Let us first understand what destiny is and how it comes about.

One’s entire life is based on the outcome of the past life karmas. The results of past life are in the form of destiny of the present life. It includes everything, starting from one’s thoughts to the words and upto the acts too.

Karmas are bound by intentions. One’s intentions in the present life determine the outcome of their entire future life.

How is Karma and Destiny linked?

We bind karmas, and these karmas give results, which we term as destiny. Our entire current life is a reflection of the karma that we have sown in our previous lives. This includes everything, right from our body to our physical shape and form, our thoughts, our speech, and our actions, which are all a result of our past karmas. Our karmas even determine our birthplace, our parents, the type of employment, and everything and every person that we encounter in life.

In destiny, we have no choice, it is all predetermined; but in binding new karmas, we do have a choice! When the past karma is unfolding to give its effect in this life, based on our inner intent at that time, we end up binding a new karma, be it a merit or demerit karma, which will give its result in the next life.

For instance, say you are donating 500 pounds to charity. This is our destiny, our outer action. However, while donating, if our inner intent is, ‘How I wish I had more money so that I could donate more to this cause’, this intention binds good karma for our future life; whereas the inner intent of, ‘Oh! I was pushed to give this money, or else I would never give a penny to these fraudsters’, binds a very bad karma, the consequences of which, we shall have to bear in our next life, as our destiny. This is how destiny is a projection of our own intents, that unfolds as a result of various circumstances coming together.

Even though the karma of the past life, forms our destiny for this life, we still have a vital role to play now. What is that role? It is to make a positive effort in everything we do. We put in our best positive effort to bring about a successful outcome. And thereafter whatever happens, we accept it as our destiny! For instance, if a glass is falling down, we make our best effort to save it. Yet, if it falls down and breaks, we accept it as our destiny.

We don’t know in advance what the final outcome is going to be i.e. what is our destiny; hence all positive efforts from our side are to be made. Also simultaneously, we may plant good intentions so that our future life is better, and there are fewer obstacles:

● One way to positively change our future destiny is to repeat five times every morning, “May no living being be hurt, even to the slightest extent, through my mind, speech or body.” This intent forms the cause of making our next life peaceful and happy (favourable destiny is created) in future.

● If you have had hurtful thoughts or have done hurtful deeds that you remember, then do pratikraman i.e. we confess our mistake of a wrong intent or action done in the past, then we ask for its forgiveness, and finally, we resolve never to repeat that mistake again. This too makes our intent pure.

● Put in a positive effort to every task that comes your way and then having done so, accept the final result as destiny and not before. No effort goes futile. It surely yields the result because effort in action has a positive intent. Remember, this intent is the cause, and destiny is the result.

All of the above help in sowing positive karma for one’s future life which creates a positive destiny.

You may also be surprised to know that we can be completely free from karma too, which means there is no creation of our future destiny, we get liberated from the cycle of birth and death forever. How?? Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan, the founder of Akram Vignan, has discovered a simple and effective path to Self-Realisation, whereby one realises that ‘really I am not the name or the body that I think myself to be. I am actually a pure Soul’.

When Gnani, the Enlightened One, graces us with a firm conviction of really ‘who am I’ and gives us the knowledge of ‘who is the real doer in this world’, we stop binding new karmas altogether. And then, as we follow Gnani’s given fundamental principles in life, we progress on the path of right belief, the destiny of which is nothing but eternal bliss i.e. permanent happiness.