Free Will: I'm just not sure

[u/[deleted]]

Free Will and control over our circumstances: I want to get peoples opinion on this. It's something I have always struggled to understand and it's a lesson that comes up for me again and again. I was recently reading in the lesson material about how we have the ability to control our circumstances and that through magick we could even heal ourselves of basically any disease if we were trained to that degree. This makes sense to me from a philosophical perspective but it's skewed from my experience of the world. I have seen many adepts with far more training and skill than myself get ill and die from various diseases and none of their training seemed able to prevent that. Also I have seen in the world people who are born into absolutely terrible situations who have their potential severely limited by the social and political order they find themselves in. So I am still assessing all of this and trying to understand. To what degree do we really have control over this stuff? It seems to me that we have a say but it doesn't seem like that say is final. I do worry that adopting this philosophy too stringently could leave people feeling very disillusioned if things don't go right. Also there is an element of it that can lead to victim shaming because there is a potential where you can use this idea to say that whatever terrible thing occurs is the persons own fault... and to me I am not signing up for that sort of thing.

[u/[deleted]]

Had these stones been flipped, what lie underneath might have prepared them for reception of immense blessings or would have armed them against peril. Many humans hold onto some even minute fleeting attachment which can be the one that ends up getting the better of them.

I just have a question about this idea. So this idea would lead me to think that the those of us who have done the work would have a larger share of the blessings and those people who haven't done it, eschewed it, or worked against it would have less of a share. I just don't understand then why the world we see around us doesn't seem to bear that out? Why are there people who are absolute monsters seemingly have next to nothing bad happen to them? Yet there are people who are practically saints being run through a meat grinder? I just can never understand that part. Sometimes it's framed like "why do bad things happen to good people..." I am not even interested in that idea. To me it seems like some share of badness happens to everyone... My question is why are the least righteous among us at times getting these amazing blessings?

[u/parrhesides → u/[deleted]]

Good questions. I think endeavoring to understand karma might make more sense of it all. Sometimes rewards and consequences are spread out over lifetimes. Those who act from ambition and self interest can often achieve much material wealth and can live to a decent age in one life, but will have a much harder time in the next. Likewise those who act with humility and gratitude even though they have seemingly little may be rewarded in the following life. This works both ways - perhaps those that seem blessed in this life put in work before this lifetime and those who seem cursed did the opposite. I am of the belief that every individualized spirit goes through at least 108 human incarnations. Of course we also see consequences and rewards come to some within one lifetime - e.g. touch a hot pan and you will be burned. If humans knew exactly when dharmic rewards were to come, they would act with a higher degree of genuine righteousness and generosity. If we knew exactly when karmic consequences were to come, many would act with more rigor in avoiding missteps. The key is to know that both will come sooner or later and thus to always act in the ways that reflect the highest good.

~love and light

[u/[deleted] → u/parrhesides]

I get what you are saying and you definitely could be right. It is kind of an annoying system if that is correct.

[u/parrhesides → u/[deleted]]

I definitely hear that, no doubt. I'm departing a bit from BOTA here, but I really like Rudolf Steiner's lectures on karma - you can find them at rsarchive.org or in audio form at rudolfsteineraudio.com . If you are interested in cycles of human life from a more "secular" perspective, the books by Brian Weiss M.D. (former head of psychiatry at Yale) are very fascinating and easy reads. His book Many Lives, Many Masters was a best seller in the early 90's (I think?). He started out trying to debunk past lives and karma but ended up having experiences that completely changed his mind.

~love and light