Spirituality

How Karma Might Affect Our Mental Health and Well-Being

How I perceive karma considering self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-love, and self-esteem — a personal perspective

Introduction

It dawned on me at earlier ages that my life was controlled by fear and guilt induced by authority figures. My parents, relatives, teachers, and even close friends used these emotions to control my life. This awareness in my younger years enabled me to take personal responsibility and protect myself.

This is a personal story. Even though I reviewed the literature on karma, I don’t make any scientific claims. I plan to provide my scientific reviews on trans-generational karma in another article neutrally.

While the concept of karma has a spiritual and scientific aspect, I choose to share a personal experience to give a unique perspective to the topic. My views might or might not resonate with you. I respect your opinion regardless. There is no wrong or right in personal experiences. I simply narrate them as is in a story format.

“How do I know what I know” has been a critical focus in my personal and professional life. As a researcher, I heavily used phenomenology as a research method to capture experiences. This method helped me articulate my perspectives and capture the first-person views of people I observed, interacted with, and interviewed. It is a valid method in various scientific disciplines.

I found phenomenology research pieces more valuable than data-oriented research from my experience. Through my observations and interactions, I gained insights into the lives of other people.

These pieces of information were much more helpful than the ones I found in papers with structured data collections, such as in epidemiological studies. However, I value and use both approaches for different purposes to create desired outcomes.

This is not a religious story. However, I see myself as a spiritual being following my intuition to live my purpose. This story reflects karma as more of a life philosophy from the first-person point of view.

How I see and experience karma in my life

In my younger years, I did not know about the term karma. The closest terms to karma in my culture and education were fate, nemesis, kismet, action outcomes, and cause and effect. But I struggled to comprehend them and make sense of these terms.

Later, through my studies, I discovered the terms serendipity and synchronicity. These terms attracted my attention because they were used by scientists and technology leaders whom I respected. So, I delved into its details to explore them.

During this research, I came across the word karma frequently. Karma initially sounded mystical and esoteric to me. However, when I examined the concept with my experience, I gained valuable insights. My knowledge of “serendipity” and “synchronicity” helped me understand the meaning of karma at a personal level.

Studying Jung's books and papers, the term synchronicity established its association with karma. I observed circumstances appearing meaningfully yet lacking causal connections. Later, studying the works of Mandelbrot in fractals also provided me with valuable insights into synchronicity in nature and the universe. My mentor, Janine, helped me to integrate my technical and psychological knowledge constructs.

By studying thought leaders in information technology, science, business, and the economy, I found that serendipity is value creation based on unexpected encounters. With the use of the Internet, I proved some of my hypotheses established from the works of those leaders.

Economic disparity in my circles has always concerned me. While some friends have had millions of dollars in their bank accounts, other friends only had enough to survive. One finding was that high income did not necessarily bring happiness. On the other hand, some low-income friends were happier than the high-income earners.

Return on investment is an economic term. I see the reflection of this term in karma and serendipitous experiences. For example, the more I give, the more I receive.

Another observation from an economic and business perspective was some people made money so quickly with little effort. Others struggled to make a little with a lot of effort. My key finding of the approach to wealth was that the growth mindset played a more critical role than perceived hardcore efforts for attracting money. I don’t allude that effort is not necessary, but I emphasize that mindset is vital.

As part of phenomenological research, I analyzed my journals starting from the age of five. I still keep my childhood journals written in my interesting handwriting. I digitized them in later years and added them to my personal development database. My childhood diaries helped me refresh forgotten memories.

I know that human memories are permanent from my experience. They are not erased like in computer memories. However, we forget them. I also believe the brain is not the only memory storage tool. Every cell in the body can hold memories. I gained this knowledge when studying quantum physics and quantum computing.

In hindsight, I found that karma was managing my happiness, misery, and well-being. However, I was unaware of the term even though I knew my thoughts, emotions, and actions created my reality. Understanding karma helped me orchestrate my life.

My first encounter with karma

Reading a journal entry recorded when I was 14 years old gave me goosebumps. It was a day I was struggling with difficult math homework in a special school, only educating some selected high achievers. I did not see myself as special but I was selected as part of this group because my academic scores were higher than average.

Even though I loved math, I had to make an extra effort to meet the special requirements. On this specific day, my brain was hurting. My stress level was extreme. I felt hopeless, frustrated, and vulnerable after several hours of study. There was no one to ask for help. I decided to have a break to clear my mind.

I started walking to the outskirts of this small town. An older man gently stopped me with a soft voice. I stopped and looked into his eyes carefully as no one before stopped me on the street. He was much older than my father. He asked for help for his young kids who needed food. Even though my parents told me not to speak with strangers, I talked with the person. I had compassion for him and gave him my pocket money, which was my daily allowance. It was equivalent to a dollar nowadays.

When I returned home and entered my study room, I experienced tremendous improvement in my problem-solving. The math problems that looked so complex turned out to be so easy. What was going on?

