“A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it.”
- Ursula K. Le Guin, the Farthest Shore Beatings
*
The question of whether our lives are predetermined, that is, whether everyone has a purpose / destiny – is one of the main questions in every person’s life. And this is not just one, central question, but there is a series of questions here:
- Are we born into destiny/purpose or into chance?
And if there is a destiny/Goal in life? does man shape his destiny or should he discover it? - No matter what a person does, he always has the same fate? Or does it depend on personal choice at any given moment?
- Are things predetermined? And what is a person’s ability to intervene during his life?
- Can a person in his ordinary life reach self-realization?
- Does a person have a destiny / purpose? Does every person have a destiny? His unique life path?
- Does self-realization necessarily lead to a person’s encounter with his destiny?
- Is fate a possibility or a limitation?
- If a person has no destiny, then what is his life? A series of accidents, or an alternative route to fate?
- What is destiny? Is this a finished scenario, or in terms of everything expected but authority is given?
- Is it desirable for man to meet his destiny, (if there is such a thing) or is destiny a limiting thing, and man must create his life and his goal in his life – out of nothing.
- Is fate a tough script, or chapter heads with which improvisations can be made.
Not all the questions here will be answered, but a clear attempt will be made to take some position, in the presence of most of them.
Well, I remember from my youth the conversations (especially in youth movement and the class) about fate versus free choice; is there destiny or not. Did man end up living the fate dictated to him, or does he make his goal in life with his own hands, and since so, did he do with his life what he did according to his free choice?
In this essay another question is posed: and perhaps neither this nor that. And maybe our lives are just a coincidence, a series of accidents, with one leading to the other?
And perhaps life by destiny is not guaranteed to everyone, and that the life into which we are born is the life of chance, while the life of destiny must be sought, dug, dug under what was clothed upon them and now covers and suffocates them?
And let’s start with the definition, what is destiny anyway?
Well it is to live your life according to the master plan that exists in you as a genetic code. He who has no destiny, lives his life without a master plan. And this fate is to live according to a blue print. When building a building, it is built in a certain way, and in order to survive such and such a period of time, and for people with such and such a level of income, (because of its architectural plan which must fit them). But the contractor or foreman does not have to go according to it, they may be able to build a building without any architectural plan at all, and then while building the building, its future is unknown because it has no basic template and then also no destiny. It came out somehow and it will look more like an accident…
So destiny is a kind of script.
Every person has some sort of a master plan within him, and the question is does he live by it? Every person has two options: either to live his life as a standard deviation (not in accordance with the father’s plan) or to live a life of destiny (which is in accordance with the father plan with whom he was born).
Destiny is not an end product, a finished product that a person has to dance to like a puppet. A destiny is raw material, a potential. A person with a master plan is similar to a driver who has a system of roads and lanes, he can still choose to drive in one lane or another. But he has a system of roads, compared to a destitute person who does have a car, but he does not have roads, and if there are roads he does not have a map of them. To live without fate is to live without roads, and without lanes, without a map. And so it is impossible to get anywhere, there is an imaginary sense of purpose travel, but without a path – the journey is in circles, and always remains in the same place.
The master plan has room for maneuver. As in the drawing: Fate is not a charcoal copy of a chart that exists below the transparent page. Rather, the artist has an idea or idea within him, and he has creative freedom to realize the idea in a variety of ways, but it is the same idea or idea of painting that exists in him on the psychic level.
Destiny is an encounter between the inner self and the real reality.
Missing a destiny is an encounter between the adopted self and the real reality.
Adopted self is a product of over-adherence to social norms. And most people do not live by an internal code, but by social norms that overshadow an internal code and an inner voice. And so man cannot connect to the path intended only for him, but he lives according to how it is proper and acceptable to live in that period. (In his personal version of course, but he goes in the general groove).
One might think that a life without destiny is a life of chaos in which everything happens, while in a life of destiny there is a clear and fixed path. Well, not exactly. In life according to social norms each person is actually fixed in a series of roles that he must ‘fit’ into, (and if he is not likened to the dead, he is an outsider), and there it is like in a prison. And in order to reach destiny, he must emerge from the social and psychological fixations, into an obscure state, and then, only if out of this freedom, he connects to his inner being, he has the possibility of destiny, and then, as stated, these paths are not dictated from the outside. The person.
Destiny is according to a cohesive pattern that is transmitted from within. Fixed life is according to social and psychological dictates, dictated from the outside. In both cases the person is not free.
And so in short: in order to connect to destiny, man must free himself from social and psychological patterns and fixations, then he finds himself in a void (not an emptiness, a void) in vain, and from there he is supposed to connect to the print within him, and then as he tries to realize it he is on his way to meeting his destiny.
Some people are unable to live by rigid social dictates, but also unable to connect to their inner being and live their lives according to the code inherent in them, and then they live a lost life, like a ship without a rudder on the ocean water.
