Breaking the cycle

Not only are karmic cycles often not completed - they are meant to be broken! The whole point of karma is to experience both sides of every occurence. Consider the case of a child who has often suffered beatings at the hands of a parent and is too young and/or too weak to escape them. Here are a few possible scenarios that could be played out in the karmic sense:

• If the parent lives long enough to become weakened by age, the child will be the stronger of the two and may begin beating the aged parent. This is not uncommon, especially if the adult child has not forgiven the beatings and still harbours anger towards the parent. In this case, one cycle could be completed in a single incarnation.
  
• The child may wait until another incarnation where the roles have been reversed so that it is the one administering the beatings.

Even though karma now seems to have been satisfied - that is, both parties have received and administered the beatings - it's likely that the cycle will continue to be repeated a number of times before one of the entities finally realizes that in order to stop the pain, it must 'turn the other cheek' and break the cycle. Thus a conscious decision is made by one of the parties not to return the beatings in this life, the next life or any life. The lesson has been learned and the entity is determined to move on and leave this particular scenario behind.