Chapter 3, Part 5, The Past and Fate

Usually when people talk about fate they are discussing the future. We will leave that topic of discussion for the next chapter. Though personally, I believe that fate should be referenced to the past. And this is the main purpose of this chapter.

Fate is defined as a predetermined state of events taken out of control of the individual. It is also worth stating that fate (when referencing to the future) can be linked to a higher spiritual power, which makes sense. It’s much like the question ‘do we have free will?’ If we believe in fate then we must accept that along with this belief are spiritual influences.

So how can I reference fate when discussing the past, especially when part of the definition of fate is predeterminism (which links to things that have not happened yet). Well firstly, because the event has already occurred in the past and we can’t travel back in time to change it, in many ways it must have been destined to happen the way it did. No matter how much we regret it or want to change the past, it’s done and dusted and is now a part of our greater story. Yet this doesn’t explain the future aspect of fate… To understand this we need to look at the events that have occurred in our past. We also need to acknowledge that the past has given us the wisdom to make decisions and choices, and therefore dictates most of our decisions in our present and future self…

Now I am not knocking out the idea of having free will. But part of free will is paying attention and being self-aware. And let’s face it, how often are we paying attention to every aspect of each day? Furthermore we are not aware of what is occurring in our subconscious. In most of our days we are on autopilot and working from past influences. Hence the past begins to influence us.

To give you an example of what I am talking about, it has been suggested (by Deepak Chopra for one) that the mind asks over 60,000 questions per day. Although some people have suggested it might be only 20,000 (which is still a lot) it has even been suggested that there are upwards of 600,000 questions per day. Yet I digress. This is the type of neuro work that is constantly going on within our mind. And to make things even more interesting, it is said that out of the 60,000 questions we ask each day only 1000 of them are different questions from what we asked yesterday. Wow!

Obviously the above estimates take into consideration questions from the subconscious mind and the way we form words/thoughts. Yet I didn’t give you this information as just something cool to place on your twitter page (yet if you do please tell them how awesome The Lonely Spaceman is). I tell you this to let you know how much programing is going on within your brain. Even when we walk without thinking about it there is still processing within the mind which is dictating these moments. We simply just don’t notice they are there because we don’t have to consciously think about them.

Okay Spaceman (if you are really a space man which I think you are NOT!). What is your point?

The quality of the questions we ask about life is equal to the quality of our life. And now that we know that the majority of these questions come from our past and not the present moment, this opens up a door to one of our most important questions.

If we change the way we view our past, will that interrupt preconditioning, and therefore change our fate in the future? I believe that the answer to this is yes. How? I will talk about that in the next chapter, and there is no question about it 🙂