Thought I'd add the Buddhist perspective on fate. I don't know if it's true but it's what find most reasonable and empowering.

There is NO fate. Nothing is predetermined. Our actions are absolutely free in the present moment and what comes into our experience in that moment is the result of past thoughts, words and actions. There could be strong tendencies though. If we've done something over and over and over again it could be hard to break the pattern or habit and we feel trapped. Basically the less conscious a being is, the more it experiences life as something that just happens to it (fate). As we become more aware of the real world we loosen the karmic chains and we start to realize our freedom. Finally with enlightenment we break free from all limitations.

You are not "programmed." Nothing happens because it must happen. Every thought that you have now changes reality. Not only reality as you know it, but all reality. No act of yours predisposes a future self to act in a particular manner. There are banks of activity from which you can draw or choose not to draw.

Sorce: Seth Speaks

From the conventional science point of view that ultimately stands for materialism and determinism, yes, there is fate, and only fate. What we may romantically transfigure as a stroke of fate would be merely our valuation from our own individual perspective on things that happened because they had to happen because of inevitable cause and effect. If sometime, somewhere there was even the slightest spark of a free will, the whole universe would collapse and go to pieces. ;-)

From a spiritual point of view however, where everything is consciousness and the material world is only an expression of it, I would say that there is both some kind of fate and free will. What we feel as a stroke of fate are the things that we want to experience here, because the universe consciousness created fractions of itself (us) in order to observe and experience itself.

I came to the humble conclusions that the reason for all this is that the universe does this to find out what existence is and means. The moment it suddenly became aware of itself, there was something new that emerged out of the pure void and nothingness: the concept of existence. It now has no other choice than to play through every possible combination of concepts and ideas. And lo and behold, it is doing this through us, because we are the universal consciousness, and every our thought is Its thought, and every our idea is Its idea, with which we spin this mission forward. We are the creative force of the universe itself, and that is the essence of what our free will is all about.

You could say that Fate exists to some extent.

We make the decision from the non-physical before we are born on this planet that we want to be born in certain circumstances and be surrounded by a certain environment. The universe will deliver exactly those circumstances for example, we will be born in a poor family in a rough part of the world. But, it is us that have made that decision before we are born. You could call this fate but as ultimately the decision lies with us, I wouldn't.

Then, when we are born, mostly, law of attraction applies and fate does not exist anymore. We get what we attract in our physical reality. What I mean by that is, whatever your dominant vibration is, you will attract something in your reality that matches that vibration.

If your dominant vibration is happiness and you never let physical manifestations bring you down, then there is no way anything negative can happen to you.

Fate is hard to prove/disprove.

First future and past do not exist. We only have now to base an opinion on. So we can only talk about what happened.

After an action has happened one can easily say "It was supposed to happen" on the simple fact that this is only true because it did happen.

Michael

I may have a story to share about fate. I believe I have found the person I am suppose to be with. I really do not know her and she does not know me, but we came together through a posting. The weirdest thing was that I had only posted what I felt about my life and she responded from a different country. We do not know each other, but we have so much trust in each other. I gave her all my personal information so she wouldn't worry about me when we meet. She did the same as well through e-mails. It is a long story that I will share until the day she gets here then I will post every conversation we had. It funny how one e-mail can change the way you feel. Another thing, I believe fate only exist when you meet you. That was the strangest thing that ever happened to me. She would say everything I would say, like if she is my other half. I feel very strong, breathless, always questioning myself because it is the strangest feeling ever.

I do believe that we have a pre-incarnation plan for lessons while in the physical. Would that be considered Fate? To some extent yes because it gives you a general framework, however, I do believe that we constantly, through every choice we make, mold and rewrite that plan.

Thank you, namaste

There will come a day when even death is not fate, there are scientist working on immortality every day. Those with the courage enough to believe that death does not have to be part of the human experience. Even in the Bible it says many lived hundreds not a hundred but hundreds of years, something mutated in our genes and scientist are working on finding it everyday getting closer and closer. When we become immortal we will go forth and populate the galaxy with human kind in that eventual day we will become the Zon.

Update 6-6-13

I see fate as a proclivity toward a destined outcome that if not averted is inevitable.

Example: A car swerves off the road and is heading toward a tree. If no course correction is made we can safely conclude the driver's fate is to hit that tree.

In other words fate is the conclusive destiny determined by where we are presently heading and the influences of the present circumstances. This fate is absolute unless intervened to another direction.

This fate is not a set predestination but more so the sum of the present equation.

Yes, I think fate does exist most likely not with everyone or differently not with every situiations. But like Moses yes he was predetermined to be born and rise up and save the people. Samson was predetermined too do what he done for his mother was even told what to eat and not eat or by an angel while she was carrying him before he was born. Mary the mother of Jesus was predetermined to do this. Her mother had to give her up at two years old so she could be trained people and angels.

