Who controls our destiny?
Does God control your destiny? The short answer is no—a conclusion that flies in the face of the teachings of the Christian Church and most other organized religions. God does not manipulate the events in your life and He does not interfere with your spiritual journey on Earth.
Most religions teach us that God is the Supreme Being who manipulates the circumstances of our lives to suit His own purpose. They believe all the good things that happen in your life, and all the hardships you suffer, are bestowed or foisted on you by God in His infinite wisdom. And they beseech you to honor and obey God in the manner they prescribe in order to win His favor.
I was raised as a Roman Catholic and early on I subscribed to this belief, just like everyone else. But this all changed one day when I was confronted on the street by a homeless man named Albert, who was actually one of my spirit guides, a wise emissary from the Spirit Side. In the dialogue that ensued, as recounted in my first book, Dancing on a Stamp, Albert answered all of life’s eternal questions that I had been asking for years: Who am I? What is my life’s purpose? What happens to me after I die? His answers rang true in my heart and provided me with the comfort and inspiration that I had been seeking all my life.
We chose our destiny
According to Albert, God (or the Source) created all of us and everything else in the universe, but It does not orchestrate the events in our lives. We are all individual aspects of the Source who are connected to each other and to all other things in the universe. The Source is a passive observer who lets the universe unfold without interference.
We are eternal souls having a human journey on Earth—a journey that we planned for ourselves before we were born. We freely chose to incarnate here in order to learn and experience the things we needed for our evolution as souls, and we determined the major circumstances of our lives before we left the Spirit Side. We chose our names, our places of birth, and the people who would be our parents, siblings, spouses, children, and friends, so we could encounter the life events that would allow us to grow and evolve.
But our Life Plans (which we are not allowed to remember after we are born) do not determine everything that happens to us because we all have the free will to make decisions and take actions, which means we will often stray off the course we had intended to follow. Thus, our destinies on this planet are actually shaped by our pre-birth planning and by the decisions we make and the actions we take as we journey through life. The Source does not interfere with these free-will actions, and It does not bestow favors or inflict hardships on us, contrary to what religious holy men have been preaching for centuries. This means you should never consider yourself to be the undeserving victim of a capricious God, because you freely chose your life, however good or bad it might be. Whenever I complained about my lot in life, Albert would chide me by saying: “Suck it up, quit your whining, and get on with it.”
Furthermore, Albert tells us that the Source does not make rules for us to follow. Most religions preach that God does make rules to govern our lives, and He will be offended if we breach His laws. But according to Albert, this is just a falsehood created by religious holy men as a means to control the masses through guilt and fear—a mechanism to compel their followers to do their bidding. Nothing we do on Earth is right or wrong in the eyes of the Source, because It does not have any expectations about how we should live our lives.
And because the Source does not make rules for us to obey, it follows that the Source will not judge or punish us for our deeds. No matter what we do on Earth, there is no punishment in the afterlife, and Hell does not exist. When our physical bodies die our souls return to the Spirit Side regardless of what we did on Earth.
This means that murders and terrorists go Heaven (Spirit Side) just like the good guys, because there is nowhere else to go. While this result may seem unjust to some people, Albert tells us that it makes sense if we understand the true reality of life of Earth. We are like actors in a play, each following the script we wrote for ourselves before we were born, while trying our best to ensure our free will actions do not send us off course. But at the end of the day, when we finish our lives and cross over to the Spirit Side, whatever we did on Earth, good or bad, contributes to our wisdom and aids in our evolution, and no one passes judgment on us.
We judge ourselves
Everyone on the Spirit Side understands that souls on Earth are just actors in a grand play and nothing that happens on Earth is for keeps. When we die we do not take anything with us except the memories and wisdom we gained from our experiences on this planet. The victims of abuse, once they have crossed over, will forgive their perpetrators and shower them with unconditional love, because they will then understand the cycle of life on this planet.
When we cross over to the Spirit Side we will review the lives we have just finished to assess our own performance. We will then be able to appreciate fully where we went off course by abusing others and failing to overcome the challenges we faced. No one will judge us but ourselves, and then only with a view to planning our next life on this planet. We can reincarnate as many times as we like until we feel comfortable that we have graduated from the Earth school and are ready to move on.
We are beings of energy who are on a journey of spiritual enlightenment—a joyful trek with no finish line. It is a never-ending adventure to experience all that the Source has created so we can grow and evolve as souls. As Albert told me many times, we need to lighten up and enjoy our journey because we can never go wrong or become lost.
-Garnet Schulhauser, author of Dancing on a Stamp and Dancing Forever with Spirit (To be published March 2015)
Listen to me talk to Lorane about these ideas on her radio show HERE
Great post. I love the diversity in your guest posts Lorane. . Very interesting.