Do you believe that the future is set? Maybe just a little bit if not totally. My mother, at one time in her life, was a firm believer in predestination - established or prearranged unalterably; "his place in history was foreordained"; "a sense of predestinate inevitability about it"; "it seemed predestined since the beginning of the world."
A rather fatalistic view I must admit. I fight that view of my future. Or my past. And yet I don't sit comfortably in a world shaped totally by free will. I dabble with belief in karma - the total effect of a person's actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person's existence, regarded as determining the person's destiny.
It is that "determining the person's destiny" which makes it a bit different than predestination. It allows for some free choice in response to a set of circumstances and ergo some control over our ultimate fate. When I laid on the snow following the ski accident I have this clear memory of looking down on my body and knowing I had to go back and that it would hurt like hell.
For four hours I did not know my name and there are to this day some eight years later this Christmas Eve whole blocks of time I have no memory of and yet I have never wavered in my belief that it was "ordained" to happen. And the free will part was what I did with it.
Do you believe things happen for a reason? I must admit I don't at times. I charge ahead as if I have total control of my life. And yet there are times (usually when I sit quietly and meditate) that I know things are as they should be. Some consciousness in the universe is just waiting for me to see the paths available for me to take. And depending upon my path there will be other choices. Other people to meet that I have the feeling I have met before. Are there, like in StarTrek, alternate time lines developed because of other paths taken?
