This article is by Bert Hellinger. It brought up what I was pondering about free will and fate.

“As we are near a goal on our familiar rails, when we are nearly there, seeing it already, sometimes the direction of our train changes unexpectedly. Someone set the points differently. Our train suddenly takes another direction.

Can we do anything about the points being set differently? Can we plan the changes ourselves or prevent them? We have no say in it. The change in direction comes so suddenly and unexpectedly, our train is already on another track, being run by other powers that want another direction and have already made the decision.

The question is: Can we set the points for others and for their train so that their train goes in the direction we had planned for them? Can parents do this for their children perhaps? Can a man or a woman do this for his or her partner? Or perhaps a politician for his or her country?

Sometimes it may look that way, at least in the beginning. But where will the train end up after all? Does it go further? Does it perhaps end up where the points were supposed to lead in another direction, and does the next setting of the point perhaps begin at the beginning of the old direction?

Should we, or can we, try once more, doing it ourselves next time? Or do we arrive at the understanding that a power is at work beyond each one of us, setting the points for us and everyone else, according to the fate it has decreed for every human being? Then here, too, we need to see this power at work, and we must submit to it without conditions.

What follows from these deliberations for us and for our relationships, as heartfelt as they may be?

We continue traveling on our life’s train, however, the points may be set over the course of time. At the same time, we see how in the life of others from time to time their train’s points are set in a way that their train suddenly takes a new direction, and we cannot tell where it will go and we have no say in it.

How do we still remain connected with them? By agreeing to their life’s journey wherever it takes them. Perhaps parallel to ours for a while, then diverging and moving away from us; later on, after some time, perhaps in the same direction again, yet different from how it was before.

Through the new direction both return differently into the parallel direction, side by side differently and hand in hand differently. How? Matured, both of them.”

Yours,

Bert Hellinger

(Sunday Contemplations, May 2012)