Nika Kravchuk

Do Orthodox believe in "fate"?

Fortune tellers, magicians, belief in fate and doom, the influence of a name on a person's life. Don't go there, don't call it that, don't do it - where do superstitions end? How does Orthodoxy feel about this? Vladyka Roman, Bishop of Yakutia and Lena, answers.

Fate as the ability to manage talents

Many people believe in fate. On the other hand, the Church teaches us that there is God's providence. So are we free or not to change something in our destiny?

Regarding the understanding of the meaning of fate in the life of every person, there are two extremes.

The first one is that the Creator invented the fate for us, and we, in accordance with this, must go our own way.

The second one, quite the opposite, has made itself especially loud in the last decade. It's about the fact that no one is our master. We ourselves are the masters of our life path and forge our own destiny.

Here Orthodoxy is somewhere in the middle. Golden mean.

On the one hand, calling us to being, to eternity, the Lord endows each person with certain talents and abilities. And using these talents and abilities, we must, by benefiting our neighbors, inherit and be worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Is this conditional? No, because, unfortunately, even in a small proportion we do not use the talents and abilities that we have.

And therefore it is very important not only to enter into the plan of God, but to reveal these talents and abilities. And only then, thanks to the presence and vision of these talents, make your own way.

Can we influence our own destiny?

On the one hand, we have what God gave us - talents.

And on the other hand, we have the right to use them ourselves. We may not develop some (due to inattention and negligence), but we can develop some. It determines our destiny.

Here is a talent given to me. What is this, fate? No. This is a divine help for my development and formation. It's not a doom, it's not a condition. This is not determinism.

It's a gift from God, and I'm free to use it. They may become an artist, or they may not. I can follow my parents, who, for example, were doctors. And I use God's gift, and I choose myself. Somewhere in the middle is the Orthodox teaching.

Fatal mistakes are grave sins

- They say that in order to make the right decision at some fateful moment, for example, before a serious operation or on the eve of a move, you need to ask the priest for a blessing. If he gives a blessing, you can act, and if not, you should wait.

It is very important to make decisions not alone, to do it alone a little presumptuous. There are always parents who know more than we do. There are always wise mentors or friends. And church people always have a confessor - one who knows the inner world of a person more than the person himself.

It is right to make decisions collectively, taking into account advice, but not relying only on oneself.

- Somehow they told me: in youth you can make any mistakes, except for fatal ones. When I asked how they differ, they answered that the latter leave an imprint for the rest of their lives. How to avoid them?

Fatal errors [can] be understood as falling into some kind of sinful passion.

For example, falling under the passion of drug addiction is just scary because the imprint is imposed on the rest of your life. A person must understand that he is sick and remains so for life.

And other passions - alcoholism, fornication - falling into them once, a person must remember and not allow himself to repeat these mistakes again.

About the influence of a name on a person

- When a child is born, parents very carefully choose a name for him, believing that it leaves an imprint on his entire future fate. This is true?

I am sure that there is no such direct influence of the name. Usually parents, when naming a son or daughter, use two arguments.

Firstly, according to tradition, they dedicate in memory of significant ancestors (grandparents), which is quite normal. Continuing the family, traditions, the good that was before.

The second is a dedication in honor of the memory of some saint. The heavenly patron does not predetermine our fate, he covers and intercedes prayerfully and is a worthy example of how to live, how to overcome sin, be worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven and salvation.

— Astrologers offer us their predictions according to the horoscope. Numerology by date of birth can calculate what awaits a person in the future. But do some predictions come true?

We said that God and I decide our fate. God and man. And in such cooperation. But not some mathematical laws, the laws of planetary motion.

How much I will be open to God's providence, God's action, which is always for the good, how much I will be in tune with the will of God - this [my life] depends on.

And those supposedly come true forecasts are all tricks of the dark forces that just want to turn a person away from God, His commandments, from a worthy spiritual life and place their hope in some momentary or insignificant things, in numbers, the Moon, the Sun, the stars.

- It happens like this: a person is unsuccessful, often gets sick, becomes discouraged, but then he decides to move, the climate changes. Everything is becoming better. Is there a human will here, or is everything happening according to God's providence?

This is a very complex issue, because it is considered and decided on an individual basis.

This is not to say that a change of place will be an absolute boon for everyone. No. In most cases, on the contrary, the rejection of one's homeland and roots leads to sad consequences.

Sometimes it is useful when there are chronic illnesses or prescriptions from doctors. But it is important to remember that it is not the place that makes the person, but the person the place. And if I have a pile of these problems that are pressing, leading me to despondency, despair, then I will take these problems to another place.

