Who are you? Why are you here? What makes you come alive?

These questions live underneath every career change, every breakup, every 2am scroll through someone else’s life. They’re the doorway to your dharma. In this guide I’m sharing what dharma means, how it differs from karma, and how to find yours, drawn from my years of teaching, my book Discover Your Dharma, and the conversations I’ve had on the Highest Self Podcast.

What Is Dharma? The Meaning of Dharma

Dharma is your soul’s purpose. It’s your unique place in the jigsaw puzzle of the universe, who you are in action. The word comes from the Sanskrit root dhṛ, meaning to hold or uphold, and it appears across Hindu, Buddhist and yogic philosophy. In the spiritual sense I teach, your dharma is what holds you to your truest self.

Your dharma is the full integration of you. Your gifts, your joy, your life lessons, your service to humanity, your mediums and your expression all come together in the way only you can show up on this planet. There is no better feeling on Earth.

Your soul’s purpose was never meant to be confined to a single role or title. It lives in the full, colorful fabric of who you’re here to become. It’s the way your voice sounds when you stop shrinking.

Your dharma is something you remember. You came in carrying it.

Dharma vs. Karma: The Echo and the Song

Karma sings the song of what came before. It’s the fingerprint of past choices still vibrating through your being: unresolved stories, inherited beliefs, unspoken contracts. Some of the fear you carry may belong to your mother’s grief or your grandmother’s silence. Within that karma lives a map, and it always points home.

Dharma is that homecoming. It’s the path of resonance, alignment and truth after the karmic dust has settled. I go deeper on this in the difference between dharma and karma.

The Dharma Highway

Imagine you were born on a highway. At the far end of it waits your dharma, you in your fullest form. As a child you’re gliding down it, creative, expressive, playful, curious.

Then the exit signs appear. “Take this one, your parents will finally be proud.” “This one has more stability, more money, a better LinkedIn title.” “Be realistic.” One by one, everyone around you takes an exit, until you look around and realize you’re the only one left on Dharma Highway. So you exit too.

For a while it works. The career, the relationship, the condo with the matching mugs. Something still feels slightly off, like you’re wearing a dress stitched for someone else’s body.

Then the universe starts speaking. Tap, tap, tap. A random ache in your chest. Anxiety before going into the office. You brush it off, book a sound bath, keep driving. So the universe gets louder. Knock, knock, knock. A string of toxic bosses. The same partner with a different face. A digestion issue out of nowhere.

Then, boom. A full-on collision. The job ends, the betrayal you never imagined happens, the body breaks down. Everything you clung to dissolves and you’re brought to your knees. That’s karma.

Karma speaks the language humans respond to best, which is pain, to show us which direction to turn away from. It’s the barricade on the side of the highway, placed there to keep you from veering too far off course. A breakup, a breakdown, an illness: these are road blocks telling you to shift. Life was guiding you the whole time.

How Karma Becomes Dharma

Your karma becomes your dharma the moment you choose to alchemize your obstacles into your offerings. Pain cracks the illusion of control and reveals the truth beneath. When your dreams crumble, when love leaves, when illness enters, the seeds of dharma activate.

Every detour carved the exact wisdom you’re meant to carry. You couldn’t have learned the lesson through someone telling you. Your soul needed to go through it. Being in the depths of my pain after my divorce, I knew one day I’d be writing this for you.

Just because you were born with a dharma doesn’t mean you were born fully embodying it. You were born with the ingredients, and life needed to cook you. That heartbreak, that health challenge, that family conflict were the simmering points your soul needed to become the version of you who can hold your dharma’s frequency and share it with others.

The Six Types of Karma

Your life is no accident. Every encounter, ache, breakthrough and longing is a thread in a tapestry your soul has been weaving across lifetimes. The word karma means action, and it’s also accumulation, momentum and echo: the energetic residue of what’s been thought, felt, spoken, avoided and embodied. Karma lives in the body as instinct, in the mind as reaction and in the soul as remembrance.

Recognizing your karma is how you reclaim authorship. Here are the six types of karma we carry, and how each one can be transmuted into dharma.