There are some people born into this world to save this world and people and make it an better place. Yes, there are some things that we don't control or have anything to do with.

We, make our selves feel good by learning and saying that we create our own reality but we forget sometimes that there is an creator who create us and everything else and he has plans and there are somethings not for us to know and there are somethings we just don't know.

Our reality might evolve around us but the world does not revolve around us. Most of us have our hands full just keeping our thoughts straight let alone what is going on in the whole entire world.

There is God, angels, demons,devil, entities, imortals, and so much more that we don't know anything about. God is still the creator and he has plans and anyone that has ever created anything had plans for what they had create.

The world is probably saved ten times everyday over with archangels, beings, entities, imortals whos job is to save the world from us or save us from the world, from other entities or beings and all of the negativity things happen in here.

Life is physical and spiritual and there are an lot of things going on beneath our noses that we don't even know about. Which we are probably better off for not know everything what is going on.

Later on I don't know them right off but I will come back when I find them and leave some scriptures to read what I have said is in the bible for some of you might want to read it.

Do we still have free will yes we still have free will to choose.

There is no fate, if you mean "inevitable predetermination." Interestingly, even in the Bible where God had decreed that Nineveh would be destroyed, when God saw that the inhabitants turned from their evil way, "God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did [it] not." (Jonah 3:10) So even in the Judeo-Christian tradition with all its supposed predetermined outcomes, there is room for an altering of the outcome based upon the course of action the people take. And that is always the case with us, particularly as regards reality creation. What is yet to be is not determined until it is, and the choices we make have everything to do with the outcome. If there is fate, it is in our own hands.

Personally, I think that fate is more of a human perception, since God created this universe out of Love not by Fate! I think the word fate, has become man’s best friend over the many years, especially since almost everyone tens to use the word very freely in a very descriptive manner to address the issue of the law of attraction of their soul mate, or in some instances death, such as we cannot cheat fate. And in the same token, are saying that they control their own destiny, and reality. So in essence no one knows for sure if Fate does exist, but I think that most of us accept it as a truth especially in the case of death!

if by fate one means what is ordained by the gods, this opens up into to our personal belief system.
my tendency is in favor of a divine plan fulfilled by each breath of life evolving (or unfolding) into greater (finer, or more subtle) consciouness within the confines of nature who controls the unerring law of cause and effect. so there are forces acting upon us, yet we at our level of mankind have free will to choose what we do and hence set into motion our own future.

(Dear Toshiro. Please don't call yours the Buddhist perspective. Before we are certified Buddhas we should only call it "my interpretation of the Buddhist perspective".)

The official Buddhist position is that 1) every effect has a cause and 2) the "self" is an illusion.

Here's my interpretation of the Buddhist perspective.

To put it simply, "every effect has a cause and the "self" is an illusion" means that free will is an illusion. However, the Buddhists do assert that what we do in the present affect our future. I think they say this for ethical reasons, because if they say that everything is predetermined, people will loose any sense of responsibility and start doing crazy things.

Here's how: when I say "you can't lift your hand right now" -- your reaction will probably be to lift your hand. Or to not lift you hand. But it will be caused by my words (plus your predisposition at the moment, which is determined by your experience). My words in their turn are determined by other causes.

Now, if I tell you "please be nice to other people because when they are hurt they feel emotional pain just like you do when you are hurt", you will most likely have another tiny reason to be nice. But if I tell you "it does not fucking matter, so enjoy yourself" then you will most likely have another reason to hurt somebody.

So depending on what I say, I will change somebody's future for better or worse.

Now, even if I don't REALLY have free-will to decide what to say to others, the cause of my actions propagates through the world just as well. This knowledge is what makes me prefer saying positive stuff over negative stuff.

Fate is those things which we think are pre-destined to be.

If we believe this, then we must also believe that everything is set in time and place, and nothing is random.

But if we look at the atom, we cannot predict where the electron will be around the nucleus of the atom at any given moment. Therefore, since we cannot make that prediction, then we see that at least the atomic world has no fate.

With me so far??? Okay.

So, since the atomic world is not set, is not pre-destined, then fate does not apply there. Again, fate depends upon everything happening in a set way...those outside reality would be able to see exactly where everything was going. But they could not predict those electrons, no matter what.

In the same way, we can statistically prove what a large group of people will do given a certain event, but we absolutely cannot predict what only one single person will do in that group. So Fate cannot exist for people, either.

So why is there a word for the idea that things are predestined- i,e. Fate? This is because of what we perceive in Life. We see events converging together, and our brains, wired to make sense of randomness, wired to make order of chaos, our dear little brains make patterns of Life and call these patterns "Fate". But we absolutely cannot predict what any one person will do from moment to moment. Therefore, Fate is just an illusion created by our minds.

However-Thinking that Fate does exist is fun. It makes sense of our sometimes senseless world.

Blessings and Love,

Jaianniah