Does free will apply to keeping things from happening to us?.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
“Dear Deepak, I’m enclosing a quote from Byron Katie that puzzles me: “Just let it be. You may as well; it is. Everything moves in and out at its own time. You have no control. You never did; you never will”.
I heard you speak about free will and even about ‘attracting’ things, people, or circumstances in our own lives.
How does that idea combine with BK’s statement?
Thank you very much and I look forward to your kind reply.”
Response:
Free will is such a puzzling topic in large part because it is so poorly defined.
Byron Katie is not suggesting that we are not conscious agents with no ability to think or act with intention.
After all, she chooses to teach and write books to improve people’s lives, and that assumes people have the option of listening, understanding, and applying that teaching.
What she is talking about is action with a motive to change us from a state of unhappiness to happiness.
This is willpower from the point of view of separation, trying to fix a sense of inner fear, and insecurity by changing someone else’s behavior or by changing the environment.
We don’t have that kind of control.
As the Bhagavad Gita says: we have control over our actions but not over the results of those actions for ourselves or for others.
Byron Katie is speaking to that understanding.
And when I write about transforming life through conscious intention, it is about aligning one’s thoughts and feelings with the universe, so that our spiritual evolution and growth are supported by cosmic intelligence.
That growth is not through control, force, or effort either.
Love,
Deepak