1. Sanchita Karma: The Karma of the Lineage

Sanchita karma is the total accumulation of karma from all your lifetimes, your soul’s stored karmic blueprint. It also includes the karma of your lineage, the ancestral imprints passed through blood and bone. We inherit our ancestors’ stories, desires, fears and unfinished business along with our eye color.

A woman whose grandmother never spoke about the war may carry a fear of using her voice. A woman may feel enormous pressure to succeed academically to honor a family that sacrificed everything for stability.

Reflect: What cultural, ancestral or family patterns do you find yourself repeating? What parts of your lineage are asking to be healed through you?

2. Prarabdha Karma: The Karma Already in Motion

If Sanchita is the library of all your soul’s stories, Prarabdha is the chapter you’ve opened in this lifetime. It’s the karma that has ripened: the family, country, body and circumstances you’re here to live through. You don’t have to heal all your karma at once, only what your current evolution needs.

For me, growing up with an emotionally volatile father made me hyper-attuned to other people’s moods. It became the birthplace of my empathic gifts and also my deepest wounds. I see it now as preparation for my dharma.

Reflect: Who in your life has been the most difficult, and what has that taught you? Where do you feel life placed you on purpose, even if it was painful?

3. Kriyamana Karma: The Karma You’re Creating Now

Kriyamana is where your free will meets fate. It’s present-moment karma, created with every choice, thought and intention. Every courageous decision rewires your karma. Karma is fluid. We are co-creators.

A woman healing her attachment style now is creating a safer childhood for a daughter not yet born. A man who leaves the job that kept him from his family is ending a pattern his father lived.

Reflect: What choices are you making now that plant seeds for your future? What brave leap felt like a timeline shift?

4. Agami Karma: The Karma of the Future

Agami is the unseen trail your current steps are leaving behind. It’s the karma you’re setting in motion now that will shape future lifetimes, the ripple effect of today’s decisions that you may not see until tomorrow, or another incarnation.

Reflect: What do you hope your future self inherits from you? What legacy are you creating?

5. Collective Karma: The Karma of the World

Some karma is personal and some is shared. Collective karma shows up as global events, cultural movements and shared crises: wars, climate change, systems collapsing, a shift from nature to digital and from presence to performance. A child born in a polluted city who longs for nature may carry climate sorrow in his nervous system, and his collective karma may be to build a new relationship with the earth rooted in reverence.

Reflect: Where do you feel called to serve, speak or stand up? What is your contribution to the world’s awakening?

6. Dharmic Karma: The Alchemized Path

Then there’s what we do with it all. Dharmic karma is transformed karma, the purpose born from pain. It’s when the wound becomes the womb of your purpose. A woman born with a fear of sharing her voice ends up speaking on stages. A man raised by a narcissistic mother becomes a father who welcomes his daughter’s every emotion. A girl whose sister died young becomes a death doula.

My health challenges, heartbreak and uncertainty were initiations. Each breakdown revealed a new octave of my dharma.

Reflect: What challenges have initiated you into a deeper version of yourself? What truth are you here to pass on?

These six threads are always weaving together. Sanchita is the archive you arrived with. Prarabdha is the storyline you’re living now. Kriyamana is the brush in your hand. Agami is the shimmer of what’s forming. Collective karma is the shared atmosphere. Dharmic karma is the transmutation. While you carry karma, you also carry the key.

The Glow of the Old Soul

Some souls come here seeking comfort. Others come to remember. Old souls choose the accelerated curriculum. They often frontload their karma, picking the heavier lessons early in life, so they can move through them faster and graduate to the fun stuff.

You likely chose a childhood where you felt misunderstood, where love felt conditional or your magic wasn’t mirrored. That ache to be understood became the catalyst for understanding yourself. In the absence of being seen, you learned to see. In your desire to be heard, you learned to really listen. You could feel the tone of a parent’s footsteps coming up the stairs and the unspoken dynamics nobody addressed.

Your first relationships were likely very karmic, because love is the fastest way to clear density. You fell for the charmer who couldn’t see past his reflection so you could become the one who sees into souls. With each breakdown you rose like a phoenix, and you carry a certain glow now, a radiance that only flourishes in the fire. People who’ve been to the depths and back can see the sparkle in your eyes.

