1) Do you believe in karma, destiny or fate? If so, how to do envision them working?
I do believe in Karma. I've seen far too many instances where someone faced the consequences of their actions. Both rewards for beneficial actions and punishments for negative ones.
Fate and Destiny... I sort of do. My daughter nearly died as an infant. She had about a 12% chance of survival unless the doctors tried a Hail Mary play. A treatment that could kill her because it was a medication that was only for adults and for a different condition but had as an effect something that could help her.
It did. That medication was (if not still is) the standard treatment for whooping cough in infants. In fact another child came in with the disease and they hit her with the meds straight away. She was out of the hospital in 7 days and never went into the ICU (as opposed to my daughter who was there for the better part of a month and coded three times in the ICU).
She was put on this planet for a reason. Her trials have helped an unknown number of other children and infants who have been exposed to the disease before they can be safely vaccinated. Also, as she grew up she discovered that she has a gift. There are developmentally disabled children that she can reach and make contact with. Children who in many cases barely make contact with their own parents. So to me she was destined to survive, she was destined grow into the woman that she is (going to college to become a teacher for special needs children).
But just because someone is fated, does that mean that they're going to become that person? Given a lot of genetic factors and my family, I should have grown up into a blue-collar farm worker with anger management issues and severe alcoholism.
I lost two uncles to it in fact. One was so drunk that he honked off someone at a bar to the point that they followed him home and killed him and the other simply drank his liver to death and quickly followed it.
So with it all around me and the genetic predisposition to it in my family...the fact that I'm a sober, white collared IT Professional and all-around geek...makes me wonder if fate is something that is a possible. That if unchanged, my fate would have been [blank] but because I made choices I became something else.
I don't like the concept of predestination really. I like having free will to do as I please and face the rewards and punishments of my actions. That's a lot more comforting to me than being pawns in someone else's chess board. As Lord Melchit once said in Blackadder the Second "As private parts to the gods are we. They play with us for their sport."
2) What is your view of spirit/the soul? Who has one?
Everyone has one. It is the part of me that is me. Technically there is no part of my body that was there when I was a child. Every cell in my body has died several times over and has been replaced. Yet I am still me. That part of me that is me has remained unchanged even though my body wears out cell by cell and is replaced. So to me, I am my soul and I just happen to reside in this walking pile of meat for a while.
3) Do you believe in reincarnation or an afterlife?
Yes I do. There are too many people who have had experiences where they have left their bodies and can describe events that happen in the operating room. In 2001 a movie about Pearl Harbor came out. There was a scene where a nurse took a hit from a plane through the chest and died right there. My wife felt the pain as if she herself was shot. Now I watch a lot of violent movies. I've watched James Bond and other films where women get shot and she doesn't react. But this time she did.
And I swear we have been around before. When we met it was like two friends picking up where we left off. I've been identified as an old soul by several sensitives.
So I do believe in an afterlife where we go when we die, hang around and catch our breath and then jump back into the game when we're ready.
4) In your view of deity, is your deity (or deities) responsible for judging your actions? Do they mete out justice in any way? If not does karma or something else result in justice or is there no justice?
God I hope not. I've a long list of stupid mistakes that Karma has already had me pay for. I'd hate to have to face some deity looking at me and pointing out all the things I've already learned my lessons from. My second and final time I've shoplifted as a child comes to mind.
5) How important are the ancestors to your path and how do you incorporate them if at all? Do they mete out justice in your view?
Not all that much for me. Mostly because I don't know who they are. Coming from a divorce as a child meant that I barely knew my father (only met him once and I barely remember that) and had no idea at all about that side of the family. That and the side I did know was so tight-lipped about their ancestors...that I only know about three generations of my family. Maternal Grandparents, Mother and her brothers and sisters and my own sibling.
Ok, make that 4 generations as my sister has an adorable little baby boy.
So I'm cut off from my ancestry apart from the drips and drabs of what I've been able to research. And even those do not help with telling me who they were, just who history remembers them as.
Such as John Kenlon, Former NYC Fire Chief.
http://www.archive.org/stream/firesfirefighter00kenlrich/firesfirefighter00kenlrich_djvu.txt