Relationship between Karma & Chronic Illness

“Why has this happened to me?” “Why am I ill?” “Why am I suffering?” Often, when you suffer from a physical condition whether being minor or severe,
it can be a link in a chain of sequence that has begun centuries ago. Some illnesses and afflictions are Karmic.

Knowing the cosmic relevance if it is karmic can lead to an understanding of your disease or illness on various levels. To consciously know this alone can have a transforming effect upon your life today; perhaps even just the understanding of your situation can enable you to come to terms with it which in turn can enable you to achieve vital equilibrium at higher levels of being and integration as well.

This is not a new idea, but an ancient one found among many peoples and cultures in every part of the world. The spiritual world is subject to laws of cause and effect (Law of Karma) as precise as those that govern the physical world. When we experience such affliction ourselves, and know its sad frustrations, we begin bitterly to question the ways and love of God who we begin to see as cruel. We might see God as testing us and heaven or hell as the reward or punishment that awaits us, depending on how we meet the challenge of this illness. We believe this not because we have proof of it but because we have been taught it through the centuries. Beliefs handed down on the strength of authority.

Perhaps we blame our condition on the blind mechanism of heredity as determined primarily by genes of our parents or secondarily by environmental influences.
The reincarnation view is that suffering is only good for the soul if it teaches it how not to suffer again and that heredity and environment are themselves the result of past life karmic determinants and every quality of the soul is self-earned rather than parentally transmitted.

Diseases and illnesses can arise from the merits and demerits of past life behavior and all suffering and pain and limitations have an educative spiritual purpose. Seeing the ethical and spiritual behind the physical. These deformities, afflictions and agonies can be lessons towards growth, wisdom and perfection. When it is remembered that the purpose of karma is spiritual education, it will be seen how natural and inevitable this approach to karmic therapeutics is.

Karma is a Sanskrit word literally meaning `action`. The `sin` that karma corrects is not `sin` in the superstitious primitive sense of disapproving gods and spirits or offended morals but rather in a psychological sense; `sin` that is universally definable and universally subject to a cosmic law. It is the sin of selfishness or being separate and the sin of self-exaltation. It can consist of violence against the will or body of another, or your own body, through over-indulgence or neglect. It can consist of pride or exclusiveness of the spirit and many other variations. It can be said that Man is spirit, not a body; `sin` arises from his overlook of this as he identifies himself with his body. To change this he must stop denying this fact and identify with spirit – his true essence. This `sin` from a past life can have an exact cause-and-effect, action-reaction relationship in this lifetime, even though it might not necessarily be obvious and can manifest as illness amongst other things.

As Jesus the Christ said, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Newton`s third law of motion states that every action has its reaction which is equal and opposite, and this applies as much to spiritual law as to the law of physics. Therefore, some human afflictions, disease and illness today are sometimes linked to specific karma and conduct in past lives and bring karma into sharper and more immediate focus.

A favourable environment and a healthy body can also be positive karmic consequence. One side of karma is that a harmful action directed toward another person yesterday can rebound to the perpetrator of the action today perhaps as an illness or limitation. A person today can meet himself in suffering which he brought to others. “Judge not that ye be not judged” suddenly stands out with a new depth of psychological meaning.

Other times this karma can be symbolic or metaphoric and manifest in the body in a symbolic way. The clinical findings of modern psychosomatic medicine demonstrate that some physical conditions are due to mental and emotional disturbances.
This branch of medicine shows that tensions of emotional origin, when they cannot be expressed in word or action, often express themselves symbolically in the body through a kind of “organ language”. e.g. if a patient suffers chronic lumbago and no organic cause can be found, it may mean that there is something in the current life situation of the patient that “he`s feeling put upon, being a martyr, aiming too low in life”.

Taking this further then, there is every implication to be a close correspondence between the `organ language` of psychosomatic medicine and this symbolic karma.
Karma is a psychological law and acts primarily in the psychological realm, the physical circumstances being merely the means whereby the psychological purpose is fulfilled. However, the retributive reaction or compensatory action that characterises all karma is usually neither exact nor literal because we are all at our own levels of growth.

In my work as a past life therapist and healer, I have had many instances of cure with physical conditions and in some other cases, where the karmic debt is more serious, improvements have been achieved. It would appear that my work through past life therapy and healing can sometimes re-establish the equilibrium so that the physical karma can justly be withdrawn resulting in the person becoming well. It is so important generally to apply the spiritual side to any cure with illness as well as the medical side. This spiritual side which is so integral to past life healing can also help change your present day consciousness and character in a positive way, through the variety of healing work undertaken on the past life being worked on.

You of course, need to be open to the process of working in this way to get the most benefit out of it. It is important to note that there are times when karmic illness or conditions can best be helped through physical rather than psychological means and this information often comes through in the sessions.

Ultimately, healing must come from within or it cannot last. No healing method is more “spiritual,” in an absolute sense than another. All healing methods have the same divine source. Whether the influences that act upon a body come from medicine, surgery, mechanical appliances, therapy, past life healing, body work etc, they must of necessity come from the One Source – Life itself.

Of course, not all afflictions are necessarily karmic and illness and disease can be affected by many chemical, biological, mechanical, social, racial, and economic forces for which we have no inner, immediate responsibility except insofar as we must ultimately acquire the strength to be invulnerable to them. Man is a unit of three. Body, Mind and Spirit and sometimes we are ignorant about the truth about ourselves.
Doctors, psychologists and priests are three tenders of the same divine fire and must work together more for the good of all. Healing does not always mean you are cured. It does mean, however, that you have changed by learning to see the creative possibilities that exist within your limitations opening you to the positive aspect of karmic growth.

It is worth remembering that while we are undergoing the karma and energy reactions of our past lives, we are setting in motion still newer causes which in turn may react upon our future lives. We extend far in one direction and far in another, it cannot be said we begin at the illusive margin, that we call “birth”, nor end at the equally illusive boundary that we call “death”. There is a larger framework of existence than the little world we occupy in the here and now and a larger meaning of life, sickness and death than we have yet been able to imagine.