Hi Shakehands,

This is an interesting question, but you will find there is not much truth to be found, because it is a very relative and personal issue.

Best thing to do is to develop your own perspective in relation to your own lifetime.

Personally I see it as a coin, which always has two sides of course.
I see one side as symbolizing the element of free will, and the other side as the element of conditioning and determinism.

The one cannot exist without the other. Total freedom without any rules or guidelines would not be possible, it would be chaos in the extreme.
But if everything were to be pinned down by law or rule, what would be the point of conscious living beings with the ability to make their own choices, such as we human beings?

For me, the art is to be as much aware as possible of the part of freedom and the part of fate or destiny that each moment of our lives holds.

See it as a matter of choice. And mental development.
If you don't think about what you are doing, then you let your emotions rule, and you don't have that much of a choice in your course of action, because emotions are the result of the past, and will force you to do things that you wouldn't do, should you take the time to consider other possibilities.

Gurdjieff said that for humans, the influence of predestination could be seen in threefold, first the Law of Accident, then the Law of Fate and in the end, the Law of Destiny.

You will find an interesting article (part of an online book) on the DK Foundation website: http://www.dkfoundation.co.uk/BookWhatIsGoingOn.htm

This expresses it better than I could do :-)

Kindly
Sam