Look at someone's hand and try to know whats in store.
Look at the astrology chart of the same person and its hundred percent certain that you get something different. Except rarest cases, the hands always gives a more rosy and bright prediction than the corresponding chart.
Ask the reason and most astrologers (especially the bogus ones) will stare blank or give incoherent answers or even say it can't be.
A great South Indian seer once said that the hand ideally represents the true postion of your evolving soul, what you should have been able to achieve till this birth. But owing to Karma, something undesirable which you have done using your free will against your soul destiny prevents you from attaining that level. So you always fall short of the hands writing. The lessened future is your Birth Chart.
But nothing is fixed and permanent. There is nothing as absolute predestiny.
Love, willpower, faith in God, prayers and above all giving up all feeble attempts and going with the flow can overcome all limitations. You can exceed your Birthcharts constrictions and rise and rise. You have that free will and every musing of God's word--the Vedas, The Song Divine(Bhagavat Geeta), The Bible says that and guarantees his help in achieving this rise.
But normally you won't get anything more than what is written in our hands no matter how much will power you exert, how many gems you wear, how many different sadhnas you perform...but again it is true in material sense of things. Spiritually you can rise with your faith, but how many want to do that these days.
So be pretty sure to show your hand to a good palmist and know what is destined and you cannot change. Show your chart to a good astrologer and exert your free will to rise above. Both free will and destiny exist, they are complimentary rather than opposite.
If you can keep your new year resolutions than be pretty sure you can exert your free will. If all resolutions end by first week of February you need to take a serious view of your life and consider where you are heading.

I agree with this 101%.

Abhishek

this is interesting reading and in fact so true:)

hello dilip,
good post

You make some excellent points and I certainly agree with you. And it is my understanding that the traditional spiritual trips, although they may state your points in different words, are really directed toward individual men and women finding a way out of the morass of daily living with its problems.

And I would like to expand on this a bit. We humans are now exposed to a wide variety of experiences; we have all become 'world travelers', and as a result many of us have evolved our awareness and intelligence and are quite capable of tailoring out spiritual paths to our own needs.

I, for example, still value the worth and wisdom of the traditional paths, but personally find them too limiting. So -- if I am correct in assuming that most people can now understand that it is their own faults and personal distortions that hold back their growth, then all that remains is to find the proper tools for remodeling our personas.

Carl Jung and the Depth psychologists have informed us that dealing with a faulty persona -- (Jung calls this our shadow) can be difficult, because the ego does not like to admit it possesses faults. But the Shamans and others (who work with our dreams) have shown us one path for examining our hidden problems; and, at the same time, by establishing contact with our own intuitive and subconscious side, can actually release enormous amounts of creative energy to assist us in the task of remodeling our house of personality.

Astrology can also be of great assistance, since any contact with our intuition is represented by the Moon and Venus, and the conscious process of 'remodeling' is here represented by Mercury. And the Tarot keys can add even more insights. For example,

Mercury is represented by Key 1, The Magician, and the Hebrew letter assigned to this key is Beth (B) -- meaning 'house' -- or house of personality. So any meditation on this Key will add in-depth insight into the correct role of personality and also for the mind.

Further, astrology tells us that the roots of our ‘shadow’ will be found in the twelfth house of the Past. This is the House of Pisces -- ruled by Jupiter and Neptune. Key 12 of the Tarot, the Hanged Man, represents Neptune and the role that meditation can play in reorganizing our personality. The man hangs from a tree from which all twelve branches have been removed, signifying that the meditator (he or she) has succeeded in overcoming the influences of the 'planetary powers'; this means that such people can no longer be defined by their horoscopes.

Finally (finally?), Key 18, the Moon, really represents the sign Pisces, and shows the ego as a carapace, fearfully climbing out of the pool of unconsciousness onto the path that lies ahead of it. This represents the 'ego', which is humanity's first experience of the 'self-awareness' that lifts us above the animal nature. AND, the whole path now lies aheadf of us because, now that we are conscious, we can fially SEE what lies ahead!

Of course we must now begin to properly use our God-given wits!

Or so they say.

I think.

shantana