When things are ‘right’ in our lives, we are happy, healthy, content, loving etc. It is easy to believe this was exactly what was meant to happen. We are, in those moments, in the flow of the universe receiving even more good things. However, life is filled with the stuff that lurks in our shadows, too. The only way we can actually understand a concept of balance in our lives is to have both… to experience those things we are happy to, along with those we would prefer not to. But, who creates these moments?
Fate is inevitable destiny. Destiny is the purpose or end to which any person is assigned and Karma is the theory of inevitable consequence. All of these are defined as being beyond our control.
Consider all we experience in our life; the good, the memorable, the painful, the dangerous, the happiest, the everyday… all of it. Do we believe that all of this was destined to happen to us? Is this our fate, our Karma? If it is, then it should not matter what steps, decisions, paths, directions etc we have taken, or take next, because what will be… will be. Or, is it possible that we are the person we are today because we have participated in our life; that every time we made a choice we determined the paths our lives took? This aspect is known as ‘co-creation’ meaning nothing in life is set in stone… we have free will; the right to choose for ourselves. Alongside the big picture of our life, we have the freedom to act in creating our own destiny.
Perhaps we are ok with this concept when we are satisfied with life, but when we are looking for more than what we have or something has happened that turns our life up-side down, we are not so willing to believe that we created this for ourselves. Surely this is more the work of someone/thing else that we can blame? We hope that our life is not out of our control and that all we are doing here is living the consequences of our actions from previous lives – i.e. our karma. When unwanted things happen, one wonders what we did to deserve them, so surely they must be the work of something other than us.
We do not have the level of understanding or detachment in this life that we did beforehand. We are here, right in the middle of it all, trying to make sense of our lives. Often, especially when curve balls come our way, we do not believe we have any control or power to change anything about our lives. We are so immersed in experiencing something that we do not realise we might have any say in it at all.
When faced with experiences we do not understand or feel helpless about, our sense of fatalism sets in; believing we are doomed when one bad experience leads to another. Our negative self-talk is heightened and options to be free of our unwelcome experience, are few. Should we then just leave it to fate and allow our lives to be a series of events that just unfold? At times we will not be able to stop something from occurring but we can always feel empowered knowing that one thing we can have absolute mastery over, is our reaction to it.
No matter what happens to us, how we choose to react to it is our free-will. It will always be this way. There is no judgement attached to our choices either – they are what they are so that we experience our life exactly as we should – our way.
Is our life what we have chosen or what we have resigned ourselves to? Could our life be different? Do we want it to be? Empowerment rests in seeing that we have at least one choice; that of free will.
When we do what we choose to do, we co-create our next experience and so on. In essence, we are who we are doing all we are doing just as it was meant to be for those of us who are using free will. We all wonder what our life would be like if we had chosen differently when we stood before those cross-roads but realise that the choices we made leave us exactly where we have co-created ourselves to be… accepting that we have helped shape our destiny. Blame can’t exist when we hold ourselves accountable for all we do, think, say, believe and choose. This is exactly what was meant by living fully in each moment… it is where we utilise our ability to choose to be accountable and co-creative.
Our lives are destined to have a plan and purpose. With free will, however, our lives become collaborative in that we work along-side this unique master plan, eventually unfolding our purpose, ourselves.
