Destiny or Fate: what is your poison?

I was wondering what everyones thoughts on this might be. I have often thought about this and it boggles my mind. This is primarily geared for those who believe in a higher power. Is life preplanned (destiny) or are we really free to make choices is life (fate)? Even a choice made can be preplanned and just seemed like we made a choice.

I have read about apocalyptic scenarios in religious texts which seems to agree that the end of the world is preplanned at some point in time. If the path to the apocalypse was not also mapped out, we could destroy ourselves before that day comes.

Freedom of choice to me seems like a sham because I often ponder past choices I have made where I decided differently over the same issue and gotten similar results and sometimes very different results. My conclusion was that it is decidedly impossible to make any kind of logical decision when you cannot know what the outcome will be. I mean you may go to work everyday until one day you get into a car wreck. This is completely random because there is no way you can say that the very next day it cannot happen again.......I know, I know statistically it is improbable. It just seems to fly in the face of making free choices if the results vary so much. Why do we bother in them when Murphy's Law seems to rule so much?

Now one thing that has helped me is studying NDE's or near death experiences where some ppl who have had them claim glimpses of how are lives here work. Simply put, before we leave the spirit world and become human for a while, many attributes of our lives are pre planned and we come here to work out some sort of theory or life test if you will. So this would mean that at least some part of our life is planned. The testing part is where we are given freedom of choice to learn from, I guess. What the test actually is, is tailored to the individual and we may not even know what it is until we go back to the spirit world and review what it is we learned. They say that the physical world is merely a classroom that is full of adversity and thus makes the learning experience more enhanced than learning anything in the spirit world because it is much more difficult.


Let me know what you ppl think:

I have sort of a strange view point on the matter. And I'm not sure if I'll be able to explain it in a way that will make any sense, so here goes:

I believe that there is a path chosen for us as a "preferred life path". We have the ability to follow that path if we so choose. BUT - therein lies the problem. We have the ability to choose, and the wrong choice will send us a different way. I think when people experience flashes of "deja vu" - that's simply a way that we know we're following the correct path.

I have odd dreams quite often with people I do not know. A long time later - weeks, months, even years later - I will have an experience that is identical to the dream. Right down to the smells, sounds, colors, and people.

I believe that I end up having these real-life experiences because I have followed the correct path to get there. You have free will, and the ability to choose (or not choose) your life path.

I really hope I made some sense...

I mostly agree here.

I believe that this world is a classroom to which we have came to learn certain things. So, if you ( while in the spirit world ) decided that you have to learn how it feels being a businessman, you would be born in a family that would help you become a businessman or you would have certain events or keypoints in your life that would help you become one. This is destiny.

Or if you have came to this world, for example, to learn how it would be to be killed in a war, then it would be your destiny.

Like if you were born a boy it is your destiny to become an old man.

Yet things that are not within this keypoints can be changed at your will.

For example, if you want a new car, it is your free will to earn money and buy one.

But the number one lesson one comes to this world for, as believed, is to learn to define "good" and "evil" within yourself. Not what some are told from aside "this is good" and "this is bad", but emotions that lead you to love, happiness and creativity from those that bring hate, destruction and depression.

As for Deja Vue stuff, it is also believed that this are glimps of the true understanding of the world, of feeling the future, of feeling the right path. Intuition if you'd like.

It is when your pineal gland wakes up, screams "Hello! Is there anybody? Anybody needs me?" and hearing silence fall back asleep.

All kids live in this Deja Vue untill they are 2 or 3. When their parents start telling them "do not do so, do so and so", "good childrend don't do so" and other senil marazmus... this intuition wanishes and they turn into a "normal pride of the society".

Try remambering what was your internal world like in that age.


Good Luck!

and think the two concepts are one in the same.

I really don't know which to believe. If I chose this life, What the Hell was I thinking? In Fact it leads me to believe, that I WANTED to suffer. Or if others ascribe to a more Karmic outlook, you sow what you reap from life to life, than I must have been a bad, bad, man.

