Puppets On The Strings Of Destiny

There is only one way to judge the quality of any psychic reading. The moment you finish your conversation with the reader, you should feel ready to make a choice, prepare for a decision… or at least take some sort of action. You should also have a basic idea or plan outlined for the way forward.

A good psychic reading will leave you feeling inspired, informed, enlightened and ready to take a step forward in your life, for better or worse. But, sadly, this is not always what people want from their psychic readings.

Do you believe that your life path is entirely pre-destined? Some people do. They prefer to see themselves as helpless puppets on a string, hanging around, while fate takes its course. For them the future is firmly carved in stone. Their destiny is pre-determined and their life path non-negotiable. The writing is on the wall. Period.

There’s much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it ~ Diana Trilling

I call them the ‘Marionettes’. During psychic readings these clients are typically only interested in what will happen to them and when it will happen to them. They show no interest in the possibility that they have much more control over their destiny, and that they can make great things happen for themselves and by themselves. Indeed, there is much for them to learn from the story of Pinocchio, who dreamed of becoming a real boy and set out on a brave adventure to achieve his goal!

The Marionettes appear to be unwilling to accept the fact that they can change the course of their lives, or prevent personal calamities from occurring. Neither do they realize that they can get what they want from life so much sooner, and enjoy those outcomes for so much longer. They can also achieve far better results, whether some of the twists and turns were pre-destined for them, or not.

I have never been able to understand why anyone would prefer to merely cruise along, like a tourist through their own life? Why would you ignore the opportunity to be truly alive and experience the power of your own free will? Do you not realize that this is the very reason we came here in the first place? We came for the experience, the adventure, the fun, the drama and the sheer thrill of it all!

Failure and success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars.  But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle ~ E.M. Forster

Sadly, the Marionettes among us will probably have to come back and do the whole thing over again. Their souls get stuck in a rut. Their incarnations can also become somewhat like habitual supermarket shopping trips when they have to plan and design their next physical experience, between this lifetime and the next. They will just buy the same old toothpaste or washing powder their mother, grandmother and great grandmother preferred, each and every time, life in and life out, for as long as it takes, or possibly for all eternity. If you listen closely you can actually hear their current Spirit Guides sighing.

Such a dull business indeed. No change, no risk, no adventure. No challenging choices or brave decisions. The Marionettes do not like such things. Pushing their cosmic shopping trolleys around is exhausting enough as it is. Oh, the burden of bad karma! And if their favorite product is way past its sell-by-date, they can always blame the Manufacturer.

Personally, I prefer not to go through a repeat version of my current lifetime. I would much rather move up a notch, or two, or at least come back and have another amazing, but very different experience. To me the alternative is too ghastly to contemplate. Why would I want to waste a whole lifetime, only to return and relive it, like the endless re-run of a failed sitcom on cable TV? The jokes only stay funny for so long, you know what I mean?

One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver’s license ~ P. J. O’Rourke

Marionettes also go through a lot of unnecessary pain, suffering and misfortune in their lives. Much of this can be prevented, or at least be alleviated. Too often I have to be a helpless bystander, watching these clients turning themselves into powerless victims of their circumstances. They become martyrs to their own fear, laziness or indecision and they are unwilling to change their self-destructive ways. ‘Denial’ is not a river in Egypt, that’s for sure!

As if cruising along is not boring enough, some Marionettes take their tedious road trips to an even more pointless, mind-numbing level altogether. Not only are they content to sit back and wait for Fate, Chance, Luck and Destiny to drag them by the hair along their ‘pre-written life path’, but they also recruit psychics, mediums and astrologers to join them on this lacklustre, uninspiring journey to nowhere.

Now, asking a psychic for some directions along the way may seem like a step in the right direction, but in this case the psychic is usually not invited to act as a tour guide. Quite the contrary. No, the Marionettes merely need their psychic advisor to provide a detailed itinerary. They want a pre-designed schedule for the trip; a full-color brochure of their future.

