'It was meant to be.' That is a statement that I have heard hundreds of times. But are things really meant to be? How much influence does free will have? There are so many books nowadays showing us how we can create our own personal reality, but I have always felt that sometimes stuff just happens.

When I was growing up, one of the most commonly used phrases in the village was 'What's for you won't go by you.' As I started out with this book I had that phrase in mind. I wanted to look at the forces of destiny and free will.

In approaching the subject I first examined astrology, because it is often said that our lives are 'written in the stars'. I had never ventured into it before, though I had always wondered how an astrologer was able to look at a birth chart and see a person's whole life. Now I realize that a birth chart is a highly accurate map of the planets and stars at the moment of a person's birth. The skill of an astrologer is in interpreting the chart.

A birth chart is really like a storybook of symbols. Each planet and constellation has a myth or story associated with it that has been with us for thousands of years and has become imprinted on our collective psyche.

In the last century the great psychoanalyst Carl Jung popularized the concept of the collective unconscious, a repository of information that we all share. It is much like the internet - we are all separate, just as individual computers are, but we share a common 'mind', just as computers share the internet. So, as myths and stories become popular, they become available to us all at an unconscious level. Even if you haven't consciously learned about, say, the myth of Mars, the Roman god of war, you will know the story unconsciously. And furthermore, when the unconscious mind recognizes a story in the sky, which could be a planet entering a particular constellation of the zodiac, you begin to unconsciously play out that story in your own life.

As well as these archetypal stories in the sky, we are all affected by the sun, moon and planets via the Earth's magnetic field. Both human and animal nervous systems are sensitive to this field. Indeed, many animals rely on it to guide them on long migrations. So not only do the planets affect us through the stories that they symbolize in our unconscious minds, but they also have direct magnetic effects on our health and emotions. The scientific evidence for this is strong and compelling. But does this mean the planets and stars force behaviour upon us or does free will allow us to overrule their influence?

In addition to our cosmic destiny, we all have a biological destiny that we inherit from our parents. New evidence is showing that we inherit the consequences of the experiences of our parents, grandparents, great grandparents and even earlier ancestors. Recent research in a field of science known as epigenetics has shown that life experiences alter our genes in such a way that the change is passed down to the next generation, and the one after that, and the one after that. So part of your genetic legacy stems from what happened to your parents, their parents and their parents before them. And your children and your children's children will bear the consequences of the lifestyle you lead today. What you do influences their destiny.

Is this genetic inheritance fixed or can we exert our free will to shape our health in any way we wish, regardless of what our ancestors did?

From a deeper perspective, do we have the free will to choose the family we are born into? There is a common worldwide belief that the soul chooses the life that it is about to live.

Recent scientific evidence of this has come from studies of people who have had so-called near-death experiences, where they have clinically died but been resuscitated and have returned with memories of the afterlife. Such reports are so numerous that leading cardiologists around the world are now investigating the phenomenon. Evidence for life after death has also come from people who have undergone psychiatric hypnotic regression.

Some of these studies have suggested that certain aspects of life are chosen before birth. Could it be that we are unconsciously guided by a memory of our pre-birth choices? Many people believe that certain subjects naturally inspire us because we 'remember' them and that we develop relationships with certain people because we planned to meet. Are such agreements fixed or can we change them along the way? Is everything that happens meant to happen? Or do we have the free will to create whatever we want, whatever the conditions we are born into and whatever our pre-birth choices might have been?

According to the law of attraction, we attract what we focus on. So we all have the power to attract what inspires us and makes us happy. What does this mean in terms of our destiny? Can we use our free will to change it by bringing new things into our lives?

On a global level, it has been suggested that the conditions of the world are the product of our collective choices. Do we have the power to change the direction in which the world is heading or are we locked into a preordained future?

The well-known psychiatrist and international bestselling author Dr Brian Weiss progressed thousands of patients into the future and many described a startlingly similar picture of the world 100-200 years from now, 300-600 years from now and 1,000 years from now.

Many indigenous cultures have prophecies about a change in the world that's due soon. Indeed, the Mayan calendar, which charts a cycle of 5,200 years, ends on 21 December 2012. The sun is also expected to reach a maximum level of solar activity in 2012. Are we destined for inevitable changes or could we choose what type of world we wish to live in?

Could it start with each of us - in our own hearts and minds?

David R. Hamilton, PhD

February 2007

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