Karma and Karmic Cycles Can Create Suffering and Struggle — Here’s How to Break Them and Step Into a Life of Deep Meaning
Why do the same challenges keep showing up in your life — in relationships, health, finances, or your inner emotional world? The answer often lies in karmic cycles: those invisible patterns that reflect the soul’s lessons and continue repeating until we finally understand what they’re trying to teach us.
Just as nature follows its timeless rhythms — day and night, the turning of the seasons, the waxing and waning of the moon, the cycle of the sun — our own lives are shaped by a deeper cosmic order. When we begin to recognize these cycles, we start to understand ourselves on a more profound new level.
In this article, we explore what karma truly is, how karmic cycles are formed, how they influence your everyday life, and most importantly: how you can heal these patterns and step into a life filled with greater meaning, freedom, and inner harmony.
In nature, everything moves in rhythms and cycles.
The Earth turns. The planets follow their ancient paths. The seasons shift effortlessly from summer to autumn, from winter to spring. Day is born from night, and night returns again to day. The ocean withdraws and returns in the eternal breath of ebb and flow. The moon grows, becomes full, wanes, and is born again.
These cycles don’t just exist around us — they live within us.
Our bodies, our emotions, our life stages, all follow their own inner rhythms. And among these inner rhythms lies a very special category: karmic cycles.
Karmic cycles are the recurring patterns that reflect your karma in a practical, tangible, and often surprisingly precise way in daily life. They appear as situations, relationships, or challenges that return in different forms — not to punish you, but to guide you. To help you see, understand, grow, and heal what your soul came here to learn.
What Is Karma?
The word karma comes from Sanskrit and simply means action. Yet despite its simplicity, karma is one of the most misunderstood concepts in modern culture. Many imagine karma as a kind of cosmic ledger — a spiritual accounting system that keeps track of how “good” or “bad” you’ve been, rewarding or punishing you accordingly. Others see it as a battle between good and evil, where some higher power decides who deserves joy and who must suffer.
But the truth is far deeper — and far more liberating.
According to the more than 5000-year-old yogic tradition, karma has nothing to do with punishment, reward, or moral judgment. Karma is simply the natural consequence of how you have lived — in this life and in previous incarnations. It is the echo of your actions, intentions, patterns, and choices.
Karma doesn’t exist to judge you.
It exists to wake you up.
Karma — and the karmic cycles that follow it — illuminate the very themes your soul wants to explore, understand, and heal in this incarnation. They bring to the surface what requires your attention, giving you the opportunity to grow, release, and move closer to your true potential.
If you want to dive deeper into karma and karmic cycles, I recommend the podcast “The Journey to Self-Realization,” (coming soon) where Amina and I explore topics such as:
- Episode 22: Karma – The Choices That Shape Your Life (coming soon)
- Episode 23: Karmic and Dharmic Synchronicity – The Invisible Rules That Guide Your Life (coming soon)
Karma has nothing to do with punishment or reward. It is simply the consequence of how you have lived — in this life and the lives before.
Pål-Esben Wanvig
The Karmic Pressure
When you begin to understand the key themes of your life — not just intellectually, but by living them through your choices, your actions, and your inner growth — your karma naturally begins to dissolve. It melts away on its own, like ice yielding to the warmth of the sun.
But when we, for various reasons, resist learning, growing, or facing the areas our soul wants us to work with, something important happens:
A karmic pressure begins to build.
This pressure is not punishment.
It is a signal — an inner intensification that brings increasing stress, friction, discomfort, and challenges into our lives. Over time, the pressure becomes so strong that we can no longer ignore it. We are pushed toward a threshold where we must seek understanding, take responsibility, and begin to heal what is causing the suffering.
And if we don’t?
This karmic pressure simply follows us into the next incarnation… and the next… until the soul has genuinely learned and integrated what it came here to understand.
Karma is therefore not negative.
It is a universal mechanism designed to support us — ensuring that we cannot run away from the lessons our soul has chosen for this life. It helps us grow, even when we resist.
One thing is certain:
The more we avoid, suppress, or ignore these lessons, the stronger the pressure becomes — and the greater the stress and suffering.
Standing in the middle of this without understanding what’s happening can be heavy and overwhelming. It can feel as if life is pushing in on all sides without any clear reason.
