"

Helena, who had been quietly observing, smiled with an otherworldly grace. "Hey! Be kind to the inter-dimensional," she said with gentle humor. "You guys are all new spirits, so you have no past lives. I doubt it has anything to do with karma. Instead, I think you were chosen."

"Oh. I forgot, Helena, I'm sorry." Ella's cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "Hey, preacher man, meet Helena, our own real-life inter-dimensional being. You already know some of our secrets, you might as well know this one too. But if you tell, you'll get some of that bad karma yourself."

Pastor John's eyebrows raised slightly, but his expression remained remarkably calm. "As a counselor, I'm trained to maintain confidentiality. So I won't tell."

"Have a seat, counselor. I'll buy your lunch," Roxanna offered, gesturing to an empty chair. "Tell me about karma? I'm Catholic, so we're all about sin and judgment and grace and forgiveness, but we don't do karma. What is it?"

Pastor John settled into his chair with a thoughtful expression. "Do you have a few thousand years to sit here and discuss karma? For millennia, religious leaders—usually in the East—have contemplated, argued, and fought about what karma is. I'm no expert, but I'll share what I know."

He paused to sip the coffee Roxanna had ordered for him. "As a Christian, I don't preach karma either, but I'm also a PhD psychologist, and there's much evidence that karma is a real thing—in this life, anyway. It's not just some made-up dogma. There's sufficient evidence of what has come to be known as karma, but few, if any, really understand what it is and how it works. It's completely missing from the Christian tradition—that is, unless you know where to look."

The pizza arrived, and the girls gathered around as Pastor John continued. "As far as past lives, there's something similar called generational karma—the sons and daughters suffering from the sins of the father. Things like child abuse, the innocent suffering from the sins of the parents. The Bible speaks of the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children for generations, but that isn't usually considered karma."

Just World Hypothesis

"In a study of karma, though, you have to be careful to separate that from what's called the Just World Hypothesis." Pastor John took a bite of pizza and continued. "That hypothesis states that if bad things happen to you, then you must have done something bad to deserve it, and if good things happen to you, that's a reward for your good deeds. It's the idea that the universe demands justice."

"This hypothesis has been proven false. Statistical analysis of many lives shows that most of what happens is random, having nothing to do with the behavior of any particular individual. The majority of what happens to us in our lives is the result of external events—our parents, the government, the weather, an occasional asteroid. These are things we can't control and have nothing to do with us being good or bad. For the most part, if we do something stupid, we simply have to experience the natural consequences of doing stupid stuff. Sometimes, though, God or his Angels will intervene, like to keep you from falling off a cliff, but that's rare."

"So the so-called Acts of God are just random events?" Ella asked, leaning forward with interest despite herself.

"Yes and no, I believe," Pastor John said carefully. "I do believe that God and his Angels impact our lives in many different ways. Divine intervention, though, is usually private and rare and can easily be interpreted as random events. It's not like a tornado tearing up a whole village and impacting hundreds has anything to do with karma. That's just the weather. Divine intervention happens quietly, to one person here or there from time to time."

"What about some driver going really fast, running cars off the road, and then crashing? Isn't that called instant karma?" Eileen asked, thinking of her own recent experiences with violence and consequence.

"That's what it's called," Pastor John nodded. "But I think that's just plain old stupidity. There's an old saying: 'If you're gonna be stupid, you better be tough.' Much, if not most, human suffering is a result of stupidity."

He leaned forward, his expression growing more serious. "For me, in my study, I sense a non-spiritual karma that's totally within the mind of the individual. It's a manifestation of the bi-cameral brain and the resulting bi-cameral mind. It's not God, or Santa Claus, sitting on a cloud keeping a ledger of your sins and balancing that against your good deeds. It all happens in your own mind, most of it in what's called your subconscious mind."

Two Brains

"The bi-whatchamacallit? What the hell is that?" Ella asked, struggling with the unfamiliar term.

"Bi-cameral means two-chambered. Our body has two of almost everything. Two hands, two feet, two ears, two eyes, and so on. But it doesn't stop there. There are two chambers in your head that hold two brains. These two brains work together because they're connected by a bundle of nerves called the Corpus Callosum. What most people don't realize is that both of these brains are conscious. These are separate conscious minds that are partly connected but mostly separate. It's sort of like those Venn diagrams you study in math class where one region overlaps another. Part of them overlaps, but most of them do not."

