Habits-The Destiny Designer

Posted on Jan 07, 2024 by SOUL Sagacity (SOUL Sagacity)

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Habits are destiny creators. People usually surrender to the word ‘destiny’ considering it as pre-ordained. Well, to a great extent it is. However, the almighty power also gives us ‘free-will’ to steer ourselves to reach the full potential of the promised destiny.

A simple example is that you are driving a car on the road. Destiny has given you a road width to drive your car in. Other car drivers are also in the same soup of destiny. The car you could own, is partially your destiny and partially your karma. Now the speed of the car and your driving etiquettes are your free-will. You can choose to be patient and understanding of other drivers on the road. You could swear at them or bump into them also. You can even wave happily at them. You can also see so many on the road who did not have the destiny to buy a car. Your habits are your free-will. This is how destiny, free will and karma are interwoven in the fabric of life, if understood in a simplistic way.

The promised fruits of destiny don’t simply land up in our lap. Destiny is like the maximum limit of what one is destined to get. One has to still get up, move and make efforts to encash it or else it only remains a potential. This is how the phrase “the harder I work, the luckier I get” holds true. If we have lazy habits, we can very well be denied our destiny.

Habits govern even our DNA:

Take the case of our DNA. Even science has largely resigned itself to the inevitability of DNA and genes and almost considers it as a ‘genetic destiny’. The human genome appears to be needlessly large and seemingly uninvolved in our daily life. It is often termed as junk DNA. Could it not be our dormant ‘genetic potential’ which is still awaiting activation for some higher purpose in life? Here the searchlight of science dims and becomes vague.

Then came the science of epigenetics. It said our ‘attitude and perception’ (habits) give our genes the trigger to manifest their good or bad potential. It means even if you carry a gene of cancer or heart failure, it won’t act unless you give it an environment of chronic stress or other unhealthy lifestyles. So, a human does not reach his destined result of good and bad, unless he earns it with his daily habits and lifestyle.

It is not your passing thoughts or brilliant ideas so much as your plain everyday habits that control your life. Simplify Life…..

~ Paramhansa Yogananda

Habits are the kingmaker:

If you want to know someone, look at his friends. And if you can’t know their friends, look at their personal habits. Plain everyday habits influence our life’s success and failures much more than our knowledge and talent, people are usually so proud of. What if a lazy scholar just sits and expresses deep knowledge without even acting on it. Habits create destinies of this life and even the next (if you believe in it).

Our daily habits are usually taken in lighter vein. We all have a consensus that one should have good habits. But we just leave them at that and often relegate it to be used as parenting instructions. The adults seem to be oblivious of healthy habits unless necessitated by health concerns. The consumeristic world pulls us into it’s fold and we are caught up in what’s trending and ego boosting for us. We adopt new habits on the basis of excitement or pleasure they bring.

Habits go a long way. They are not just getting up early in the morning and brushing our teeth morning and night. People usually confine habits to physical life such as exercising, hygiene and eating routines. Physical habits are simpler to observe and their consequences easier to see. Yes, they are certainly important but habits are much more than that.

Needless to stay smoking and drinking are the most common deep seated harmful addictive physical habits that will affect not only the body but even the larger interests of the soul journey. Despite this people still do not clean their act unless faced with disease, life threatening situation, emotional upheaval or financial strain.

The mental habits:

The mental habits are a lot more difficult to change as they are deep seated in the subconscious mind. They define our moods, personality, desires, motivations and overall nature. They eventually steer us in claiming our God-given destiny or even denying it to us. The mental prison we often create by our mental habits, limits our talent and even destiny into mediocrity. What we are today, is the result of our past habits of past lives. What we will become in the future will come from new habits we create now. So, destiny and free-will (habit) go hand in hand.

Mental habits such as over confidence, procrastination, pessimism, being judgmental, cynicism, sarcasm, gossiping, self-doubt, mental addictions and ego battles are the hallmark of our not reaching our true potential. They program our mind into tamas (darkening) and prevent us from reaching sattva (light), which is soul’s essential purpose of life.

The habit prison:

Each morning we get up, we act from a reflection of the past. Our mind is preoccupied with the tasks for the day, sitting on the baggage of past worries, disappointments, resentments, unmet desires and a general sense of lack. We cannot think greater than our environment.

We languish in a self-created program of sorts. An automation of habit patterns which we call our ‘comfort zone’. People chain themselves with self-pity and seek corroboration rather than evolution. Sometimes we are so steeped in past bad experiences that we hold them too close to our line of sight that we are unable to see what else we could use from the new horizon. We get attached with events, people and places of the past.

The neurons that fire together, wire together. It becomes a permanent automated program. We strengthen our lack each day by visualizing emotionally on things we do not have. The universe doesn’t understand our narrative and the reasons for it. It simply reads our vibration and gives us more of it. If we feel a sense of lack, the universe gives us more lack.

When people are run by limiting automated daily habits, they distract their mind by scrolling mindlessly on their mobile phones or laptops, look for opportunities for pleasure or seek excitement in whichever way they can by copying the world.

The first thing they do when they get up in the morning is check messages, may be pose a happy picture on social media during the day, forward an inspirational picture message in a whatsapp group, do the same routine and distract themselves with pleasure. They crave for a daily dose of ever-increasing dopamine hormone that comes from each mobile notification or a ‘like’ or ‘follow’ they get on social media. They take selfies using best skin tone filters and post them for validation from the masses in this digital storm that is blowing over the hapless minds. Women evoke more responses from the ever energetic male attention from the safety of their homes. People set themselves up in a mental prison of validation by waiting for a cascade of ‘likes’.

What we can do:

Progress or evolution is never free. One has to pay attention. Become self-observant and self-aware. Attention is our best asset that the world is leaching away from us. We must focus on to our own being, avoiding the world’s ‘attention-hijack’. By guiding and sanitizing our consciousness we can design our destiny. By doing self-analysis, removing ego blocks, investing in relationships, picking a book to read, taking a nature walk, basking in the sun, walking bare feet on the grass, introspecting and meditating, avoiding needless ego battles, we can calibrate ourself back to the highway of evolution.

Meditation the ultimate steering wheel:

Meditation is one precious tool with which one can weed out so many ills of the mind without individually addressing each habit. Our every habit is attached with one of the six body chakras (energy centres). The process of meditation calibrates the chakra into the right direction. The temptations, urges and compulsive behaviour slowly diminish into oblivion.

One’s consciousness comes in one’s own direct control. If one develops such a habit, one can become a master of the senses.

The right energy flows automatically and puts things in place. All one has to do is, simplify life and not meddle with nature’s curing process by going out of focus in useless distractions. Realigning our consciousness can steer us into becoming a destiny designer. “We have to visualize ourselves as what we wish to become, without waiting to become.” The emotional feeling of that accomplishment should be visualized even before it happens.

If we can develop a habit of seeing a vision of the future with focus and belief, we will manifest our destiny. If we considered 86,400 seconds given to us by God each day as an opportunity, we will be mindful of how we spend it. It is said ‘time is money’ but I’d say ‘time on earth is an opportunity for karma’. Sanitization of the mind is the need of the hour as the planet is undergoing ascension into a new era, we all need to be fit for it. Watch your habits!!