Having an understanding of karma can be an incredibly useful aid on the spiritual path. The information in this article arose from inner revelation and contains some information about karma, the nature of the soul and reincarnation which has never been spoken about in such specific detail. Each sincere spiritual teacher who teaches enlightenment may be called to speak on different topics, depending on what is most helpful for spiritual seekers of that time period. Because people are now more aware we live in an energetic reality, karma and the soul can be described in energetic terms and this information is now ready to be relayed.
Contents
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Karma as actions and consequence
Karma can be described simply as 'everything having an energetic consequence'. Every action that you take, every decision you make has energetic ripples. Many of these ripples are unseen and do not manifest in physical, tangible ways immediately - hence many people do not believe in karma because they have not awakened their intuition enough to read the unseen forces of the universe.
If you could see karma with your eyes you would see ripples of energy emanating from every living being at all times. These ripples create attraction and repulsion fields. Certain things can be destined to happen because of your actions or can be destined never to happen because of the karmic roads you choose. Karma is a creation of your reality. But it is a co-creation with other forces such as others' free will, the forces of nature e.g. the weather and coincidental factors. Many modern 'manifesting' gurus have a very poor understanding of the nature of reality. It is not possible to manifest everything. The divine will only support manifestations that are of the soul, calling in circumstances that are truly for the highest good. Many other things that are not divinely supported do appear to 'manifest' such as a person becoming wealthy, but an egoic person does not manifest wealth through their manifesting energy (which is a sacred high vibrational energy) - they simply worked with the material plane and manipulated people in order to make money. Karma as a divine law seeks to restore justice and so will only support that which moves in the direction of love, truth, peace and awakening. And many manifestations of the soul are slow to appear because of the collective ego of mankind or of the egos of the people involved in one's situation. Jesus is a clear example of a person who was morally perfect as an enlightened being but could not manifest perfect circumstances.
All living beings eventually experience karmic justice, but this can take years or lifetimes for karmic balance to be restored in some cases. Enlightened beings always have a karmic debt towards them (meaning the forces of creation actually owe a repayment to the Enlightened person for their service), especially because Earth has been so unjust. This debt begins to be repaid most significantly in Nirvana, after death.
Karma - positive, negative or neutral choices
The soul records all things.
Every choice you make at each moment is either positive, neutral or negative, in terms of whether it moves you towards enlightenment or away from it. (A choice can be a physical action such as speaking words aloud, or it can be an intention you hold inside*). A positive choice comes from consciousness, and brings more genuine peace to the world (either to yourself and/or others). A negative choice brings more suffering to the world (either yourself and/or others). Positive choices accumulate positive karma. Negative choices accumulate negative karma. Some choices are neutral - it may be a choice that you have to make in order to function in the physical world but it doesn't in itself accumulate positive or negative karma. A possible example of a neutral choice could be choosing between two identical shirts to wear to work in the morning. You need to pick one of them to wear in order to go to work, but choosing one over the other does not really matter. You could make a different choice - such as going back to bed and faking being sick to take a day off work (that may accumulate some negative karma!). If you did put on a shirt and go to work, you might accumulate some positive karma during the day, and then as part of the whole series of events the shirts played a role in preparing the physical conditions for you accumulating positive karma, but choosing the one shirt over the other itself was neutral karmically.
*Having an unloving thought doesn't always create negative karma - if you are just inwardly 'letting off steam' but have no intention to cause harm to anyone, that's karmically neutral, but if you had a negative thought about someone and intended to hurt them (e.g. seeking revenge or saying something cruel), the intention alone would create negative karma).
What does accumulating positive or negative karma actually mean? The soul can be visualised as being a 'ball of energy' - each karmic choice affects you on a soul level. To make a negative choice, to accumulate negative karma, attaches a dense energy to the soul itself (which obscures the soul from experiencing itself fully for what it is). Usually each negative choice is like a dot from a flick of paint on a wall - not a huge amount of negative karma. There are some karmic choices, however, that can accumulate larger amounts of negative karma (e.g. an extremely negative karmic choice would be murder)... But we'll get onto that later. Each positive choice, each accumulation of positive karma, helps the soul to emanate higher frequencies and to clear some of these dense energies. This works towards clearing the energetic charge that keeps it reincarnating into a body on Earth. (A neutral choice doesn't affect the soul's karma).
