Every New Year, this popular meme about planting flowers does the rounds of social media. Someone is asked if they are not afraid of what they think this New Year will bring. Are they not afraid of the future, since everything seems so messed up? Their answer is that the New Year will bring flowers. How could that be? They reply, “Because I am planting flowers.” Their response is a brilliantly simple example of the difference between Fate and Destiny.
Fate can be thought of as relinquishing your power of choice to forces outside of yourself. You may interpret these forces as aggressive, punishing or controlling. Even if you regard these forces as benevolent, they are still calling the shots in your life. You may believe you can’t challenge them, that your fate is written in stone. Outside forces are deciding your life path for you. The best you can do is to “make the best of it.”
On the other hand, embracing Destiny means the willingness to recognize that it is your choices which determine your future.
Choice is Power
The word Fate comes from the Latin fatum, which means “that which has been spoken.” In other words, it’s a done deal. The word Destiny comes from the Latin destinare, which means “to make firm” or “to establish.” Remembering King Arthur, you could think of Destiny as Arthur pulling the sword Excalibur out of the stone. Whereas Fate would have him tripping and falling on it.
Choice is power. It’s the expression of our power. It is the power by which we set into motion an act of creation. We’re always setting in motion an act of creation, consciously or unwittingly.
From Fate to Destiny: Taking Responsibility
Most of us will probably declare to anyone who will listen that we want to be captains of our ship. Of course we want to be free to chart our own Destiny! What I’ve noticed in myself, however, and others too, is a tendency to prefer an “a la carte” approach to full self-empowerment. Some aspects of responsibility for my Destiny fit snugly into my comfort zone. No problem!
But other aspects of responsibility require me to be willing to acknowledge where I may have had a part in creating what might look like Fate. It’s so easy to blame the gods, the stars or the powers that be. It’s more challenging to recognize that the challenges in my life are an out-picturing of choices on my part.
“The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.” Shakespeare: Julius Caesar
Or, as Freud wrote: Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
When Not Choosing Is a Choice
What Freud is implying here is that not choosing is in itself a choice, a choice not to be self-sovereign.
It’s so easy, and is the path of least resistance, to let an external influence stop or compel us. However, by not making a decision, we’re allowing Fate to make a decision that we could have made for ourselves. These forces may take the form of the energies around us or, indeed, the dynamics of fear and negativity in us. That’s when the forces of Fate determine what happens next.
When we start to take charge, we start to work with the forces of our Destiny. Being willing to look at what attitude, action or thought pattern was instrumental in creating what seems to be “out there” is a powerful way to move from experiencing life as Fate to embracing life as Destiny. This elevates our life from the experience of being victimized. It leads to our being victorious within that particular sphere of our life.
No such thing as a small choice
This can all sound daunting. How can you possibly take responsibility for everything in your life? Where on earth do you start?
Very simply, start where you are. First of all, realize that there is no such thing as a small choice. Every choice ripples out, like a pebble dropped into water. The pebble (the choice) may seem tiny, but the ripples expand out almost into infinity. How can we, in our present state of awareness, possibly follow the thread of one single choice? Ultimately, there is no end to anything.
Just One Thing
The same is true in terms of our spiritual growth. Choosing one attitude or principle to live by for a day or week (gratitude, kindness, honesty etc) can have far-reaching effects. As captain of your ship, imagine yourself at the helm. To change your course, you only need to turn the wheel very slightly to make a huge difference in where you end up! Every time you tweak your mindset or your attitudes, you cross another step stepping stone on the path from Fate to Destiny.
In his book “Just One Thing”, Dr Michael Mosley writes of the power of making even simple choices on a consistent basis. These can include choices like a daily walk, being friendlier with people you meet when out and about, becoming more aware of how much time you fritter away on television or social media, finding things to be grateful for.
As Thich Nhat Hanh said: At any moment, you have a choice, that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it.
Flex Those Choice Muscles
I sometimes get the image of the capacity to choose as being a bit like physical fitness. There is no doubt that we have become flabby in the choice department. Our “choice muscles” nearly always work on automatic pilot.
The only way to get a very unfit body moving in the direction of fitness is to start with small steps. Doing weights with baby dumbbells or tins of beans is obviously not as impressive as juggling twenty pound weights. However, you will certainly not get to big-time muscle-training unless you start with small-time baby weights!
Many of us have got out of the habit of using our choice muscles. We use them sporadically. We often use them unconsciously (Fate). Consequently, in being unwilling to make conscious choices, we’ve often allowed our choice muscles to be commandeered into carrying out someone else’s intentions.
However, just as with physical fitness, it is possible to get stronger by starting modestly and working a little at a time. I may not be able to choose everything that manifests in front of me right now. But I can begin to commit myself to flexing my choice muscles to whatever degree is possible right here, right now (Destiny).
