Tag: destiny

  • To Leave a Legacy

    I awoke this morning, looked at the sky, and felt the grey rain clouds descend through the skylight slowly dulling my senses. It was a good dulling. The kind that mutes out the noise and sets in the calm that prompts the mind to wander to spaces not often visited. This morning that space happened to be the contemplation of a legacy.

    As I laid in bed wondering what my legacy would be, I wondered if it was important to me. Is the desire to be remembered an indulgence of the ego, or the need for affirmation of a life well served? The cynic in me tugged at my conscience as I realised that even the need for affirmation, regardless of how well intentioned, talks to the ego more than to servitude.

    If servitude is a natural consequence, regardless of intent, is a legacy then not inevitable? As my mind spiralled down the rabbit hole I saw the patterns forming and the relationships unfolding. The distractions of how we contemplate being perceived versus how we’re perceived while contemplating it. But I avoided restraining or deliberately guiding my thoughts. Instead, I observed it as it took a shape and form of its own, similar to an out of body experience. It’s the only liberation I can afford these days.

    The questions kept tumbling out of that grey space, demanding answers, but only finding a mild curiosity in its place. I looked at the landscape before me, the beginnings of a desire to articulate a legacy, and smiled a small smile as it dawned on me. To be or not to be is not the question, instead it’s the inevitable outcome of a life lived, or not lived.

    My legacy will be my legacy regardless of how I choose to shape it, or define it. Contemplating it proves to be yet another distraction from living it. Living it, however, suggests that I have a sense of conviction in what is important to me, which if true, would mean that such contemplation would be unnecessary since my call to action rings loud and clear in my head.

    When that call is muffled or worse, silenced, I find myself contemplating more than living. At times like that I’m not failing my legacy, because my legacy cannot be betrayed. It can only be defined. Just by being, whether I choose to actively contribute or not, my legacy will be known for my contribution or my lack thereof. The fact that I am borne from a mother and not through mist means that I cannot pass through this world being unknown. Therefore, it is not possible to live a life without interruption or contribution.

    How I disrupt or contribute defines the quality of my life, and the essence of my legacy. I can go through life demanding to be known, or I can live eagerly seeking to know. Answers come to those who seek it sincerely, but I’ve rarely seen fulfilment reach those who demand it. So it makes sense to invest in curiosity as a means to inform my actions, rather than demand a reciprocation that is almost always lacking.

    Quite unexpectedly, I found myself reminded once again that this world is built for respite, not justice. My legacy therefore is not one to hold me in good stead in this world, but is intended to treat me well in the next. The paradox of life is therefore the need to serve those that directly distract us from our true purpose while maintaining a steady course to achieve it in spite of such a colourful distraction.

    Early morning thoughts can be therapeutically taxing, and what should be the calm before the day often turns out to be the storm before the distractions instead. Life is waiting to be lived. To be, that is the only sane choice for me.

  • Similarity Between Light and Prayer

    I’ve often tried to explain my views about destiny, or fate as many like to call it. In a recent conversation with a friend, we touched on the subject of prayer and it led me to again consider my views about the purpose of prayer if destiny is supposedly pre-written in line with the mainstream views of destiny. In other words, is my fate sealed because the outcomes have been decided regardless of my actions, or are we simply missing the point? That’s when the similarities between prayer and a typical beam of light occurred to me.

    A normal beam of light will simply light up an object, whereas a slightly more intense beam of light will possibly heat it up. Yet an even more intense beam of light could change the shape of the object, or even cut through the object, if not entirely incinerate the object. So it stands to reason that just existence of something is not necessarily a finite definition of its purpose or impact.

    I think the same is true with prayer. If said lightly and without conviction, it serves a limited purpose, if any at all, like those solar powered garden lights that light up nothing more than the casing in which they exist. For the same reason, I believe the prayer of the oppressed person is so much more powerful, because the oppressed person usually turns to Allah at a point when they’ve given up reliance on anything and anyone else. So the intensity, sincerity and conviction with which they pray results in it triggering those effects that Allah has already ‘configured’ in this universal law that governs our existence, often referred to as fate, or destiny, or taqdeer. Hence there being no need for Allah to directly intervene, because these laws that Allah has established already intervenes simply because Allah said ‘Be’, and it is. So trust that handhold that you have with Allah, and stop doubting it. The doubts weaken our prayer while the trust strengthens it.

