Spiritual Growth and Psychological Healing – the Karmic Connection:

the Karmic Connection

By Tom Hemphill

For years I have studied what makes humans tick. My curiosity has led me down many paths of knowledge – psychology and sociology, cross-cultural studies and anthropology, spiritual studies and - of course - the teachings of Dr. John Christopher Daniels, the spirit guide of Religious Research and source for more than 4500 Life Readings and Teaching Readings.

I have long been fascinated by the interplay between karma and psychology. To put it more clearly, each of us incarnate humans (“personalities” as Dr. John used the term) encounter various challenges and difficulties, out of which come life lessons that we subsequently learn (or fail to learn) through a mixture of personal growth, dealing with relationships, study, counseling, meditation, etc. Simultaneously, the soul is present and very much involved in the incarnate life of the personality, and brings to that personality the soul’s issues of karmic learning, past relationship challenges to be addressed, other spiritual learning, etc.

Thus, there are two sets of life issues to be addressed by each of us - those unique to that lifetime and those brought in by the soul. Both of these agendas must be addressed by the incarnate human in order to heal, resolve, learn, celebrate, or otherwise grow through specific issues of life.

Historically, these two types of issues for personal growth have been seen from distinctly different viewpoints. Many of us have used psychography or have gone to a psychic or medium to learn of karmic issues or spiritual agendas that the soul has brought into this lifetime. Many of us have also worked with psychologists and other counselors to identify childhood issues or emotional difficulties or other personal growth issues, separate from the understanding and insight that a knowledge of reincarnation can bring.

Over the years I have been blessed by my studies of a spiritual view of reality, through Religious Research and other sources, as well as some very helpful assistance from skilled counselors and mentors. I have often seen overlaps and interwoven issues between these two disciplines – psychological appreciation of why I think, feel and do as I do, together with spiritual knowledge of reincarnation and the purposefulness of each life in the larger picture of a soul’s journey.

Indeed, Dr. John often offered spiritual insight for people with very real psychological problems, clarifying such difficulties in light of karma or the ongoing growth and experience of the soul in earth living. However, it is not enough merely to learn a theory; one must be able to put the theory into actual practice. Dr. John taught that earth is like a laboratory for souls. If you ever took a “lab course” in high school or college, you know that after some time in the classroom, one then has periods of time in the lab in which to put into practice the theory learned in the class.

This is an excellent way of looking at the role of the earth lives – typically, about 60 to 100 incarnations - that a soul typically uses for its growth during the soul stage of its existence, before it progresses beyond the point of benefiting from physical expression and goes on to higher and higher forms of spiritual existence. Each earth life with its unique personality is another “session in the lab” for the learning, growing child of God we call the soul.

I believe that the spiritual and psychological learning – the process of self-awareness – is more intimately connected than is usually acknowledged. To be more specific, in many cases, they are not merely similar or intertwined; they are one and the same.

The personal growth issues an adult must face are often rooted in childhood experiences. Children are excellent observers of life, but poor assimilators of what they observe. They tend to interpret events around them in terms that they can grasp; however, they lack the maturity to see things as an adult might.

In addition, they are unsophisticated in their experience of loss. A three-year-old bursts into magnificent tears when he drops his ice cream cone because for him this is simply Loss. He has no sense of magnitude, so he cannot determine that this is a minor, irrelevant loss as opposed to a large and significant loss.

This combination of observing everything, understanding little, and being vulnerable to any kind of loss or rejection or fear makes childhood a precarious journey. Small wonder that so much counseling focuses on “the inner child.” While all of us have heard too many wisecracks about working with the inner child, early childhood is where the bulk of life’s traumatic experiences – and the need for subsequent healing – has its source. You cannot heal the adult without healing the inner child; and you cannot heal the inner child without allowing her to express her feelings, no matter how painful, fearful or irrational.

I believe that this is one place where the learning agenda of the soul – the lessons that the soul wants to work on in the “laboratory” of Earth – ties directly into the psychological challenges of the personality. This link is not circumstantial but a deliberate and carefully orchestrated part of the soul’s choosing in this incarnation.

Bear in mind that, as Roy Smith wrote in Incarnation and Reincarnation,* “The soul is a spiritual child, just starting out on its path of spiritual growth.” Suppose you as a soul have a major issue of loss and fear to work on, perhaps an issue of rejection or humiliation or abandonment in a key relationship in your past. Just as a human young child cannot deal well with this, so also a young soul might be traumatized by such an experience even though an older soul with more understanding and wisdom would take such an event in stride.

