What is individual karma?

The world's karma limits individual karma, but within those limits individual karma places you either high or low. 

Live the best you can in your karmic position and understand yourself so that you can use this earth-life as a stepping-stone to something higher.  

No conditions are given you that you do not need, and the moment you get out of a condition, you are rid of it forever. 

Find the Jewel of Truth in the mire of your existence and make your life more tolerable. 

Nothing that you understand can crush―or terrify you, for you can set out to overcome it without fear. 

You may remember the story of the great naturalist who while watching a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis was moved to cut some of the confining sheath by pity at its violent struggles to free itself. 

But when the butterfly emerged, he found it but a poor―weak―crippled―thing unable to fly. 

He was forced to see that the very violence of the struggle for freedom was necessary for the perfection of its strength and self-reliance. 

It is just so with each human soul in its struggle to free itself from the chrysalis of the physical. 

The greater the struggle if persisted in to victory, the stronger and more self-reliant will be the newborn soul.

―The Teacher