It was revealed to me through inner revelation that even the soul itself is made up of energy and this energy can be measured similarly to how our physical bodies are made up of energy and we all have an 'energy body' (electromagnetic field). The soul itself contains two components:
The divine template, which is like the structure of a house. This contains all the information for the soul to be able to move towards Enlightenment. It is a record of divine truth, and this part of your soul (which is the majority of the soul for all living beings, always) knows the true nature of love and of the nature of reality. It is the part of you that is eternal truth, eternal compassion and eternal awareness.
The karmic record, which is the part of your soul which has 'karmic sites'. These are little 'dots', small spaces each representing very specific soul lessons, where a dense energy or a high frequency energy can be created at that site according to your choices in each and every moment.
The karmic record of the soul carries different energetic charges according to your life choices and this is the property that ensures it attracts to the appropriate dimension after each incarnation (whether you experience another incarnation or Nirvana). This is how the soul carries this ability and is an impersonal property like a magnet being drawn to another magnet.
When you have cleared all earthly negative karma you become totally enlightened - (1000 on the Scale of Consciousness). When you have reached complete enlightenment, then the soul continues to its next experience which could be described as Nirvana - a dimension where everything is totally peaceful.
In order for a soul to become enlightened it must:
Accumulate enough positive karma
Clear all earthly negative karma
Becoming enlightened and leaving the cycle of rebirth on Earth requires sufficient lifetimes to do this, many thousands of them.
Misconceptions about karma
There has been a misconception throughout history to see 'good' and 'bad' karma in a materialistic way. The idea that poverty is a punishment or that it is a result of good karma to be born rich is incredibly false.
Karma between lifetimes works to incarnate the soul in its next life into a body and life circumstances that are the best match to help it to learn the spiritual lessons it needs in order to move towards Enlightenment.
The best karmic predicament for a person's awakening may be, in some cases, to be presented with some challenging circumstances. Often souls who are closer to enlightenment choose challenging circumstances to incarnate into.
Sometimes a soul incarnates into a wealthy family because it has had very difficult recent incarnations and needs a 'rest' from energies relating to material scarcity. Other times incarnating into a wealthy predicament is a karmic test: will the person use the advantages they have to help others, or will they become caught up in the traps of the ego?
Sometimes someone has fortunate or unfortunate circumstances and chooses to incarnate into that life for a different reason than the circumstances themselves. For example, souls always intentionally choose at least one of their biological parents. So a soul could choose to incarnate into a specific body so that 'Mark Jones' is their father. It could be more important to that soul that Mark Jones is their father than whether they incarnate into a well-off or less well-off situation, or which country Mark Jones is living in at the time etc. Mark Jones and the dynamic that will be created between father and child could be an extremely pivotal set of lessons that the soul chooses and deems more important than other factors.
Similarly, later on in life someone can end up in fortunate or unfortunate circumstances that are not the result of positive or negative karma. The free will choices of others, environmental factors (e.g. the weather) and coincidental factors can mean that people experience circumstances that are not reflective of whether they have made positive or negative karmic choices in this life.
Karma and positive repayment or negative consequences
Karma can take a long time to show its effects. The 'payback' from accumulating both positive and negative karma does not always show itself quickly. Often the results of negative karma involve losing positive opportunities (such as a loving relationship or a job) - but this may take months or even years to unfold. Realisations of how low vibrational one's actions were may arise months or years later (perhaps as feeling regret). On the other hand, positive karma can also take some time to be reflected back to the person! Some of the kindest people can be treated the most poorly (because society has been overwhelmingly egoic) and it may take years to attract people and/or circumstances that embody justice for that person. It's wise nonetheless to focus on being a kind person (with boundaries!), because even if the results are not immediate, being unkind will eventually catch up with you! (And karmic 'payback' will be much more powerful now that we are in the beginning of the era of New Earth).
