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Originally Posted by Greenslade
The Sufis have a saying - "All beliefs go to God, but a belief in God is the strongest."
I believe in predetermination because I'd like to think that there is some kind of rhyme and reason for all of this, otherwise what's the point? Is Spiritual development nothing more than a series of serendipitous happenchance? Predetermination also means taking responsibility for what happens in my Life because my Free Will was exercised as Spirit, and that frees me from the victim mentality. Things don't happen TO me they happen BECAUSE of me. It wasn't pure luck that my suicide attempt didn't happen.
The curious thing about Spirituality is that it's based on mentality.
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It was interesting going through the process of confronting myself and my misunderstandings about myself. When I crashed into the severe depression it was a bit like my psyche fractured into separate pieces. I felt like I was a bit of a split personality. A part of me detached from being human, likely my objective/observer self. There was a part of me that was in a fiery rage. Another part that was totally saddened by it all. And there was a very quiet ally side that was trying to chime in despite all the noise I was making about being human and being alive. I think the ally side is my soul voice.
I think one of the benefits of having a critical father who created intense self doubt was that I had to learn to rely on my instincts to make decisions. My rational left thinking brain always saw everything I did as wrong. No matter what choice I made it was going to be the wrong one. So I had to develop the right intuitive side of my brain to function in the world. My perception is this is the part of the brain that allows us to access our higher knowing is our soul’s voice. I very clearly had thoughts about certain directions I wanted to take in life but had intense foreboding feelings that going down certain paths would mean disaster. I felt I had no choice but to listen to those instinctive forebodings. As well I also had occasions to have very strong sense of knowing the directions I was going in was the right one. Things felt right and it was my cue that the direction was where I was meant to be. Aside from the intuitive feelings the point is, it seems my life had very predetermined paths I was or should take. Certain people and places and even illnesses I was born with were written into the script of my life to help me face the lesson of self loathing and the tendency to want to bail. Those events were triggers or catalysts to get me to face myself and the people I was led to connect with would offer me the best opportunity to see myself and grow.
When I fell into severe depression though I started to feel like a victim. I felt separate from my soul and felt like my soul didn’t care about me, my human self. The point being, I do think that in many ways, our lives are prescripted by our soul so that we can intermingle with the right people in the right places at the right time. It has to be a bit prescripted for us all to connect when and where it is most ideal. This in many ways, means that our human perceptions and freewill desires are not necessarily going to be fulfilled. I thought in many ways, as humans we have free will but I think the free will comes more into play when we are scripting our lives before we come. I think it is why you sometimes here people who discuss their prelife plan being asked if they are sure they want to take on such a difficult life. Once we commit to a life we are kind of bound to fulfill the contract. Our free will about what we experience in that life is no longer in our (the humans) hands. Our free will is maybe more about how we chose to perceive the preplanned major events of our lives. I do think we have a certain amount of free will to walk a different path but more often than not we will somehow get pushed back onto the path we were supposed to be on. For me I had strong knowings of the paths I needed to take. In many ways, I think I had to have the intuition to not get myself into deep water I could not get out of. Those knowings led me to safety despite it seemingly being otherwise to my human mind.
What I have concluded for myself is that my human self had a perception that there was some ideal life that I was supposed to create and live. The truth of my life is that it was never about the career I was in or how much money was in my bank account. The main purpose of my life was to confront the need to self destruct. Everything I did, everywhere I went, was all a means to an end to help lead me to confront the self loathing that was holding me back from thriving. My human self thought I was supposed to have a specific type of life based on what society and other humans say life is supposed to be but my soul had other very specific plans and my human self was kind of along for the ride trying to survive the choices I made for myself before I was even born. But those choices were mine and as you say how I have handled things is because of me. I am responsible for the life I planned out and how my life played out in the end. But I don’t think humans have as much free will as they perceive they do. Otherwise this place would be a free for all and chaos would ensue.
When it comes down to it, though I do think we all eventually get to a place of understanding our personal responsibility in all that occurs. I think the phrase you highlighted, things don’t happen to me, they happen because of me. Or it’s counter, things happen to me, they don’t happen because of me, are both phrases that can, for some of us, keep us stuck in blame. Blame of others or blame towards ourselves. I think the phrase I am trying to embrace is, despite appearances, everything that happens is serving my better good. This empowers us to see that no matter what the circumstances we will gain from the experience. But I do think there is a lot more predetermination than any of us realizes.
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