"OMG you guys, it's Saturday and here we are studying math and psychology," Eileen said with a theatrical whimper.

"Okay, let's order some more pizza. I think we're gonna be here a while," Roxanna said, already signaling the waitress. "Is this about that right-brain/left-brain stuff?"

Our Perceptual Bubble

"Well, maybe," Pastor John said thoughtfully. "I'm not sure about the right/left brain hypothesis, but it seems that there's a collective consciousness to which both brains are connected, and within that field of consciousness there's a smaller field of awareness—a perceptual bubble, a virtual reality within which all our life experiences are perceived. It's within this perceptual bubble of awareness that we live our lives, unaware of the remaining vast array of reality that surrounds us. The Bible says that we're surrounded by a cloud of witnesses that we cannot perceive. This bubble of awareness is probably connected more with one side of the brain than the other, but I'm not sure if it's the left or the right side."

"Oh wow! That's exactly what Commander Beaker said," Ella exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm. "So we all live in this little virtual reality, a perceptual bubble, and within that bubble is the world that we know and love."

"Yes, exactly," Pastor John said, pleased with her understanding. "Our little perceptual bubble protects us from the vastness of the universe that would overwhelm our limited consciousness."

"I thought we were talking about karma?" Roxanna asked, trying to keep the conversation on track.

The Still Small Voice

"I was getting to that," Pastor John said with a smile. "Somewhere just outside the bubble we live in is what we call our conscience—not to be confused with consciousness. Some call it the still small voice, the voice of the Holy Spirit. Some believe it's the right brain, the domain of spirit, speaking to the left brain, the domain of the physical."

The restaurant had grown quieter around them as the afternoon wore on, and Pastor John's voice took on an almost reverent quality. "I don't know which, if any, of these ideas are true, but I've read in several places that God wrote His law into our hearts, so that no one is innocent of knowing right from wrong. The Bible also speaks of us eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thereby losing our innocence and becoming subject to sin and judgment."

"As a psychologist, I de-spiritualize all that, and I believe that within our consciousness is a code, a set of rules, that all social animals have written into their DNA so that they can live within a healthy social group. Even social animals, such as wolves, have a set of rules that they must follow within the wolf pack. Domestic dogs, though, seem to have lost these rules."

He paused to take another bite, organizing his thoughts. "It's a result of natural selection more than some extraterrestrial DNA expert writing behavioral algorithms and putting them in our DNA. For humans, these rules are complex. We call it a social contract. That's the source of that still small voice, and the source of karma. That's not to say that we can't hear the voice of God, but that's rare. The still small voice, I think, is an automatic behavioral algorithm honed and perfected by natural selection over the millions of years of our development as humans. As a pastor, I get attacked for that belief, but that's what makes sense to me."

"I would have to disagree," Roxanna said respectfully but firmly. "I believe God is an ever-present force in our lives, if we let Him in. It isn't that God doesn't speak to us, but that we don't listen."

Hearing Voices

"So that little voice makes karma?" Eileen asked, trying to piece it all together.

"I thought hearing voices means you're crazy," Ella interjected with concern.

"Those crazy voices are what's called a tonotopic disruption—the input to the auditory cortex is scrambled. This is a symptom of schizophrenia, and schizophrenia is a disease. In schizophrenia, though, the voices are not still and not small. They're loud and disruptive and typically say things that are obviously insane. So you can easily tell the difference."

"More pizza, please," Roxanna requested, settling in for what was clearly going to be a long afternoon. "This is going to take all afternoon. I don't understand what this has to do with bad things happening due to karma."

"Well, I think it works like this," Pastor John explained, his psychologist training evident in his methodical approach. "That code written into our hearts says that takings must be balanced. If I take from you, then something of equivalent value is taken from me. This is to balance the social order and keep peace in the community. For example, if I buy a car, I take the car, and the dealership takes my money. So that's a balanced taking, a balanced transaction. But if I drive off in the car without paying, then that taking of the car will have to be balanced by something taken from me by karma."

"So if I steal ten dollars from someone, then someone will steal ten dollars from me?" Eileen asked.

"No, there's no equivalence of the event. There's only an equivalence of value. So, for example, if you stole that ten dollars, and the person didn't have food for supper, and got in a fight with his stressed-out wife, then what you took from him—the taking—had a value much more than ten dollars. You also took from him his peace of mind and his wife's happiness. So then you wreck your car and it costs three thousand dollars to fix, and that balances the taking. It's all about takings. A taking could be money, but someone can take your peace. Someone can take your happiness. Someone can take your innocence, like in rape, and condemn you to a dysfunctional sex life and a series of failed marriages. One simple taking can have an extraordinary impact that's very expensive to balance. In the most extreme circumstances, karma can take your children, or even take your life."