Karma and grace
Karma is not something frightening, it is actually beautiful.
Karma is a record of what you know as a soul and what you haven't yet learned, or haven't learned fully yet. Karma is what allows you as a soul to learn the lessons needed to eventually be an energetic match to Nirvana.
Without your soul carrying a karmic record there would be no experience of learning, no experience of awe when you see, hear or feel something that connects you more deeply to your true nature… if there was no karma you would be a stationary 'blob' of energy that never gets to experience change, never gets to see the many forms of Lila** manifesting through time and space. There would certainly be no way to match you to a perfect circumstance that could teach you something profound or be experienced by you as a moment of true magic. That person you fell in love with who you'd consider a soulmate, or the friend you see as a kindred spirit - you only had that experience because karmically parts of you are/were an energetic match, and so on the level where form and essence meet, you experienced yourselves as very relatable to each other. If there was no karma, you wouldn't have been able to have that experience, nor any of the beautiful experiences of your life.
**Lila is a Hindu term which describes the idea of God expressing itself through 'divine play' in all forms. The idea is that God forgets itself to be God and then incarnates into various forms as a way of 'playing' - in order to have a different experience it forgets its own divinity, and so, for example, becomes a person who incarnates, having forgotten their true divine nature.
But what about the painful parts of life? Sometimes challenging situations may be a part of someone's karmic journey (for example perhaps being born into a difficult family situation), whilst other circumstances are not a direct result of karma but occur because we live in this dimension where people use their free will, and there are also physical forces such as the weather, and so this can be experienced as 'misfortune' or 'bad luck'. Until the highest levels of consciousness are reached it can be extremely difficult, or impossible, to look at traumatic situations in your life and be able to imagine that your soul, on some level, might have consented to them. Some souls really do agree to endure very challenging situations in an incarnation - however, when you interact with someone on a human-to-human level, they are experiencing the situation from a different vantage point, where they may be in great emotional pain. There is no love in simply telling someone that they chose a negative situation as a soul, so they should be okay with it. Even if such a situation was chosen by the soul (which it may not have been, it may have been an unfortunate event), the person in the situation still has to work through layers of emotions that arise such as grief, anxiety, anger etc in the same way someone who didn't say yes to the situation on a soul level did.
After a lifetime is over, each soul reviews their life that has just come to an end and gets an opportunity to fill in the 'blanks' - they can see why important things in their life happened and see the love and grace in a situation that brought about great suffering.
If someone does karmically choose a difficult situation to be born into or be presented with during their life, this is always either because it gives them a great opportunity to learn and advance more quickly towards enlightenment, or because a soul is needed for a very specific purpose at that particular time on Earth. Jesus is an example of a soul who made a great sacrifice - as a soul he knew there was a great chance he would be murdered, but his soul agreed to play the role of being Christ because an enlightened teacher was so greatly needed at that time.
People do experience situations that were not a result of karma but happened due to coincidence, 'bad luck' or an unfortunate set of events. (Also some positive events truly are also a coincidence, good luck or a fortunate set of events which were not set in motion by higher forces!). You could say in one sense that everything happens for a reason but that reason may not be to deliver karmic lessons - the reason could be 'because Dave ran ten minutes late that day, he was just in that place at that time…'. It may have simply happened as a result of the free will of other living beings or a natural event occurring (e.g. a weather event).
The forces of karma and material-world forces are very entangled!
Karma and reincarnation
At the point of death, after each soul has moved through a post-death dimension that gives them a final opportunity to learn further lessons from that lifetime, every soul will go to a place that perfectly aligns with their overall karma. This could be another incarnation on Earth, or an incarnation on another planet or another dimension that is equivalent to the Levels of Consciousness souls are here to learn on Earth (Levels of Consciousness 1-1000). Or if total enlightenment is attained the soul moves on to Nirvana.
