Are We All Living A Predetermined Destiny?

[Darrick]

  About a year ago i was watching one Joe Rogan's podcasts/videos and came across a very interesting conversation between him & a friend. His friend brought up an idea that he had heard from another source stating something along the lines of...

  "What if our lives are already predetermined? Either by a higher entity or some other unknown force(or no force at all). And no matter how hard we try, how hard we work at developing the self & keep pushing towards being what we truly want to be, things will go the way they are pre-determined. Like someone who wants to be a famous actor. In their mind they keep trying and trying, working at it & giving it their all everyday BUT are already predetermined NOT to become famous and will forever be stuck trying. And those who have made it to fame and or whatever were predestined to be. "

  Although i came across this conversation a year or so ago, it has always stuck with me. And if it IS true, that is a scary and very sad truth. 

Either WE as humans and conscious being HAVE THE ABILITY to CREATE our own reality... or the UNIVERSE or WHOEVER the F@$! has it all mapped out for us already.

Thanks for reading!!!  

[Neo]

Yes, but we all make our choices don't we. So the choice still happens, it was just that every thing in the universe that impinged on that choice including your own DNA and whatever was going through your mind that day was all set in motion a long time ago. If you were to choose that it's not worth doing something because of this very knowledge of predetermination, then that too is a choice.

[Darrick]

@Neo Nice!! Very good response! But this brings me to one of Leo's recent videos which he explains that WE DO NOT have free will. And every decision or choice is NOT ours, but is part of a bigger picture and that thoughts & ideas come from "no where". Tricky stuff. 

   It sounds sooo confusing and really got me thinking.. which is good!!  

When Leo said that we DO NOT have free will, it turned my whole perception up-side fucking down  

[Neo]

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When Leo said that we DO NOT have free will, it turned my whole perception up-side fucking down

Yes, as far as I know, we don't have a choice, but if you *act* as if you don't have a choice, then you've chosen to do so.

[Live Life Liam]

The ego thinks it has free will when really it's just an illusion and only consciousness/God/infinity or whatever you want to call it that does.

When you have a direct experience of the true one self you will know what people are talking about by saying free will dosent exist.

But technically you do have free will because your not this limited identity at all. So yes and no but the person you think you are does not.

Edited January 26, 2017 by Live Life Liam

[FindingPeace]

Yes it's all predetermined. You can prove this quite easily. It's already been proven by your current history to date.

We may not be able to see how our futures will turn out, but they will turn out exactly as they will. Then you can look back and see what happened. Ultimately, everything that has happened in you life up until this very moment, every thought, decision, action etc was always going to happen the way it did. There was never an alternative. That's why you are here right now the way that you are. And your future will continue in the way that it will. Whatever happens is the only way it can happen. You just can't see it until it does. You don't create your thoughts and make decisions. They occur and your conscious awareness witnesses them. There is no 'control'.

Reality is just an inevitable chain reaction of cause-and-effect events. It will do exactly what it does and there will be no 'alternative'. How can there be?

We only see the illusion of free will because we don't have the resource to construct an accurate enough simulation and projection to see what will happen. So we live with the belief that things are uncertain until other things occur and actions are taken. The thing is.. all those occurances and actions will happen anyway, exactly the way that they do.

But this isn't a sad or scary thing. Why should it be? You're 'life' is only an observation of a process. Life is an emergent phenomenon of consciousness. Just go for the ride and see where it will take 'you'. Appreciate the fact that there is even a ride to go on!

[cetus]

@Darrick There is another way to look at this too. What you are experiencing now is only one version of the infinite you as a creator.

Every choice you make creates a different version of this universe as you move through time and space.

Think about it.  At an extreme, you could do a complete 180 on the reality you live in now and change everything in the blink of an eye. And in doing so create a completely new version of this universe because you have changed it's "story".

Or you could choose to stay within the safe confines of the familiar framework of the universe you created now and maybe change it slightly moment to moment, as most do. Totally your choice.

Here is where it gets heavy. haha

It really doesn't matter much because in the big picture all versions of reality are just a dream. So you can dream/create any version you choose from infinite possibilities. You are the creator existing as mind and body within the dreamscape of time and space.

