by Mark Havenner

Created on: May 27, 2007

The road we walk on in life was carved by our own hands.

Having been reared in a fundamentalist world I was told at a very young age that our life was the Will of God. He had a plan for us and no matter what we did we fit into God's Will. Yet, in the very same breath I was told that we had Free Will. How is it possible, I would think, that our life was planned out by God and that we can also choose our own path. Whatever path we've chosen is the one God laid out for us right? So what's the point? Free Will is a myth. An illusion. We are not actually free to choose our own path if God has already chosen it for us.

Many fundamentalists get many things wrong and perhaps it was dogma like that that pushed me into a life of apparent heathenism. However, with any ancient teaching there is always truth buried beneath the mythology. The fundamentalists wanted to believe they had Free Will, but they also wanted to believe that God was omnipotent. The two concepts don't necessarily always work with one another.

That is, until you realize that God is not an old man with a beard sitting on a cloud. God is a mortal personification of an impossible idea. There is no way we can possibly explain The Way Things Are in human words, we are quite simply limited by our third dimensional perspectives. And that third dimensional perspective is entirely the problem behind concepts like Destiny.

There are two personal truths I acknowledge:

The universe is infinite.
All things are ultimately one.

Based on these truths I have a very specific explanation for the concept of Free Will versus the concept of Destiny: we've created our own destiny.

We have chosen this particular level of perception long before we manifested in it and additionally we have chosen the path we want to take. During life we make choices that further direct our path. The more we stray from the path the harder things become. Reality may also have things in the way just because that's the way it is.

But consider the wild card. We share this reality with every other creature that can perceive third dimensionally. They have also chosen paths. All of these paths are connected at the root and based on choices the paths intersect or don't intersect. Each time a decision is made it will directly affect all of the paths it was intersecting with. That is the true beauty of infinity, the real truth behind Free Will and the cause for our sense of Destiny.

As I look down my path I know I have chosen it and that others chose all my interactions. But at the core we are all on the same path, because eventually when we broaden our perspectives enough we all are the same stuff.

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