For example, I cannot choose, as yet, to be free of the whole money paradigm as it operates in the world. Nevertheless, I can choose to handle money with as much integrity as possible.
One Tin-of-Beans Choice at a Time
The bigger picture of perceived choicelessness can seem overwhelming. I’ve found that it is tempting to keep the debate running around my mental body. I can let my mind keep going in circles, which in itself is a clever way of avoiding the issue! Or I can look at my world, right here and now. I can wonder if there is any way I can begin to flex those choice muscles.
It may not be a choice which will save the world or even solve all my existential questioning. However, each small choice (a tin-of-beans choice in the greater scheme of things!) will strengthen me for the next one. It’s like when you have been exercising for a while. Eureka! You discover that there actually were muscles under there after all! And the tin of beans that may have felt heavy at the beginning now feels as light as a feather.
Choice and Evolution
One way of describing the process of evolution from Fate to Destiny is that it entails beginning to act mindfully and consciously with a pattern or archetype within us. For example, we will automatically act from our wounded inner child until we decide to heal our wounds. By means of authentic healing, we free our inner child to engage in a higher quality of choices. We liberate our nature child, our magical child, our creative child. This does not mean that our wounds have to be evaporated or forgotten about. It means that we start taking charge of healing our wounds. In this way they will not make the choices for us in any given situation.
Fate Surrenders to Destiny
It’s in how we interact with what’s happening in this moment that we sow the seeds for what’s to come beyond the frontiers of our present experience. The quality of the seeds we sow in any given moment depends on whether we choose to react (Fate) or to respond (Destiny.)
Reacting to our experiences means we make decisions, often impulsive or knee-jerk decisions, based on our interpretation of what happened in the past. Reactivity is driven by the unresolved trauma that’s embedded in us. The same old attitudes and beliefs lead to the same old results. The future is thus fated to be an extension of the past. Same old, same old.
In contrast, we can practice responding to our experiences by making empowered choices. Such choices are based on spiritual and ethical principles, on what’s happening right here, right now (Destiny). This response draws on the wisdom we can derive from past experience. And it frees the future to follow a more empowered trajectory.
Changing Inner Space
Does the outside world have more authority over you than your inner world? The point of choice, the point of power, is to change yourself in relationship to other people or circumstances. This is far more empowering than expecting them to change in relation to you.
We will often find ourselves in situations of limitations, unforeseen predicaments and surprise choices. Attempting to control the external world can so easily miss the point of what these circumstances are set up to teach us. And it rarely works! Under such circumstances, monitoring the response in our own inner world is a more empowered, and indeed feasible, goal. By not losing or giving away our power, we gradually transition from Fate to Destiny.
Ripple Effects
It’s a valuable practice to slow down, regularly, and reflect on the power and influence of just one of your thought patterns. Think of the power of an attitude (i.e. seeing yourself as helpless) , and everything that attitude has created for you in your life (i.e. neediness, dependency, other people’s resentment at your neediness and manipulation etc).
On the other hand, think of the ripple effect of a decision to be kind. Who knows the ramification of a simple act of kindness? How many times have we unknowingly been the the beneficiaries of the ripple effect of kindness? Someone was kind to someone, and that person was kind to you.
There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effect will change automatically. ACIM Lesson 23 2.3-7
We are the Sum Total of all of our Choices
We could think of the infinite field of consciousness, of divinity, as being comparable to a vast electromagnetic field. Every one of your own options of choice determines your spiritual “charge” or “vibe” Every choice you make influences your frequency. Therefore, where you find yourself in the infinite field is the automatic consequence, the collective consequence, of all the choices you have made throughout time. You are always becoming that which you have chosen and are choosing. Within an infinite field of power you are drawn to that part of the electomagnetic field which resonates with your own frequency.
There is nothing arbitrary about where we find ourselves in creation. Nothing happens, and nobody goes anywhere other than by their own choice.
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
There is wisdom in the phrase “one step forward two steps back” when it comes to mastering the power of choice. This is a lifelong process. It can take profound courage and integrity to look our choices in the eye, as it were, and acknowledge where we may have contributed to our own and other people’s suffering.
It is not helpful to make light of the deep spiritual questioning and probing that can accompany such issues. But it is helpful to remember that we have the opportunity to be both “spiritual” and pragmatic at the same time. Each choice, made consciously, with the attitude of embracing our mastery, reconnects us a little more with that part of us which is fully conscious of itself as both creator and creation. In every moment there is the potential for choosing to align with Fate or Destiny.
Every single choice we make is either going to enhance the spirit or drain it. Every day, we’re either giving ourselves power or taking it away. Caroline Myss
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Josh
Lovely! I’m gonna go plant some flowers!
Best to you, Rose!
Rose Tobin
Thanks, Josh.
Lovely to hear from you, Rose.