Why Heal If It’s All Just Karma?
I was told that during the time of the ancient Egyptians, I was a queen.
A bad queen - I misused my power and was not very kind to those I governed.
As a result of these actions, I accrued some ‘karmic debt’ towards various people, one of whom chose to show up - five life times later - as my mother.
Like all of us, she tried her best with the tools that she had at her disposal. But not always: she was both severely narcissistic (a result of a childhood riddled with abuse and neglect) but also deeply envious, which could lead to intentional cruelty.
It wasn’t easy.
But if I take a ‘past life’ approach to this challenging dynamic, I realise that the suffering that came with being her daughter is just a kind of rebalancing.
what I put out there, simply came back to me
Five life times ago, I wasn’t very kind; this life time I got to experience what it was like for others to not always be kind to me. Fair’s fair.
There are many lenses through which you can view the specific life you turned up in - where you were born, when and to whom - and sometimes opting for one lens over another can afford the required perspective to unlock what might have been keeping you small or sad up until that point.
This is what happened to me.
Because for years my default baseline was that I was broken, not worthy and somehow bad.
Professionally, I know that this comes from the messages we inherit when our brains are developing and we are learning how to view ourselves, our place in the world and how to connect to others. So I also knew that my feelings were a result of my childhood. After all, when we are born, we are blanks screens without any beliefs at all.
But regardless of all the anger, resentment and grief release I’d done over the years, on a bad day (or in the days leading up to my bleed at least), I would get sucked back into ‘poor me’ mode - thinking that I’d been given the short straw and didn’t deserve to be happy or fulfilled and therefore never would.
Until I listened once again to the recording of the medium explaining why I ended up experiencing the past that I did.
And unlike two years earlier, when I first heard about my earlier misdemenours - when this knowledge dragged me down into a spiral of self-blame, shame and guilt that kept me stuck in overwhelm and powerlessness for a good while - this time, I was able to see that there was a bigger picture.
That there is a web of karmic energy that seeks harmony and balance
And that my challenging childhood could simply be seen as just retribution for the pain I’d inflicted on others.
Through fully acknowledging that there might be a reason FOR my experience (rather than seeing it as something that was being done TO me), I no longer felt powerless but powerful. I realised that I could in fact choose to see things through a wider lens, which allowed me to fully let go of any last vestiges of victimhood, reclaim my sovereignty and truly move on.
It was a seismic shift.
I’m not saying that inner work is no longer necessary in order to leave your past behind - I am so much calmer, more confident, more accepting and more compassionate towards myself and others as a result of the cognitive insights, the emotional letting go and the physical release of body-held trauma that came from reparenting the parts of me that were wounded…
…I’m saying that to truly love yourself requires healing and ALSO perhaps a shift in perspective - away from the personal and the micro, towards the collective and the macro.
And to remember that different things click into place at different times.
What you heard months or even years ago that either didn’t make sense to you at the time or made you feel worse, can, at another time, be precisely the puzzle piece you need to create the aha moment you are now ready for.
It’s ok to dabble in multiple philosophies and and healing approaches (it’s what happens when you are driven by a desperation to no longer feel so unhappy) and even to hand pick beliefs from one area that seemingly contradict others (if it’s what feels supportive at the time).
We believe what we need to believe in order to gradually become whole (whether it resonates with others or not), just as we do what we can to cope until we realise we are no longer just coping.
Today, I am grateful for everything I have lived through because I now see that all of it was necessary in order to wipe the slate clean. Now, I can forgive myself entirely (both for who I am and who I was) in the same way that I can entirely forgive those that showed up as my parents.
Finally, we are quits - free of the karmic net in which we were entangled.
Artwork @christian schloe