Is our life the result of predetermined destiny, or do we use our free will to influence the events of life? What does destiny or karma mean?
Every desire we have during our lifetime is a product of our karma. We are born with individual inclinations, aspirations towards certain things, situations and people. That inclination is reflected in our hope to establish some relationship, contact with the product of our desire. The intention or a desire that was set in a past life now aims to be satisfied. This is how one of the universal laws works – the law of cause and effect. By living this life, we consistently create new desires that will strive to be met by some new birth. Every desire takes time, place, context, and body to be satisfied.
Hence, our life is predetermined in the sense that all significant events in it are predestined. When a soul is ready for a new incarnation, the Universe or the Creation, drafts a script of that soul’s life. The script contains all the experiences that a particular soul seeks to go through in the body. And the soul is given the time, place of its birth, death, as well as the time, space, resources and other souls who are a part of their experiences, as well as that of their soulmates. The term ‘soulmate’ refers to all those souls whose incarnations will connect with our lives. These are our family members, partners, friends, colleagues, acquaintances. The flame of the primal desire in us, the inclination, which is recognized in the material world by intuition or tendency, will be how our soul communicates with our mind. If our mind is in harmony with our soul, if it listens to its whisper, it will lead people towards the fulfilment of those desires and needs. This is how karma, or destiny, is met. Every day of our life is filled with different experiences for which there was an intention to happen.
Free will is a powerful tool
Does this automatically mean that the free will is just a delusion that does not exist? No. Every human being is born with free will, and this is one of the most valuable resources that we are blessed with compared to other living species. However, free will only reflects our ability to manage the level of consciousness at which we function, that is, to live our lives. Although it may not look like it, that is all we need to live a life of happiness and well-being, peaceful and stable. The level of consciousness on which we experience our life will directly influence the experience of the purpose of life.
Life and God owe you nothing
The first trap of our mind, or ego, to be more precise, involves expectations. People live their life expecting their life, as well as God, to make their life precisely as they wished by looking at other people’s lives, often comparing themselves with their environment. One of the most important lessons is to understand that life or God owes us nothing. None of us was born with a promise from God or life that our lives would unravel as our mind, ego or intellect desired. We need to abolish this concept as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. Expectations lead to disappointment which creates unrest, sorrow, anger, rage, resistance, depression. The mind creates expectations.
On the other hand, happy or sad events for our mind are no more than experiences for our soil. Our soul will not attach to an emotion caused by an event in our life. It will experience it. Our soul will completely experience the feeling, but will not remain attached to it. What is sorrow or happiness for our mind is just an experience for our soil. Nothing more than an experience that sought to be lived and expressed in this incarnation, in this body. By getting through this experience, our soul will have its purpose for which it was embodied. When we live in harmony with our soul, we realize that every experience that happens to us is part of the purpose of our life. If we fall into the trap of our mind, ego or intellect, we will grasp each experience as a kind of discomfort (pain, sadness, stress, hatred, envy, greed) or pleasure (happiness, joy, euphoria). It depends on a person’s level of consciousness how they will live their life. We raise our awareness level with knowledge and practical application of the knowledge. Constant work on ourselves, with unconditional faith, will allow us to realize this knowledge and then to enjoy it.
The purpose of life is to experience and express it
When we realize that the purpose of life is to go through all experiences without delay and repression, as well as to express all of it, only then will we be able to perceive life as a show in which we play the primary role. To be an unbiased witness of the course of our life; to surrender to life with complete faith in its course; to surrender to life means acceptance. It is an expression of strength and high awareness. To surrender to destiny means giving up. And that is an expression of weakness. No experience is good or bad by its nature. It is just an experience. Many things depend on our state of consciousness – whether we will go through that experience and keep holding on the emotion that the experience created, or we will stay free and accept it as the part of our journey, an integral piece of a grand puzzle whose broader picture we may not be able to perceive and recognize at the moment; as part of the story of our life. It is our absolute free will. The way we will approach everything.
Karma either runs out or gets completed
In life, karmic events are fulfilled in two ways. One, to fully undergo the experiences that life brings to us – experiences our being longs for (relationships with people, keeping a particular job or staying in a specific situation, various forms of addiction, living in a specific place, etc.). When we satisfy these desires, karma is fulfilled, and we no longer return to it. When karma is completed, there is no longer any tendency towards it, because that story is over. The course of life will make sure that we have a sense of fulfilment and purpose after a job done, and we will have no urge to get back to it.
The other way to complete karma is to rise in our consciousness to the degree that we will overcome all the desires we were born with and for which we will feel the urge to satisfy. We will be aware that there was an intention to satisfy our passion, but there will be no instinct that will strive for satisfaction. Our passion will be overcome in high consciousness. The feeling of lightness and relief would be the same if our desire was satisfied through experience — a state of peace and well-being.
We will choose one of the options of our own free will.
To live a life with dignity and without constraints, no matter what experiences the life consists of, is our true nature and our only duty towards life and soul, to our self. We have chosen all the experiences at the soul level solely for its expansion.
Author: Dejana Vojnović – graduated from the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade she has been working as a foreign language teacher for ten years. She completed her psychology training in transactional analysis and at the same time became interested in a more in-depth spiritual search, which continues today. Using her own acquired knowledge and what she has experienced, she has been working as a consultant for several years.