Karma

What is Karma?

Many people believe that the definition of karma is “an eye for an eye.” They think that if you harm someone in another life - then they get to hurt you back in this life. This definition makes it seem as if you have no choice. From my metaphysical and holistic studies, the idea of karma is not as simple as that. It’s an agreement—a conscious choice to offer repayment. For example, I have facilitated taking many clients to their meetings before conception. It is my method to help clients understand so much more about their current life situations and pre-life choices. In a pre-conception meeting, a soul in-between lives, their Higher Self, and a council of spirit guides give advice and guidance about a proposed next incarnation. The suggestions made by guides are not carved in stone. The explorer can say to their guides, “No. I am not ready or willing to do that.” With Spirit guidance, the explorer chooses what lessons they want to learn in their next life. They also get to choose their parents and significant others who will help them achieve soul growth. The explorer’s Higher Self shows them previous lifetimes of accomplishment and fulfillment. The explorer’s guides also help them review some of their unresolved incarnations - those previous lives stuck in negative emotions, behaviors, or actions. And perhaps, other lifetimes in which they harmed another - lifetimes in which they were unkind, or worse, hurtful in some way to a related soul. With guidance from Spirit, the explorer can CHOOSE to make amends in some way. The explorer can say to their Higher Self, “I don’t want to be that kind of person in my next life. I want to experience someone doing that same hurtful thing to me, so I will know in my heart how that feels.” Or, the explorer can decide: “I don’t want to be the kind of person who would hurt a family member in that way again. In our next incarnation together, I CHOOSE to be kind and generous to that related soul no matter how they treat me.” The explorer may willingly choose and accept to experience a lifetime that involves difficulty, heartbreak, or other challenges. If so, I tell my client, “We are so brave when we are between lives to choose these lessons. (And perhaps these parents.) Then, when we get here, the veil gets pulled down, and we forget our agreements.” We are not victims. We are volunteers. 

Birthmarks and Karma

A birthmark may indicate where a physical injury happened in a previous life. 

When I was born, I had an extensive black birthmark. It covered the entire back of my left hand from my knuckles to about two inches below my wrist. It was not a port wine stain. The doctor told my mom that it was “overgrown blood vessels.” The mark has faded with age and now looks like a burn scar. 

When I learned that birthmarks possibly originate in a previous life, I decided to do a self-regression to investigate. 

 NOTE: There are cautions about doing a regression on yourself at the bottom of this article. I am a trained regressionist and shaman, so I know how to keep myself safe. 

Investigating my birthmark, I closed my eyes and called on my guides. I asked them if there was a connection from a previous incarnation to the birthmark on my hand. 

The guides took me to a lifetime in rural Kansas. Throughout this regression experience, I was inside the body of a woman who lived on a farm with my younger sister and our children. As I explored this isolated life, I learned that our husbands had gone off to war, and both had died overseas. 

In the next scene, I hear my sister screaming. I look out the window and see her running up to the house. She continues to wail as she runs. I run outside to see what the matter is. 

Breathless, she pointed to the barn, which was quite a bit of a distance from the house. My sister was hysterical. She blurted out that she had gone to the barn to call the kids in for supper and saw that the lantern had fallen over and the hay burning. 

I knew her son and my daughter were playing in the barn. I run as fast as I can to the barn. I hear one of the kids yelling for help. I reach in and pull a child out of the flames. It’s her son. Pushing him away with my right hand, I reach in again with my left hand to try and grab my daughter. I burned my hand trying to reach her. I got her out, but she was severely burned and unconscious. She died in my arms. 

I couldn’t understand why she didn’t try to save the kids. Why, instead, did she run all that way to the house to get me? She wasted precious time. Because of her fear of taking action, I lost my daughter.

As my explorer self of this life, I stayed within my past life self in an associated way. Because my mom in this life was my sister in that farm life, I needed to know why I brought in the birthmark on my hand. 

By staying within her, I could feel the pain of her loss and her grief. I also felt her intense anger.    

It was too hard to stay within her. I’d had enough of feeling all those emotions. I dissociated. I left her body and became an observer.  

I fast-forwarded through the rest of my farm woman’s lifetime. I witnessed her continual angry, emotional abuse toward her younger sister. She never let up. She never let go of her anger. She never forgave her sister for the death of her little girl. There was never a resolution. They lived together in this same way for her entire life. She died angry. 

After I, as the explorer, reached the end of her life, I asked our mutual Higher Self for the lessons I had learned. 

Higher Self told me that the younger sister in that past life is my mother in this life. Higher Self said that I am an older soul and my mom is a younger soul. 

Higher Self reminded me that because Mom is a younger soul, she is vulnerable and not as strong as me. It is the way she is again in our present incarnation. (As a teen, I often thought of myself as having to be the adult when she remained child-like in many ways .) 

Higher Self told me that I brought in the birthmark burn scar always to remind me that I had a karmic debt to pay to mom. In this incarnation, I made a karmic agreement always to be kind to her no matter how disrespectfully she sometimes treated me. 

I owed her. And I stayed true to my pre-conception promise. In our present life together, I always treated her with respect, no matter what.