Karma: For the Love of Karma

By Michael G. Millett

Relationship karma operates in all our relationships and starts in each life with childhood family interactions. Relationships are where we learn fundamental lessons in life through contact with karmic connections and soulmates. Karmic connections or soul groups are people we feel instantly familiar with. We have a sense of connection stemming from a previous life or lives either in a positive or negative setting.

 Soulmates are two people who are extremely compatible on most levels. The connection is usually extensive, spanning several lives and for the most part positive. We can have several soulmates, and they can be in incarnation with us or acting as guides for our present life, helping us and encouraging us from the other side. Our soulmates have generally shared many experiences with us and know us well. All these contacts and relationships are usually intensely emotional, and some of them can conjure up strong feelings either positive or negative, all for a purpose.

 These experiences and connections happen to provide opportunities to develop the qualities and characteristics we are most in need of. These relationships can often be identified with our patterns of abuse, abandonment, love, manipulation, power struggles, rejection and intimacy: issues we learn and grow from. Power issues are particularly common in relationship karma. People get drawn into dependent relationships where one person holds all the power, and tension often arises when it is time for the other person to take back his or her power.

 We may be the victim, martyr, persecutor or rescuer with fixed ideas that rigidly control our lives and hold us back from growing emotionally or spiritually. We may also be a love addict within the relationship and unable to move out of it, which leaves us feeling "stuck." We may be looking for conditional love but need to learn the art of unconditional love, and the ability to "allow." We may be seeking love from outside ourselves when the real challenge is to love ourselves. Perhaps we need to reframe our whole perspective in regards to loving and being loved. We may also be perpetuating an old pattern, such as infidelity or betrayal or even simply very deep love. We may even experience the exact opposite of these as a kind of balancing experience for our development and growth in order to advance a strength or resource we need.

 Retributive karma can be involved when a person has betrayed their partner in a past life sometimes find that in this life, it is they who are betrayed or rejected. Subsequently they find themselves in a position where they are making some form of reparation for that original betrayal. Perhaps we may also be closely bound to someone by an old vow that needs playing out or releasing. However, we can change or release these patterns by finding a new way to deal with the person projecting the pattern to us. Perhaps we need to acknowledge the part of us that has those emotions and deal with it in our own appropriate way, by fully accepting our emotional self and choosing not to be held captive by our emotions. This can be harder for some people to do than others. General therapy can be very helpful to such people as a way to improve and change limiting patterns.

 Another way is to go back to the past through Past Life Therapy and deal with issues therapeutically and spiritually in that setting through releasement and healing. Outer difficulties can only be resolved through bringing out the appropriate virtues of mind and soul. We set in motion from the past what comes into the present and our life today is an "emotional learning ground" when it comes to relationships.

 We often choose a particular relationship in order to grow and learn how to complete a full attachment or how to disengage from one and break free from a dependent bond that has been formed previously. All is for our growth, development and evolution. It can be hard for some people today to find that their partner does not develop at the same pace at a spiritual level, even though strong feelings may be present at a physical or emotional level. Such an imbalance can often lead to depression, suffering and sometimes tragedy to the relationship. However, this is all part of the bigger picture for both partners to learn and grow from the experience, each in their own way.

 I believe that ultimately the spiritual purpose of partnership is to develop wholeness within us, to create freedom and take back or release our power over someone. We are a combination of male and female energies and our challenge is to harmonize the male and female within in each lifetime. This is the key to true balance and spirituality. We each learn our lessons differently because we are each at our own level of growth. So much of relationships is sorting out chaos and emotions and learning to love ourselves. On a higher level, every problem is self-caused and therefore must be self-redeemed. We must awaken from our complacency. In doing this, we begin to see the spiritual behind the physical and our lives open to new awareness.

Michael G Millett is a certified counselor, hypnotherapist and psychotherapist.

In 2004, he was awarded with a Ph.D Honoris Causa Degree from Calamus International University in Personal Development.

He holds certificates in Transpersonal Therapy and Past Life Healing from the London College of Transpersonal Hypnosis and Healing and is a member of APRT in the USA. He is also an NLP Practitioner approved by the Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming USA and the Association of NLP (UK).

Please visit his website at http://homepages.which.net/~michael.millett.