It isn’t only from karma

by Jan Erik Sigdell, Slovenia

One explanation for suffering and prosperity, which is common in Eastern religions as well as in Western esoteric doctrines, is karma. We reap what we have sown in a past life, or sometimes earlier in the actual life.

In that case the question is justified whether we should intervene and try to help people who suffer. Wouldn’t we in that case take away an opportunity for them to learn, which their souls now have? Couldn’t help even be a way to let them shirk the school? People sometimes think like that in Eastern cultures and, therefore, hesitate to help. Those in the West who reject the reincarnation idea often take this as an argument to make it seem inhuman and loveless.

Act of omission

This is a misunderstanding. In fact, the lesson for the one who suffers can only be deepened if he through help and compassion can experience the love he himself was earlier incapable of! Furthermore, if we don’t give the help we could have given, we create own karma through an act of omission.

But is karma the only reason for suffering, difficulties and problems? Experience from regression therapy gives us a wider and more varied view of the reasons. It is true that karma is a main reason, but there are also various “secondary reasons”.

One such reason is that we have old and unconscious feelings of guilt, which we carry with us from the past, hidden deep in our unconscious self. These are of three kinds:

• Feelings of guilt, which were once justified

• Feelings of guilt we were talked into having

• Feelings of guilt we took upon ourselves by mistake (misunderstanding)

Feelings of guilt, which were once in the past justified, arouse because we did something unjust or caused suffering. They may still be justified, if we in our soul (since this is normally unconscious) still haven’t changed our attitude, realized the wrong we did and compensated. But it is actually quite common – much too common – that we still carry old feelings of guilt we no more need to have. We have already long ago expiated, learned, changed our mind and compensated, but something inside us think that we must still have the feelings of guilt, simply because they are there. Their task is to make us change our attitude, often through attracting experiences we can learn from “on our own skin”. But in that case they have already long ago fulfilled their purpose and become like a kind of vicious circle: Since I have the feelings of guilt, I believe that I must still have them.

Such superfluous feelings of guilt may too easily make us repeat a lesson we no more need to have. We attract a similar experience “on our own skin” once more, even though it isn’t needed. That is one reason why it is so important to uncover and release such feelings in regression therapy.

Uncover and release

But a feeling of guilt can be wrong from the beginning. It happens that we let the environment talk us into having feelings of guilt, even though it wasn’t our fault. Or we take them upon ourselves for, e.g., an accident we couldn’t prevent – and in that case it certainly wasn’t our fault! Such feelings of guilt “by mistake” are just as important to uncover and release!

Still another reason for unnecessary suffering is that we once stopped loving ourselves. It isn’t very rare that we did that somewhere on the way! Of course unconsciously. This can be a consequence – like a kind of a side effect – of feelings of guilt, or it can simply result from having felt unwanted as a child. Experience shows that maybe half of the children are born with a feeling of being unwanted and unloved. This often begins already in the mother’s womb. The soul that is connected to the fetus knows very well if the mother is happy, or if she is angry, sad or disappointed about being pregnant and wishes she wouldn’t have the child (maybe she even thinks about abortion). The role of the father is, of course, also important, but not to the same degree, since after all the child isn’t in his belly, but in the mother’s – and that nine months long without interruption, if it wants to, or not…

This can continue in the childhood. The child still doesn’t feel being liked, but rather as a burden for the family. Even if its conscious self cannot yet realize it, its soul understands it very well, and often better than the parents… This can also lead to not loving oneself. And then it becomes as if one – likewise unconsciously – believes to not be worthy of having a good life, having success or believes not to be good enough for a truly loving partner.

Low self esteem

A low self esteem, often also acquired in the childhood, has similar effects. The child was then scolded when it did something wrong but never praised for what it did well. It often had to hear: “Don’t touch that or you will break it!”, “You can’t do that!”, “Can you never do something right!?”, “You are good for nothing!”, and the like.

Fears

Still another reason for unnecessary problems is fear. We actually often attract what we fear! Or we complicate our life unnecessarily because of fears we don’t need to have. We may even attract disease because we fear that we could get it!

Fears, not liking oneself and low self-esteem are other things, which are important to consider in regressions. It is, of course, true that karma plays its role here, too, because this is a consequence of what we had to experience on our own skin because we did it to others – for example when childhood experiences caused such problems or when we had an awful experience which gave rise to the fear. Like we treat our children, we will ourselves be treated by new parents, until we understand to accept a child with love and give it nearness. But the insight about this can be actualized in a regression such that further lessons are no more needed.

Uncomfortable insight

There are still more causes for suffering. Who suffers can – still unconsciously – that way get care and attention from the environment (even though it isn’t very real, since it comes more from a sense of duty than from the heart), or he or she can put the blame one someone else (to not see the own part in it). He or she can withdraw from an uncomfortable insight, which would be needed to come out of the suffering. He or she may even blackmail the environment, or want to show it: “Look what you have made out of me!”. Such unconscious motivations for letting oneself suffer, which are actually a form of self-betrayal – in way out of convenience or with unconscious calculation – can also be uncovered and dissolved in a regression.

Forgiveness

The most important and the only truly effective “medicine” is love, compassion and reconciliation. The latter – to forgive and be forgiven – is an especially important “medicine”. Because when we can forgive, then it is all over and we have left the problem behind us. But if we still carry hatred, grudge, anger or accusations, we also hold on to the problem. One reason for suffering can actually be not wanting to forgive! One chooses to suffer instead…

Inherited feelings

One special and sad cause for an attitude in life, which at least indirectly leads to painful situations, is that one in the childhood “inherited” the parent’s fears and helplessness concerning emotions and nearness (touch). It is regrettably not rare that the parents couldn’t show feelings (other than the negative ones…) and had prejudice concerning physical contact. Such negative patterns are easily “inherited” from generation to generation. It is here important that we can break out from such an unhappy “tradition”, open ourselves and show positive feelings towards our children and give them the physical contact that is so important for their soul health.

Show positive feelings

We incarnate most of all to learn love. This seems to be more theory that practice for many of us. Practice means showing positive feelings for others, to which belongs body contact with those close to us (on the partnership level also sexuality as the highest form of nearness). Love is also expressed in true forgiveness.

Buddha is told to once have said: “Regard the one who hurts you as your teacher”. We can be quite sure that if someone hurts us, we actually get back what we once did to others. If we can see it that way, we can also forgive! Because in spite of all “secondary reasons” the basic reason somewhere still is a karma we acquired on the way. It is only so that we unconsciously and too easily complicate things still more for ourselves and continue in old tracks we should have left long ago.

Not wanting to forgive and instead seek revenge is a much too common way to complicate things for ourselves! To shrink back from feelings on an emotional or physical level is a way to continue in old tracks. Some of us do it out of an unconscious fear of being hurt. But to that way keep love away from us actually means to continuously hurt ourselves! But we have become so used to it that we almost don’t notice it…