That is precisely the moment when the time is right to seek help.
Beginning your soul’s epic journey — for example through a deep primordial shamanic spiritual development and awakening process — can become the turning point that opens the door out of suffering and into clarity, meaning, and inner freedom.
You can read more about this in the article “When Life Feels Empty and Without Meaning: Are You Ready to Begin Your Soul’s Epic Journey?”
Karma is not negative — it is a universal mechanism that ensures you cannot avoid the lessons your soul came here to explore.
Pål-Esben Wanvig
We Cannot Exist Without Karma
Karma is the only universal principle that truly explains the deep and complex roots of human suffering. But here is what’s essential to understand:
Karma is not your enemy.
It isn’t here to punish you, limit you, or make life harder. In truth, we could not exist without karma.
Without karma, all life would dissolve back into pure oneness — without form, without experience, without contrast, and without the possibility of growth.
Karma creates form.
It creates contrast, choices, consequences — the very foundation that makes human life possible.
When you learn to relate to karma wisely and constructively, it becomes one of your greatest allies — a guiding force that not only explains suffering, but reveals the path toward inner freedom, meaning and a deeply fulfilling life.
But if you misunderstand karma, resist it, or ignore it…
the same mechanism becomes a doorway into suffering, stagnation, anxiety, depression, numbness, emptiness and hopelessness.
It’s not about whether karma is “good” or “bad.”
It’s about how you relate to it.
What Karma Actually Means
The word karma comes from Sanskrit and simply means action.
But this includes far more than physical actions.
Karma is everything you do within your entire inner universe.
It expresses itself through four dimensions of action:
- Physical action
- Mental action
- Emotional action
- Energetic action
Everything you do — consciously or unconsciously, awake or asleep — leaves imprints.
Like footprints in sand.
And these imprints do not disappear.
They are stored as threads of information in what we might call your “karma-cloud” — a living, dynamic field of memory that follows you through this life and into the next.
Karma is the sum of all the traces you carry — all the imprints left by everything you have done, thought, felt, and experienced.
Every physical action, every thought, every emotional reaction, every pulse of life-energy leaves a small mark within you.
Together, these imprints form a living field of memory.
This is your karma.
Not a judge.
Not a punishment.
But an archive of your inner history — a deep library that reflects:
- the consequences of your motivations
- the lessons you’ve learned
- the themes your soul still longs to grow through
It is the memory of how your inner world has shaped your outer life — and the foundation for the journey you are living right now.
Help for Learning and Growing
The soul incarnates for many reasons, but one purpose always sits at the center:
The desire to experience, to learn, and to grow.
When the soul enters a human life, it can feel — in one sense — like stepping into a tight straitjacket. Suddenly it is bound by time, space, a physical body, and a veil that hides its memories. And yet, this “restriction” is also a rare and precious opportunity.
Only here, inside a limited human form, can the soul experience what is impossible in its natural, boundless state.
Only as a human being can the soul taste:
- the sweetness of a strawberry
- the warmth of love
- the sting of jealousy
- the vulnerability of fear
- the power of empathy
- the growth hidden inside illness, setbacks, and difficulties
These are experiences that exist only in the world of duality — and this is exactly why we are here.
Continuous Growth Is Our Nature
If actions had no consequences, life would lose its meaning.
You could do everything — or nothing — and nothing would change.
At first, this might sound tempting. But look a little deeper:
What would life feel like if nothing you did mattered?
If you could lie on a beach all day, eat whatever you wanted, avoid every responsibility, never face a single challenge — and none of it had any impact?
The truth is this:
Such a life would become empty, flat, and eventually deeply meaningless.
Science shows clearly what happens to humans who are never allowed to stretch, try something new, use their gifts, face resistance or grow through challenge:
We lose our spark.
We lose our vitality.
We lose ourselves.
Like a muscle that is never used — it eventually withers.
Karma — in its simplest form, the consequence of our actions — is not a punishment.
It is the structure that makes growth possible.
Without karma, learning could not exist.
Without learning, growth could not exist.
And without growth, we would never experience meaning.
At the heart of human nature lies a profound truth:
We are built to grow, to learn, to expand beyond who we were yesterday.