Reality is of an energetic nature: souls are only able to enter into a new incarnation that matches the Level of Consciousness that they obtained by the end of their post-lifetime review. There are many factors that determine how well a person is suited to enter into a particular body and the circumstances that are likely to come with it, and because reality is energetic all factors are considered automatically, like a magnet being attracted to the strongest magnet. Whichever new lifetime has the greatest 'magnetism' for being for the highest good for your soul, that is the lifetime the soul will enter next.
Being born into a rich family, a family where the parents are happily married or into a stable, wealthy country are not necessarily the results of 'good karma' and the opposite is not necessarily the result of 'bad karma'. When a soul incarnates again, it is matched to circumstances that will best help it to learn and fulfill a particular mission for that lifetime (e.g. learning about key themes or playing a particular role). Everything predictable about your life is considered before you incarnate. Many souls choose to incarnate in a particular place to set up for a likely or inevitable meeting - for example a potential life partner or best friend may be deliberately incarnated in the same town as you and be of a similar age to make it easier for you to meet. The soul incarnates into a body that will have a particular kind of personality: perhaps more extroverted or introverted, more cautious or more impulsive… this particular brain and body is chosen to teach each soul particular lessons. All souls who travel the human journey get to be both male and female many times on the journey to enlightenment, and to be both gay and straight and everything in-between in different lifetimes. If you are not new to being a human on your incarnational journey it's likely you have been born as various different ethnicities and lived in various places all around the world, been both tall and short, able-bodied and disabled… because there are lessons to learn from these various experiences and none of these outward expressions are the essence of who you are as a soul.
The general journey for a soul reincarnating on Earth is that it will begin as very simple life forms (such as a single celled organism like a bacteria). Once enough lessons have been learned at that stage, the soul then incarnates into somewhat more complex animals: insects or bugs. When these lessons are complete, the soul then incarnates into more complex animals - mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. If you'd like to read more about the animal incarnational journey click here.
When enough lessons are learned from the animal incarnations, the soul moves onto human incarnations, usually until Enlightenment is reached. (In some cases a person who accumulated a lot of negative karma can reincarnate again as any form of animal from a single celled organism to a more complex animal. At the most negative end of the karmic spectrum, a soul who caused enormous harm (e.g. genocide) can be prevented from ever incarnating on Earth again. Hitler is such an example of a soul who has been removed from the incarnational journey of Earth).
Through meditation the answer revealed about plants is that they do have souls, but are from a different incarnational journey completely - a soul that incarnates in a plant will never be a human or an animal, and a human or animal can never become a plant. There are many many incarnational journeys souls can take through different dimensions and planets and universes - the journey of most of these beings is not fully comprehensible whilst in a human body.
Karma is an energetic record that can be accessed
Karma is readable to a totally enlightened being. Most 'channelers' who have not reached enlightenment would not feel comfortable or confident to view someone's karmic record - and they may not be at a level where this information is accessible to them. It is certainly not possible to know about another person's karma unless your intentions are totally pure! Your karma is totally private to the egos of others - but for an enlightened being (who therefore has no ego) they can know about your karma.
This is nothing to be afraid of. You can only be truly 'seen' through the eyes of love. You are a soul remembering your true nature as Loving Awareness. If someone judges you for your past, they haven't seen you. Your true essence is invisible to them.
An enlightened person is able to see your karmic predicament because it may enable them to help you more deeply, to love you in the ways your soul needs the most.
A truly enlightened person can see:
What is most blocking you from awakening more deeply
What your 'soul mission' is this lifetime - key themes and lessons and roles you may be ideally suited to
If you are clearing any significant karma from past lifetimes
How you can clear any negative karma in the fastest way
Soul agreements made before birth
How close you are to enlightenment
What accumulates positive karma
Positive karma is not difficult to accumulate - it just takes a sincere intention to align with love.
There are two types of positive karma: karma towards others and karma towards yourself.
