This is a topic and question that pops up over and over in the webinars I hold and the workshops I conduct.
I have written about it in a previous blog.
What is Fate or Destiny and how does Free Will fit into all this?
In the West we are conditioned to believe that we can do anything. All that is needed is will power and smarts. And a little bit of luck helps. Luck is nice, but not crucial because the dictum we live by is “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
Another strongly held belief is that we cannot control what happens to us, but we can always control how we react to it. Perhaps we can control our reactions, but it ain’t easy and it ain’t fast. It requires a lifetime of dedicated, mindful practice.
And now some scientists are concluding that there is no such thing as free will.
So where does that leave you and why does Jeff Bezos have many more zeros in net worth tabulation than you do?
Someone asked Ramana Maharshi, the Indian sage, if destiny simply determined the broad contours of one’s life or even the tiny specifics such as picking up a glass at this exact time and putting it down at this exact place.
Ramana Maharshi rarely answered queries of this kind. Somehow, he did reply to this one. “Everything the body does is precisely determined,” he said. “Including the picking up and putting down of the glass.”
“Then where is ‘free will’?”asked the bewildered devotee.
You always have the choice, said the Maharshi compassionately, of being the ‘doer’ or not being ‘the doer’.
It took me decades to understand what a profound teaching this is.
Look at your life. There are many things you do each day without being a ‘doer’. You brush your teeth, you go to the toilet, you take a shower.
Then, somehow, as you go through the day you become a ‘doer’. You decide what strategy to implement in your company. You decide whether to buy the latest electronic gizmo for your son. Soon there are dozens upon dozens of actions taken and decisions made by ‘you’.
Life becomes complicated.
Is it possible for you to move through life where everything, but everything, happens spontaneously without conscious thought on your part?
This can happen. It only happens when the ‘you’ that makes decisions disappears.
This is enlightenment. This is the end of all sorrow and suffering.
This is the space from which St. Paul proclaimed, “I live, yet not I, Christ liveth in me.”
This is the space where water turned to wine and the fishes and loaves multiplied.
Jesus did not ‘perform’ miracles. They happened spontaneously around him. You can say ‘His Father’ made them happen. But, remember his proclamation, “I and My Father are one.”
Is your head spinning? Do you, or do you not, exist? Who are ‘you’ anyway? And how do ‘you’ disappear?
These are deep waters, and I will deal with many of these questions in future blogs.
For the time being. Just try to let life unfold rather than try to stubbornly make things happen the way you would like them to.
Be gentle with yourself.
It will take many, many years for you to truly understand how simple life can be. Many decades before you can “…meet Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters the same.”
And what about your desire to become as wealthy as Jeff Bezos?
Throw out the intent and then forget about it. It may happen. It may not happen.
It does not matter.
It is like the salt doll that set out to measure how deep the ocean is. Long before it got to the bottom there was no more doll.
Peace!