Michelangelo, said he chooses a statue according to the block of marble. And that in every block there is already a certain figure. And the block of marble he chooses is according to the statue he is looking for. (And he probably recognizes in the marble block the statue inside). So is human life; In the life of every person there is the statue inside that wants to go out and be. But only a connection to the inner self, to the inner entity, can free this inner giant from the bottle of social norms. When you are connected to yourself, accept yourself, live in peace with the way you are inside, you feel the living figure trapped within the marble blocks of social norms.
The blocks of stone around the statue are the habits, patterns, restraints, repressions, little lies, and masks we put on the inner self to fit the overall look.
Usually the lives of human beings are conducted according to the stone blocks that surround and imprison the statue, they are lives that look like life, they have the image of life, but nothing happens inside. There is no self-realization here, because nothing from the statue goes out into the world. The stone around the statue stops him from meeting life outside. And only this encounter begets fate.
The sculpture is the hidden inner and personal potential, usually suffocated by the large blocks of stone. These blocs are: manners, economic status, nationality, family, education, our profession, our popularity, our education, our image, our political opinions, our smart statements. But it is a mask on the face of the personal and intimate life of man, and until they are rescued from the bear embrace of the stone blocks there is here a simulation of life, but not life really. Because life really comes from within, and not suffocates from without.
What is common is to bury the inner life potential and above that build a new personality. Adopted personality, acceptable personality. A personality in which our most essential part is not manifested. The word destiny is a product of the connection between this hidden, raw inner self and the reality that is now taking place in the world. It is a potent (powerful) connection that leads to self-fulfillment and the discovery of the unique path intended only for you: your destiny.
An unrealized life, in which there was no encounter with the inner child, with this hidden statue of being – this is a life where everything happens from the outside, and not from the inside. This is a life that takes place on the outer plane and not on the inner plane. What is it like? For a car that is in a crowded place with other cars, on a slope, and there are all kinds of rolling rocks, and they and the other cars hit the car and it moves from place to place. But the movement does not stem from the car engine itself, rather it comes from outside it. And so this is not a movement towards a goal. But a pointless shift. That in the end man did nothing real with himself and with his life.
Here it should be understood that a life of movement towards a goal can only take place on the inner plane. This mechanical life is a life that takes place on the external plane, in worlds of: profession, financial situation, marital status, friends, political opinion, etc. Instead of life arising from an internal spark they are driven as they once operated an engine, by a belt that is pulled by force and then the engine turns.
Only an occurrence on the inner plane can lead to a person’s encounter with his destiny.
Gurdjieff calls life with no destiny and goal – mechanical life. According to him these are lives that occur under the Accidents Act 2]. Because the person is not connected to something that puts him on a clear and unique path he is prone to accidents (which are the collisions mentioned here earlier, by other cars and rocks deteriorating).
In mechanical life there are accidents. And they happen because the inner compass, our inner center of gravity is paralyzed, like a plane detached from the control tower giving it instructions. Only in a person connected to his essence, the instructions come from within. In life without destiny we move not because of something that comes from within, we move because of what comes from outside. Then it’s almost a life of movement from accident to accident, and that’s because we are not connected to the inner and personal selves.
A life of destiny is an original and authentic life, guided from an essential state. While mechanical life, life of accidents, is an adopted life, and they are adopted in the two senses of the word: “adopted”: first, they do live out of effort and not out of a dynamic spring from within, and secondly, because they revolve around an adopted self.
The more a person acts from within and less from how he is supposed to behave, the more connected he will be to his destiny.
The person without destiny is an old person, he is not aware of his condition, does not ask himself questions, his views are stereotypical. His restraints are fixed, his behavior borrowed, strenuous.
Fate does not wait for him.
Fate is connected with only one thing: the type of man, not his behavior, nor his papers, nor his style, but his typological essence.
In mechanical life there is happiness and misery, suffering and pleasure. In a life of destiny there is no good or bad, just a match between what is supposed to be and what is really happening.
One of the ways to bring a person back to his essence and hence to an encounter with his destiny is to do a separation between the potential and the mask. Then he develops the alertness to his essence and he knows how to recognize it and separate it from the adopted self, only then he has the possibility of reaching the path of fulfilling his destiny.
And here comes the most important point in all this: all people have a potential for individual destiny (which is being overshadowed by social conditioning), but they differ greatly in: power, talent, caliber, radicalism, specialness and sensitivity of the quality of their destiny potential.
The majority have a weak and average destiny potential, which could be overcome and overshadowed easily by social norms and conditioning. But the minority that could be called: special, highly sensitive, with high caliber, or just outsiders – has such a powerful and unique potential – that the conventional norms could not blurs them. So those few with outstanding potential rare persons–from one hand cannot conform (because their unique potential is too unique) and from the other hand find it difficult to find the specific avenue in which they can apply their specialty and have indeed a fully accomplished destiny and self-actualization!
The main problem with being an outsider is finding the right path: (the artistic occupation, or love relationship) in which to apply their unique potential that will fit the level and quality of their special and rare brand of potential.
Gabriel