Without cleansing myself, without transforming myself, without eradicating that nasty and bad thing that presses and causes despair in me, I will take it. I'm not going anywhere from myself.

Take it, tell your friends!

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Can a person change his life? Or are all the events that happen to us predetermined by fate? Who among us has not asked this question. Should you believe in rock? Or is it the lot of losers, fatalists and deeply religious people. Perhaps everything is in our own hands, perhaps man forges his own happiness?

Over the past decade, the famous American film "Final Destination" has been one of the highest grossing projects in the world. The tape, filmed in the horror genre, tells the idea of ​​​​the existence of such a thing as the fate of a person. According to the plot, the main characters, who miraculously escaped death in a plane crash, begin to pursue death. The project literally promotes the idea of ​​predetermined fate.

Of course, the film "Destination" is only the imagination of the writers and director. However, this plot is often touched upon by numerous authors, citing examples from the life of cases where people are pursued by evil fate.

For example, one of the American publishing houses last year published the story of one girl. As in the case of Final Destination, a young American woman once escaped death at the hands of a crazed killer at the cinema's premiere. After some time, the victim again went to the cinema, where she was attacked again. This time it ended in death...

There are many such situations and examples. This raises the question, perhaps faith in the tricks of fate is not unfounded, and popular beliefs regarding the fact that if you are destined to be killed, then you will not die of illness, right?

Unfortunately, there is no consensus on this issue either in religion, or in philosophical teachings, or in any of the world's cultures. People's attraction to mysticism has been observed for hundreds of years. At the same time, common sense often takes precedence over violent fantasies. Even the most famous fortune tellers, astrologers and palmists claim that everyone has the power to change their lives. But for this you need the desire and desire to change something in your destiny. The probability of realization of all predictions without exception is no more than 80%. There are a huge number of cases when a prescription changed on the astral map of a person in the practice of astrologers and predictors. For example, a person leading a vicious lifestyle was destined for murder. Having taken the path of righteousness, this sign disappeared on its own.

To believe or not in fate is the business of each of us. Each side of the coin has its pros and cons. But at the same time, do not forget, you should never give up. All religions and philosophies do not encourage despondency at all and promote faith in a better life. I would like to note that successful people never pay attention to failures, finding positive moments in every event of their life!

2-3 days ago I came to enlightenment. Before that, he was doing his favorite things - watching lectures on physics, chemistry, biology. Even before that, I understood that consciousness is not something unreal, spiritual, divine, but only chemical processes in our head, the movement of atoms and molecules. All these movements, the connection of neurons with each other, forms our consciousness. True, before that I believed that thoughts affect these movements and connections. But everything turned out to be somewhat different: it is these movements and neural connections that form our thoughts. If it seems to us that we can at any moment clench our hand into a fist and change the course of the processes taking place in the head with “our” such desire, then this is just an illusion. Our consciousness is an illusion. Our feeling that we can influence our actions is an illusion. Everything we do, everything we think about is the result of a chemical and physical reaction in the brain.

(The most amazing thing is that when I thought of this, it turned out that many people already knew about it: physicists, biologists, Sokolovsky. It amused a little CSW that such a thought had occurred to me without their help.)

So, I didn't stop there. At first, there was dissonance about the fact that I used to think that I was influencing events, but now it turned out that this is not entirely true. Yes, from the realization of this, I did not become like a bio-robot that is unconscious and does various programmed actions. At least, I remained in the illusion that I myself influence my actions, and not the processes in my head. But, in our world, at the macro and micro level, everything can be explained by the classical laws of physics. For the classical laws of physics, with enough information, there are no uncertainties left. (Quantum uncertainty has very little or no effect on our world.) Let's say you roll a metal ball. Knowing its mass, the force of friction on the surface, air resistance, acceleration, maximum speed, taking into account all the irregularities of the surface of the ball and the floor surface, the force of attraction, etc. etc. you can calculate when and where the ball will stop. Having all this data and enough computational power allows you to determine exactly where the ball will stop before it stops. It is also possible, having all the data of all variables in the human brain, having sufficient computing power, it is possible to calculate what processes will occur in a person in the brain and what actions he will perform. But, you see, even with a metal ball, we already have enough variables. And the human brain is hundreds of billions of times more complex than a metal ball. On this, yes, "fate" is. If by "fate" we mean events that will happen in the future. And with sufficient computational ability, these events can be counted.

