How You React Determines Your Fate
Choices vs. Fate
Once in awhile, I ponder the question of whether a different choice in life would have drastically changed my outcome. And I often wonder, do we really have choices or are we destined by fate?
Perhaps there is such a thing as reincarnation, where the laws of the universe work whether you believe in them or not; where karma is dealt to our particular situations because of what we have done or not done,good or bad. This also includes the idea that 'like attracts like' and any negative or positive energies we release toward others bounces back to us a hundred times greater.
I remember my aunt used to tell me, "Be careful what you think and what you say!" She believed, as many Edgar Cayce followers, that any negative energy (like hatred or anger) would quickly tie you to thatperson in a next life, so that both parties must come back to work it out. What a perfect way to receive punishments and rewards for our bad or good deeds.
So, getting back to choices vs. fate, I realize that certain situations in my life have caused me to choose certain paths - whether I was trying to get away from a bad situation or whether a particular choicejust appealed to me more. The key thing to understand, though, is that it isn't so much the choice (because no matter what we choose, it has a way of working out to what we need to learn anyway) it is theway we reacted to the situation that is the real issue. How we 'choose' to react is far more important than the choices we make.
My grandmother used to tell me, "You can't avoid problems in life. Every time you try to go around them, they meet you in the face. You have to go through them and deal with them in order to getrid of them."
This is part of what it means to 'live in the present'. Deal with it, good or bad, and you won't have to deal with it again, but try to avoid it or fight it, and you will find yourself in anunhappy and long struggle until you're ready to accept it as it is. Allow 'what is' to 'be'. Any resistance on your part just prolongs your suffering.
Do I believe in fate? To a certain extent I do. I believe that we are put here to learn lessons, and we have to keep coming back until we get it right. We are born into the very situations we need inorder to learn what we must learn. But once again, it is how we react that is the key to getting us out of our own hells. How we react is the key to turning our fates around. That's when great thingsstart to happen in your life - miracles that you might not ever have experienced had you not learned the lesson you were dealt.
And do I believe we have choices? Oh, yes! But only if we are ready for them... only if we can change our negatives into positives do we get some choices that lead us out of our self-imposed dungeon ofsorrow.
The key: How we react determines our happiness, our fate, and our choices. So, start by putting those positive energies out there and watch the magic happen! Greet hatred with love, violencewith peace. Judge not. Love thy enemy.
Copyright © 2011 Dolores Owen
Dolores is a Legal Administrative Assistant for the Law firm of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, L.L.P. She is a life-time member and on the advisory board of Missouri CURE (Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants) and enjoys genealogical research in her spare time.
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