The Threads We’re Weaving

What you’re about to read isn’t a definitive guide to karma—it’s a reflection of what I’ve come to understand after years of sitting with astrology charts, guiding soul work, and watching the same energetic patterns ripple across lifetimes (including my own!). This is my lens, rooted in evolutionary astrology, intuition, and direct experience—not a universal truth. So, as always, take what resonates and leave the rest.

Before we go any further, it’s also important for me to name that the word karma comes from ancient Indian spiritual traditions—particularly Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. In these traditions, karma refers to the principle of cause and effect: how actions, intentions, and energy shape our future experiences across lifetimes. What I share here is not rooted in those original lineages, but in my personal synthesis as a Western astrologer and soul guide. I speak about karma through the lens of energetic patterning, soul memory, and emotional healing—not as an expert on its traditional roots, but as someone working intimately with its echoes in the healing space. I offer this perspective with humility, respect, and the intention to empower and bring clarity with modern application, not to define.

So... what is past life karma, really?

To me, karma is a bit like walking a spiral staircase. In general, I believe that the soul moves through lifetimes in an upward spiral—growing, remembering, evolving. But every so often, there’s a place on the staircase—a particular pattern or emotional imprint—where we get caught. Like a scratch in a record, we repeat the same loop on the same floor over and over again. The scenery may change, the costumes might shift, but the emotional pattern stays the same.

This is how karma can feel:

🌀 Why am I still dealing with this?

🌀 Why does this always happen to me?

🌀 Why do I keep attracting the same kinds of people or situations?

From this perspective, healing karma doesn’t mean skipping ahead or bypassing the spiral. It means finally pausing at the scratched spot in the record. It means slowing down, listening more closely, and becoming aware of the unconscious patterns that have been driving us. It means honoring the soul material that got stuck there, offering it compassion, and beginning to choose differently.

That’s the sacred work of evolution. Not perfection, but participation. Not escaping the pattern, but transforming it with awareness.

What Is Past Life Karma?

At its core, past life karma is the energetic momentum of your soul’s history—unresolved emotional patterns, relational dynamics, and internal narratives that you carry forward from one lifetime to the next.

It’s not a punishment, and it’s not a cosmic scorecard tallying up your sins and virtues. That’s a misunderstanding I see often, especially in spiritual spaces that unconsciously borrow from moral frameworks designed to control behavior.

In evolutionary astrology, karma is seen more like a soul habit—a pattern you’ve enacted so many times that it becomes second nature. It’s familiar, even if it’s painful. It has a magnetic pull, especially when you’re not fully conscious of it.

Steven Forrest, one of the pioneers of evolutionary astrology, describes karma as “the habit of the soul.” He reminds us that we’re not being punished—we’re being invited. Invited to become aware of the groove we’ve been stuck in…and, subsequently, invited to evolve it.

This is where the spiral staircase metaphor comes alive: imagine walking up a spiral staircase over many lifetimes. Sometimes, you find yourself hitting the same spot—again and again—because you never fully integrated the experience. That “scratch in the record” loops you back into the same emotional tone or relational pattern, even if the outer details are different.

That’s past life karma.

It might show up in this life as:

A recurring feeling of abandonment or rejection
An inexplicable fear of being seen or expressing yourself
A tendency to attract the same type of difficult relationship dynamic
A chronic inner voice that says, “I’m not enough,” no matter how much you do

These are echoes. Energetic residues. Stories that haven’t fully been heard, completed, or rewritten.

Karma doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means there’s a pattern asking to be brought into the light—so that you can choose something new.

And it’s worth naming that this particular moment in history is a time of accelerated karmic reckoning—personally and collectively.

We’re living through a heightened vortex of soul evolution, and many of us can feel it: the pressure, the unraveling, the intensifying of old patterns. From my perspective, your soul chose to be here at this moment in human history for a reason. Not to be punished, but to participate in the healing.

It’s possible that part of your soul’s agreement in coming here wasn’t just to work through your own personal karmic loops, but also to help transmute ancestral, collective, and even cultural karmic patterns. Not because you “deserved” more hardship or carried more flaws, but because your soul trusted in its own strength. Because some part of you knew you had the capacity to hold a deeper thread of the collective story—and help weave it into something new.