"So this all happens in your head? There's no angel in heaven keeping a ledger and making bad stuff happen to balance karma?" Ella asked, her skepticism warring with fascination.

Karma Is an Inside Job

"I think karma is totally an inside job. You do indeed create your own reality when it comes to karma," Pastor John said with conviction. "For example, you're having a party and playing loud music late at night. Your conscience, your still small voice, is telling you that you're taking your neighbors' peace, but you can't hear it due to the loud drama of the party. So the next day when the neighbors are glaring at you from across the street, that small voice is telling you to go apologize, but you don't listen and blow them off. Then at work, for no reason at all, you say something stupid to your boss and get fired. On your way out of the office, you're asking yourself why you said that stupid thing. The small voice can sometimes get loud. It was the small voice coming through that sabotaged your job and got you fired. You did it to yourself. Many believe that it's one side of your brain in conflict with the other side."

"So who's calculating the value? Getting fired is much more costly than losing some sleep," Ella pointed out.

"You calculate it yourself, in that other side of your consciousness that you're not aware of. And if you piss it off by not listening and blowing it off over and over, it can really be a bitch. The phrase that karma is a bitch is no joke."

"But how do you know the other stuff? How do you know when you stole ten dollars that it took his wife's happiness?" Ella pressed.

Helena, who had been listening with the patient wisdom of someone from far beyond their time, finally spoke. "I agree with almost everything Pastor John is saying. He is wise. The complexities of human consciousness are beyond comprehension, even to us inter-dimensional people. Don't forget about the Akashic Record, where all knowledge exists. Your mind can connect to this record and know almost anything, even the extended effects of something you stole."

"But what about those people who steal and rape and commit all sorts of crimes and go on to live a happy, wealthy life?" Eileen wanted to know, her voice carrying the pain of personal experience. "Where's their karma?"

"Unfortunately, there's a small percentage of people, maybe about one percent, that have no conscience," Pastor John explained soberly. "They do not have, or cannot hear, that still small voice. It's a psychological disorder known as psychopathy. They are psychopaths. They have no social contract. They can't feel the pain of others—in fact, they think it's funny. When someone falls down and hurts themselves, a psychopath will laugh. With no conscience, there's no karma. Many of them live dysfunctional lives because they can't fit in society, but a few become very wealthy, and even get elected president. It's this fact of psychopathy that shows me that karma is internal. If it were that angel in heaven balancing their karma, psychopaths would not be immune."

The table fell silent for a moment, the weight of this revelation settling over them. Roxanna finally spoke, her voice tight with controlled emotion. "We know one of those psychopaths. He raped our sister since she was fourteen, over and over, and then was going to kill her. We told our Navy Commander, and we don't know what he did, but that perp was disappeared. Isn't that karma?"

"No. That's justice. Justice has nothing to do with karma. Karma comes from the inside. Justice comes from the outside. Every bad thing that happens isn't karma. Sometimes it's justice. Sometimes it's just an accident. A natural disaster that kills thousands isn't karma—it's just an unfortunate event. Matthew says that God causes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike. That tells me that external events have nothing to do with karma."

Isn't There Good Karma?

"What about good karma? Isn't there good karma too?" Roxanna wanted to know, eager to move toward something more hopeful.

"Yes, I believe there is," Pastor John said, his expression brightening. "But you have to listen carefully to that small voice. Your life path can be guided to success or failure with tiny little differences in the choices you make. Little changes to your choices that you don't even notice can, over time, make a dramatic difference in how your life works out."

He leaned forward, his passion for the subject evident. "Tiny differences in the choices you make, if they're negative choices, will ultimately lead to disaster. Tiny differences in the choices you make, if they're positive, will ultimately lead to success. You won't even notice these little changes, but that's how you're led to disaster or success."

"Listen to that small voice, and maybe sometimes it really is the Holy Spirit speaking. That way you can avoid the bad karma and get the good karma. The internal noise in your mind is intense, so it's very difficult to hear that small voice, and sometimes it says things you don't want to hear. So do your best to quiet your mind and heed the voice. It will guide you to where you need to be."

