Karmic Lessons

A Karmic Lesson is a number from 1 to 9 that never appears anywhere among the letters of your full birth name. Every letter carries a number, and most names cover most of the nine. The ones that are missing are the subjects you did not study last time round, and this lifetime keeps putting them on the timetable until you do.

How to find yours

You need the letter values, the same ones the Destiny post uses.

A, J and S are 1. B, K and T are 2. C, L and U are 3. D, M and V are 4. E, N and W are 5. F, O and X are 6. G, P and Y are 7. H, Q and Z are 8. I and R are 9.

Write out your full name as it appears on your birth certificate, middle names included, and put the number under every letter. For this you use every letter, vowels and consonants alike, and Y counts as a 7 whichever job it is doing. Then write the digits 1 to 9 in a row and tick each one that appears at least once. Any digit left without a tick is a Karmic Lesson.

There is no adding up and no reducing. You are only looking for what is absent.

A worked example

Take Sarah Jane Mitchell, an invented person I use across these pages.

Sarah gives 1, 1, 9, 1 and 8. Jane gives 1, 1, 5 and 5. Mitchell gives 4, 9, 2, 3, 8, 5, 3 and 3.

Tick them off and Sarah has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 9. There is no 6 and no 7 anywhere in her name. Sarah has two Karmic Lessons, 6 and 7.

Emma Louise Hart, another of my invented people, comes out with every digit except 7. One lesson.

Many names miss one, two or three numbers, and some miss none at all. A long name with plenty of letters tends to miss fewer, and a short one tends to miss more, which is worth remembering before anybody panics about a list.

When a lesson is softened

My teaching notes are clear on this point, and I have watched it hold up in reading after reading. A Karmic Lesson weighs less when the missing number turns up in one of your core numbers, such as your Life Path, Destiny or Birthday.

Sarah's 6 is missing from her letters, yet her Life Path is a 6 and her Destiny is a 6. Her road and her work will teach her the 6 whether she likes it or not, so that lesson is well covered. Her 7 appears nowhere in her core numbers, so the 7 is the one to watch.

Emma is an odd one. Her letters contain no 7 at all, and they still add up to a Destiny 7. Go figure. The name totals the very number it lacks, which softens her lesson considerably and tells me she will learn the 7 by living it.

What each missing number asks you to learn

Missing 1 asks for initiative. These people tend to let stronger personalities make their decisions, and life keeps handing them situations where nobody else will. The lesson is self trust, making your own call and standing behind it.

Missing 2 asks for tact and patience. These people can be blunt without meaning to be and wonder why it lands badly. The lesson is listening, cooperating, letting go of old resentment, and knowing when to soften and when to stand firm.

Missing 3 asks for expression. These people are often talented and fiercely self critical, so the talent stays in the drawer. The lesson is to lighten up, share the work before it is perfect, and let some joy in.

Missing 4 asks for discipline. These people drift from job to job looking for the exciting one, and lose interest when the glamour wears off. The lesson is order, routine and foundations, the bills paid and the project finished.

Missing 5 asks for flexibility. These people hold fixed opinions and treat change as a threat. The lesson is to travel, in body and in mind, to accept change, and to let other people be right now and then.

Missing 6 asks for commitment. These people feel lonely even when surrounded, because they keep their feelings guarded and hold others at a distance. The lesson is to let people close, show what you feel, and give in a relationship.

Missing 7 asks for depth. These people struggle to understand their own feelings, and sometimes the body carries what the mind will not look at. The lesson is plain reflection without self condemnation, and sticking with one discipline long enough to master it.

Missing 8 asks for good stewardship. These people often earn well and spend it all, and they bristle at anyone in authority. The lesson is managing money, accepting sensible limits, and valuing people above status.

Missing 9 asks for a wider heart. These people can stay focused on their own small circle while larger needs go past. The lesson is compassion that reaches further, and service to more than just yourself.

These lessons start as a whisper. Ignored, they get louder.

A lesson and a debt are two different things

People mix these up, so here it is plainly. A Karmic Debt is one of four totals, 13, 14, 16 and 19, that turns up in the working behind one of your numbers, whether as the total itself or as a step on the way down (a name that adds to 77 reduces through 14 to 5, and I count the 14). It points to something misused in a life before this one, and it sits behind a particular position in the chart. The Karmic Debt post in the daily posts goes through all four.

A Karmic Lesson is an absence. Nothing was misused. The subject was simply never taken. I think of the debt as a class you sat before and are now resitting, and the lesson as a class you skipped altogether and are now enrolled in. Both are chosen by the soul, and neither is a punishment.

Two names, two sets of lessons

Your birth name is the blueprint, and its lessons stay with you for life. If you have changed your name since, the new name is an overlay sitting over the first, and it carries lessons of its own.

Suppose Sarah marries and becomes Sarah Jane Gough. Gough gives 7, 6, 3, 7 and 8. In one stroke she has filled both her lessons, the 6 and the 7. But she has also dropped Mitchell, and with it the only 2 (the T) and the only 4 (the M) in her name. Her new name is missing 2 and 4.

So a name change can fill a lesson and open another. The 6 and 7 from her birth name remain her blueprint, softened now by the name she signs every day, and the 2 and 4 arrive as new homework for the life she is living under the new name. Work out both names and read them side by side.

Then look at your own list, and ask which of those lessons life has been raising its voice about lately.

If you would like your own numbers read as part of a full chart, my readings are here.