  • Questions from a Non-Muslim

    cynicallyjaded:

    wolfy18:

    I have a few questions I’d like to put out to the Muslims & Christians on here.

    Some questions might appeal to one religion more so than the other and the questions are sort of related to eachother, but whatever.

    1.  If God is all seeing, all knowing, and the great planner of everything, does this mean he plans evil?

    2.  Can you have mercy without sin?  If not, does this mean we have to become a sinner before we can “find God”?

    3.  If our lives are planned, does this contradict our free will?

    By the way I’m asking out of intrigue, not trying to sound like a condescending twat.  I genuinely want answers.

    Hi, these questions are asked often by both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Here’s my perspective on what I think it means:

    1. Evil is not a ‘commodity’ like good in the same way that dark is not a ‘commodity’ like light. The one exists in the absence of the other. This ties in with the concept of fate and free will, which also relates to your third question, so I hope to deal with it more comprehensively in that answer. Essentially what I’m saying is that God doesn’t plan good or evil. He simply makes available the choices to us with predetermined outcomes, and what we choose is what determines whether good or evil results from our actions.
    2. Assuming that mercy is only required when we sin overlooks the fact that mercy is also needed to continue giving without reason or recompense. What I mean is that we often only think of asking for mercy if we realise that we’ve done something wrong. However, as Muslims, we consider every good that we receive, and every comfort that we enjoy as a mercy from Allah. So we believe that we’re indebted to Allah for all the mercy that He shows us even though we are often not complying with what we believe to be His will or instructions for the way we should be living our lives. 
    3. Free will and destiny are often very misunderstood. As Muslims, we believe we have a limited free will, and not an absolute free will. What I mean is that I can choose how I respond to a situation, or how I want to act, but I cannot control what situations or experiences are presented to me. This world is a perfect system in that every action has a predetermined reaction. These are the natural laws and order of things that we believe was created by Allah. Therefore, whatever we do, the outcome is known to Allah because He created the ‘rules’ that govern existence and how everything interacts. But in this system, there are variables, and these variables allow us to exercise our limited free will. So by exercising our gift of reason and logic, and our ability to act on it, we choose either to encourage good, or evil. How we choose, and how we comply with the laws and guidelines set out for us is what determines our standing in Allah’s court, and subsequently will determine our final fate when we’re called to account on the day of judgement.

    I’ve contemplated the issue of fate and free will previously, so if you’d like to read more about my thoughts on the subject, you can see some of my previous posts under the tag of fate.

    I look forward to hearing your views on this. 

  • Man has never created anything. We’ve only manipulated what we have in order to arrive at new configurations of what already exists, regardless of how complex the manipulation may be, it will always be nothing more than that. A manipulation of what exists.

    Excerpt from a previous post on Destiny

    Serves as a good reminder for me whenever I feel pompous about my achievements in life.

  • Man has never created anything. We’ve only manipulated what we have in order to arrive at new configurations of what already exists, regardless of how complex the manipulation may be, it will always be nothing more than that. A manipulation of what exists.

    Destiny

  • Destiny…

    Some believe that the future is written and cannot be altered, others believe it can. Some believe it’s not written at all, and lies completely in your hands. Unsurprisingly so, I believe in neither, at least not within the context of its common interpretation.

    I often wonder what fate really is, and if it really is as rigid as we often believe it is. Someone recently shared a post that suggested that it is largely our inability to control the choices of others, and therefore their choices result in our destiny, and how we react to it is what completes the cycle. I think this is only a small part of a much bigger picture. 

    Consider this scenario. I’m driving down a road, and there’s a huge rock in the middle of the road which presents me with a few options:

    1. Avoid the rock and drive on unharmed or undamaged – and people will say that it was in my fate/destiny to have seen the rock and been able to avoid it in time
    2. Apply brakes and stop before hitting the rock and escape unhurt or undamaged – and people will say that it was in my fate to have seen it and brake in time to avoid injury
    3. See the rock and choose to do nothing because I was feeling particularly morbidly destructive at the time and die in the crash – and people will say that it was in my fate to die that day and if it wasn’t the rock, it would be something else that would have caused my death anyway
    4. Not see the rock because I was texting someone and crash and die – and people will say that he was too busy with his mobile phone, that’s why he didn’t see the rock

    There’s probably many more scenarios that could play out but the point is, I had a choice in what I was focusing on and how I was going to respond to the presence of the rock, and each sequence of events and related decisions had pre-defined outcomes. And in this, I believe, lies the secret of destiny.

