Friday, 23 September 2011

Rule 29: How to Handle Destiny

Destiny doesn’t mean that your life has been strictly predetermined. Therefore to leave everything to fate and to not actively contribute to the music of the universe is a sign of sheer ignorance.  “The music of the universe is all pervading and it is composed on forty different levels. Your destiny is the level where you will play your tune. You might not change your instrument but how well to play is entirely in your hands. ”


We use the word destiny for everything, which happens as unpleasant surprise in our lives, which we cannot foresee and take into account and which we cannot influence. It happens, when life in its self mightiness and stubbornness enters our web of connections, plans and expectations and whirls them apart. We cannot control or tame destiny, it is mightier than our wishing and wanting.

Every blow of fate is an important task for learning acceptance because we define destiny right so as this, which we cannot handle and accept. Yet fighting what has already happened anyway is no gain but is just a waste of our resources. When we learn to accept that, which is most difficult to accept we have done an important step in overcoming our own stubbornness.

By acknowledging destiny we acknowledge that there is a higher power controlling our lives and that we only can act within a framework provided by this power. We can move freely as long as the health necessary for it is granted to us. But we cannot run as fast as an Olympic winner or perform all Yoga exercises like a contorsionist. And when we fall ill, we even don’t manage to get out of bed. We can do a lot to prevent falling ill, but when it has gotten us, we only can surrender to our destiny and act accordingly to the narrowed framework, which our fate has provided for us.

We cannot choose the „instrument“, as we cannot choose the length of our bodies or the colour of our eyes and the set-up of our brain. Still we can train our skills within this framework, we can live up to our inner grandeur, can sharpen our senses and increase our talents. There are limitations due to the capacity of our brain, so that most of us cannot enfold musical skills like Mozart or Schubert. Yet it is up to us to develop our modest talents within this limitation, whether we let them grow or lay barren.

We will not be able to move on, when we envy others about the instruments they have received to play with. I have a clarinet, and you a violin. Instead of producing beautiful sounds with my clarinet, I stare at the violin and think that I am only able to play music when I have it. It is better to trust our own abilities and make the best out of them by learning to develop and enjoy them.

When we fail to do so we disregard our gifts, which life has given to us. We have these possibilities within the context of our free will.  And we have our inner reasons for doing so, if, as mentioned before, we had other reasons we would also lead our lives differently. So it does not make sense to blame ourselves or others for mistreating or spoiling their talents.

Rather we should pay our attention to the reasons which keep us from living creatively and productively, to ornate our lives instead of letting the days pass by. When we explore these areas we might encounter fears and other unpleasant feelings, which want to be taken serious. When we succeed in this, it will become easier for us to take up our own instrument and to share our unique voice with the universal symphony.

On the idea of predetermination

There is a common premature understanding of this idea, which could mislead us to indulge in our passive and depressive parts. Everything is kismet anyway, inevitable fate, what should I do against it, best is to tuck in my head and wait until it is over. By this, we follow our personality imprinting and take the idea of predetermination as an excuse for our laziness or convenience.

Yet the concept of predetermination is not about strengthening a limited personality structure. Understood correctly, it serves as an explanation of wider contexts and is only intelligible when we transcend our egoistic parts and reach the view of holistic consciousness. From there we understand what it means that everything which happens is meant to happen exactly like this, wanted so or predetermined by a higher power or intelligence.

We should not get irritated by the „pre“, for this is not about a time line – as if this huge intelligence would have been sitting somewhere up there a long, long time ago and thought about a gigantic story, which then starts to enfold exactly in the way it was projected into future. The linear structure of time comes from our own motivation for achievement in a materialistic consciousness, as explained in rule 28. We cannot presume that the divine existence works just and only like that. Rather it is more plausible, that this intelligence has access to all modalities of time while having its own centre in a form of timelessness, which is open to our experience only in extra normal states of consciousness.

Thus we can comprehend predetermination in the following sense: devine wisdom works in everything which happens, whether this is pleasant or unpleasant to us. And even that, our judgement about the respective situation is still carried and supported by this wisdom.

Furthermore, predetermination means that there is no difference between the events in this world – moments of despair and bliss and everything in between – and the meaning and evaluation of these events by us. Everything is as it is, and is also meant to be as it is. By accepting it like that, we abstain from moving away from reality and disappear into a dream world: Well, it is as it is, but I just paint it in a different way in my fantasy. We also abstain from blaming reality: What an idiot had the idea for this lousy experience I just had? So we do not lose any energy by rejecting that which is. The energy, which is set free starts looking for a more productive way to add to the process of life.

So we can confide in the idea that everything should be the way it is, and then we notice that it is this very life which wants to move us on: By its urge to enlarge and grow. Let us be entrained by it! And let us have the trust that the speed of this development is exactly the one which is good for us and which is appropriate for our abilities.

Then we stop to criticise ourselves permanently, as we should have to be better, faster, more efficient … as we are. We do exactly what we are able to do in any moment; when we know better and are in the position to do so, we do it like this. And something even better might be available for us in the next or over next moment, and then, and only then we act like this.

This insight also helps us to become more tolerant for our fellow men. We stop to permanently demand from them to be better as they are. They also give their best all the time, which is possible for them in the given moment.

An important question to the idea that everything that happens is also meant to happen like that is the justification of evil deeds or of undeserved blows of fate. Does this mean that it is okay to commit mass murder as this is meant to happen this way? We have to make a distinction between two levels. On the human plane, there is no discussion that such a behavior has to be rejected and prohibited and that the predators of evil acts have to be called on their responsibility and brought to justice. Any society cannot exist when behavior which damages its functioning is tolerated.

On the spiritual plane, this perspective is supported, and it gets an addition by another insight, which says that those evil actions have happened the way they have happened and that nothing of them can be reversed. Death people cannot be brought back to life. Yet it inhibits our connection to the flow of life when we judge or deplore what has happened. Ultimately we do not know why what has happened, has happened in the way it did. We do not know how something, which according to human standards should not have happened, is measured by divine standards.

So when we want to experience the power of the spiritual plane, we have to sustain the tension between these two levels and we are not to neglect one of them. Further more, both levels are not in a hierarchy, like the spiritual being superior to the mundane and diminishing its importance by this – both stand as equal side by side.


The rules are taken from Elif Shafak's novel “The Forty Rules of Love” (Viking 2010). They are inspired by the Sufi tradition and worded by the autor's imagination. www.elifshafak.com

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