What is destiny? Do you even believe in it? Was your birth predestined by the stars? Is your death predetermined as well? Is your future already laid out for you? Are you just passively going through life as a consequence of your circumstances?
When it comes to romantic love, do you believe that you have just one soulmate and it is your destiny to meet each other this life time? Can it also be your destiny, not to meet your soulmate in this lifetime and could it also be possible that you will never find each other no matter how hard you try?
Do you believe your life is predestined or do believe you have the free will to make whatever choice you feel in the moment? Perhaps you believe that you create your destiny by the choices you make with your free will? Does your destiny override your free will? Does destiny and free will even exist?
What if destiny is simply whatever is happening in the moment? What if it is however life shows up, as it is? What if all you have to do is be present to it? If you surrender to your destiny, then there is no need to resist or even choose. It is all happening by itself. There is no doer. As a result, whatever appears to happen, you can trust that it is meant to be. You simply watch your life, as pure Awareness, allowing existence to make the choices. You neither say yes nor no, but simply be present to what is. This is what the Indian mystic J. Krishnamurti called choice-less awareness.
When you abide in choice-less awareness, it frees up your consciousness to embrace what is. Once you surrender the mind’s expectations, let go of resistance and control, and accept the moment as it is, you can embrace your apparent destiny. When there is no mind, then existence is free to unfold in perfect harmony. This happens through choice-less awareness, when the mind does not interfere with, or try to control what appears to be happening.
Before the realization of your true Self, it may have been your destiny or your karma, to suffer. Perhaps the suffering was there to help wake you up from the dream. Even though free will may appear to be a reaction to the desires of your mind, suffering is a result of that free will. The false self makes a choice to fulfill the desire or not and that creates a reaction, which is the essence of karma and suffering.
When faced with desires, it appears to the false self that it has free will to make the choice or not, but in actuality, the choice is limited between fight or flight or do nothing. The parameters of the choices are limited by the mind’s past experiences, which influence its future imagination. You could say that those limitations of choice create your destiny, based on the consequences of your actions.
The truth is, time is an illusion, a concept used by the mind to measure the immeasurable. You use your mind to impose a sense of linear movement between past, present and future. They are all concepts. There is no time. There is only the eternal now. Every moment that has ever existed, and will ever exist, and every probable reality based on all the different choice points that could be made, all exist in the multi-dimensional, eternal now. Therefore, if time does not exist, perhaps destiny doesn’t either.
It is like in in the case of experiments with subatomic particle accelerators in Quantum Physics. Scientists use them to speed up and increase the energy of a beam of particles, inside in a long metal pipe. When an accelerator shoots a sub-atomic particle into the pipe and directs them via magnetic fields, the particles switch from positive to negative, at a certain frequency, within a perfect vacuum. This creates radio waves that accelerate the beam of particles into bunches. Basically when this happens, the particle becomes a wave. The peaks and valleys of the wave represents all the potential realties where the particle will land. Although, in the end, the most probable outcome is wherever it first began, the path of least resistance. This is based on Newton’s First Law of Motion which states that “A body at rest will remain at rest, until an outside force acts on it, and a body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force.” In other words, bodies in motion stay in motion and bodies at rest stay at rest. It takes tremendous force to make the particle change its position. It almost always takes the path of least resistance.
Perhaps destiny is what ultimately occurs in the now, meaning it is the actual outcome of the multitude of probable realities that are possible. If this is the case, then free will is the illusion of choice that the false self believes it has. The option to make a choice or a decision is part of the delusion of free will. The outcome is already decided by the path of least resistance, as in the particle and the wave.
The truth is, there is only the appearance of free will and only the illusion of destiny. This is because time does not exist. Within the multi-dimensional now, all the probable realities of what could occur, actually co-exist simultaneously. What ends up happening in the present moment, is the path of least resistance, based on the past circumstances and the current direction of the present path. In essence, the path of least resistance becomes a kind of destiny.
Just like in the particle accelerator experiment, it takes tremendous energy to shift the direction of your path to a new probable reality. That does not mean that it cannot happen, but your pre-existing tendencies will most likely influence the outcome, even if it appears as free will.
Yet, regardless of the outcome, all the other probable realities will also continue to exist in alternate dimensions, in the multi-dimensional reality. So, either way there is no one destiny that has to happen. It only appears that way, based on wherever you focus your attention in the present moment.
If destiny is the path of least resistance and free will is an illusion of the mind, does karma exist? All karma is in reality, is cause and effect. It is the consequence of your actions. Those who believe in reincarnation, propose that karma from your past lives can influence your present life. Whatever seeds of desire you planted in a past life, cause you to reincarnate in your next life, if you haven’t yet fulfilled them in that previous life. It is also believed that if you have acted in a way that causes harm to another, you will have to come back in the next life, to pay the price, in retribution. But, remember, just like the drop of water that has realized itself as the ocean, when you wake up, you are no longer subject to your karma. It is the domain of the false self. If you don’t use your free will, and you learn to abide in choiceless Awareness, then you no longer create future karma.
So, it seems, destiny and free will only exist on the level of the false self. It may be your destiny to fall in love, get married and start a family. For some, it may be to pursue a career and try to succeed in life. For others it may be to seek enlightenment in the future, by doing arduous practices. Yet, all of those desires rarely bring true sustainable bliss. In fact, it is often by letting go of your goals and desires, that you are free to manifest your true potential, or what is considered as destiny.
This happens in true surrender, through choiceless Awareness. You don’t have to use effort to try and make your life happen, but instead simply allow it to unfold naturally. Some call this the flow state, where you don’t have to work hard to achieve success, coming from a fear of failure, but instead trust that everything will work out in divine harmony. This is how life becomes magical, and you are supported by effortless Grace.
Once you are able to let go of your identification with the false self, you realize there was no destiny in life, except maybe for one aspect. Perhaps your only destiny is to wake up from the slumber of your false self and remember who you already are as your true Self.

About the Author

Prasad Paul Duffy is a spiritual teacher and visionary in the human potential movement. He is the author of the books YOU ARE LOVE and DANCING AS THE INFINITE, and is the founder of THE SOURCE SPIRITUAL CENTER in Los Angeles. For further into please visit www.prasadpaulduffy.com

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