The soul could be bringing that long-standing trauma into this lifetime to be healed. Healing does not come from intellectual abstractions and theories. Rather, your soul must enter into an experience of relational loss or trauma as you. When you heal and resolve that issue successfully in this lifetime, not only you the personality but your soul as well finds healing. In order for that healing to happen, a trauma or loss must be re-experienced.

A colleague shared with me a childhood experience: his mother was very ill and was expected to die. She was in a hospital in a distant city for a long time – several weeks. As a young child, he could not grasp what this meant at the time. He only knew his mother was gone. He was frightened and he wanted her back. He experienced this as an abandonment and was traumatized. For the rest of his mother’s life, he was overly close to her. Not surprisingly, he also sought security in unrealistic ways in his marriage and in other relationships, particularly with women. So, we have a not-so-unusual issue for therapy with a good psychologist: a case of traumatization in early childhood – a “wounded inner child” – resulting in a lifetime of unspoken fears and stressful relationships.

However, my colleague had received a Life Reading with Dr. John many years ago. The Life Reading revealed that centuries ago, very early in his soul’s earthliving experiences, he had experienced the loss of a much-loved older sister. Inexperienced, confused and frightened, the soul allowed fear and loss to take charge of his awareness at the soul level. The soul was not able to guide the personality to a resolution of her grief. In addition, rather than experience this ordinary death just as a sad event of earthliving, the young soul became traumatized about loss and death.

The soul was then given extensive work in-spirit between lifetimes as well as the opportunity to associate with the soul of the lost older sister. Thus, the soul knows that although the physical body of that incarnate girl died (as do all incarnate bodies), the other soul did not die. The soul is now ready to go through the loss experience again, and this time to do deep healing.

To complete this karmic healing, the soul who had incarnated as his older sister long ago came back this time as his mother. The soul arranged for the current personality to experience a similarly traumatizing event – the apparent and symbolic loss of his mother by a small boy. Thus, the soul “set up” the personality to have an experience similar to the original experience of loss, so that the soul can successfully guide the personality through it – thus healing both the personality’s childhood grief as well as the soul’s centuries-old trauma.

Knowing this reincarnational history puts the current counseling in a whole new light. Specifically, the trauma of the child in this lifetime was greatly increased by the soul’s trauma. When the little boy became fearful of losing his mother, the soul was able to add to those feelings the fearful abandonment feelings that the soul had been carrying unresolved for centuries of earth time. Without this additional load of fear, abandonment and loss, perhaps the little boy in this lifetime would have weathered his childhood difficulty and come through it. But that event was staged precisely so that the soul could create a means to invest his own emotions of loss into an incarnate expression of himself, so that in resolving that for this lifetime, the soul resolves it for himself as well.

This is hardly an isolated incident. I believe this is a common approach for a soul. Knowing that she wants to work on this or that important life lesson in a given lifetime, the soul arranges for herself, in the incarnate personality, to experience the kind of trauma-triggering event that needs to be re-lived in order to be healed. When this occurs, the soul adds to the experience of the personality whatever emotional energy the soul needs to heal. Then, by guiding the personality to seek healing for its own trauma, the soul enables the healing of both the personality and the soul.

Just as the soul brings her emotions of pain or loss or fear to the young personality, so she also brings her superior wisdom and commitment to healing to the adult personality as the personality seeks to heal - through relationships, study, counseling, spiritual growth, etc. The personality has a truly difficult task - but it also has excellent assistance.

This puts a lot of “life experiences” – emotional stress, psychological problems, mental illness, phobias - in a different light. Yet it fits precisely with Dr. John's teaching that the personality is designed, created and born in order to serve the soul’s agenda for growth and service.

As you face your own traumas, life issues and problems, bear in mind that you are not just dealing with the “you” of this lifetime. You are also an expression point for a soul with its own agenda for this lifetime as you. Indeed, you are here – and comprised mentally, physically and emotionally just as you are - specifically to facilitate the soul’s growth. As you heal, you help the soul to heal in a far greater way. Facing your inner fears and seeking healing is not just another growth opportunity. Far more, it is an opportunity to help your soul do wonderful work of healing and growth.

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* Incarnation and Reincarnation, by Roy Smith, is available from Religious Research. See our web site www.religiousresearch.org for more information.

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