"That sounds like the Law of Attraction," Eileen said thoughtfully. "My dad talks about that stuff."

"I think karma and the Law of Attraction have a lot in common," Pastor John agreed. "In the Christian tradition, it's called faith. Faith isn't a belief, though. Faith is an action word. It's the actions you take based on your belief, or better yet, those actions you take based on what you know. Knowledge is superior to belief."

Helena smiled with otherworldly amusement. "You're writing your sermon for tomorrow in your head, aren't you?"

Honesty Will Set You Free

"You are very perceptive, Helena," Pastor John said with a laugh. "There's another very important concept that goes along with faith, karma, and the law of attraction, and that's honesty."

The late afternoon light was beginning to fade, casting the restaurant in golden hues as Pastor John continued his impromptu lecture. "Your subconscious is very intelligent and very sophisticated, but it has one problem. The subconscious cannot tell the difference between what's real and what's imagined. This is because of the way the perceptual bubble works. The bubble we live in is imaginary. Your senses and your memory provide all the raw data, and your imagination creates the perceptual bubble that we perceive."

"So when you dream at night, or daydream, it can feel totally real, because what is real is created by the imagination anyway. When you lie or create any kind of deception, your subconscious thinks it's all real, but then it doesn't match with what is perceived. That creates confusion in the subconscious and it doesn't know what to do. So faith, karma, and the Law of Attraction are effectively shut down, and the bad karma can be amplified. It's very, very important to be true to your word and avoid any deception, or the most powerful forces in your life will be wasted."

The Lord Spoke and Not a Thing Became Everything

Pastor John's voice took on an almost mystical quality as he quoted, "In The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz, he says, 'Be impeccable with your word.' Your word is the power that you have to create. Your word is the gift that comes directly from God. The Gospel of John in the Bible, speaking of the creation of the universe, says, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word is God.'"

"Through the word you express your creative power. It is through the word that you manifest everything. Regardless of what language you speak, your intent manifests through the word. What you dream, what you feel, and what you really are, will all be manifested through the word."

"Isn't the Law of Attraction just the Power of Positive Thinking?" Eileen asked.

"Yes, in some ways, but I think it's more than that," Pastor John replied. "Positive thinking focuses the mind on positive things, making positive things more likely to manifest. What's really important is positive intent. Your intention drives the Law of Attraction more than just thinking positive."

"What about negative intent?" Eileen asked with a mischievous glint in her eye. "What if I hate some girl and want her to get a zit on her nose?"

"Any of that negative stuff—hatred, jealousy, any negative intention to harm or hurt someone, gossip, talking trash—all of that totally kills the Law of Attraction and amplifies negative karma. One of the worst things a group of girls like you guys can do is sit around and gossip. Gossip is instantly transformed into negative intention and creates an environment where the Law of Attraction cannot work. Jesus said that there were some towns where he could not perform miracles because of their lack of faith. These negative practices can even block the gifts of God."

"So in order to receive the good stuff, first we have to be perfect?" Ella asked with exasperation. "Then what's the point? People aren't ever perfect."

"It sounds like a mission impossible, a catch-22, doesn't it?" Pastor John said sympathetically. "What Jesus recommended was repentance. Repentance isn't walking barefoot on sharp rocks to pay for your sins like some think. Repentance is a change of mind, a purification of your mind, and it's a process that doesn't happen immediately. It takes a lot of work. It's effectively changing the resonance of your thoughts to more perfectly resonate with the mind of God. It's that connection to the mind of God where all the power comes from. The gifts of God, the Law of Attraction, good karma—it's really all the same thing once you realize that the source of all of it is God."

"Don't worry, Ella. You're closer to perfection than you think. You're all kind and gentle spirits; you ooze goodness like nectar from a flower," Helena said with genuine warmth. "Even millions of years in the future, human spirits still struggle with negative thoughts, but I don't think you guys will need to struggle much with living a righteous life. You're almost there already."

"Righteousness? I'm sorry, Pastor John, and Roxanna, but this is getting a little too religious for me," Ella said, glancing at her watch. "It's getting late and our mothers are getting worried. You said you were wanting to talk to us about something. What was that?"

Pastor John's expression grew serious again. "Your friend Jenna—the one I saved in the tunnel, the one who you sponsored. She's just one of hundreds just like her in this county. I need your help to understand them, to know how to help them. My training as a psychologist and a pastor is lacking when it comes to these lost souls. I was hoping to have some meetings with you from time to time to share what we've learned."

