What Actually Is Karmic Debt & How Can You Know If You Have It?

They say, "What goes around, comes around," and if you're a believer in karma, you might be interested to know that sometimes karma is said to transcend lifetimes. Karmic debt is just that: karma from past lives.

Karmic debt describes something that occurred in a past life that you're now making amends for in this lifetime, numerologist and author of You Are Cosmic Code Kaitlyn Kaerhart explains to mbg.

Clairvoyant and acupuncturist Deganit Nuur adds that "when you haven't mastered a karmic lesson, it'll repeat itself over and over again until you master it."

That said, both she and Kaehart add that karmic debt doesn't need to mean the end of the world. Most of us have karma—but holding fear and shame around it isn't conducive to growth. Instead, there are many fulfilling ways we can go about "repaying" or balancing these debts.

According to Nuur, if it can't be explained in this lifetime, chances are it's rooted in a past life. "This tends to make sense of most irrational fears or other behaviors or patterns that wouldn't otherwise make sense in context to this lifetime."

Try as you might to avoid the issue, if you fail to address your karmic debt, it's going to keep popping up, beckoning you to settle the score and master your karma.

Sometimes, karmic debt relates to very close relationships that have crossed lifetimes, which is where karmic relationships come into play.

Again, even if you try to bury your debts, you likely already know the themes and issues that continuously pop up in your life.

At this point, you might be wondering how you calculate karmic debt in numerology. According to Kaerhart, it's as simple as looking at the single-digit core numbers in your chart and considering the equation you used to get to them.

"If one of those numbers is related to 13, 14, 16, or 19," she says, "that means you have a karmic debt."

This number is all about your personality and how you relate to others. It's calculated by adding the digits of your birth day and month. (Don't include the year here.) For example, someone born on August 14, would add 8 + 1 + 4, which is 13.

To find your life path number, which is akin to your sun sign in astrology, you add up your birthday numbers the same way listed above, but this time with your birth year included.

This number is just the day of the month you were born, and it represents any skills you've brought with you from a past life.

Lastly, your soul urge number deals with your heart's desires, and it's found by adding up the digits of the consonants in your full name, no vowels included, using the alphabet chart above.

Karmic lessons and karmic debts are related in that they both deal with karma from past lives. However, karmic debts tend to bear more weight throughout the course of our lives.

As Nuur explains, "It's not as simple as being nice to someone today because you were mean to someone yesterday. You can absolutely do your best to master your karmic lessons, complete karma, and be mindful to not cause harm—but we're not guaranteed heaven, a holy land, or an award for becoming 'debt-free.'"

That said, she does advise cultivating awareness around the impact of your actions and making choices with that awareness. "If you're approaching karma like a bank account, hierarchy, or checklist, you've missed the mark entirely," she adds.

Rather than thinking of it as repaying, Kaerhart likes to view it more as a necessary experience. You have to go through experiences that "show you what others around you went through because of you," in a past life, she explains. "And in understanding that, you're meant to find a better approach."

When we can approach our karmic debts with more understanding and compassion, we can address them head-on rather than avoiding them, though there's no guarantee we'll break the cycle in this lifetime.