There is an unseen life that dreams us.  It knows our true direction and destiny.  We can trust ourselves more than we realize and we need have no fear of change ~ John O’Donohue

And so, the Marionettes travel daily through the most amazing and exotic locations in the human experience, without noticing or enjoying a single sight, sound or tourist attraction. Instead they yawn, cry or whine, while they read their brochures repeatedly…staring with great long-suffering at the colorful snapshots provided by their favorite fortune-teller. They care only about getting to the next pre-determined destination. What happens along the way is of little consequence. And the fact that they may pass by several shortcuts along the way, well, that is also irrelevant.

The Marionettes never get to feel the wonder of the monsoon rain on their faces or the miracle of the desert winds in their hair. Heck, they don’t even get off the bus, when it is time to re-fuel or change a flat tire. No, the Marionettes prefer to just hang around in the stuffy cabin, while patiently waiting for predictions to come true and outcomes to manifest, without any active input or participation.

Ironically, for the Marionettes the long-anticipated outcomes are often an anti-climax and a non-event. Not playing ‘snakes and ladders’ usually leads us to finish yet another round of life’s game without feeling any real sense of achievement or fulfilment. This is what they had been waiting for all this time? So, they wandered through the maze via the long and difficult route. Well done. Now what? Life is what happened to them while they were waiting for the master plan to unfold.

Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation ~ James Allen

One can clearly see the evidence of a person’s level of self-determination and spiritual growth by simply looking at the kind of information that comes through for them during psychic readings. People, who know what they want and know where they are going, often receive very clear and specific details about outcomes and timelines during readings. They are typically aware of their own power, or are at least keen to increase their awareness, and they often reap the rewards their status as co-creator brings. They even receive clues to alternative routes and fun stops along the way. Reading for them always feels like being part of a treasure hunt; an extreme sport of some sort.

But for the Marionettes, who are out of touch with themselves and live without any real purpose, the content of their readings can be somewhat like the twighlight zone. Certainly not the highlight of any reader’s day. Marionettes show little interest in how they can improve their life, gain wisdom, develop spiritually or meet their true destiny. They have no idea where they are heading, or what they really want. They are definitely not ready to make any choices or decisions. Yet, they expect a clear indication of the outcome. Due to their indecision and passive inertia their readings often become blurred. Predictions become mere probabilities; timeframes remain vague, outcomes appear fluid and uncertain.

The psychic usually knows the general direction of where their Marionette clients are heading, but how soon they will get there usually remains to be seen. The psychic is also relatively powerless to reduce the amount of trauma that will be experienced along the way. Warnings and advice fall on deaf ears.

The Marionettes will eventually get to each of their pre-determined destinations. All roads do lead to ‘Rome’. But they will probably take the longest route with the most obstacles. And they will have as little fun as possible getting there.

The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and their destination ~ John Schaar

If you suspect that you may be a Marionette, you need to know that your future is not entirely pre-determined. There is also no such thing as ‘fate’ or ‘bad luck’. There is only destiny and free will. Destiny is the cards we are dealt in this lifetime. Free will is how we play them. Any successful card player will tell you that the secret to success lies in a combination of opportunity and strategy. They will also tell you that it is possible to win the jackpot with a weak hand, or lose millions with a royal flush. It is all about the attitude, the faith, the patience, the confidence, the self-control, the focus and, most of all, the timing.

Yes, most of the major events in our lives are predestined. You can identify them easily, because they are the events and circumstances that are truly beyond your control. These are the signposts and pit stops we have planned for ourselves, like an elaborate obstacle course, before we entered into this lifetime.

Pre-determined events and outcomes serve as the highlights and low-points for our roller-coaster ride through life. They are destined to happen to us, one way or the other. But how good or bad the actual experiences are, how much time they require and what route we take to get to each of them, all depends on what we think, feel, decide, choose and ultimately do.

When life gives you lemons, you don’t make lemonade. You use the seeds to plant a whole orchard and build a new lemonade brand… an entire franchise. And once you have had enough fun being the CEO of your lemonade empire, you sell your stock, buy a flying carpet and travel to Atlantis or The Pleiades on holiday. Along the way you could visit each of the Seven Wonders of the World and maybe meet your Knight in Shining Armor, before you ride off into the sunset.

Or you could just stay on the bus and drink lemonade someone else has made, from a can.

© 2010 Anthon St Maarten