So It Didn’t Work Out… Or Did It?
A dive into karmic relationships
By Mi Chuinda Levy, Lifestyle Staff Writer
For many of us, there is one person you can’t rid yourself of, one name that floods your mind with emotions in a matter of moments. You can’t help but wonder what could have been. It is possible this relationship is a karmic relationship, one that is not necessarily meant to last physically, even if you believe that is what you want.
Karma is the most important concept with these relationships, hence the name. The word karma is derived from the Sanskrit word Kármán, which means action (Thakkar, 2015). The concept of karma originates from the ancient Hindu text Rig Veda, a collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. From that text, the concept found its way into various religious texts and finally embedded itself into the core of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism (Thakkar, 2015). These religions established that not only is karma a direct result of your behaviors and actions, but it also follows you through every lifecycle you incarnate into until you have completely neutralized or balanced it. This idea is better known as karmic debt and balancing karmic debt. Although karma can be positive or negative, in karmic relationships, you typically focus on the negative karma accumulated over time and rebalancing said karma.
According to astrologer Ruth Aharoni, negative karma mainly accumulates based on how you interact with others, both inside and outside relationships. Intense negative emotions such as bitterness, anger, jealousy and vengeance are all signs that an important lesson was not learned from the past and soon, “an opportunity will present itself to learn it, to rectify the situation, and to erase the negative karma” (Aharoni, 2007). Karmic relationships are meant to facilitate growth in the present and potentially right the wrongs made in a past life.
Karma enters lives in many ways regardless of what incarnation (or better known as a lifetime) you are in. Karmic relationships are just one of many ways this can occur. Despite doubts, the universe makes no mistakes. Not even about who your karmic is during your various incarnations. The souls of you and your karmic partner know each other either from this incarnation or previous ones and both of you have unbalanced karma that needs to be resolved. In this lifetime, your karmic partner can take the form of a family member, a romantic partner or even a so-called enemy. Regardless of who they are, their main goal will be to invite suffering into your life, so you can go through a developmental period (Aharoni, 2007). Developmental periods are times when you experience personal growth and become one step closer to achieving complete self-awareness.
You have to grow through your karma. Karma, put simply, is working towards getting what you deserve, and to get what you deserve, you must balance out your karmic debt. This is not to say you deserve the heartache, codependency and power struggles a karmic relationship might bring. Instead, this is to say you deserve the lessons and opportunities karmic relationships will bring. Aharoni says, “Every relationship in every incarnation is a learning experience and has the power to bring about repair, restoration, and the condition of heightened consciousness” (Aharoni, 2007). Every lesson you learn prepares you for the next and brings you just a little closer to being able to be content with your completing soul (Aharoni, 2007).
Your completing soul, or the stereotypical ideal for a romantic soulmate, is often who you mistake your karmic to be. There is only one completing soul out there for you, while there could be a multitude of karmics. The passion and fire that come from a karmic are often so intense that you think this person has to be the one, but oh no, when you meet your completing soul, there is a unique energy that surrounds the interaction. As cliché as it might sound, when the two of you are united and karmically balanced, everything fits so perfectly and moves in synchronicity. The auras of you two quite literally become one with one another, creating intense energy.
There is a possibility that you meet your completing energy and the time is not right because one or both of you are not ready yet. Not to fret though, when the both of you have cleared your negative past karma, a time will come when the two of you will reunite because “there is an undercurrent of love that ultimately, sometime in the future, will triumph” (Aharoni, 2007).
This underlying current of love will not necessarily be there with your karmic partner. If anything, it will be an underlying current of urgency for you to balance your karmic debts through learning the lessons the universe has set before you. Both you and your karmic partner will continue to find each other no matter the incarnation you are in until this balance is achieved.
It is not your responsibility to explicitly focus on your karmic partner and to fix their faults. The majority of time spent in karmic relationships is about personal growth, which means on an individual level, there’s much more to be done. Take the lessons you learned from karmic relationships and let the person go. One of the best ways to let them go is to take the energy you would have once given to them and give it back to yourself so that you can be the best version of yourself.
Keep in mind that although every completing soul is a karmic, not every karmic you meet will be your completing soul (Aharoni, 2007). Most people you form relationships with are not and will not be the completing soul you expect them to be and that is okay. Instead, through these relationships, you will help one another balance your karmic debt so that you both can keep working on yourself and towards finding your completing soul in the future.
Sources:
Aharoni, R. (2007). Karmic astrology: Past lives, present loves. Llewellyn Publications.
Thakkar, C. (2015, December 4). Karma. World History Encyclopedia.