Watch to the end, laurel, I'm talking to you!

There is a school of thought that says we make our own destiny. We are our choices. I've had some reasonable people point out that sometimes the choices are out of our hands... I had to agree, things that are done to us, especially as children just are way beyond our control. So, doing some reading tonight I ran across the concept of the Wyrd in a response to a very interesting article found here:



http://www.polyamorousmisanthrope.com/2007/11/26/thou-art-god/#comments



"Most of the time Wyrd is seen as analogous to Fate but it’s not. The best metaphor for Wyrd is looking at the threads of any fabric. The threads that go up and down are laid first in a loom and can said to be predetermined, whether by our genetics, the family environment we are born into, or supernatural intercession hardly matters because it’s only half the fabric. The PATTERNS that we make are determined by our choices, the threads that go back and forth to maintain the metaphor. Personally I consider it’s both these things that comprise how our lives is. So YES what has come before us can determine our life to an extent AND the choices that we make in life do to. The hard part is figuring out what things come from where and then having the strength to look back and say, “Okay that wasn’t a very good decision….. can I make a better decision next time. Or was that the only decision possible.” Cause sometimes there IS only one decision to make. ...It does take a bit of doing……and complete brutal honesty with yourself cause only YOU know all your secrets. Not to mention you have to KEEP doing it…and you keep falling off your balance point…"



-Deb Terry



And here is an excerpt from the Wickipedia about WYRD:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyrd



In a simple sense, Wyrd refers to how past actions continually affect and condition the future, but also how the future affects the past. Indeed, for a true comprehension it is key for the Wyrd to be embraced as a conceptual mystery, wherein the tides and tidings of time and timelessness flow and weave always, entwining the reticulum of the fabric of being and non-being.[1] The Wyrd also foregrounds the interconnected nature of all actions and how they influence each other. Wyrd, though conceptually related, is not congruent with predestination. Unlike predestination, the concept of Wyrd allows for one's wyrd or agency: albeit agency constrained by the wyrds or activities of others, but nevertheless capable of weaving reality. This view is also prominent in the concept of Karma, as used in Indian religions. Wyrd is "inexorable"[2] and "goes as she shall"[3], the fate (Norse ørlǫg) woven or scored by the Norns.



I like it, I may have to add this idea to my self defined cosmology. I like that Your actions and achievements in prior lives define the roadmap, but your present conscious mind decides your path from birth to death on that map in this life.



Yeah, I believe in some sort of reincarnation. It's closer to the concept of Bardo than anything else I suppose. The development of discipline that may lead to Nirvana. Go look it up, it's fascinating.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana



:)



I'm still having some trouble working out who set us on the road though.

Or you are just a Heinlein fan, a quote about a saying that the main character in the novel was prone to use:



That pantheistic, mystical “Thou art God!” chorus that runs through the book is not offered as a creed, but as an existentialist assumption of personal responsibility, devoid of all godding. It says, “Don’t appeal for mercy to God the Father up in the sky, little man, because he’s not at home and never was at home, and couldn’t care less. What you do with yourself, whether you are happy or unhappy–live or die–is strictly your business and the universe doesn’t care. In fact, you may be the universe and the only cause for your troubles. But, at best, the most you can hope for is comradeship with comrades no more divine (or just as divine) as you are. So quit sniveling and face up to it — “Thou art God!”



– October 21, 1960 Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame



Nice, "Quit sniveling and face up to it...".



Brilliant and slightly wacko guy that Heinlein.



I read everything he ever published.