How Does Past Life Karma Show Up in the Birth Chart?

In evolutionary astrology, your birth chart is a snapshot of your soul’s curriculum—where you’ve been, what you’re healing, and where your soul is asking to grow next.

And when it comes to karma, the South Node of the Moon is the clearest symbol of your soul’s past-life momentum.

Your South Node placement, by sign, house, and aspect, shows what you’ve done many times before. The energies, behaviors, or roles that feel familiar—sometimes even too familiar. These are the skills, tendencies, and emotional imprints your soul has carried over from previous lifetimes. But they’re also the grooves in the record that can keep you stuck when left unconscious.

The North Node, on the other hand, represents the evolutionary invitation—what your soul is here to stretch into this time around. It’s not about abandoning the South Node altogether, but about integrating its gifts and transforming its limitations. The North Node points to the direction of growth, freedom, and re-patterning.

Beyond the nodes, there are other placements in the chart that can reveal karmic themes or unresolved soul material (I plan to cover these in greater depth in some future posts, so stay tuned if this is up your astrological alley!):

Pluto speaks to your deeper psychological shadows and soul truth—it’s often a place of great power AND sensitivity, especially when unconscious in our lives
Chiron reveals the wounds and insecurities you’re here to bring compassion and healing to, first in yourself and then, if well integrated, in others
The 12th House gives us clues about what has been lost, stolen, or sacrificed in our past lives—meaning, it also points the compass to what’s ready to be reclaimed and reintegrated into our way of being
Retrograde inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars) can show areas of a particular ‘karmic re-do,’ where we’re really working on mastering that planet’s energies and lessons within ourselves
Saturn can reflect karma that must be matured through effort, accountability, and time

Each of these placements can offer profound insight into the stories your soul has been carrying. But astrology isn’t just about analysis; it’s about reclamation through pattern recognition and conscious choice. Your birth chart doesn’t doom you to repeat the past. It helps illuminate where you have the opportunity to shift the pattern—to pause at the scratch in the record and choose something different.

That’s the spirit behind my Monthly Astrology Subscription. I created it as a way to help you work with these karmic patterns in real time—tracking your transits, deepening your awareness, and staying attuned to the soul story you’re living each month. If you're in a season of evolution, this offering is here to support you as you walk the spiral more consciously.

What Are Karmic Wounds?

The Scratches in the Record

If karma is the scratched part of the soul’s spiral staircase—the loop that we keep unintentionally circling around—then karmic wounds are the grooves worn deep into that scratch. They're the emotional imprints that formed in previous lifetimes through loss, betrayal, failure, shame, or disempowerment, and they still reverberate in your energetic field now.

Often, they don’t show up as clear memories. They show up as intense sensitivities, irrational fears, or persistent emotional pain.

You might find yourself asking: Why does this tiny thing bother me so much? Why does this always feel like such a big deal?
That’s usually a sign you’re brushing up against a karmic wound.

These wounds often convince us of lies: I’m too much. I don’t belong. I’m not enough. I’m bad.

And here’s where it gets even more tangled: to protect ourselves from feeling these core wounds, we develop strategies—protector parts, personas, behaviors, coping mechanisms. We try to prove the wound wrong, not by healing it, but by avoiding, compensating, or defending.

That might look like:

Shutting down emotionally
Overworking to earn love or worth
Controlling or dominating situations to avoid vulnerability
People-pleasing or appeasing to stay safe
Withdrawing or lashing out before anyone gets too close

These defenses, while understandable, are often what end up creating more karma. Because they keep us dancing in the same groove—even when we think we’re doing something different, we’re still listening to the same underlying track.

True karmic healing isn’t about erasing the record or avoiding the staircase altogether and trying to ascend via a cloud out of our human reality. It’s about pausing long enough to hear what the old groove is trying to say.

This is the heart of shadow work—not purging or perfecting yourself, but reclaiming the parts of you that were exiled, shamed, or buried. Meeting them with curiosity and compassion, and letting them tell their story.

