Free Will or Predestination?

People often think predestination and free will cancel each other out.

They don’t!

I was quite shocked when I read at your website that “even the order in which we do our errands can shape our future.” I have believed my whole life that major events in our lives are planned prior to our birth. If we are hit by a car JUST because we went to the grocery store before the pharmacy, that implies there is no meaning or lesson to be learned in this accident, and it wasn’t destined to happen, it was just a random event. To me that means that, for example, a major heartbreak could have been avoided just if, say, the timing for telling certain things to a person was a month earlier or later, etc. Can you please explain this?

Odessa

The conundrum Odessa is facing is one that hits everyone eventually if they’re on the road to Spiritual Awakening.

Our Higher Self sets things up so that we have multiple exit points from which to choose in life. My classic example is illustrating a person’s life with four possible exits built in: dying at 6 from an uncontrolled high fever, dying at age 27 from a car accident, dying at 43 from falling out a window, or dying at 78 from prostate cancer. Also, choice is in itself pre-planned.

If an accident is something that was planned between the pedestrian and the driver of the car to balance karma or for creating a new learning situation, it can happen later in the same day, or another day, or at any time that is conducive to activating the exit point for whatever closure the Soul wants to bring to the lifetime.

As the personality makes that split-second decision (“Pharmacy first, or grocery store?”) that is also one’s Higher Self evaluating that particular exit point and deciding whether or not to activate it. Free will and predestination intertwine.

Regarding the “major heartbreak” situation: again, if the Higher Self deems that the personality has learned enough about interpersonal relationships to avoid the heartbreak and instead choose new, more peaceful and supportive paths, they’ll get that little nudge to

(1) put off the discussion,

(2) reword what they were planning to say, or

(3) even get a flash of insight that allows them to comfortably consider their partner’s point of view, thereby negating the need for the discussion that would lead to the heartbreak situation in the first place.

If the lesson isn’t learned, then the chance for that difficult discussion may occur again at a later date. Again, free will and predestination.

There are many forks in the road that are pre-planned. We get that either/or choice — that is what free will is all about, and why one can believe in BOTH free will and predestination.

We go into a particular life with the understanding that our tendencies in the past have been to make certain choices when we have certain experiences. If we want to learn to make different choices this time, we may set up the same “trip trigger” that has resulted in problems in the past, allowing ourselves the chance to take a different road.

As my colleague Staci Wells so eloquently puts it,

…life is like a computer flow chart: we come to a question point. If we choose answer A we go in one direction. Answer B gives us another direction. We set up our lives with many of these nexus points…

A lot of karma-based romantic relationships are a pure replay of the interactions of previous lives, up to that critical juncture where the karmic lesson is either learned, and the karmic knot undone, or it’s just a case of same-old-same-old, and the Higher Selves involved plan to do it again — either with each other in another life, or setting up the same type of nexus point for their personalities with other relationships in this life.

Regardless of whether something “feels” predestined or spontaneous, involving free will or predestination, one rule is iron-clad: The Higher Self is excellent at making sure it gets its homework completed!