Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”
―
Whether the fate of man is predestined or he, himself, is the architect of it, is a question that scholars of all time argued about, searched for the answer, and try to give different-different explanations for it.
This question is very important because we will find our lives always oscillating between destiny and free will.
So, let’s try to understand some aspects of it in this article.
A simple perspective
Let’s begin by looking at different aspects of our life…
There are many things in our life that we did not choose– like you didn’t choose the place you were born to, you came into this world and when you were grown enough you just realized that this is your home. You didn’t choose the color of your skin, you were born with it.
The parents you were born to, the language you learned as a child, the way your brain works, and many other qualities of your mind and body are the things that you had no hand in creating in your life.
So, we can say these types of things were your destiny, and you were powerless in determining any of these.
As you moved along in your life, there were some events that happened in your life that you had no intention of creating but they just happened to you and changed the course of your life, for good or bad.
So, we can say that you were destined to experience those events.
On the other hand, when we look around us, there are so many things in our world that was created by humans through the use of free will.
For example– the device on which you are reading this was intentionally created by someone through the use of his free will.
From some very small to some very big things in our life depend on the choices we make through the use of our free will, like the clothes you wear, the school or college you went to, the house you built, the car you bought, the valuable relationships you have, the books you read, the work you do, etc. are all done by the use of your free will.
Now, let’s see the other side of it…
Let’s say you had to go to a meeting, you get ready at the right time, you left from your home at the right time, and you had no thought of not being able to attend the meeting at the right time, that’s all the work of the free will, then you get on the highway and you were moving nicely, and after reaching a fair distance, you find yourself stuck in a traffic jam, and you couldn’t get to the meeting at the right time.
Well, that can be considered part of your destiny.
Another example would be when you decided to go on a vacation on a certain date, you had all the preparation, but on that day the weather got so bad that you couldn’t even move out of your home for a couple of days.
So, from all these examples we can clearly see that destiny and free will goes hand to hand, which means we can simply say that we are neither completely bound by destiny nor do we have absolute free will.
Meaning of Destiny and Free Will
The word destiny comes from the Latin verb “Destinare” which means “to make firm, or to establish”.
It gives us a sense of something that has been firmly established and sure to come true.
Destiny commonly refers to a specific future or outcome that results from a predetermined or inevitable course of events.
The word destiny can also refer to the course of events itself or to the power or force that makes those events happen.
Destiny is something that involves what is going to happen, what has to happen, or what is meant to happen.
So, if a certain future is said to be someone’s destiny, it means that it’s predetermined to happen, or that it must happen.
To understand it in simple terms, think about “The Avengers” movie series. In the first “Iron Man” movie, they tried to kill Tony Stark, and he could’ve died there in the blast, but he didn’t because it was his destiny to become Iron Man and save the universe from Thanos before he dies.
So, In movies, the scriptwriter determines the destiny of a character, but who determines the destiny of a person in life?
We’ll talk about that later, but for now, let’s look at the word FREE WILL.
Free will simply means the ability to choose between different possible courses of action without any compulsion. It means the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate.
Free will gives us the ability to choose so many things, like the house we live in, the friends we make, the places we see, the foods we eat, the work we choose to do, etc.
So, if our life is predestined then the concept of free will seems like an illusion, which doesn’t really exist, it just seems that we have a choice, just like characters in the movies.
However, if we have free will then the concept of destiny doesn’t seem to fit because we can change our destiny by using our Free will.
So, Let’s dig a little deeper into this…
Consciousness
The first thing you need to understand is the true nature of reality.
There is a field of energy and information that exist within and all around us, this field is also known as the eternal spirit, and every material form that we can observe through our physical senses are excitation in this field.
To understand it in simple terms, think of the field as a calm body of water like a lake or a pond; when you throw a pebble in it, it produces a ripple, that ripple is the excitation in the water, it’s part of the same water but appear to be separate from the rest of the water.
In the same manner, the field is like the water, and the material reality is like the ripple in the water. Just like the ripple, the reality is constantly changing and moving ahead, which we call growth, for example – the growth of a plant.
Now, just like a pebble had to be thrown into the water in order to produce the ripple, there must be a force to cause the excitation in the field for the physical reality to exist.
So, the force that causes the excitation in the field is the consciousness, and the act of the consciousness observing the field with an intention is equivalent to throwing the pebble into the water.
Now, there are two types of consciousness that are causing the excitation in the field and creating the reality as we perceive it through our senses.
The first consciousness is the consciousness of the field itself, which is known as the universal consciousness, the divine consciousness, or simply The God.
This Universal consciousness is the first cause; it is the field and the observer of the field at the same time. It is 100% evenly present in all places at all times.
It has an absolute free will independent of anything, as it wills something to be it instantly comes into being.
So, all of the reality from the tiniest subatomic particles to the gigantic galaxies that exist in the universe is actually the manifestation of its will, and this why the scriptures teach that “ Not even a leaf falls without God’s will”.
