Gazing in the Mirror

April 5 - What is Destiny ?

It is not in the stars to hold
our destiny but in ourselves.
~ William Shakespeare

Our mind must be steady in
its conviction that our life
is some part of God, and that
the Spirit is incarnated in us.
~ Ernest Holmes

There were a LOT of predictions about 2012 and what that single year meant before it even began. Now, with this global pandemic, I wonder if this was the RESET anticipated but with a bit of a lag before showing up.  The momentum that really energetic attention took on in 2012 was intense to live through. Cool, rational logic would have suggested to any careful thinker that it could not be true that anything was going to happen exactly as it was being predicted. I do believe the energy had "effects" and I think that mostly those "effects" functioned like a spark plug that will bring much good to pass (and I do continue to hold to that ultimate hope) although not instantaneously as was often suggested. Change will come in the only way such movements in civilization can occur – slowly, naturally and over time.  Or with mind-boggling rapidity as it has now in 2020.

My reading for this day in "The Lunar Tao – Meditations in Harmony with the Seasons" by Deng Ming-Dao was on this very theme of Destiny and it caused me to apply his thoughts about Destiny in general to the events of 2012 as a year with the definite benefits of hindsight. I still remember all too well how it felt to live it – by turns anxious, hopeful, excited, imbued with special energies and complete happy bliss – all of these and if I could remember them there was much more than I've just indicated. It certainly was never boring to live through that particular year.  And now 2020 is even more unprecedented as though 2012 were only a rehearsal. For some people no doubt it was "fearful" and for many people living today through the Coronavirus pandemic even more scary. Fortunately the worst disasters and fears that people can spin on top of things are never the only power that influences the outcome.  I keep my own faith there - in the good.

Ming-Dao asks – "Is there destiny, or is there none ?" and then expands upon that with – "How you answer determines your fate". At the end of his own essay he notes – "How you answer determines your fate; the riddle is that the universe moves — that is Tao". Destiny is a theme in a lot of classic writing. Many couples after falling in love would like to believe that somehow their coming together was fated, was destiny. Many people use "destiny" as an excuse or a way of explaining their misfortunes. Destiny is sometimes a method of coping with loss.

Deng Ming-Dao notes "But can you say what will happen tomorrow? Can you say what will happen in ten years? Of all the world's disasters and calamities in hurricanes, tsunamis, famines, genocides — not one has ever been accurately predicted. If these gigantic events cannot be detected, how can the minute events of one person's life be preordained? Use your own sense. Why believe someone who wants you to accept a predestination that you can't confirm? What will happen on the last day of this year? You can't answer that. Why? Because tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and every other day are created by the events of today. There is no predestination because the future is made by the present."

And it is interesting how quickly and easily we forget this truth even though in our best understandings we do know it clearly. This understanding is certainly not meant to suggest that we shouldn't make plans regarding our future. Yet we would always be wise to be prepared for the possibility that "our plans" may have to change and seek to adjust to whatever reality is unfolding. Deng closes his essay on this thought "There is no predestination, because there is uncertainty. But we can consider probabilities, and we can influence them. This road we travel is not there until we step on it, and with each step, the road stretches on, just ahead of our walking: it is our walking that makes the Way".

I don't believe in Destiny but I do believe in having an influence on the direction that my path is taking me. I am highly adaptive and flexible regarding situations, conditions and circumstances. Sometimes it might seem that I am difficult to pin down but I am always clear – but only in the moment of NOW. I don't try to predict what the next moment will look like. What I think will happen often changes for me so frequently that I long ago gave up on that impossibility. I do believe in conscious manifestation but I am always casual, loose and generally non-specific about these. The lessons of my life have taught me to approach conscious co-creation with that perspective only.

~ perspective

I believe that the only person
I have been destined to become
is the person that my choices
made within the larger circumstances
that are the life I share with others
has made me.
The closest I ever get to "destiny"
is when I am so determined to "make"
something happen that I don't give up
until I experience that no matter how
many tries it takes.
If I could describe "true destiny"
it would be with the word
UNCERTAINTY and is the
outcome of events that are least
expected and which then change
the whole trajectory of the path
I thought I was on in the moment
"before".
Dreams come true and sometimes
when that happens we realize that
it was our dream but we had failed
to realize that it was there within us.
The closest thing to destiny within us is
our character and knowing we are
personally responsible for our choices
and decisions and accepting the outcome
that flows from these.

#adjustment #change #energy #fear #flexibility #hindsight #logic #loss #plans #prophecy