Is there such a thing as free will? And if so, how should we as spiritual people proceed

knowing that we are free to create our reality? And if not, how should we proceed knowing

that we can't miss our destiny? So the opposite of free will is what they call in philosophical

circles determinism. Determinism is this belief that all of the

events that we experience in life, all of the choices that we make, are ultimately determined

by causes that are external to our will, such as the year we were born, the community we were

born into, the family we were born into, our access to resources, our religion, our culture, et cetera, et cetera.

And as we move through our life, if we hadn't been born at that time, in that family,

with that set of resources, we would not have been able to take advantage of certain opportunities

and make certain choices that have ultimately cascaded into the life that we have.

And I would say that there are merits to that from a ground level

perspective, but from a spiritual perspective, which means we want to zoom out and look at it

through a broader lens, before we even come into this life, spiritually speaking, we choose

when we want to come into the life, what kind of family we want, what the characteristics

of our parents are going to be

like, what siblings we're going to have, what opportunities we're going to be afforded,

you know, et cetera, et cetera. So in a way, we freely choose our circumstances that we're born into,

but then once we get born into this life, a part of the process is we forget all of that. And all we can

recall as we continue to grow up in this human experience is the stuff that happened after we were

born. So this is all by design. And I think that's one of the reasons why Einstein said there are only

two ways to live your life. You can live your life as though nothing is a miracle.

In other words, determinism is the answer to why this is happening. Or he said, you can live

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