    Destiny, for me, is not a prescribed outcome regardless of the efforts of my life. Nor is it a cast-in-stone destination that I will reach regardless of what I do or don’t do towards achieving it. If that were true, we’d all be able to laze around and never have to worry about anything, because it’s all pre-ordained already. Well, I believe that it is pre-ordained, but just not in that context.

    I often toy with the analogy of a software developer and the code that they write. That code gives ‘life’ to a certain number of functions that have specified behaviours that are limited only to the permutations possible through the available configurations made possible by that code. Let’s assume for a second that that code had a sense of self, or a conscious nature with an associated intelligence to act out the possible permutations defined by the developer. In that case, every single one of those sequences that play out could be defined as destiny within the context of that code. 

    Extrapolate that example onto a grand scale and note how the same laws apply to the universe, and humans. The laws of nature have been defined. Pre-determined. Hard coded and configured. We have the intelligence and the limited ability to manipulate those configuration permutations in seemingly infinite ways, and because of the number of variables that give rise to infinite variations, it appears impossible to predict the outcomes accurately, except where the known variables are limited to what is within our grasp to compute. Man has never created anything. We’ve only manipulated what we have in order to arrive at new configurations of what already exists, regardless of how complex the manipulation may be, it will always be nothing more than that. A manipulation of what exists. 

    With this in mind, destiny then becomes a sequence of events that are triggered entirely by choices we make, and actions we take, with one caveat. There’s always a caveat. Each person acts with independent thought, despite many displaying behaviour that suggests that they’re possibly incapable of such an act. How our choices interact with each other is what makes life a challenge, or a pleasure. How we react to those interactions of choices is what determines our fate and well being. 

    Whether we choose to actively participate or not is irrelevant. Because every breath forces a reaction, every thought prompts an action, and every action spawns a reaction. So the only time we stop participating is when we die. At that point, the impact of our actions continue to survive beyond our lifetime, but we are then unable to influence the outcomes of any further interactions of choice. 

    The future is therefore what we make of it. What effort and focus we put in, directly influences what we get out. But don’t mistake this for karma, as in if we do good, we should expect good in return. It doesn’t work that way. Our choice to care about someone that may not choose to care in return (for whatever reason) will result in our good being repaid with bad. That is destiny and karma will never be able to explain that.

    We alter the course of our lives with every thought and every act. We develop trends through the consistency of our actions, but at any given moment a single act or coinciding set of choices could alter that carefully constructed path and destroy every aspiration or ambition we so meticulously planned for. However, this ‘configuration’ is not limited to only what we can observe or manipulate physically. I believe it extends to everything we sense, feel, think, experience, or contemplate.

    Imagine that every single thing that you can fathom, tangible or intangible, physical or spiritual, all has a value that gives it a weighting within this grand scheme we call destiny. How much we accumulate of the various values would determine the course of our lives. Take this a step further and imagine that even prayer has such values assigned to it. The accumulation of this value on a spiritual plane would have an influence on our experiences on a physical plane, which results in apparently amazing outcomes that would not otherwise be explainable. 

    The complexity of the laws that govern all this is mind blowing to say the least. The fact that a finite set of laws exists is unquestionable. If there was the slightest hint of randomness in any of it, things supposedly left to chance, there would be unpredictable chaos at every turn. But there isn’t. Even when things go really pear-shaped, after a suitably rigorous post-mortem, the sequence of events that gave rise to the apparent chaos is quickly unravelled. Which confirms that chaos in fact does not exist. 

    There’s so many more thoughts on this that I need to articulate, but it’s too many to effectively translate into words right now. This is the first time that I’ve attempted to share these ideas at all even though it has been plaguing me for many years now. I wonder if it will make sense to anyone else at all?

  • What goes around comes around…only when it comes around, it comes around twice as hard.

    (Source: http://soulhunting.tumblr.com)