If we look at it plainly, karma would mean that you reap what you sow. However, karma is much more complex than that. To understand its complexity, you must understand that it does not serve as a ‘punishment’ for what you have done in this or your previous lives.
Karma is a cycle of lessons which often seem negative because they come as challenges which we need to overcome. Being creatures who seem to adore the comfort zone, these challenges are meant to take us out of it and make us confront new frontiers.
However, our karma debt is never too high for our abilities, and even if you may feel like life can be too overwhelming, the karma you are paying off is set accordingly to your capabilities and potentials.
This said, the next thing you need to know about karma is that there are many types of karma which we are dealing with in a single lifetime. Starting from the widely-known personal ‘present-life’ karma (the “you reap what you sow” type), our karma extends to greater depths and broader horizons.
One of those types of karma is the family karma we all pay off to some extent. However, there are those who have taken on a more substantial burden of this type of karma, and they are the carriers of their family’s karma.
These people come with a unique set of traits that make them different from the rest of the family. If you feel like you are paying off your family’s karma, here is what could be happening to you:
Your consciousness is on a higher level compared to the rest of your family members, you are more spiritually evolved, and you are able to analyze the events in your family from a more detached perspective.
This makes you very different from your parents and siblings, and even the more distant relatives will notice this without too much effort. And while this may sound confusing to many, if you are bearing the burden of your family’s karma, you will be perceived as both the pride and the shame of the family!
If you have felt like you have been a target of constant criticism and praise at the same time, it is because you are worthy of praise (being indeed the jewel in the family), but the expectations your family has set toward you are something which creates such a mental strain for you that you want to run away instead of living up to them.
This bizarre combination is what makes your family love you and be mad at you with equal intensity, and it leaves them in a confused state which forces them to question their family-made perception of what life should look like.
Being the bearer of your family’s karma means that you have been brought there as the “sacrificial lamb” with the purpose of saving your family from the spiritual deterioration they are heading toward.
However, carrying the karma of your family is not fun and games. It comes with complexities that can drain you from your life force easily, and you might even find yourself feeling ill.
Depending on how much you understand your role, the family-karma roller-coaster can take you up high where you can breathe easily and then throw you in the darkest depths where you might even start questioning your existence.
How to fulfill karma’s lesson
You have been brought different because you are meant to challenge the old and outdated attitudes which destroy your family, and while they cannot see how those negativities affect you all, you are able to easily perceive the whole string of events which lead to where you are now.
This means that you should always stay true to yourself and listen to your intuition. Being more spiritually evolved, your intuition draws information from your Higher Self and guides you to the right path, if you give in.
Have open and even blunt discussions, if needed, where you can explain the reality to your parents and siblings – the reality they are unable to perceive. They will most probably not feel too happy with your honesty in most cases, but you should never allow yourself to please them by adhering to the lie they live in.
In fact, accepting the things that you know are wrong and living by them will not only lead to the deterioration of your family but will eventually start deteriorating you as well. This is how many family-karma carriers get ill for no apparent reason or drift away in mental illnesses.
The best way to achieve this is by cutting the energetic cords with your family
In most cases, the hardest thing to do is try and explain the truth to those we feel attached to. It simply backfires – badly. It is because we are all tied to each other with energetic cords which define our relationships.
These cords come with the beautiful and the bad, and they are the channels through which we send energy to the others on a subconscious level. If you stop working through those channels, you will be able to connect on a higher level with people.
The energetic cords are tied to the solar plexus (the 3rd chakra). Cutting them will definitely change your relationship with your family, but you will not lose them (if you do not want to). It is because if you renew your communication, new cords will be created, and you get to decide what kind of energy should flow through those cords.
Releasing yourself from these ties will allow you to start functioning on a higher level and they will allow you to approach the situation more wisely. And the easiest way to do it is by using the knowledge you already possess about your parents and siblings.
Start allowing yourself to let go of the fear that has been inspired by your family relations. Understand the relationship you have with your family members on every level and whether any of those aspects are fear-driven.
Let yourself be as you are and let your parents be as they are. We are not here to judge (always remember that). We affect each other with our behavior only if we allow to be affected. But not allowing does not mean that you should mingle in whether they should behave like that or not.
Not allowing their behavior to affect you means that you understand it, accept it, and are already over it. Just let go of who and what they are and allow them to be themselves, while you are also yourself.
You can also meditate on the thought of letting them be as they are and letting go of the strong clutch you have placed on them. You are not the small child that needs to hold your parents by the hand, so do not hold yourself to their views and thoughts either.
Love them unconditionally and do not judge them. And most importantly, be always aware that your presence is already affecting the way your family will turn out to be in the future. I know I have been changing my family by challenging their perceptions ever since I was a child, and all I have ever needed was to be myself.
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A professional writer with over a decade of incessant writing skills. Her topics of interest and expertise range from health, nutrition and psychology.