Because once we actually take the time to listen and confront our fears and our shame, it turns out that the scratch in the record holds not just pain, but power. It holds the voice of a younger soul part still waiting to be heard, seen, and sung back into the spiral.

How Do We Stay Stuck in Karmic Loops?

Why the Pattern Keeps Repeating

We stay stuck in karmic loops when we unconsciously replay them—usually through projection, protection, or avoidance.

One of the most common ways karma perpetuates itself is through unconscious projection. When we haven’t yet fully seen or integrated a wound, we tend to see it everywhere. We project it onto others. We replay it through relationship dynamics. We attract the same situations, again and again—not as punishment, but because part of us is trying to resolve the story and come back into the wholeness of our authentic Self.

For example: someone with a karmic wound around betrayal might unconsciously assume others will abandon them—and so, to protect themselves, they push people away first. The result? Isolation. And the pattern repeats.

We also stay stuck by reacting from our protector parts—those internal strategies that kick in to keep us safe but often recreate the very pain they were designed to avoid. When we're too defended to feel, too proud to take responsibility, or too afraid to be seen, we reinforce the grooves rather than heal them.

But here’s the good news: these loops are not fixed. They can shift. And often, they start to surface most strongly when we’re being given the chance to shift them.

That’s what makes astrological transits so potent—they highlight specific karmic patterns and give us the opportunity to consciously engage with them.

For example, at the time of writing this, I am moving through two transits with major karmic healing potential:

Transiting Uranus is squaring my natal North and South Nodes, activating themes around liberation, soul evolution, and resistance to growth
The transiting South Node is conjunct my natal Venus, surfacing old patterns around self-worth, attachment, and relational wounds

These transits don’t make anything happen—but they bring pressure and visibility to what's already within. They shine a light on the scratched parts of the record, offering an invitation to shift the song (and trust me, they are for me right now!).

We also experience this collectively during:

Eclipse portals
Significant Pluto transits
Nodal shifts
Major planetary alignments that stir ancestral and cultural themes (this is why 2025 is such a major year in every astrologer’s books—with every outer planet shifting signs within a year of one another, it’s a HUGE time of major collective karmic healing and evolution)

These are moments when the veil thins. When the volume of old patterns turns up. When you’re more likely to see the loop while you’re still inside it—and can choose something different.

And sometimes, that shift doesn’t come from deep excavation. Sometimes, we break into a new level of the spiral staircase when we do something unexpected. Something that jolts you out of the default pattern and opens a new timeline…Kind of like in the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once, where jumping timelines requires doing something completely random and irrational. The shock to the system—the disruption of the script—is what cracks the loop open and deposits you somewhere new.

So, in summary: Sometimes the most healing thing you can do...is to choose differently. Even if it’s weird and nonsensical (especially if it’s weird and nonsensical).

How Can I Start Healing My Karma Now?

The first step is not doing more. It’s noticing more.

Karmic healing begins with awareness—slowing down enough to recognize when you’re about to run the old groove again. It’s not about fixing yourself, being perfect, or transcending your humanness. It’s about paying attention to the parts of you that have been trying to protect you, trying to be loved, trying to stay safe.

When you feel emotionally activated, stuck, or in a pattern you’ve seen before, try asking:

What is this part of me afraid will happen?
What story am I believing about myself right now—and is it actually true?
What would it look like to respond differently, even just slightly?

Sometimes healing happens through deep presence, sometimes through forgiveness, sometimes through boundary-setting, screaming in your car, writing the letter you’ll never send, crying in the bath, saying no, saying yes, finally asking for help.

And sometimes… it happens simply through choosing differently in the moment you would usually react the same.

This work doesn’t happen in isolation, and you don’t have to walk it alone. Having a way to regularly reflect on your patterns—especially through the lens of your birth chart—can be a powerful support as you move through karmic themes in real time.

That’s why I offer an ongoing astrology space where I share monthly guidance, reflections, and intuitive tools to help you stay attuned to the soul-level patterns unfolding in your life. If you’re in a season of reckoning or renewal, I’m here to walk with you, as you rewire the pattern, as you move up the staircase, and as you choose a new future for yourself.

What Is Past Life Karma, Really? A Soul-Centered Guide