Pain as Purpose: The Alchemy of the Ache

Some experiences arrive like storms. The moments that shattered your world were turning points, invitations into a deeper version of you that comfort could never reach. Heartbreak carries wisdom no textbook can teach. Illness rewrites priorities in a language only the body understands. Betrayal awakens discernment that no affirmation can replace. These experiences are the path.

You didn’t consciously choose this pain, and you get to choose what you make with it. The seeds of who you become are planted in the aftermath, when you let yourself descend into the dirt and water it with your tears until new life begins to emerge.

One day you’ll look back on this chapter and think, “Out of everything in this life, I’m most grateful that happened, because without it I wouldn’t be this version of me.”

Signs You’re Living Your Dharma

When you return to the highway, the energy of life shifts with you. You move from the contracted energy of karma into the boundless field of dharma.

The road clears and it can feel like the Universe has taken the wheel. You meet the right person at the right time who says the right thing. Synchronicities multiply, time picks up momentum, and life feels like it’s conspiring with you. In yogic language this flow is kriya. The moment you start to stray, karma taps the brakes.

How to Find Your Dharma

Finding your dharma starts with remembering who you were before the exits. Sit with these questions in your journal:

• What exit did you take out of fear or conditioning?
• What signs has your body been giving you that something is off?
• What did life have to take away for you to finally listen?
• What makes you come alive?
• What does your soul’s highway feel like now that you remember it’s yours?

Then look at how your purpose tends to arrive. Some women are born with a gift. Others find their dharma through a breakdown that becomes a breakthrough. I break these paths down in the four types of dharma.

For a fast, fun starting point, take my free Dharma Archetype Quiz to discover which of the dharma archetypes you carry and how it wants to be expressed.

Dharma and the Divine Feminine

So many women exit their dharma to be loved, to be good, to be chosen. Reclaiming your soul’s purpose is one of the deepest acts of divine feminine healing. Your feminine energy knows how to follow joy and the body’s yes. When you trust her, she leads you straight back to the highway.

On the spiritual path, your dharma becomes the place where your healing turns into service. The wound becomes the womb of your purpose.

Dharma Resources From the Highest Self Podcast

Keep exploring your soul’s purpose with these guides:

• The Four Types of Dharma
• The Difference Between Dharma and Karma
• The Meaning of Soul Purpose
• How to Remember Your Worth
• What Is the Divine Feminine?

If you’re ready to go deeper, my book Discover Your Dharma: A Vedic Guide to Finding Your Purpose walks you through the Dharma Archetypes, the stages of dharma discovery and how to turn your soul’s purpose into a life you love. It includes a foreword by Deepak Chopra.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is dharma in simple terms?

Dharma is your soul’s purpose: the unique combination of your gifts, joy, life lessons and service that only you can bring to the world. The word comes from the Sanskrit root dhṛ, meaning to hold or uphold.

What is the difference between dharma and karma?

Karma is the echo of past actions, inherited patterns and unresolved lessons. Dharma is your soul’s purpose. Karma often shows up as obstacles that redirect you, and when you alchemize those obstacles into wisdom, karma becomes dharma.

How do I find my dharma?

Notice where you exited your path out of fear or conditioning, listen to the signs your body gives you, and follow what makes you come alive. Journaling, the Dharma Archetype Quiz and the book Discover Your Dharma are good places to begin.

What are the types of karma?

Vedic philosophy describes Sanchita (accumulated and ancestral karma), Prarabdha (karma ripening in this life), Kriyamana (karma you’re creating now) and Agami (future karma). Sahara also teaches collective karma and dharmic karma, the karma you’ve alchemized into purpose.

What does it mean to be an old soul?

Old souls often take on heavier lessons early in life, like a childhood where they felt misunderstood or karmic first relationships, so they can awaken sooner and spend more of their life living their dharma.

Can your dharma change over time?

Your dharma stays rooted in who you are, while its form evolves. A career, a project or a role can shift across your life as your expression deepens and your gifts mature.

If you’re ready to go deeper, my book Discover Your Dharma, with a foreword by Deepak Chopra, walks you through the full journey from confused to clear about your purpose. You can also tune into the Highest Self Podcast for weekly conversations on dharma, love and the feminine path. Your dharma has been waiting for you to remember the way, love. Let’s walk it together.