Chosen or predetermined?
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
Q. Masters, there is a matter that confuses me and my spiritual friends. It is about manifesting and creating things with the power of our thoughts. This seems perfectly reasonable and we have found that it works. Our confusion arises from another school of thought that everything is totally planned by our soul before we come—even down to our thoughts. If this is true, we cannot change the path we have already created for ourselves. This is so puzzling for me; which is correct?
A. When you get ready to come down to Earth to learn some life lessons, you decide which ones you wish to encounter. These can be such things as anger, betrayal, romantic love, issues around self worth, being controlled or controlling others. What you do not generally decide is exactly how you are going to experience these lessons.
Let us say that you are working on self-worth issues, and your basic premise is that you cannot accomplish anything because you are poor and stupid. You can continue to replay those identities for the entire lifetime, or you can start to find ways to change your impression of yourself.
The predestined crowd would say you planned to be dumb and poor. However, you might read a book on affirmations and begin to tell yourself you are brilliant, and that your brilliance may enable you to become rich. You start to excel at school, get a fellowship to do research, get national recognition, and win monetary prize after prize. You have manifested a realization about your self worth by using your abilities to become recognized as brilliant and, in consequence, wealthy.
If you follow only your thoughts, you make it impossible to change your feelings about yourself. These thoughts are a combination of dreams, expectations, and what you have absorbed from seeing, hearing, and reading what other people think. You may imagine that these thoughts (although not really yours) are pre-ordained and nothing you say or do will change them.
You acknowledge that your confusion arises from whether to exercise freedom of choice by seizing your own power, or sit back and accept what others plan for you, but you are the master of your soul. You alone are the driver of each lifetime. You alone determine the pathway, whether by manifesting what you would like to experience, or by sitting back and taking whatever comes.
Take responsibility for your actions today—don’t worry about tomorrow. As each day dawns, live in the moment. When you try to figure out what you might have had in mind when you presented yourself with a series of lessons, you are worrying about the past and not living in the now. Choose what feels right in this moment. You are then manifesting what will help you increase your wisdom. That will be creating and walking your path.