Positive karma accumulated towards others is when you do something conscious that positively impacts others. Positive karma towards yourself is about the relationship with yourself - it is accumulated when you make a conscious decision that respects, honours and sees your own sacredness.
In order to accumulate the positive karma required to reach enlightenment, a person must:
See themselves as divine. The divine Self is very different to arrogance (and recognises all other living beings as expressions of the same divine energy). To see yourself as divine, is to recognise yourself as a soul. It is to let go of the limitations of the ego, which inherently deep down feels small and afraid. The divine Self is eternally courageous, perceptive (able to see highly intelligent solutions from higher consciousness) and unconditionally loving towards self and all others.
Embody the power of the soul. This includes embracing saying no and setting boundaries at any time it is for the highest good. It may also involve removing oneself from situations where one cannot help, for example where people are caught in their ego's and not open to true help. (In this case investing energy would be a drain on your resources and also make you have less energy to help yourself or to help others who are truly open to help).
Completely surrender their will to divine will - allow themselves to be a channel of love, willing to do whatever is for the highest good. Offer their life in total devotion to love, truth or Enlightenment (all are one and the same).
Sometimes actions that accumulate positive karma are not received well by others. The feedback from the external world may not be a good reflection of whether what you have done was a positive karmic choice (because sometimes others' egos are triggered by consciousness!). The best feedback is within your heart: a positive karmic action is always accompanied if you listen deeply, by a sense of clarity, a clear conscience and a sense of no regret. There is an energetic sense of true peace about your decision, regardless of the consequences (e.g. maybe another person was triggered by you telling them an uncomfortable truth that they needed to hear). The decision comes from a place within you that is stable, tranquil and courageous.
One of the things that sometimes trips up spiritual seekers on their journey of karmic choices is that they can become stuck in the perception that they understand the spiritual path. Unless you are totally enlightened, your perspective on awakening, love and doing the right thing will continue to shift and be shaped by nuance and subtlety as you move to higher states of consciousness. You may have known you are on a spiritual path for ten, twenty, thirty years, but you will cease to accumulate much positive karma if you don't remain open to further expansion - the willingness to learn and see things differently.
Whenever you do things that accumulate positive karma you are in this state:
Connected to your soul
In touch with your intuition and willing to listen to it
Willing to see the other person/living being as a soul, as a being of Love
Willing to let go of a mental position
Willing to feel vulnerable or feel your deepest emotions
What accumulates negative karma
There are two types of negative karma: karma towards others and karma towards yourself.
Negative karma accumulated towards others is when you do something unconscious that negatively impacts others. Negative karma towards yourself is about the relationship with yourself - it is accumulated when you make an unconscious decision that doesn't fully respect yourself.
If you have karma to repay towards yourself, this is about rebuilding the relationship with yourself, treating yourself with more compassion and respect - seeing your own worth and sacredness. You might repay karma towards yourself by practicing self care, speaking kindly to yourself or setting healthy boundaries with others.
Of course, if you truly saw how sacred you are, you would never accumulate any negative karma towards others because you would be totally at peace and all your actions would come from a state of integrity. When you love yourself, loving others becomes natural. Therefore loving yourself is a foundation of making amends with others too.
Karma towards others can sometimes be directed towards a specific person/s - it may be your karmic 'duty' to make repairs towards that specific person or persons, otherwise that negative karma will remain recorded at the soul level for the rest of your life. It is wise to check in with yourself if you may have an unfinished energy with anyone. Imagining you are on your deathbed: are there any repairs you'd like to make, anyone you'd want to apologise to? If you left your body right now, are your relationships in a karmically pristine place? Did you make all wrongs right to the best of your ability? Does everyone know you truly care about them?
