Circumstance, Providence, and Action
Every now and then someone will tell you that we all manifest the lives we deserve and that only you are to blame for whatever your lot in life is. This is especially a trope that gets thrown around in New Age and occult circles where we like to think our thoughts or our actions manifest reality itself.
Conversely every now and then, someone will tell you that they have almost no control over their situation, and that whatever they do they cannot make their life better. You find this also in magical circles where people write off their lives as cursed or their astrological conditions as negative.
Both of these ideas are utter poppycock!
The beginning of a new year is a natural time to take stock of your life and lay your plans for the future. AS you role forward I want you to keep in mind three factors that contribute to any scenario: Circumstance, Providence, and Action.
Circumstance is the situation you were born into. This is everything from your parents economic situation, to your race, to your DNA.
Providence is luck and probability, the stuff that happens to you. This is the car that comes out of nowhere, the promotion you did or didn’t get, the storm that blew down your fence.
Action is what you do. The decision to start a business, ask someone out, sleep in, go out all night.
Circumstance is more or less immutable – it is the situation you find yourself in and the result of things that happened in your past and in aeons before you were born. Maybe your parents were rich, maybe they were poor. Maybe you have a genetic disposition to alcholism, maybe not. These are the cards that you are dealt and you just have to play them to the best of your ability.
Actions are how you play those cards, totally mutable according to your will and ability. Do you wallow in your fight it?
Providence is the interplay between Action and Circumstance – sometimes you do everything right and stuff still does not work out. Sometimes it works out for a long time, then stops. Simetimes you don’t do a damn thing right and you just keep having stuff handed to you. For most people providence or luck is not very mutable – this is where sorcery comes in. Through effective sorcery you can tip the scales one way or the other.
The reason I am writing about this is that there are two pieces of advice about this that I want to convey: advice for how you view yourself, and advice for how you view others:
ADVICE FOR VIEWING YOURSELF: View your circumstance with as little emotion as possible. Take advantage of whatever advantages your situation affords you, mitigate whatever risks and disadvantages you have, and play the cards you were dealt. The fact that you were born African American in a culture that affords extra privilege to Whites sucks, The fact that you were born with a physical beauty type that society doesn’t value right now sucks. The fact that your parents did not have money or education sucks. The fact that you have a physical disability sucks. Whatever your situation – that’s the situation and you get exactly NO ADVATANGE from being upset about it. Whatever you can do to combat that you should, but do whatever you can to reach your goals anyway. Even though you may have to work five times as hard as some idiot who had life handed to him on a silver platter- the circumstances are what the circumstances are. You use actions to make the best of them and Sorcery to tip providence in your favor.
ADVICE FOR VIEWING OTHERS: Because the advice that is most useful for the individual is to buck up and get to work changing your life, some people twist this into a philosophy to judge others. Just recently I saw a meme with a mirror and the caption read “if you want to know who to blame for your life, look in the mirror”. The reality is though that you are not the only person to blame. You are never the only person to blame, or credit, for anything. Even your own thoughts are largely patterned by the genetics you inherited from other people and the experiences you have had with other people throughout your life. Do not use the fact that you were able to overcome negative circumstance be used to judge someone else.
As the New Year marches on, and you work towards your goals keep these three factors in mind:
Accept your circumstances and work with them, while still having compassion for people who are not able to.
Influence providence with Sorcery, while realizing that you cannot control everything. Sometime you may do everything right and still not have it work out. This is why multi-pronged approaches are the best.
Take wise actions that are are in line with your goals, and cut some of the actions you take that are counter-productive.
