Well, it is a little hard for me to say, particularly since I haven't focused on that so much. But I think I can say that things come more as a surprise to me, such as ~ oh! This transits sounds like just the ticket to deal with blah, blah, blah ~ only to find SURPRISE! not so. The energy gets translated in another way than how I imagined. Foiled again.

It is always interesting to me to get someone else's swing on the natal chart, as long as I can see that the interpretation is not motivated by some personal agenda that only makes me growl. But one of the advantages of a site like this one is that you get some different perspective from someone who sees something you were not looking at, and then that goes into the processing and you wind up thinking, hmmm. Yeah, how did I miss that one?

As far as the whole "fated" or "destined" deal is concerned, I kind of look at it as though there are so many variables and weird things that you cannot see coming in life that it almost shrinks to irrelevance. If we existed in bubbles, it might be another story, but we don't, so I find myself not really seeing a whole lot "determining" my existence ~ even though there may be some recognizable themes or situations that keep hitting the front page news, so to speak. While it is true, too, that forewarned can mean that you are forearmed, I have been finding that, at least with certain transits, being forewarned doesn't do me so much good since my "preparations" don't guarantee that I wind up escaping the energy that comes marching in like the 8th infantry. For one thing, a mental attitude doesn't always match the craziness that can come up in life ~ a sudden death, a drastic hit in the pocketbook, a chance meeting with an old friend, appendicitis ~ who knows? I am certainly not so good as to be able to spot all the possibilities in life in looking at a chart, and I sort of think that nobody is really that good that it is possible to do that except in vague-ish ways, like, oops! 6th House issue here ~ watch your health, but who knows how or why.

So, no, for me, it is just not much of an issue at all.

And that is very true, too, mem. Which is why I think a synastry reading with the person reading a chart for a person makes a lot of sense.

yes, that's very much along the lines of "The Secret".