Quick excerpt from Eat Pray Love...
"The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in one's lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same old addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma (and also of Western Psychology by the way)-take care of your problems now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering- that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding- there's where you'll find heaven." Elizabeth Gilbert -=Eat Pray Love=-