One common topic in numerology is the idea of karmic debt. Karma refers to the consequences that arise in life as the result of our past actions, either in this life or—in the case of karmic debt—often in previous lives. The idea of karmic debt is tied to the belief in reincarnation and carrying on the past acts and memories of one life into another.
In numerology, karmic debt refers to the Karma that you carry into your life that has been accumulated from previous lifetimes and can negatively influence your daily life. This debt may be carried through into your attitudes or circumstances in life. Karmic debt can be cleared by clearing your Akashic records and adopting a positive mindset.
Learning about your karmic debt and figuring out how to clear your karmic debt can help you lead a more positive, fulfilling life. Read on to learn more about karmic debt, how you can tell if you are experiencing it, and what you can do about it.
What is Karmic Debt?
People unfamiliar with Eastern religions and philosophies may not know about Karma. Karma is a spiritual concept in Buddhism, Hinduism, and New Age philosophies like numerology. It refers to a person’s past actions, sometimes known as karmic lessons, both in their current and previous lives since Karma is also connected to reincarnation.
With reincarnation, people bring their past Karma from previous lives into their current lifetime. Whether they have accumulated good Karma (through positive actions) or bad Karma (through negative actions) throughout the hundreds of years they’ve been alive, they may or may not suffer from a karmic debt.
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A karmic debt is determined by the actions you’ve taken and the decisions you’ve made either in your current or previous life that has given you bad Karma. Here are a few examples of actions that may cause someone to bring a karmic debt into their current lifetime:
- Abusing one’s power or authority in a previous life
- Committing murder or arson at an earlier life
- Being unfaithful to a lover in a previous life
- Refusing to forgive a loved one in a previous life
Of course, karmic debt can be accrued by performing any of these destructive actions (or others) during your current life. Even still, the result is that you carry the spiritual consequences of these terrible acts into your subsequent lifetimes, where the same destructive patterns tend to repeat themselves on a new stage.
The saying goes that those who forget their past are doomed to repeat it. The problem is that with reincarnation, a person forgets their past with every life cycle. Karmic debt is a way to determine how someone’s past lives played out and how they can improve their Karma moving forward.
Signs You’re Carrying a Karmic Debt
The easiest way to determine if you have a karmic debt is to use numerology to calculate your karmic debt number, which can give you some insight into what your karmic debt is and some idea of how you can work to clear it.
Even if you don’t clear your karmic debt completely in this lifetime, working toward clearing it can make it less prominent in your next lifetime, making it a worthy goal.
Because everyone who hasn’t been reincarnated into a completely enlightened state usually carries karmic debt, almost everybody has some. Karmic debts vary in severity and can also lead to varying severity in the consequences they reap.
Here are some of the signs that you may be carrying a karmic debt:
- Your numerology corresponds with one of the karmic debt numbers (explained more in the section below).
- You have a reoccurring negative pattern in your life, such as domestic abuse, addiction, depression, anxiety, money problems, or difficulty with interpersonal relationships. These patterns can range from minor to earth-shattering.
- You are drawn to serve others and help them (This can be a sign that you are subconsciously trying to clear a karmic debt involving self-centered behavior or greed since you carry the emotional and spiritual impact of those behaviors forward).
- You have a broken relationship that seems broken, yet you are drawn back to it repeatedly. This can signify that this person’s karmic debt is somehow tied to your own and that you’ll be required to serve them to clear it for both of you.
- You are currently dealing with consequences in your current life that point back to your negative patterns and behaviors. This can signify that you are accruing negative Karma during your lifetime and worsening your karmic debt rather than alleviating it.
If you learn that you have a karmic debt, it isn’t the end of the world—as mentioned, many people around the world carry one. The different eras of human history have spawned countless incidences of violence, destruction, greed, rage, and other negative emotions, so chances are, at some point in your past lives, you weren’t a perfect person. You may not have even been a good person.
But that’s okay! Clearing your karmic debt is about making amends for past mistakes.
How Do You Determine Your Karmic Debt Using Numerology?
The way you determine your karmic debt number using numerology is to determine all your other numerology numbers, such as the following:
- Personality Number
- Life Path Number
- Expression Number
- Birth Date Number
- Soul Urge Number
There are only four karmic debt numbers: 13, 14, 16, and 19. If any of your other numerology numbers corresponds with one of these four numbers, you are likely carrying a significant karmic debt.
What Are the Karmic Debt Numbers and What Do They Mean?
As mentioned before, there are only four karmic debt numbers. But these four numbers can significantly impact your life and how it plays out, as well as your attitudes and behaviors within it.
Here are the four karmic debt numbers and what they ultimately mean:
Thirteen – Drive
People with 13 as their karmic debt number are usually drawn to success and leadership roles. Still, the flip side of this desire is that they can also fall prey to ineffectiveness, laziness, and depression. People with karmic debt 13 can become shiftless and lack focus, making it difficult for them to actualize the dreams of success that drive them.
Because they are driven to success, people with the 13 karmic debt number sometimes try to take the easy way out or cut corners in their work, then become discouraged when get-rich-quick schemes or similar haphazard plans of attack never pan out.
