Transforming Fate into Destiny: A New Dialogue with Your Soul
Robert Ohotto
Foreword by Caroline Myss. Carlsbad, Calif.: Hay House, 2008. $14.95. 207 pages.
Why am I here? What is my purpose in life? How can I fulfill my destiny? In Transforming Fate into Destiny, his first book, Robert Ohotto treats these questions clearly and succinctly using his own years of personal experience as well as his work as an intuitive and astrologer.
The terms "fate" and "destiny" are often thought of as the same kind of mysterious force. Ohotto contends that fate and destiny are very different, though collaborative, agencies. Fate is the mysterious preincarnate design of our life that is written in the stars. Destiny, by contrast, is what you make of this design. Ohotto calls the negotiation between fate and destiny your "Cosmic Contract." By means of this contract, we can choose what to do within our mortal limits in order to be more successful as well as less anxious and resistant to life. He writes, "We must embrace consciously that a choice was made when our soul met with our body incarnate, and we made a soul 'decision' to be bound to a contract with Fate....The ego often finds this baffling. How many of us have looked at our lives and wondered why didn't I pick the lot of Bill Gates?" Nevertheless, he adds, "if you are in touch with your true passion, a creative obstacle is meant to help you bring it out more effectively in the world." At this point your free will, in contact with Fate, becomes what the Chinese call wu chi — both crisis and opportunity for personal evolution.
Fate can take the form of a loss, an accident, a rejection. It can confront us as a shock, but it can be an opportunity as well. What our consciousness and ego do with these shocks is the point of the book. Ohotto calls this life-enhancing struggle "a dialogue with the soul": Our Cosmic Contract stipulates that we must come to terms with the fate point, the juncture at which we encounter our mortal limits and must realize our personal potential within those limits.
In this book, Ohotto goes chapter by chapter to explain the process of working with these obstacles, employing lessons and practices that establish new ways of attracting "a way to destiny" in order to clarify and in some cases remove psychological burdens and issues. In the latter half of the book, Ohotto moves into some deeply intuitive areas, illuminating new ways to cope with the shadow, the personal unconscious, and synchronicity. In the end, the book helps us genuinely find ways of doing what we must do anyway, and it helps us to do so with consciousness and intention.
Erin Sullivan
Erin Sullivan is a consultant astrologer, author, and lecturer. Her works include Saturn in Transit: Boundaries of Mind, Body and Soul; Astrology of Family Dynamics; and The Astrology of Midlife and Aging.