 

[LetTheNewDayBegin]

It is undeniable that we experience "making a choice" in our lives. As @Neo brilliantly pointed out, thus, there is always a choice to make. It doesn't matter if it's an illusion or not. Experience of it is undeniable.

Stating "Reality is just an inevitable chain reaction of cause-and-effect events"  (as @FindingPeace said) is totally ungrounded. You see, without an observer, the reality ceases to be cause-and-effect. It becomes just this ever expanding field of probablities that manifest as something on an act of observation.

Also, the saying that "you have no free will" I believe is meant to guide you to realisation that there is no "you" in the first place, because everything is just one. These kinds of thoughts are meant to guide towards enlightenment. There is just one observer in this world and it observes itself. Bear in mind though, that all knowledge drawn from enligthenment experiences remains biased towards enlightenment.

To sum up, as you can see there's a strong coupling between the observer of reality and the reality observed and maybe that is the underlying mechanism of the process called "making a choice".

[Arman]

It is a very tricky one because looking at physical reality one can come to the conclusion that all life is deterministic, but then, by switching awareness and detaching from experience, you can start to realize that just your intent and focus alone can seem to change the probable outcome of any given reality at any given time - so it seems that it's generated from within. However then you could say that very impulse to go within and set intention may also be subject to that same determinism. Perhaps it's a combination of both free will and determinism - because one subset or partition of reality (ie. physical reality) can be a lot more predetermined than another, possibly even entirely deterministic until interacted with by a space of higher free will awareness (ie. our individuated soul.) 

I suspect that the answer isn't going to be binary so much as spectral; like various degrees of decision space, at one end being god which has unlimited power and unlimited free will, and at the other end being the most limited forms of decision space. Like rocks would be closer to this end. 

Edited January 26, 2017 by Arman

[cetus]

Reality has infinite possibilities so if you change physical reality through cause and effect, so what? It has no bearing over anything because all possibilities already exist. All you would be doing is acting them out in physical form one after another into infinity through various choices.

But if that's your thing, go for it. The worlds your oyster.

[Soulbass]

It should be possible to travel/actualize/teleport through various alternate realities^^

Edited January 26, 2017 by Soulbass

[FindingPeace]

16 hours ago, LetTheNewDayBegin said:

Stating "Reality is just an inevitable chain reaction of cause-and-effect events"  (as @FindingPeace said) is totally ungrounded.

It's grounded in this:

16 hours ago, LetTheNewDayBegin said:

You see, without an observer, the reality ceases to be cause-and-effect.

Exactly.

Reality is a subjective experience in the first place. It's an interpretation. It comes from our conscious experience. Otherwise... there is no reality and no cause-and-effect. No nothing.

Everything about your experience of reality, of 'life', is subjective and an emergent phenomenon of conscious awareness. It is impossible for anyone to even conceive what reality really is because you can only experience it as a manifestation of your sensory input, cognition and consciousness. Time, space, empty space, matter, objects, life, light, sound, colour, thoughts, decisions... you name it... it's all created by our interpretation of sensory input.

Free will, making choices etc, are experiences too. But they aren't real. If you look in to it hard enough you can see how every 'choice' in life is actually not a choice at all. That 'free will' is in fact not free, because it is completely influenced by pre-existing causal factors. Every 'choice' you make is actually an effect of a cause. If we really want to get deep, it's possible to see that there are never any 'choices' or 'decisions' at all.

But, this is all my subjective interpretation of reality. It isn't real. It isn't the 'truth'. Just a perspective, like everyone else's.

[Neo]

Quote

You see, without an observer, the reality ceases to be cause-and-effect. It becomes just this ever expanding field of probablities that manifest as something on an act of observation.

But what if it turns out we aren't *special* observers at all. We think we observe, but actually we are just part of the whole machine? (this is where the meditation comes in to see there is actually no observer)

[Guest Annetta]

21 hours ago, FindingPeace said:

And your future will continue in the way that it will. Whatever happens is the only way it can happen. You just can't see it until it does. You don't create your thoughts and make decisions. They occur and your conscious awareness witnesses them. There is no 'control'.

 ... OH!  (I don't have anything else to contribute)