Human Regard & Karma
Why the Way We Hold Others Shapes the Way Life Holds Us**
Most people talk about karma like it’s an invoice from the universe—do something bad, and something bad comes back. It’s catchy, but it’s also shallow. Karma isn’t a cosmic punishment system. It’s feedback. It’s cause and effect. And at the centre of that cause and effect is one thing: human regard.
Human regard is the way we see, treat, interpret, and hold other people in our internal world. It’s the quality of our gaze on others—are we seeing their dignity, or are we reducing them to their usefulness? Are we meeting people as fellow humans, or as characters in our personal storyline?
Karma is simply the long echo of that regard.
Human Regard: The Invisible Force Behind Every Interaction
Think of human regard like the soil in a garden. You can plant the same seed in two different soils, but you’ll get two different outcomes.
Treat someone with suspicion, and the interaction tightens.
Approach them with respect, and the air loosens.
Offer patience, and patience is often returned.
We influence people before we even say a word, because regard shapes tone, posture, energy, and intention. If you look at someone as a problem, you’ll handle them mechanically. If you see them as a whole human being—imperfect, layered, trying—the relationship becomes workable.
Human regard is subtle, but powerful enough to shift an entire conversation, a team dynamic, or a family history.
Karma Isn’t Moral Policing — It’s Psychological Reality
Karma is often explained with spirituality, but the psychological version is just as compelling.
When you hold negative regard toward others—judging, diminishing, dismissing—your nervous system records that stance. You end up:
expecting hostility,
bracing for disrespect,
interpreting neutrality as threat,
attracting relational chaos because you’re tuned to it.
In a sense, you become what you broadcast.
On the other hand, when you move through the world with grounded regard:
you treat people with care,
your intentions stay cleaner,
your communication gets more honest,
you create a kind of emotional “credit” that people instinctively repay.
This is karma in practice: your internal stance generates external patterns.
The Echo Effect: How Regard Comes Back to You
Humans reciprocate more than they initiate.
When someone feels seen, they soften toward you.
When someone feels dismissed, they defend themselves.
We don’t even realize how much we teach people how to treat us by how we hold them in our minds.
This is why some people walk through the world and consistently receive kindness—they emanate it first. And why some people experience constant conflict—they unconsciously hold others in a way that invites collision. Not intentionally. Just habitually.
Karma is the ecosystem you build around yourself.
When You Lose Regard for Yourself, Karma Gets Messy
Here’s the twist most people miss:
Your regard for others and your regard for yourself are twins. When one drops, the other follows.
If you:
tolerate disrespect,
silence your needs,
betray your boundaries,
or dim your worth,
…you create karmic loops where people mirror that same disregard back to you.
Life keeps repeating the lesson until you stop offering yourself up as the one who can handle anything. Karma isn’t trying to hurt you; it’s trying to correct your posture.
Listening to Your Intuition When Treating Others the Way You Wish to Be Treated
There’s a reason the Golden Rule exists in every culture and spiritual tradition: it aligns behaviour with intuitive truth. Your intuition already knows how you want to be treated. It knows what dignity feels like. What fairness feels like. What sincerity feels like.
Most people don’t mistreat others because they lack morals—they mistreat others because they override the quiet internal signal that whispers, “You wouldn’t want this done to you.”
Before you speak or act, intuition offers micro-cues:
a tightening when the action is ego-driven,
a softening when you’re aligned with integrity,
a warmth when the behaviour is generous,
a pang when you’re veering off course.
When you slow down enough to listen, your behaviour shifts:
You communicate with clarity instead of criticism.
You set boundaries without hostility.
You offer honesty without cruelty.
You practice patience without self-erasing.
Intuition isn’t sentimental—it’s discerning. It knows the difference between compassion and over-giving, between kindness and enabling, between taking the high road and being walked on.
Treating others the way you wish to be treated isn’t about being universally nice. It’s about aligning your external behaviour with your internal knowing.
When you let intuition guide the way you regard others, your karma naturally clears.
You stop generating chaos.
You stop participating in cycles you outgrew.
You start becoming someone you respect
Intuition is the bridge between intention and action—between who you are and who you’re becoming.
The Bottom Line
Human regard is the blueprint.
Karma is the architecture.
Your daily choices are the bricks.
You are building a world you will one day walk through.
So build it with intention.
Written by Shanda L Kaus RN BScN
The Cultivated Intuit
Written on December 4, 2025
Photographs taken by Shanda L Kaus
Pyramid Lake, Alberta, Canada on December 4, 2025
