On the face of it, this question is quite challenging! How can we believe in fate or destiny if it is our actions that determine our life's experiences? Can certain things be fixed, pre determined and yet other things be flexible and respond to our actions, thoughts and feelings? I hope to shed some light as I delve into this curious conundrum.
Who is in control of our destiny? If it exists, when was it chosen? Did we choose it in a time and place that we have long forgotten? Or, did a great being that we call God choose it for us, mapped out in some kind of divine plan that preceded everything that is?
I believe that destiny is a place that we choose, and continue to choose in each moment. It may sound strange, but perhaps destiny is not quite as fixed as we may imagine. What if our destiny is shaped and tuned with each and every choice that we make in this world? What if all potential outcomes of our lives exist together, layered in an infinite realm of possibilities? What if when we act and react to life's experiences we shift and move from one potential to another, in each and every moment?
Can Karma dictate our lives and our luck? Is it Karma that directs our fate in response to what we think and feel to shape our lives in a kind of universal feedback? Many years ago i read that Karma is not what happens to us, but how we react to what happens to us. That is very deep statement and takes quite some thought to understand it.
Let me ask you. If you were put in prison, not because you did anything wrong, but due to a great mistake in the system, how can we deduce whether that is good or bad karma? DO we look at the situation on face value, or do we look at how that situation is experienced? What if, during that time of imprisonment you learned to find inner peace? What if during that time of incarceration you learned to meditate and discovered God and became enlightened. What if you found more happiness in prison then you ever did in the free world? Would you then say that you had good or bad karma?
The message here is, perhaps it's not so much What happens to you, but indeed, how you react to it that really matters. It may well have been your fate to have lost your freedom, and whether that event is predetermined and fixed, it is actually your reaction to it that determines whether it is good or bad Karma.
DO you see? What happens to you is your fate. Maybe we can change it, maybe we cannot, but most importantly maybe it does not matter exactly what happens to us. Maybe the details of our lives are just a kind of container, just for us, to experience life and discover ahd shape our lives in a way which we choose.
When we can realise this, we can transcend the duality of fate and whether something is good or bad. IN a way it us who choose in each and every moment what is good and what is bad. It is our perception that determines it. If we are grateful for everything that we experience, and seek to learn and shape it into a positive then it matters not what happens any more. Fate becomes something of a container for our experiences, but it has no relevance to our state of mind or whether is is good or bad.
I believe that once we can realise this, we can learn to live with our luck, our fate, without judgement. We can be set free from the ongoing labelling of one thing or another as good or bad, and instead we can choose another path, that of acceptance. In this way we can transcend the need to understand why things happen, and instead understand why we react to things as we do. Once we are in control of our reactions, our judgements, our desires, and instead go deeper and instead welcome every experience as a chance to learn and understand who and what we are, we are then finally on the path to bliss.
and so it is! ... if you choose it :) ..
Thumbnail source: https://tricycle.org/magazine/free-in-captivity/