It is not known when a person began to wonder whether it is possible to change his fate. Perhaps even in ancient times, when people learned to be aware of themselves in the world, to separate themselves from it and acquired the ability to introspection.

Freedom of choice or predestination?

Be that as it may, the very fact of raising the question of predestination or freedom to choose one's own destiny makes it clear that once a person managed to change his destiny! After all, if he asked this question, if he noticed that his actions are determined not only by some divine or natural forces, but also by his attitude to the world, actions and will, then he noticed the existing freedom of choice.

Rain falls from the sky not at the will of a person, but a person is free to choose to get wet under it or hide and stay dry.

A classic image from fairy tales (both Russian and Greek, Indian, Scandinavian - every nation has it!) monomyth- a hero at the crossroads of three roads - proof of the idea that formed in ancient times about free will and the ability to choose one's own destiny!

Each person more than once in his life comes to the "crossroads of three roads", when "you go to the right - you will find a wife, if you go to the left - you will lose your horse, if you go straight - you will disappear yourself."

There are many scientific, pseudo-scientific, fantastic and sci-fi theories (based on which books are written and films are made) about a multitude of worlds, dimensions, variants of human life, the ability to turn back time, and so on. For example, there is a hypothesis that a person exists in several alternative dimensions at once and lives a separate life in each, lives a different destiny.

A person constantly makes a choice, and it is precisely the set of consistently made decisions that is fate. Yes, perhaps the choice is not always made consciously and it is always conditioned by something, but still it is made by the person himself, and not someone for him.

For example, a person automatically pulls his hand back if he touches something hot. This unconditioned reflex serves the instinct of self-preservation. But there are cases when not only people, but even animals passed through the fire if they needed to save their offspring. It turns out that the person able to overcome predestination, to change one's very nature, to tame the instinct for the sake of the goal, which means to change fate by an effort of will.

There is also an opposite point of view. Fate- this is a series of predetermined events that do not depend on the individual. No matter how hard you try, what will be, will not be avoided. Freedom of choice and will is an illusion. Man is limited bodily, physiologically, intellectually, socially, and so on. He can act only within strictly defined limits, and all the main events in his life were determined long before his birth.

Yes, perhaps a person is limited in choice, but the choice given by life is so wide that it is difficult to notice its limitations! For example, a person cannot see ultraviolet rays, but most people do not have such a desire! Needless to say, people do not want to see much of what is given to them, out of hundreds of possible options, they choose the usual, each time the same thing, limiting themselves: they think as they used to, act out of habit, raise their children as their parents raised them , even in love make the same mistakes.

But it is impossible to change life by continuing to live as before! Having the opportunity to change the course of events, people themselves choose doing nothing or life "at random", and then sigh: "This is fate - there's nothing to be done ...". Do not confuse laziness, unresponsiveness and unwillingness to develop with evil fate.

A look at fate in positive psychology

In psychology, as in other sciences that study human nature, there is no unambiguous answer to the question "Is it possible to change fate?". But psychology is helping science. If the psychologist cannot help the client to reveal his inner potential, do some work on himself, develop as a person in order to have the opportunity to improve the quality of life (in fact, change fate), he will try to make the client changed attitude from the negative to the more positive.

The most important and necessary skill in life, it is the ability to distinguish a situation in which something can be changed by active actions from one that will not change, and all that remains is to change the attitude towards it.

Many modern psychologists working in line with humanistic and positive psychology, They say that as long as a person is alive, he can do anything if he wants to!

People experience clinical death, recover from incurable diseases, survive in incredible accidents, man-made disasters, in inhuman conditions. Millions of people have experienced and are experiencing hunger, cold, unemployment, poverty and war. Yes, of course, not all! But perhaps in a couple of decades people will find a way to significantly prolong life, and someday they will achieve immortality.

The most independent of the will of man seems to be the fact of his birth. A person only by about three years of life begins to understand that he lives, gradually realizes what the world around is and that there is an “I” in this world. Birth, according to most people, is the real destiny, which cannot be changed on its own.

But today there is an alternative view of this phenomenon. Some esotericists and philosophers argue that a person, even before his birth, chooses his parents and the time when he should be born.

In psychology, there are also directions and schools that adhere to this point of view. For example, during a session Holotropic Breathwork(method of transpersonal psychotherapy) people relive their birth, see past lives and feel themselves in some kind of outer space, where they can remember how and why they chose these parents and such a body for a new life.

From this point of view, it turns out that, being still only a kind of ideal, and not a material entity, a person is already shaping his own destiny.