If you want to explore why continuous growth is an essential part of who we are, you’ll find deeper insights in the articles below:
- Our Inner Expansion – Why Do We Long to Become More Than We Are?
- Learn How to Love Your Karma (coming soon)
- The Intelligence of Trees – Our Natural Guides to a Fulfilled and Joyful Life
- The Art of Living According to Nature’s Healthy Rhythms!
- When Life Feels Empty and Without Meaning: Are You Ready to Begin Your Soul’s Epic Journey?
- What Is the Meaning of Life?
Without karma — the consequence of all our actions — meaning could not exist, because it is in our human nature to continually learn, grow, and expand.
Pål-Esben Wanvig
Karmic Cycles
In this life, karma rarely shows itself as isolated events.
Instead, it reveals itself through karmic cycles — repeating life-patterns of varying length, where the lessons you’ve avoided, resisted, or struggled to understand return again and again… each time a little louder, a little clearer, a little more insistent.
They knock on your door — softly at first, and eventually with force — until you finally open.
Throughout the years, both in my own life and in my work with clients and students, I have seen karmic cycles arise in almost every area of human experience. They are not random. They are not coincidences.
They are teachers — often demanding, but profoundly meaningful teachers.
Here are a few examples many people will recognize:
These are just a few expressions of how karmic cycles appear.
And they all share one truth:
If we do not change the cause, the pattern will return.
Karmic cycles do not repeat to punish us.
They repeat to awaken us — to help us see, understand, learn, and ultimately free ourselves from what has held us captive, often for years or lifetimes.
Karmic Cycles Do Not End on Their Own
These cycles will continue — again and again — until we are willing to learn what they are showing us and grow beyond the choices, behaviors, and underlying causes that created them in the first place.
They do not disappear because we wish them away.
Or because we hope they’ll stop.
Or because we ignore them.
They dissolve only when we change.
For the soul never abandons its learning themes.
It is patient — infinitely patient — and it will continue to lead us back to the lesson until we finally listen.
How long a karmic cycle shapes your life is not determined by fate, luck, or divine judgment.
It is determined by you.
You decide how long these cycles will define your experience of life.
And when you finally choose to understand, to learn, to grow — the cycle begins to unwind, layer by layer, until you stand freer, clearer, and closer to your true nature than ever before.
The same kinds of problems will always return in a cycle unless we transform the causes that create them. This is how you recognize the karmic cycles in your life
Pål-Esben Wanvig
My Challenges
Throughout my life, I’ve had my share of challenges — many of them appearing as karmic cycles that repeated themselves again and again until I finally understood what they were trying to teach me.
The Cycle of Illness
For many years, my health was one of my greatest struggles. Infections came relentlessly, one after another. Some of the most difficult were recurring pneumonias and bronchitis. Two to four times a year I was knocked flat, and almost every time I ended up on antibiotics.
It wasn’t until I discovered—and healed—the deeper cause behind this karmic cycle that my body began to return to balance.
Was it my fault that I got sick? No.
But I did have the power to seek out the right people who could help me break the pattern.
The Relationship Cycle
Another repeating pattern in my life showed up in relationships. For years I joked that I was “illiterate” when it came to the art of creating a happy loving relationship. The cycle was the same every time:
Year one was a bubble of infatuation.
Year two slipped into a comfortable friendship.
By year three, everything fell apart.
It wasn’t until I began working with the deeper learning themes behind this karmic cycle — jealousy being one of them — that things finally started to shift.
Today, I’ve been happily married to my wife, Maria, for more than two decades.
That says it all.
The Burnout Cycle
The third—and perhaps most dramatic—cycle in my life was burnout.
My first “mini-burnout” came in my early twenties. At the time, I was leading a sports club, competing on the national team, holding three jobs, and studying engineering at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) — all at once. When exams were over, I was just millimeters away from total collapse.
But I didn’t learn the lesson then.
I went straight into a demanding engineering job, gave everything I had… and hit the wall again. I eventually had to resign because of health issues — and started my own company. That company became the beginning of my most severe and final burnout in 2003—an experience so intense it nearly took my life.
The cycle ended only when I finally understood why I kept burning out — and found the courage to change the patterns that were causing it.
Taking Responsibility for Illness — Without Taking the Blame
It’s easy to fall into the belief that we alone are responsible for everything that happens in our bodies. But reality is far more nuanced. In many cases, you are not the cause of the illness you carry.