Actually that raises a good point, if this life was pre-planned, and some religious theories present a "You choose your path as a spirit" again I cite, what the hell was I thinking? I've learned a few lessons, but in the process I feel as if the Lessons have been abusive, towards my psyche.

I feel in this life I was meant to learn "Resolve", how to keep getting slapped down and see how well I get back up again. I think 10 years of it has been enough.

Anyone up there in heavanland? Hello, enough's enough!

Well anywho, not blathering on my own problems too much, you pose an interesting thread. Fate, the power to choose, or Destiny you were meant for a path. I can see it as being a bit of both, I also think you have a predisposition for a certain outcome, but it may not come to be based upon the decisions you make, and the limited resources you as a human have at your disposal, like forward thinking. In fact if we functioned, like there will allways be a letdown around the corner, and plan appropriately to prevent it, can we circumvent negative destiny?

-ADHDsux4me

The future exists
not because it is set
but because it is being set
this is the true nature of destiny

ADHDsux4me, Karma is another thing... in brief, it is an induced feeling of guilt ( in this or previous life ) that disables one from reaching some goals.

For example, someone was induced that being rich is bad, as there are so much poor people around... then he might have problems with becomeing rich, as his subconscious know that "rich = bad" and would block his conscious attempts of becomeing "bad".

Yet there are certain technique of removeing this karma.

[edit on 15-9-2004 by bratok]

Well, I don't know about it being my "poison" at all but I believe in a combination if the two...I believe we are here for reason, to learn and experience what we are meant to for this incarnation, but we may make different choices which effect the way in which we learn that lesson.

Aren't destiny and fate synonymous with each other?

Main Entry: des�ti�ny
Pronunciation: 'des-t&-nE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -nies
Etymology: Middle English destinee, from Middle French, from feminine of destin�, past participle of destiner
1 : something to which a person or thing is destined : FORTUNE
2 : a predetermined course of events often held to be an irresistible power or agency

synonym see FATE

Ive herd semething before, cant remember where from, but it goes something like this. I think it has to do with reincarnation though.

Every spirt will continue to make the same choices and go through the same events in each of their lives (Destiny) unless they choose for themsleves to change their already choosen paths (Fate).... I think this has got to do with the Karma theme.

fate and destiny are the same, if you believe in either of them then you really are saying you have no choice in your path in life , that it is all decided for you already, i do believe in fate, i believe that everything happens for a reason and that no matter how much you try to choose or alter things and your situation, you will end up at the same point, the point that you were destined for

I believe in destiny, in fate, in karma, and in free will.

But I don't believe that free will is easy. Free will only comes when you're enlightened, IMHO. It takes great effort, until then you're just trudging along the path of fate. You may think you're outwitting fate, but fate in essence is playing you for the fool because of your ignorance.

and it could seem like a paradox but the best way to descripe the process which is hard for myself and most unenlighten to understand , but i found a way to descripe it easyly overr many years of struggle ( altho i feel it over simplfys it its so much more dimetional , anyway , your life is like a connect the dots the dots are the fate events there things u can't aviod ( hell picked them out in the start anyway your soul did anyway ) well u can sorta aviod them but not for ever , now how u get to event to event in life is up to u , it can be a stright line for those who want to experince more and learn more and complete ones life task or u can do loop de loops alot and avoid the next event for a time u see the line between the events is your desintity and u can make it stright or any desgin u like now u can't experince one event b4 the other or atlest this metaphor can't explain how that does sometimes happins but exteremlyy rare for most of ya u can't u experince the events in order

Well, I thought about it good and hard. Destiny wins hands down.

Sorry the title is Destiny and Fate, which is the same thing. I was younger then and confused, but now I am whole and vibrant. Guess I will go and grout some bathroom tile.

Peace and Safety.