{"id":926,"date":"2011-04-12T00:48:11","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T07:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robertfagan.com\/?p=926"},"modified":"2025-03-18T23:02:44","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T06:02:44","slug":"destiny-versus-self-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/commentary\/926\/destiny-versus-self-effort","title":{"rendered":"Destiny Versus Self-Effort"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Those who ponder the Law of Attraction will often get caught up in a mental tussle between the effects of what we can affect for ourselves and what life or destiny throws at us. Trying to assign absolutes takes us out of the very alignment we are trying to achieve. That tussle is as much the ego\u2019s demand for knowing and assigning a reason to everything as anything else. While the Law of Attraction is a valid law of nature, there are many permutations of it whirling around in so many energy fields that we cannot always assign cause and effect, and blame to our own vibrations with absolute certainty. For example, your energies may be less or greater than mine.<\/p>\n

The lesson is applying the Law of Attraction is not so much in the getting or achieving, but how we respond to life. Everything exists in the Universe; we can\u2019t rid ourselves of anything by dropping them off the Universe. The issue then becomes, \u201cWhat do we focus upon and how do we respond with either love and excitement, or fear?\u201d If we accept that life is a journey and not a destination, and that we take detours or get out of alignment rather than suffer self-demeaning failure, we set ourselves up for a more fruitful ride.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Gilbert\u2019s popular book, \u201cEat, Pray, Love\u201d<\/em> contains a quote that I love that addresses this tussle:<\/p>\n

\u201cDestiny is a play between divine grace and willful self-effort. Half of it you have no control over, half of it is absolutely in your hands and your actions will show measurable consequence. Man is neither a puppet of the Gods nor is he entirely the captain of his own destiny. He is a little of both.\u00a0 We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing the two speeding side-by-side horses. One foot is on the horse called \u201cFaith,\u201d the other on the horse called \u201cFree will\u201d and the question you have to ask every day is which horse is which, which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it\u2019s not under my control and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?\u201d<\/p>\n

While we cannot control everything, we can control your reactions to everything.<\/p>\n

Every morning we wake up, you have absolute choice over everything you experience. Are we going to react with fear, judgment, scarcity, or resentment in a victim mode or are we going to embrace even the unintended with joy, appreciation, excitement, and charity. The choice is yours and always has been. Maybe it is time to cease analyzing and judging, and start living and feeling from a place of love. Destiny and free will may tend to smile upon you more often.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those who ponder the Law of Attraction will often get caught up in a mental tussle between the effects of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":3240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2107,334,2109],"tags":[2380,3044,3045,3046],"class_list":["post-926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coaching","category-commentary","category-life-coaching","tag-law-of-attraction","tag-eat","tag-pray","tag-love"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2011\/04\/destiny.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18831,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions\/18831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}