In the garden of Gethsemane, there is a poignant scene in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus is given to agonize over what may be coming next in his life.
He is given to say, "Thy will be done.
" People have taken that saying to mean that God is going give you what life you are going to live.
In other words, you are fated to be and do as some outside force wishes.
You have little or no say in what your life will be.
Your happiness is determined by an outside force, so many people believe.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is true that a natural disaster such as a tornado may indeed affect your life.
That is an outside force over which you have no control.
However, if you had built or made ready a storm shelter with provisions for a disaster such as food and water, you might have shaped your own outcome.
So you have some say-so in the matter.
The point of this article is that you do have a part to play in determining your own meaning and happiness.
It is not simply handed to you on a silver platter or imposed upon you as fate.
You are not destined to have this degree of happiness or that degree of meaning.
These are not thrust upon you in certain amounts by an outside source, namely God.
You choose how much meaning and happiness you shall have.
How? By the connection you cultivate and maintain between yourself and The All There Is (Tathis).
(Tathis is a word I coined to subtract as much baggage as possible from the term "God.
" It is a combination of the first letter of The, the first letter of All, the first two letters of There, and the entire word Is.
It is pronounced with a long "a" [as in plate] and the word "this.
") You build such a linkage through the use of meditation or prayer.
It is a discovery of the totally unconditional acceptance that Tathis extends to you.
Please notice I stated, "extends to you.
" Tathis does not give something to you in the conventional sense of the word "give.
" You already have everything because you are a division of Tathis.
So, Tathis need not give you anything you already possess.
Tathis extends to you unconditional acceptance in that relationship you establish with Tathis.
In other words, that acceptance is already there but now it feels like it is flowing toward you.
You have opened yourself to that confirmation.
That confirmation was always moving toward you, you just didn't realize it.
You always have the choice to turn and move yourself toward a rendezvous with Tathis.
"God" does not impose anything on you.
You are free.
In this freedom is your great choice.
But it is in that choice that you begin to make your own life your own life.
Sounds redundant and ridiculous, doesn't it? Because Tathis does not impose anything on you, you make your life what it is.
By your choices and your intentions you attract to yourself all that you will find in life.
Yes, there will still be those incidents where something will be forced upon you from the outside.
Still, you have the rock-solid opportunity to make a choice about how you will react to any happening in your life.
Beyond these forced events, however, you attract to your life that which you are.
When you find your meaning and happiness, you will be attracting positive people and happenings to your life.
Why? Because you will be in that mode.
What mode is that? The style of fashioning your own tomorrows.
Forging what the next minute of your life will be all about.
You have the choice, always, of having your life be full of meaning and happiness, or full of sorrow and despair because you believe you are fated in a certain way.
Do not ever let anyone try to convince you that your life is simply planned for you - that you are fated to have or have not...
anything.
The choice is always yours.
So, it is not "thy will be done," in the conventional sense.
It is done as you will it to be, when you will it to be.
Get to it.