I finished the homework and was still feeling fantastic. I thought about whether this person had put a spell on me. As a STEM education student, I knew that he did not do anything unusual. All he did was smile at me, pray for my life, and pat me on my shoulder gently. He left by saying goodbye with gratitude.

I wrote several pages of my feelings about this event and shared them with my best friends at the time. Then, one day, I decided to share this exciting experience with my academic support teacher, with whom I felt very close. She used to teach us psychology. It was my elective subject. I loved the subject so much and adored the teacher.

When I checked my journal, I noticed a sentence from the teacher that stunned me. She said: “People come to our lives for various reasons. Our responses to others create certain neurochemicals in our brains. Those chemicals affect our learning abilities. Your experience shows the impact of connecting with a person who needed your help. Your unconditional giving to a person in need might have made a karmic effect on your psyche.”

Her words meant a lot to me and taught me to listen attentively to my thoughts, emotions, and actions. I have never ignored any person who approached me decently since then. What astounded me was that my teacher used the term karma, which I recorded in the journal but did not register in my memories. However, this event created a firm memory that I still remember vividly after several decades.

There were many examples like this in my journal. I don’t want to go into details, but I will highlight one interesting entry. One day, a fortune teller stopped me. It was a day I was feeling at a crossroads. She touched my hands, looked at my eyes, and wanted me to say a few words.

I knew that fortune-tellers were not capable of knowing the future. But her enigmatic words that I recorded at the time reflecting her vision were impactful after a decade. I believe her words went to my subconscious and helped me create my reality with my intentional actions to realize the outcome. This example established insight into understanding the role of karma in my life.

My point here is not about beggars and fortune-tellers. I don’t judge people based on their looks, circumstances, and roles in life. But my point is how my responses to the events created karmic effects in my psyche by coding memories as a karmic investment.

When I learned to see things beyond logic, my experiences significantly changed. In addition, these new experiences helped me redefine my identity. With an enhanced identity, I learned how to go beyond my defined identity and connect with other people, animals, plants, and objects more meaningfully.

Learning about my multidimensional aspects enabled me to focus on karma with more attention, a clear vision, and a non-judgmental approach. In later years, I studied the spiritual teachings of Rumi, which significantly helped me correct mental issues and improve my mental health, especially with expressive writing.

I learned that self-compassion, self-acceptance, and self-love increase our self-esteem and create more meaningful memories. These memories are not just for the brain but for every cell in our body. Through creating meaningful memories, I healed many chronic health conditions and attracted loving people to my life.

Many inputs in energy form invisible to our eyes feed our cells. Our body is a marvelous instrument to connect with the higher self. When I learned to observe people and events from our higher self and made decisions based on insights from multidimensional aspects, I evidently experienced the role of karma in my life.

The concept of karma serves as a guide to understanding people and events and creates my reality with responsible actions. I see the formation of karma with every decision I make. Therefore, a mindful approach to everything in life was a tool to invest in my karma.

This does not necessarily mean dealing with only good events. Life is full of good and bad incidents. But accepting all as is and responding to them using multiple intelligence capabilities (not just logic) contributes to our well-being. For example, not denying any opposing thoughts or negative emotions — instead of accepting them as they are — helped me improve my mental health.

Conclusions

Several concepts increased my understanding of karma. I used them for my personal development. They were cause and effect, action and reaction, reciprocity, synchronicity, serendipity, humility, empathy, compassion, tolerance, responsibility, connection, collaboration, and beliefs. Another critical term was consciousness, which we know very little about, as I pointed out in this article.

I asked how I could collect karma when I learned about the concept. The more I tolerated people, the better I got connected with them. Tolerance of ideas and events also helped me manifest them in my life as I want them to be.

Life on this earth is not a utopia. We are spiritual and biological beings at the same time. The physical aspects are highly complex as they relate to the survival of living beings. Conflicts and paradoxes never end in nature. We cannot control the external world, but we have unique cerebral capabilities to control our inner world.

As part of the spiritual domain, beliefs play a critical role in life. My phenomenological studies helped me gain knowledge that traditional science studies couldn’t prove. Ironically, scientists still struggle to define the terms that I have already experienced in real life and use them for survival and well-being. For example, we know that millions of people in various cultures experience karma.

Most traditional scientific studies only look at phenomena from logical perspectives with data. But we are multidimensional beings. Therefore, some of our subjective experiences cannot be captured and represented with data.

So, believing in karma keeps me alert for the moments I participate. This approach helps me make informed decisions and create meaningful memories. Hence, it supports me in creating my own reality without blaming circumstances and other people for the consequences.

After many years of studies to understand karmic effects on my personal development, I created a golden rule of karma in my life, ensuring my joy does not come from other people’s failures. This critical principle made the most significant impact on my freedom in life.

As a result, karma gave me internal freedom and external liberation in this complex world. I learned that my thoughts, emotions, behavior, and actions are not absolute. They need to adapt to the situations. By understanding the principles of karma, I now have a choice to be happy for no external reason.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

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