The second type of consciousness is the Human consciousness, it is the individualized expression of the universal consciousness that exists in the field to experience the reality created by the universal consciousness.
As an individual human consciousness observe its reality with an intention, it creates its own excitation in the field which manifests as its personal reality.
So, we can say that the human consciousness is an extension of the universal consciousness.
To simply understand this, think of it as a movie; in a movie, there is a creator of the movie, who decides everything in the movie, nothing can go on without his consent, and then there are characters that observe the world of his imagination, project their intention, experience different emotions, and take actions which creates the further events that they experience, but ultimately the final outcome always depends on the will of the creator of the movie.
In the same manner, the universal consciousness is the creator and designer of all reality, we (Human Consciousness) observe this creation, project our intention in it, experience different emotions in it, take actions that create further events in our life, but ultimately how the reality is going to unfold itself always depends upon the will of the universal consciousness.
Now, if the above statement is true, then it seems like we only have an illusion of free will not actual free will, and our life seems to be predestined.
So what’s real?
The concept of human responsibility and the answerability of his deeds become meaningless if he doesn’t really have free will, which cannot be the case because if you intentionally walk off of a roof and break many bones in your body, you cannot blame that to destiny because nothing forced you to make that choice, it was your responsibility to take care of where you are putting your feet.
So, the obvious truth about destiny is that Man is neither the master of his fate nor is he bound to the blind law of predestination.
We have been granted a limited autonomy according to which we are free to do or not do certain things, and that’s why we are responsible for certain things that happen in our life, but we cannot completely control everything that happens in our life.
Now, as I said earlier that the reality is not made of matter rather it’s an expression of a field of energy, as the consciousness observes the field material forms appear as material reality.
Now, in the field of energy, infinite potential reality exists as possibilities in the form of infinite frequencies of vibration. Everything that you can imagine about your life is a potential reality in the field.
You must have read or listened about the Law of Attraction, which says that if you hold an image of something in your mind that you want to have and feel as if you already have it, you begin attracting it in your life, but how or when it will happen you can never know until it happens.
So, what actually happens during this process is that you choose a potential reality in the field and project your intention in it, and when the vibration of your body becomes equal to the vibration of that potential reality, that potential reality begins to unfold or manifest in your life.
Now the important thing to understand here is that all potential reality exist in the field simultaneously, the concept of time as past, present, and future only exist in this three-dimensional reality, however, when it comes to the field there is only one time which is “NOW”
So, all the reality that exists as potential reality exists in the eternal Now.
Dr. Joe Dispenza teaches this concept in his workshops and he wrote about it in his book Becoming supernatural. It is a very profound and unique way of looking at our life. He talks about space-time and the time-space concept of reality.
Read this book, and you would begin to see life from a new perspective.
So, if all possibility exists simultaneously in the field as potential, then it means that everything that is going to happen also exists in the field.
Now, if it’s true then it means the future already exists, but it doesn’t exist as a set of predetermined events that are going to unfold one by one like the way it happens in a movie, rather it exists as an open possibility.
You can think of it as the script of a movie and your life as the shooting of the movie, as the shooting goes on, the changes can be made according to the performance you give.
If you don’t improve your performance it will go on as it’s going, without any improvement in your life, but as your performance improve the importance of your character improves so does the script of your character because in this script there are infinite possibilities for every character.
Now, the other thing to understand here is that there are some events that are designed by the universal consciousness that has to happen, we cannot do anything about it, but how much those events would affect our lives would depend on how we respond to those events when they make their appearance.
The best example for that for the current time would be the ‘Corona Virus Pandemic’.
So, we cannot always control what’s going to happen in our life, there are some things that are going to happen and we can’t do anything about it, that’s what I would like to think of as ‘Destiny’.
However, we can always control how we are going to respond to what happens, that’s what I would like to call ‘Free will’.
Now, another way to think about destiny and free will is that destiny is like a big river that’s flowing in one direction, and your life is like a boat that’s floating in this river, you are sitting in this boat with a paddle, the paddle is like your free will.
By using the paddle you can choose how and where your boat floats in the river but you cannot use it to float and move in the opposite direction of the stream of the river.
There would be times when the boat would meet with unexpected winds, waterfalls, bumps in the rocks but as long as you stay in your boat and use your paddle intelligently you can always bring back your boat into the water where it floats freely without needing much effort from you and you can enjoy the ride.
In the same manner, your life would always flow in the direction of your destiny but by using your free will you can choose how it is going to go in that direction, and the ultimate destiny that we all have is death.
We all are going to die one day that’s a common fate to us all, but who we would become when that happens depends upon how we use our free will.
So, we can say that Destiny and free will are like two sides of a coin, if you only have one side of the coin it makes the coin worthless.
In the same manner, Destiny and free will both are necessary for life to have meaning.
Thank You very much for your time…
-Parvez Alam
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