Fate should be examined in two aspects:
The first is the formation of capability, the second is the formation of skill…
Both capability and skill are from fate. However, because the being to which this capability and skill has been given, is essentially comprised of the divine names and forces, he has the ability to act and assert power within this configuration.
Hence the determination of capability and skill by the divine power is “fate” but the assertion and actualization of this within the limits of the individual configuration is the person’s “will”, i.e. personal will power is the usage of the names that are inherent within one’s specific composition.
When you manifest these names you are in effect using your willpower!
To what extent can you use your willpower?
To the extent of the power of the names in your configuration.
But if you can reach your essential reality and recognize and experience the absolute essence and attributes of Allah within your own being, then you may be able to extend and increase their usage, and your ‘personal willpower’ will transform into ‘divine willpower.’
In reality there are no separate personal and divine willpowers of course, there is only a single will, and that is the will of Allah. It is only when this will is configured to operate from a ‘person’ is when we call it a personal will.
So long as you live within the limits of your composition you will have a so-called ‘willpower’!
But if you can overcome your composition and expand its limits, divine willpower will begin to manifest through you, whereby when you will for something to happen the divine forces will operate to make it happen. That is, the “divine will” will execute itself through you.
Your composition defines your fate and the means by which your composition is formed is the “Lawh-i Mahfuz” the Preserved Tablet.
The preserved tablet is the recorded and preserved cosmic information that defines your make-up, in other words it is the effects that you received from the zodiacal signs and planets which has formed your immutable archetypal reality (al-A’yan al-Thabitah).
The miniature expression of your preserved tablet is your brain, while at the cosmic level, it is the star signs and planets!
Your immutable archetypal reality is the cosmic programming your brain received on the 120th day after conception. It is the life program you are destined to live!
The preserved tablet can change but the al-A’yan al-Thabitah is totally unalterable. Why?
Because the effects it creates in the brain are fixed. It has been hardwired; it can no longer change!
Your preserved tablet, on the other hand, can change in two ways:
It can change with the effects of the planetary transits. And, when the brain undergoes certain experiences, new circuits are wired and activated, which can also cause changes to your preserved tablet.
The first is achieved by saints (walis) on duty and those with the power of administration. They have the ability to strengthen or weaken certain effects.
The second can take place via the practices one person does to overcome his composition; as he abandons his habits and natural tendencies he allows his composition to change by firing and wiring new neural networks in his brain, eventually changing his preserved tablet.
The verse says:
No calamity befalls you on earth (on your physical body and outer world) or among yourselves (your inner world) that has not already been recorded in a book (formed in the dimension of the knowledge) before We bring it into being! Indeed, for Allah, this is easy.[1]
The word “you” in the verse refers to the illusory existence of ‘man’ in the form of a composition!
Everything “man” is destined to encounter and experience, the “good” things and the “bad” things, is recorded in the divine book called the Preserved Tablet, which in modern terms, is his astrological chart.
Man is under the administration of this chart, it is his fate! But in respect of his quintessential reality, he is also the creator of his fate.
In respect of the names comprising his composition man is subject to fate, in terms of the divine attributes and absolute essence within his essential reality, he is the creator of his fate!
And whoever is blinded (with external things) from the remembrance of Rahman (remembering that his essential reality is composed of the names of Allah and thus from living the requirements of this), We appoint for him a Satan (a delusion; the idea that he is only the physical body and that life should be lived in pursuit of bodily pleasures) and this (belief) will become his (new) identity![2]
This verse makes it evident that one who is blinded from his essential reality, of the Divine Attributes and that comprise his being, and who thinks he is a ‘person’ turns away from the Rahman and delusively follows the Satan.
If you think of yourself as the name, the label, the body that you’ve been given and constructed throughout your worldly life, this is turning away from the remembrance of the Rahman (the infinite quantum potential) which is how “following the Satan” manifests at the physical level. Rahman is the awareness of one’s infinite quantum potential, the attributes comprising his being.
The divine names are not observed singularly at the level of names, as separate meanings, they are observed at the level of acts, within a composition, as collective meanings. It is incorrect to think of the divine meanings as separate forms of existence. The One encompasses all meanings and is not in any way divisible.
There is no fragmentation, division, or separation in existence. He is AHAD, the One and Only, Single existence. And He is WAHID, meaning all of the seemingly separate meanings are in UNISON, they are not ‘parts’ of the One, there are no parts!
The ONE observes through you, His various different meanings as a whole, they are not separate from one another. These meanings that are derived from the level of Names are observed at the level of acts.
There is no level of names beyond the level of acts that contains different singular meanings or groups of meanings!