Instead, people with this karmic debt number should cultivate their focus and learn how to set and execute their goals effectively. Making a deliberate effort to be positive in life and grateful for the things one has in life can also help people from falling into the pitfall of constantly wanting more and more success.
Fourteen – Control
People with 14 as their karmic debt number are guilty of hedonism in their past lives. When this karmic debt number comes up in a person’s numerology, it often leads to patterns in their life that point to drug abuse or inappropriate and unbalanced sexual relationships. People with a karmic debt in 14 may also be prone to overeat or drinking too much.
Often, the drive to pursue unhealthy hedonistic practices comes from the urge to self-medicate spiritual and emotional traumas or smooth the rough edges of general emotional instability. Since people with a karmic debt number of 14 often lead unpredictable or dramatic lives, this can also lead to cyclical moods and emotional instability.
To battle this tendency, people with 14 as their karmic debt number should focus on being flexible in the face of ever-changing life circumstances and finding self-care rituals and methodologies that encourage discipline and commitment rather than hedonism.
Deliberately taking self-control when you have a naturally weak will for sensory pleasures can help prevent many problems as you move forward. Living an organized—even spartan—life can also reduce these negative karmic tendencies.
Sixteen – Ego
People who have 16 as their karmic debt will be subject to the destruction of the ego, and this can either refer to a massive spiritual awakening or a life circumstance so catastrophic or life-changing that it turns a person’s life head over heels. The karmic debt number 16 is a double-edged sword. While the actions and behaviors that can come from a karmic debt of 16 can be devastating, this is the karmic debt number where a person is also most likely to clear their debt.
People with a karmic debt of 16 can be some of the most fiercely intellectual and ambitious people on the planet but may, conversely, pay a high price for their arrogance and egotism. As they are brought low each life cycle by building up and tearing down, it can ultimately lead to a person with a karmic debt of 16 becoming more and more spiritually enlightened with every life cycle pass they take.
Even though it is one of the most tumultuous karmic debt numbers, 16 has the greatest potential for positive change. It denotes a soul determined to reach a higher level of spiritual enlightenment and intellect.
Nineteen – Selfishness
People who have 19 as their karmic debt are the subject of isolation and resolve—while these people may often be left to fend for themselves or may find themselves up the proverbial creek without a paddle, being stuck as their only advocate often leads these people to develop a level of self-reliance and street smarts that people with other karmic debts cannot.
People with a karmic debt of 19 may have a history of abandonment or, conversely, of abandoning others and refusing to form emotional attachments. The downfall of 19 is that this karmic debt often creates souls that are too prideful and stubborn to accept human connection and empathy from others.
A person with a karmic debt of 19 may feel a deep, overwhelming drive to stand alone and face their challenges without help. Still, in life cycles, this can cause these souls to be brought low, repeatedly, to show them that while independence is a virtue, everybody needs help and a human connection to progress.
So, You Know Your Karmic Debt Number—What Now?
Once you’ve determined your karmic debt number, this can give you a framework for shaping your life moving forward.
- For example, suppose your karmic debt is 19, and you recognize that you have a negative habit of pushing people away or refusing help even if you truly need it. In that case, you might make a point to deliberately accept help or push yourself to connect emotionally and spiritually with others.
- Likewise, if your karmic debt number is 14, you might look at your consumption habits concerning sex, food, drugs, and drink and see if you are over-indulging in any areas of your life. If you recognize that you’ve got a problem with gambling, shallow relationships, or some other addiction resulting from this karmic debt, it can allow you to take action to move past it.
Knowing your karmic debt is about self-awareness and introspection, learning more about yourself, and investigating your flaws to identify solutions moving forward. The more you address your karmic debt in your lifetime, the less likely you will have to deal with these same destructive patterns in subsequent ones (or for the rest of your current lifetime).
Personal Numerology and Karmic Debt
Karmic debt is directly tied to an individual’s numerology. While many Eastern philosophies and religions recognize the concept of karmic debt, numerology goes deeper into the theory by explaining specific causes of karmic debt from past lives and how they can be addressed directly.
Akashic Records and Karmic Debt
Another astrological concept that comes into play regarding karmic debts is the concept of Akashic Records. The Akashic Records consist of a “soul imprint” left by all living things as they enter and leave consciousness in the life cycle.
Other names for the Akashic Records include the following:
- The Universal Mind
- The Hall of Records
- The Book of Life
The concept of this collective consciousness spans many different cultures and modes of thinking, but the Akashic Records are the basis of karmic debt. The Akashic Records hold the past transgressions that your consciousness has committed on the physical plane and hold them as part of the collective consciousness.
However, each time you are reincarnated, some of these transgressions follow you into your next life, depending on their severity and how prominent they were in your previous life.
Reading your Akashic Record can be one of the first steps to learning more about your past lives and how to clear your karmic debt. Without this reflective knowledge, many people flounder through the same problems lifetime after lifetime without learning anything or progressing spiritually.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to access a person’s Akashic Record. Typically, people can only gain insight into them as they pertain to their problems in their current life cycle.
