Everything is preordained.
As long as you are living a worldly life, as long as the world affects you and you affect the world, everything is predetermined, everything.
But as soon as you become humble and you acquire humility, you begin to turn within, instead of thinking, “I am great,” and “I can do this,” and “I can do that,” you would rather feel that you are nothing and surrender everything to the Creator by turning within and offering to the Creator.
That is the time when the predetermination becomes weak.
But as long as you are living in this world as a worldly person thinking, I am that and this is this and this is this way and that is that way, everything, even the raising of the finger is predetermined.
Only when you dive deep within yourself and you surrender your ego, your ambitions, your temper, your emotions, your idea of right and wrong, your consciousness, and you become empty, only then will you become free.
But as long as you react to conditions and to the world you can never be free, it’s all predetermined. And you go on life after life after life until you give it up. The ego appears to be very strong. It will tell you you’re this or you’re that and you’re good person and you should become this and you should become that, that is your ego at work. You should smile and say, “No, give it all up to consciousness,” become empty.
Robert Adams