Often we keep moving like a pendulum from free will to destiny and again from destiny to free will. We look at different tangible and intangible objects, such as money and taste, and get attracted to them. We feel that we have free will to make efforts to fulfill our desires and set goals to achieve the objects of desire. If we are able to achieve the goal, we consider it to be an outcome of our free will while if we are unable to achieve the goal, we blame our destiny for the same. If the events are destined to happen, where is the place for free will, and if there is free will, where is the place for destiny.
I feel that we remain confused throughout our lives and pass on the confusion to everybody around us. We somehow cook a half-baked story of Karma and start believing in the same. We are facing tough circumstances, due to our past karmas. This is a very popular belief. Mostly used as an alibi to avoid hard work. Karma comes as a shield to protect us from taking responsibility for our decisions. That makes us weak and irresponsible.
On the other hand, we use free will as an escape mechanism. We get addicted to pleasures. We like certain things that have been sold to us by the salesmen sitting at every nook and corner in society. You should become a doctor, engineer, or Civil Servant. We keep getting this feed repeatedly from all the relatives and parents. The young minds get trapped in the marketing strategy soon and set their life goals in terms of becoming so and so. Most of them are not able to succeed due to the huge competition and live life full of frustration and unfulfilled dreams always living with the burden of being a failure with quite low self-confidence and trampled self-esteem. The ones who succeed realize soon that have been made fool of. However, that is so difficult to accept, and therefore start living a life full of pretensions. They start pretending as if they feel happy and start setting their next goals in terms of such different pleasures.
Where is the freedom in so-called free will? It's just a trap. An unaware mind gets into the trap and keeps running after the repeated dose of certain sensations throughout his life. The more he gets the more thirsty he becomes to run more. Can a person hungry for money make a decision to leave money? Can a person attached to his kids make a decision to leave the kids? Can a person addicted to social validation make a decision against social conventions? Can a person addicted to coming first make a decision to come second? Where is free will in all these decisions? Where is the choice?
The entire problem is due to the false understanding of free will and destiny. Our entire understanding of life is from an external perspective. Manthara develops fear and insecurity for the future of Bharata and convinces Kaikeyi to ask two old boons from Dashratha to make Bharata king of Ayodhya and to send Rama to the forest. We may consider it as the free will of Kaikeyi and Manthara, and the destiny of Rama from an external perspective where we feel that the rulership of Ayodhya is the measuring yardstick. Kaikeyi and Manthara are exercising their free will to get the same while Rama plays into the hands of destiny. If we change the perspective and look at the same event from a soul perspective, it is Rama who exercised his free will. He was not bound by the greed of the rulership of Ayodhya and therefore he could so easily leave Ayodhya. On the other hand, Kaikeyi and Manthara were so fixated on Bharata and more than that on their own mental stories of pleasure and happiness that they played into the hands of greed. Buddhi (Dashratha) is free to exercise free. However, it becomes weak when it gives those two boons to Mana (Kaikeyi) and Chitta (Manthara), and when Mana and Chitta get dissociated from Rama (consciousness), greed and ambitions take over. These events keep taking place in the mental plane with all of us almost all the time. So long as our Buddhi stays connected to Rama, Mana, and Chitta do not take over. As Buddhi becomes weak, Mana and Chitta take over. A strong Buddhi in fact helps even Mana and Chitta to connect to the consciousness.
Thus, Karma is internal. The more we move away from the consciousness, the more we get fixated on worldly objects and more greed and ambitions take over and the more our lives are driven by fear. That's our destiny and that's our Karma. Rama was always free: whether he was in Ayodhya or in the forest. He was always sitting on the side of the river and never ever entered the stream. He always remembered that this was a play he was playing on the stage of life and that is why never fell into the trap of Karma: whether good or bad.