Today, an increasing number of scientists and ordinary people come to understand that the idea forms matter, in particular, to the fact that The thought is material. Being ideal in nature, it is able to transform, change and transform into physical matter.

A person determines his being and builds his destiny not only by his actions, but also by thoughts. What are the thoughts, such is life, what is thought and dreamed about, then it comes true.

It is known that people with a strong will, believing in themselves, purposeful, confident that they build their own lives, fortunetellers cannot predict fate. Such people also do not succumb to mass and gypsy hypnosis, manipulation and "zombie".

There is no predestination for the one who believes in himself and that he the creator of his own destiny.

Today, palmists do not hide the fact that the lines on human palms do not remain unchanged, they change, appear and disappear in the course of life, as a person chooses his path.

Everyone can predict your own fate! It is enough to analyze your thoughts and actions. After all, it is not difficult to guess what will happen if you smoke a lot, treat your loved ones disrespectfully, do not raise children, endure an unloved job for a long time. You don't have to be a fortune teller to do this.

Lifeworlds and dimensions

By and large, everything is decided by what a person sincerely believes and how he relates to life. If you believe that fate is a strict predestination, fate, fate, then life will seem to be the course of events predetermined and not dependent on a person.

If you believe that by working on yourself, setting and striving for goals, developing your personality, intellect and abilities, you can write your own history, life will be a work, a creation of human hands.

A person sees the world as three-dimensional, but according to scientists, there are much more physical dimensions, perhaps an innumerable number of them. Psychology also studies measurements, only this dimensions of inner worlds. And in this regard, how many people, so many dimensions. A pessimist sees the world in a gray light, for an optimist the world is bright and bright. And this is not just a metaphor.

More recently, German scientists have found that in severe forms of depression, people really begin to see the world in gray. The sensitivity of retinal neurons to contrasting shades is disturbed, as a result, the world literally dims.

It is important to remember that people with opposite beliefs and ingrained views on the world and destiny are unlikely to understand each other, because they seem to live in different worlds. Everyone has their own truth and their own right to it.

It is impossible to fully imagine what another person feels and thinks, how he lives. One grew up in the midst of violence, he has a villainous fate, and the other grew like a hothouse plant, and for him fate is infinitely kind.

Do you believe in fate?

Psyche is a function of the brain, which consists in the subjective reflection of objective reality. It turns out that the entire visible world is just a reflection of reality, because a person perceives it biased.

Certainly there is congenital mental features, but there are also those that formed, are brought up, mature. There are also things in the external world that a person either can or cannot influence.

For example, everyone is waiting for a miracle and hopes that fate will send him love, a woman or a man with whom he can live happily for the rest of his life.

If a person made an effort, was looking for a partner, and not just waiting for him to knock on the door, people will say: “Deserved, searched, did not give up, that's why I found it!”. If he did not seek, but met love by chance on the street, they will say: “Luck smiled at him! He has a happy share!

But how to know for sure that in the first case the meeting depended on the efforts made, and in the second there was not a single, even insignificant action that would not lead to acquaintance?

A person cannot change innate reflexes, given genetic characteristics, social and natural disasters, cannot force a betrothed or betrothed to appear in his life by the power of thought, but he can indirectly influence all these events, be able, given their likelihood, better organize your life.

The past is invariable, but the present is in the hands of man. The past cannot be relived or changed, but you can always change your attitude towards it and take care of the future in the present.

If you have a choice what to believe, then why not believe in good, in what fate and life can be changed for the better? Especially since other people did it! There are a great many examples of how a person has radically changed fate for the better!

If the individual is sure that everything is bad, it will get worse and nothing can be changed, then there is no need to try. In this case, there is no personal responsibility, no volitional decisions are made, no efforts are made - the person is passive. If so, then the freedom of choice for such a person and the opportunity to change his fate, indeed No. But this is also a personal choice.

If a person believes that everything in the world is arranged correctly and harmoniously, that everything always happens for the best and everything will be fine for him personally, it is only necessary
make enough effort, he has a completely different, kind, creative faith and, accordingly, a different fate, not an evil fate, but a smiling fortune.

How to relate to life, what is meant by the word "fate", and how to answer the question of whether it can be changed, everyone chooses for himself! This choice always remains with the person.

But, of course, it is better to believe in a happy lot, that with your own active actions, positive thoughts, self-improvement, creative ideas, purposefulness and optimism, you can make yourself happier, and in case of problems, do not lose heart, but draw conclusions, changing your life. and fate for the better!