IT’S ALL ABOUT CHOICES

              There is the inexorable dance between free will and fate that plays throughout our lives. This is something that those who are interested in astrology strive to understand and those of us who practice and study astrology endeavor to walk this fine line.

Certain things in our lives are fated at birth and indicated in our charts. We cannot change our parents or our birth circumstances or how we are raised. We have particular predispositions and preferences and interests that will reveal themselves throughout our lifetimes. This is all what we call fixed karma in Jyotish or Vedic astrology.

If we step back a moment, we can see specific patterns that continually repeat themselves.  While we may be unable to immediately stop their occurrence, we can choose to change our reaction to it.  With a reaction, we re-act the same situation over and over again.  We can act constructively rather than re-act nonconstructive.   This is unfixed karma in Vedic astrology.

And then there are the gray matters, the karma that’s a mixture of being fixed and unfixed.  The choices we make daily with our diet and activities.  There are pre-dispositions to the types of foods we prefer and how we may organize our days.  Yet, we do not have to be a slave to our chart, but can make positive, uplifting choices.

One of my favorite movies is “Sliding Doors” starring Gwyneth Paltrow.  It depicts the life of a woman and shows what happens when she catches a train and when the same woman misses that train.  Different events unfold, yet inevitably she experiences what she must and faces the lessons that are essential for her life.   How the events unfold varies.  She exercises choice in facing daily events and reshapes her life in a method that is uplifting for her.

           So, if things are not unfolding as you wish, choose and continue to be pro-active, set strong intentions, and learn the lessons, however they present themselves.