What Is Destiny?

Fate, Destiny, and the Art of Conscious Weaving

As fate would have it, I was actually born into a magical tradition with its roots in Africa. When you are initiated into this tradition, you are given a very long-form divination. This divination is meant to give you a set of perspectives about how to relate to the tradition, how to conduct your life in order to create auspicious circumstances, and what roads or taboos to avoid so that you do not lead yourself down a self-destructive path.

A lot of people who enter this tradition actively seek out this divination. It is genuinely useful and can be deeply helpful. I have seen lives transformed through having these kinds of divinations done.

The difference for me is that I was initiated into this tradition as an infant. This does not happen very often. Because I grew up with it, and because my family, as well-meaning as they were, did not handle some of the information in that divination with maturity and care, I grew up feeling trapped.

I grew up feeling as though this divination was a chain, a set of circumstances I could not escape. I felt locked into something that was going to end a certain way no matter what I did. While this is in no way a criticism of the tradition itself, I was not given something that felt life-giving or life-affirming. What I was given felt more like a curse.

Because of this, I have spent much of my life trying to understand the nature of fate and destiny. I have wrestled with what is predetermined and what is not, with what will be part of our story regardless of our choices versus what we say and do that actively changes how our story unfolds.

In many ways, this tension between fate and destiny has formed a core wound for me. And within that wound, I have discovered a great deal of gold. Many of my gifts emerged from it. It gave me a set of challenges that pushed me to orient toward choice, freedom, and the ability to have a real say in what our lives become.

That is the core idea I want to help you grasp. What is destiny?

Destiny Is Not a Destination

What I have come to understand is that destiny is not a predetermined state. Destiny is not an actual destination. It is not a place you arrive at, sit down, and then coast from.

Destiny does not work that way.

Destiny is an ongoing, continuous process of cultivation. It is a verb. It requires conscious, active participation. That idea of being an active participant is central to what destiny actually is.

Predetermination belongs to fate.

Fate is mechanical. Fate is robotic. Fate is a set of circumstances that, when mapped across a story arc, leads to predictable outcomes. It is like a romantic comedy or an action movie. You already know how the story will go.

Fate unfolds in the way you expect.

Destiny, by contrast, is unpredictable. It emerges from the circumstances of your life and how you choose to engage with those circumstances. It is created through the weaving of the story you form from what you are given.

Life as Story

To make use of the idea of destiny, you must understand that you have a story. Your life, at least as you understand it, is a story you have told yourself.

There are facts and events that are indisputable. But the meaning of those events is wrapped inside the story you tell about them. That story is malleable.

You can revisit your past, shift your perspective, and suddenly the meaning of your life changes. Memory itself is ephemeral. The meaning we assign to what happened changes the type of story we find ourselves in.

Most of us live our lives building this story unconsciously. It becomes mechanical. Family, culture, civilization, and the broader human story impose values, ideas, and expectations that shape us without our consent.

We are carved by these stories. We react. We judge. We resist. We wish things had gone differently. And there is no underlying thread that helps us orient the story consciously.

This is the pathway of fate. This is how we end up living a life we did not choose.

Becoming a Conscious Weaver

Destiny asks one primary thing of us: to understand that the only story we came here to live is our own.

Our greatest gift to the world is becoming who we actually are.

At the same time, your story is being woven into a larger story. That is inescapable. Your life is a sub-story within the story of the planet, of humanity, of civilization, and of your family. All of this unfolds simultaneously.

Living in alignment with destiny means learning to weave consciously. It means choosing the cosmology your story exists within.

Cosmology is simply a worldview. How does the world work? Is your worldview life-affirming? Does it place your life into a larger framework of meaning and purpose?

Meaning and purpose are about function. You are a cell in the body of the world. Every cell has a role. Each cell lives for itself and contributes to the life of the whole.

Your life has been preparing you for that role. Through challenges, through skills, through love, through inspiration, through the spontaneous desire to do certain things. You do not need to hunt for your purpose. It is already present.

Most of us are trained out of knowing it.

Destiny as Frequency

When you discover your innate meaning and purpose, you naturally begin to weave yourself into the fabric of life. You understand what you are here to contribute.

This is one of the paradoxes of destiny. You become fully yourself by understanding how you belong to something larger.

Your wounds, limitations, and challenges carry gold. When you engage them consciously, they reveal threads that become part of the weaving.

Destiny is not just an idea. It is a frequency. It is an attractor.

When you align with it, circumstances begin to organize around it like planets around a star. Destiny becomes a kind of north star, helping you orient your compass again and again.

With the right tools and technologies, destiny becomes an ongoing process of conscious cultivation. Not something you reach, but something you live into, moment by moment.