Karma’s memory field is made up of eight different types of imprints. Several of these are collective and completely outside your personal control: elemental memory, atomic memory, evolutionary memory, and genetic memory. These are impressions you inherit or carry simply by being human — not something you consciously created.
The second category is your individual karma: personal karmic memory, sensory memory, unconscious memory, and conscious memory. These are the layers where you actually have influence — where healing, insight and transformation become possible.
That’s why it’s misleading to say that you “created your illness.”
Many illnesses arise from factors far beyond anything we can control: environmental toxins, traumatic events, accidents, chronic stress, infections, genetic vulnerabilities, or long-term exposure to pollutants. The body responds to all of this, whether we want it to or not.
At the same time, there are areas of life where our choices play a role. Conditions like type 2 diabetes or certain cardiovascular diseases can develop when we ignore the body’s need for healthy food, movement, rest, and balance over long periods of time.
But the essential point is this:
Illness is never as simple as blame or punishment.
It is often the result of a complex interplay of influences — some you carry alone, many you carry with humanity as a whole.
The Length of Karmic Cycles
How often a karmic cycle repeats itself reveals a great deal about how deeply the theme is rooted — and how strongly it shapes your life.
The shorter the interval between each repetition, the heavier the burden it creates.
If a health issue returns every few months, the body eventually runs out of resources. Stress builds, resilience collapses, and what begins as a recurring imbalance can grow into serious illness.
The same is true for financial struggles that keep resurfacing: they create fear, instability, and slowly erode your quality of life. Repeated conflicts with the people around you pull you into the same exhausting emotional spiral.
The longer the interval between cycles, the better your inner landscape is doing.
When a karmic cycle has healed, it may — at most — reappear every 11 to 12 years. This mirrors the sun’s solar cycle, one of nature’s most fundamental rhythms. The sun is the great timekeeper of our planet — the pulse that all life depends on. A human being who lives in harmony with this rhythm lives in balance — in deeper resonance with themselves and the world.
This is the goal: to bring the rhythms of your life into alignment with the greatest and most essential cosmic timegiver: the sun.
When karmic cycles fall out of sync with this rhythm, stress arises. And the further out of alignment they become, the more intense that stress grows.
(You can read more about this in the article “The Art of Living According to Nature’s Healthy Rhythms.”)
When karmic cycles tighten — appearing more and more frequently — we gradually lose our inner balance. If a cycle repeats every six months, you are living with significant psychological and emotional strain.
And when life becomes governed by the shortest karmic cycle — the daily 24-hour cycle — both body and mind are pushed into a state that requires immediate professional help. At that point, your nervous system and soul are crying out for stabilization, support, and healing.
The sun represents the most important natural and healing rhythm that all life on Earth depends on. A human being who lives in harmony with the solar cycle lives in true balance.
Pål-Esben Wanvig
How to Heal Your Karmic Cycles
One of the central aims of the deep primordial shamanic development path I offer through the Yggdrasil Shamanic School is to help people come back into rhythm — into harmony with nature’s great cycles, and especially with the sun’s 11–12-year pulse.
This happens through both practical, grounded changes in daily life and through advanced shamanic work that makes it possible to heal some of the most complex layers of your crystallized karma.
When you begin to resonate with these deeper rhythms, a natural balance emerges.
You no longer spend your days doing “karmic firefighting” — constantly managing crises, chaos, and new problems before you’ve had time to catch your breath. Instead, you free up time, energy, and inner space for what truly matters to you and your soul. For the things that nourish you. Inspire you. Lift you.
I do not see karma as punishment — but as a guide.
A quiet compass pointing toward the learning themes your soul came here to explore.
Before we can heal a karmic cycle, we must first recognize it. We must see the pattern. Notice the repetitions. Understand the story that is trying to be told.
Some karmic cycles are obvious — like a flashing light.
Others are subtle, tucked away beneath the surface, and require a trained, compassionate eye to reveal them. This is why having support from a qualified spiritual teacher, guide, or therapist can be invaluable. They can help you identify your karmic cycles and show you how to work with them safely, wisely, and constructively.
Once you become aware of a karmic cycle, the next step is to uncover your learning themes:
When these questions are answered, something beautiful begins:
Growth. Insight. Transformation.