"I think you already know what you need to know," Ella said with surprising wisdom. "Addiction is not the problem—it's secondary to a much deeper issue, which is unresolved childhood trauma. That trauma is the real global pandemic. You have to go deeper, back in time, and heal their emotional and spiritual injury before anything can be done for their substance abuse."

Pastor John stared at her for a long moment, then smiled broadly. "Oh, Ella, I love you. For someone uncomfortable with religion, you just gave me a speech that came straight from the mouth of God. You could, if you want to, join our little church. We would love to have you there."

"Umm. What? Now I'm even more uncomfortable," Ella said with nervous laughter. "Roxanna is our church girl, but she's Catholic. The rest of us wouldn't feel comfortable dancing and singing about God. But we can meet up from time to time. You bring the pizza."

"Girls? What's going on? You were supposed to be home an hour ago," came a stern voice from the entrance. They all turned to see Alisha Patel standing in the doorway, her expression serious but not quite angry.

"Oh. Hey, Mom. We were having a meeting with Pastor John. He was teaching us about karma," Ella explained.

"So is your phone broken? You couldn't call?" Alisha asked, crossing her arms.

"Let me apologize. I had the girls preoccupied. We lost track of time," Pastor John said, standing respectfully.

"It's good to meet you, Pastor John. I appreciate your apology, but that doesn't excuse my daughters for not picking up the phone. Karma, huh? I studied that when I was young."

"Really, Mom?" Ella asked with surprise. "And when were you going to tell me all about it?"

"Because I gave up on it. I studied comparative Eastern religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, as well as Taoism. They all teach karma, but they each teach a different kind of karma. If karma is a real thing, it should all be the same."

"I think what's going on is that each religious group has a slightly different experience of karma," Pastor John suggested diplomatically. "It may well be one thing, just experienced differently. Each group comes up with a different explanation, a different justification for what they experience."

"Mom, karma is an inside thing—it comes from the bi-cameral brain. We have two brains. It's not some Hindu god keeping a book of sins to be paid for with karma," Ella said excitedly.

"Oh, okay. Is that what it is? So you guys sat here for a couple of hours and figured out what others have struggled with for thousands of years. You must be really smart kids," Alisha said with unmistakable sarcasm.

"Mom, don't be sarcastic. We really are smart," Ella protested.

"If you're so smart, tell me how do you get off the wheel of karma?" Alisha challenged.

The Wheel of Karma

"What wheel?" Roxanna asked, looking confused.

"What she means by the wheel of karma is that many teach that until you resolve all your karmic debts, you keep being reincarnated until you do. You're just going round and round through multiple lives, like a wheel, until you can get off the wheel," Pastor John explained.

"What's the answer, Pastor John? I want to know," Eileen asked eagerly.

Pastor John's expression grew solemn. "It's the most difficult thing anyone will ever have to do. You have to repent, change your mind, change your consciousness and move it into resonance with the Spirit of God. You have to forgive, completely, everyone and everything that has caused you trouble, and then forgive yourself for every sin you've committed against anyone. It's a lot harder than you think. Once forgiveness is complete, there's no burden of guilt, and nothing for your bi-cameral mind to worry about. All is forgiven, all is good. And then you have to live a life of love and never hurt another for the rest of your life. The life of love may require you to live a life of celibacy in daily contemplation in a monastery somewhere. Otherwise, you create more karma and fall back on the wheel."

"I think I can do that," Roxanna said with quiet determination.

"Celibacy? Forget that," Eileen said immediately.

"Roxanna, can you forgive, totally forgive, and then love those men who raped our sister?" Ella asked pointedly.

Roxanna's face fell as the reality hit her. "Umm. Well. Okay, but when we reincarnate, let's all do it together."

Three Brains?

"You guys don't know anything about karma," Alisha said with a knowing smile. "There aren't two brains. There are three."

"Three?" Pastor John asked, his professional curiosity piqued.

"Yes. Three. The heart has its own brain. Try this when you're confused and don't know what to do. The brains in your head are probably fighting back and forth, going nowhere. Calm down. Calm the mind in your head. Then tap your hand over your heart, and listen to your heart. The best advice is probably going to come from the heart. At your age, girls, just make sure it isn't your hormones talking."

She looked around the table at the scattered pizza boxes and empty glasses. "Let's go home, girls. Dinner is ready. You can come too, Pastor John. These girls could use a dose of religion now and then."