Still, by learning bits and pieces of your Akashic Records, you can better understand yourself as a spiritual being and how you need to move forward to progress spiritually, emotionally, and mentally.
How to Clear Your Karmic Debt
So, you’ve discovered your numerology and have been saddled with karmic debt. Thankfully, this isn’t the end of the world.
You can do many positive, proactive things to try to help clear your karmic debt from transgressions in your previous and current lives.
Here are a few of them:
- Proactively work to identify your biggest struggles in life. Knowing what aspects of life are bringing you down is one of the quickest ways to hone in on the karmic debt you may carry with you. Do you often find yourself standing alone in a crowd? Are you inclined to over-indulge in the senses with excess food and drink? Do you have a history of destructive romantic relationships? All of these problems can point to a problem with your karmic debt.
- Take responsibility for your mistakes. It’s not enough to acknowledge that you have a problem with the life problems associated with karmic debt. You also must be willing to accept your part in creating that problem and your sole responsibility for fixing it. This can be intimidating since many of these problems may require years of intensive introspection, therapy, or other work to process and repair.
- Take a step back from toxic relationships or cut ties altogether. Learning to recognize when negative people in your life are holding you back is an important part of developing better self-awareness and learning to take the time to focus on yourself and your spiritual improvement. Remember that the karmic debt of others can often cause them to try to drag you down with them, so keep yourself free and clear of other peoples’ drama whenever you can.
- Perform actions to contradict the circumstances of your karmic debt. For example, suppose you learn that you have accrued a karmic debt by abusing your power over people weaker than or subordinate to yourself. In that case, you could reverse this karmic debt by becoming an advocate and protector of the weak and the innocent. Likewise, if you have a karmic debt wrapped up in hedonism, becoming an ascetic can help contradict this spiritual fate.
- Tackle your weaknesses head-on. Acknowledging and addressing karmic debt means looking at some not-that-flattering sides of yourself. This process is referred to in some circles as shadow work. Shadow work involves becoming a more whole and balanced person by taking a non-judgmental look at your personality flaws and bad behaviors as a person and trying to figure out their causes and ways to amend them.
- Contact a psychic for a deeper insight into your karmic debt. A third-party perspective on your karmic debt and your Akashic Record can help you gain clarity concerning your karmic debt if you are floundering and unsure how to clear it on your own. Depending on how severe your karmic debt is, it can have a massive negative impact on your life, so it’s essential to identify it quickly and take action to avoid long-lasting negative consequences.
Much of addressing your karmic debt involves taking a hard and honest look at yourself and your shortcomings. Not only do you have to look at the problems you’ve experienced in your current life, but it’s also ideal for looking at potential conflicts arising from karmic debt in your past lives.
In general, going out of your way to be a positive person with as much empathy and compassion for others as you can and making a point to serve humanity in whatever way you know best is one of the best ways you can move forward with erasing a karmic debt, even if you’re not exactly sure what your karmic debt is arising from.
Can You Completely Repay a Karmic Debt?
While most people in the world struggle with their karmic debt, there are signs that you have cleared your karmic debt or are on the path to doing so.
Here are a few of the signs you should look for to see if you’re on the right path in clearing your karmic debt:
- You are respectful of religious leaders and knowledge bearers. You hold a deep sense of awe and wonder for the people who dedicate their lives to improving humanity’s mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health.
- You become more intuitive and see more synchronicities and “lucky coincidences” in your life. Those who become invested in numerology and clearing their karmic debt will soon see signs that they’re on the right path. This is a clue from the universe that you’re doing exactly what you need to do. One example of commonly reported synchronicities is “angel numbers” or repeating numbers.
- You are more forgiving, calm, and compassionate. Those who have resolved much of their past karmic debt from previous lives often give off an air of being “old souls” and can be more patient and kind than those still dealing with karmic trauma.
- You aren’t as negatively affected by your environment or situations outside of yourself. Ever heard the phrase, “True happiness comes from within?” Repaying your karmic debt brings that deep sense of security and happiness to your life, which makes it harder for life’s curveballs to throw you for a loop.
- You are naturally drawn to service others. People are drawn to serve humanity and help others are usually on a higher path to enlightenment and have cleared much of their karmic debt from previous lives, while those who still have a high level of karmic debt struggle to see the problems of people beyond their own.
- You are unafraid of death. Because people with a lighter karmic debt carry fewer regrets into their next life, they spend less time ruminating on death and its trappings. Instead, people who have cleared their karmic debt live joyfully in the present moment, not wondering what the future will bring (either positive or negative).
Repaying your karmic debt doesn’t just make your next lifetime easier—it can make your current life a much more positive, rewarding experience filled with love and human connection.
Karmic Debt Affects Your Everyday Life
Even if you’re unaware of your karmic debt or what it pertains to, carrying it can cause a person to inadvertently repeat the same mistakes they have repeated in their past lifetimes for centuries. This is because, without any idea of an alternative path, the consciousness tends to fall into the same pattern as its previous lives.
Since knowing you hold karmic debt is half the battle, once you learn about it and figure out some ways to address it, you’ll be amazed at how much easier life becomes for you.