The play of Karma gets further deeper in the plane of energy. When Rama went to the forest, he was living happily with Sita and Lakshmana exploring the beauty of the forest and meeting different saints on the way. However, Suparnkha approached Rama and asked him to be her husband which Rama denied very politely. However, Suparnkha was full of greed and lust and insulted by the rejection approached his brother Ravana to take revenge. Ravana took help from his relative Marich to take the form of a golden deer to attract Sita and kidnapped Sita. From a surface, we will again understand as if it was the free will of Suparnkha and the destiny of Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana. However, Suparnkha was just fixated on greed and lust and made decisions driven by her habit patterns due to her past Karmas. It was Rama and Sita who exercised complete free will. Rama decided not to take the support of Bharata because of his freedom from all the support systems. He explored other possibilities even in adversity and in the process met Hanumana and Sugriva. He was not restless which is again an indication of his equanimity and wider understanding of life. After helping Sugriva to regain his kingship, he sought the help of Sugriva and Hanuman to find Sita. When we look from an internal perspective, the law of Karma as it operates in the plane of energy becomes clear to us.
The energies of Tamas, Rajas, and Sattva, all operate inside us. Tamas (Suparnkha) and Rajas (Marich) take over the energy of Sattva when Sattva is not connected to the consciousness. Lakshmana, when asked by Sita to go away to search Rama after listening to the pretentious voice of Marich, Lakshmana drew Lakshmana Rekha and asked Sita not to cross that. We all draw a Lakshmana Reksha for ourselves in the form of different rules and traditions. However, when knowledge is disconnected from the consciousness, that can not protect us from the attacks of the demonic forces. It is because disjointed and disconnected knowledge and rules lack substance and focus on the form. That is why they are not strong enough to protect us. On the other hand, when all the energies get connected to the consciousness, they become as strong as Bharata, Hanumana, and Lakshmana. Bharata brought stability to the empire of Ayodhya acting as a representative of Rama. Hanumana searched for Sita and Lanka and made seemingly impossible tasks to be possible. Lakshmana killed Meghnatha who could not have been won over by none.
Even in the causal plane, we misunderstand the play of destiny and free will. We feel that Ravana and Meghnatha did not listen to Vibhishana and it was the destiny of poor Vibhishana to have been thrown out of Lanka. However, if we examine a little more deeply, Ravana and Meghnatha were just fixated on their ego and ambitions. It was Vibhishana and Sita who were free. Sita exercised her free will not to be affected by the fear. Vibhishana exercised his free will not to fall into the trap of greed and ambitions and that is why both could meet Rama.
A disconnected Saatvik causal energy gets trampled by the old samskaras of Tamas (Ravana) and Rajas (Meghnatha). However, when that connection with the consciousness is established at the causal plane, Vibhishana becomes the king of Lanka. However, that connection at the causal plane is the most difficult thing to establish. It's not easy for drama to cross the ocean. A bridge is to be formed between the mainland and Lanka. The first step to form that bridge is to look inside by sitting in meditation and making our concentration (Hanumana) realize its powers to fly to the inner world, take smaller and bigger forms, and see the entire inner world. Then a bridge has to be formed by doing small deeds of welfare. When these stones are thrown into the sea with the name of Rama, the bridge gets formed. Then the old Samskara in the form of Vibhishana tells the consciousness to kill Ravana by hitting an arrow at his naval.
Thus, Karma operates at a much deeper level than what we believe and understand. If we have no fixations on the mental, energy, and causal plane, where is the question of life and death. We are free to come and move away from this world just like an actor always remembering that he is playing a role on the stage. He is not bound by the play ever. Death is frightening if one is not aware of his reality. If one is aware of his real self, death is just a change of the stage. Our fixations on the mental, energy, and causal planes develop different habit patterns that take away our freedom. We feel as if we are taking the decisions out of free will while playing in the hands of our past karmas. On the other hand, the consciousness wants to make us free by bringing different challenges in our lives, that we resent due to ignorance. With awareness, we can look inward and unravel the mysteries of destiny and free will by observing our own inner world.
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