Other times the karma you have to clear towards others is general - you don't have to repay a specific person, but instead generally act with love and learn a specific lesson in the way you treat other human beings. When negative karma can be cleared without a specific person, this could be because the person you wronged is uncontactable or deceased, or perhaps you didn't wrong a specific person in a serious way - but your interactions with people in general were missing a certain divine quality. For example, maybe you could listen to others more deeply - you had a habit of being distracted on your phone during human interaction. In our culture, reverence and respect are generally under-realised divine qualities most people could improve upon. You could perhaps start to clear some negative karma around treating people with as much respect as they deserve by treating any human being with respect.
Whenever you do things that accumulate negative karma you are in this state:
Disconnected from your soul
Out of touch with your intuition and not willing to listen to it
Unwilling to see the other person/living being as a soul, as a being of Love
Unwilling to let go of a mental position
Not willing to feel vulnerable or feel your deepest emotions
General tips for accumulating positive karma (and avoiding negative karma)
See all of life as sacred. Every living being on the planet is worthy of respect, love and care. Do your best to cause no harm wherever possible and to offer kindness to all living beings wherever you go. (This also includes seeing yourself as sacred. Sometimes making a loving choice towards yourself will inevitably hurt others' feelings and there is no way to create a 'perfect' circumstance in the situation).
Speak the truth. Truth and Love are the same thing. You can be tactful (and mastering this is an essential lesson on the way to enlightenment!) but don't lie unless absolutely necessary to protect someone (for example you would not tell a murderer where the house of the person they are trying to kill is!). Lying to someone in any other circumstance than necessity to protect someone is a form of disrespect. There are also times people must be told 'hard truths' in order to grow. Learning how to deliver uncomfortable truths from an inner state of love is another essential teaching of life. Sometimes it is important to give the other person the opportunity to learn, through showing them something they haven't seen (and perhaps don't want to see!) This requires courage and is a deep act of love when done from an open heart, with sincere intentions towards the other person. (Of course some people go the other way and are unnecessarily blunt and harsh, which is not an expression of love. Each situation will require a different approach - surrendering to the highest good and asking for divine guidance for your situation can allow you to be a channel for loving energy to flow in the highest expression for your unique circumstance).
Treat your body with reverence. Honour your body as a temple. Disrespect for your body (for example taking harmful drugs, eating a very processed diet, starving yourself, over-exercising or smoking) always shows an area where you don't respect yourself or don't respect others. Respecting your body also means having healthy boundaries around who you choose to surround yourself with and who you share physical intimacy with. Without respecting your body you also end up less able to help others. (If you are struggling with addiction, know that the divine knows if you are finding it difficult to let go of a habit. Each and every positive choice you make to seek help with your addiction and make positive steps is noticed and accumulates positive karma. The act of truly surrendering to a higher power and asking for help (even asking for divine help inside your own head) is an incredibly positive choice and can facilitate miracles. For advice on how to let go of an addiction or destructive habit click here).
Support people who are suffering. One cannot accumulate much positive karma if one avoids the darkness of suffering and tries to delude oneself that one can awaken through only pursuing pleasure. To be with others in their suffering (listening deeply, empathising, offering loving physical touch if appropriate, offering them physical resources that can help them resolve their problems etc) shows that you are not afraid of embracing your own suffering and being kind to yourself. An unwillingness to help others in times of deep need always shows a lack of self love. When you love yourself, all others and their wellbeing are as sacred and important as your own. Of course boundaries are sometimes necessary - you cannot help everyone, sometimes you need rest, and some will not respect your love. Nonetheless, it should be a lifelong commitment as a moral value to help where you can. Even if a 'small' act of love is all you can manage, loving words from the heart can go a long way to alleviate others' suffering. (One of the biggest ways to accumulate negative karma is to abandon people who are suffering deeply *who you have the capacity to help* (e.g. a dying or chronically ill loved one, or not showing kindness to someone going through serious hardship).
Be willing to let go of everything that is not for the highest good. Sometimes things the ego wants are not good karmically. Sometimes an immoral job, an unhealthy relationship or a negative attitude can act like poison to your life as a whole. Make it your highest priority to live a life of love, and to be willing to let go of anything that gets in the way of that commitment.