fate

Fate – Choice - Illusion

May 1, 2003 PlanetLightworker Newsletter

Fate – do events always have to be the way they happen? The dictionary says something about fate as “the agency that inevitably causes a predetermined outcome.” Really? Someone is thought of as “fatalistic” when he or she believes that there really are no choices in life, only the illusion of choice. Now there is a trio of words that really arouses my interest: fate, choice, and illusion.

How do these words combine for someone who is spiritually aware? Let’s see a show of hands. What, no takers; does this mean I am stuck with answering? Before answering, allow me to throw a little more mud in the water, obfuscate things a bit. There are some folks who channel and relate to us that the entities they channel cannot foretell the future because we humans have not yet written it. There are other people who insist that the future has been foretold by prophets such as Nostradamus, especially after an event occurs that was allegedly and usually cryptically predicted. Now, I am not discrediting either side of the deterministic debate debacle. I am working to understand how fate-choice-illusion fit together in the human experience.

I think that for us human “beans,” we need some of all three. It is when one of them becomes overused that balance is forfeited. Let’s look at all three, first, fate. In the 1988 version of the movie, Dangerous Liaisons, a French noblewoman of dubious integrity, played by Glenn Close, urges an equally dubious French nobleman played by John Malkovich, into various acts of deceit. She tells him that when his ploys are found out, to simply plead, “It was beyond my control.” Malkovich’s character takes to this advice like a fish to water, and his life spins out of balance, only to be fatally restored in an act of integrity and redemption – good movie.

It seems that we need some amount of belief in fate in our lives so that we do not have to continuously wrestle with the burdens of choice and responsibility. The seeming existence of fate serves us well in many situations such as terrible disasters, natural and man made. It is difficult to take personal responsibility for a hurricane or earthquake, or even the 911 attack in 2001. I imagine it is difficult for the non-combatant citizens of Iraq to see choice in what befell them before and after the war. So attributing some events to fate is a pretty good safety valve.

What then of choice? Should we, as did Malkovich’s character, deny all existence of choice? Are we cosmic controlled caricatures dancing to the pull of invisible strings throughout our brief stays on Earth? I don’t think so. I believe that choice is the mechanism that enables me to change my life, to cause it to be different that what it is. Choice IS freedom, not freedom creating choice. If I believe the latter, I will never allow myself to choose. I must start from the premise that I do have choice in my life over that which I need to change that I can change. As much as group prayer and intention are marvelous practices, let’s face it - they did not prevent war in Iraq; they have not cured world hunger or the erosion of the rain forests; they have not eliminated dis-ease and pain; they have not freed Tibet from occupation by the Peoples Republic of China.

I am not advocating the cessation of these practices. I simply maintain that as a seemingly single, isolated human in a skin suit, there is a limit to that which I can change by the exercise of choice and that is where I will place my emphasis and energy with some left over for global issues. If it is my passion to do so, I can dedicate every waking moment to a cause. I can choose to spend my life doing whatever I can to affect a global change. It matters not if the change happens in my lifetime. That I choose to devote myself to it does. The fate of the change may not be that it happens during my life or ever for that matter. It matters not because of my individual choice – the power to make a difference, if only in my life.

Last, we have illusion. Illusion we are told is not real, duh! It is as real as we believe it to be. Illusion is popular. What are television, movies, theatre, and novels all about if not illusion? Illusion serves a buffer to fate and choice. Illusion is a time out from working at making choices and submitting to fate. Illusion sometimes offers a gentler way of looking at the world than when presented with the starkness of choice and fate. The tradition of storytelling and oral histories is thousands of years old and is now carried forward by the entertainment media. What are the stories of old but a method of softening historical, harsh realities into entertainment with a message?

All three, fate-choice-illusion, do serve us when they are kept in balance. Think of them as the legs of a three-legged stool on which I sit. The seat will always be stable; it will never wobble regardless of the disproportionate lengths of the legs. It can, however, become very slanted such that it becomes difficult to stay seated on it. Gravity will pull me towards the short side – a message that the leg(s) are out of balance with one another and that action is required to restore balance and make all three the same length. The seat (life) then becomes a stable platform on which I can navigate without the risk being dumped on the floor where everything seems over my head and out of reach.

The last thing I need to remind myself is to maintain my balance of fate-choice-illusion in my human existence. Sometimes as a Lightworker I get caught up in the “realizations” that fate and illusion really don’t exist, and I chastise myself for falling into their traps and not being aware that I always have choice, and that I will only evolve when I have the awareness of choice and make the ones that are in my highest and best interest. Yeah, I do that, a lot it seems; yet, I am a human albeit with a spiritual pedigree, but my Higher Self does not need groceries, shelter, and diversions from the task of pursuing aware spiritual evolution. So I lovingly accept all the parts of me, human and spiritual, and remember to laugh and smile, especially when fate-choice-illusion get out of balance, for this a game.