Slowly at first, then with increasing strength — until a new path opens.
A path that leads you away from repetition and suffering…
and back toward freedom, clarity, and inner peace.
I see karma as a guide — a teacher that helps us identify the deeper learning themes and soul-level growth intentions we carry into this life.
Pål-Esben Wanvig
The Foundation for Growth and Learning
This is the very foundation of the growth and learning processes your soul longs for.
When you listen to these processes — truly listen — life begins to open. But when you ignore them, the opposite happens: the karmic pressure increases, and your karmic cycles move closer and closer together. Patterns repeat more quickly. Restlessness intensifies. Stress rises.
But when you choose to learn, grow, evolve, and finally change what actually needs to change, something profound begins to shift:
The distance between your karmic cycles expands — until eventually they no longer create stress, chaos, or suffering at all.
And when that happens, you reclaim time, energy, and inner space to devote yourself to growth processes that uplift you, inspire you, and fill your heart and soul with passion and joy.
We do not need painful karmic cycles in order to grow. Growth can also unfold through joy, insight, curiosity, and inspiration — as on the path toward spiritual awakening and self-realization. (See the articles on the primordial shamanic path to Unity, spiritual awakening and self-realization (coming soon)).
When you look at the three examples from my own life, the key was always the same:
I had to face and take full responsibility for my challenges — consciously, honestly, and with an open heart — in order to dissolve the karmic cycles.
– The cycle of repeated pneumonia ended when I found qualified functional medicine doctors and processed a deep trauma tied to my father’s death.
– My painful relationship patterns were transformed through couples therapy, spiritual guidance, extensive personal development — and a good dose of courage. One of the biggest breakthroughs was healing my own intense jealousy.
– The story of my burnout — and how I learned from it, grew through it, and ultimately healed it — is something I’ve shared in my articles on burnout (coming soon) and in my book Beyond Positive Psychology: A Journey From Burnout to Enlightenment.
Each of these was an essential chapter in my Soul’s Epic Journey.
And the same is true for you:
When you enter your growth process with an open mind and a courageous heart, karma begins to soften, the cycles begin to shift — and life opens the door to something deeper, freer, and far more meaningful.
A Path to a Fulfilled Life
Understanding karma and karmic cycles — and learning to meet them in an active, conscious, and constructive way — is one of the most powerful keys to a meaningful, balanced, and fulfilling life.
For me, karma has never been a punishment or a burden. I see it as an invaluable guide — an inner compass that helps my soul navigate through this lifetime, and into the next. Without that guidance, I would have walked blindly through life, unable to understand where I was or where I was headed.
When I collapsed in 2003, my life was driven by a series of rapid karmic cycles pulling me in all directions. I felt trapped in a pattern I couldn’t explain — an autopilot I didn’t know how to turn off.
But step by step, the connections began to reveal themselves. Bit by bit, I started to perceive the unique symphony that life truly is — a complex, beautiful, and deeply intelligent composition of experiences, growth, and meaning.
In the beginning, it didn’t feel like a symphony at all.
It felt like dragging a hundred kilos of stone uphill in a fierce headwind.
I slipped. I fell. I hurt myself.
And still, I crawled back up.
Then, slowly, the light began to break through.
Life opened.
The rhythm became clearer.
The path grew lighter.
And today, I can say — with a gratitude that reaches all the way to the core of my heart — that this journey has made me a free man. I live in harmony with nature’s pulse and with the quiet, beautiful symphony that exists beyond time and space.
When I think about what my life would have been like if I hadn’t taken that chance… if I hadn’t met my journey with honesty, courage, and openness… it sends a chill through my whole being.
I would never have become who I am today.
That is why I hope this simplified introduction to karma and karmic cycles inspires you to embrace your own soul’s journey — not as an idea, but as a living choice.
Because when you can say, from a sincere place within yourself:
“This is my karma.”
…you have already taken the first great step.
Because in that same breath, you are also saying:
“I am responsible for healing my karma.”
And it is in that moment that the true journey begins.
When you can say, “This is my karma,” you have already taken the first great step — because in that same breath, you are also saying, “I am responsible for healing my karma.” That is the moment the true journey begins.
Pål-Esben Wanvig
