The Power of Intention Page 2
This field of intent can’t be described with words, for the words emanate from the field, just as do the questions. That placeless place is intention, and it handles everything for us. It grows my fingernails, it beats my heart, it digests my food, it writes my books, and it does this for everyone and everything in the universe. This reminds me of an ancient Chinese story I love, told by Chuang Tzu:
There once was a one-legged dragon called Hui.
“How on earth do you manage those legs?” he asked a centipede. “I can hardly manage one!”
“Matter of fact,” said the centipede, “I do not manage my legs.”
There’s a field, invisible and formless, that manages it all. The intention of this universe is manifested in zillions of ways in the physical world, and every part of you, including your soul, your thoughts, your emotions, and of course the physical body that you occupy, are a part of this intent. So, if intention determines everything in the universe and is omnipresent, meaning there’s no place that it’s not, then why do so many of us feel disconnected from it so frequently? And even more important, if intention determines everything, then why do so many of us lack so much of what we’d like to have?
The Meaning of Omnipresent Intention
Try imagining a force that’s everywhere. There’s no place that you can go where it isn’t. It can’t be divided and is present in everything you see or touch. Now extend your awareness of this infinite field of energy beyond the world of form and boundaries. This infinite invisible force is everywhere, so it’s in both the physical and the nonphysical. Your physical body is one part of your totality emanating from this energy. At the instant of conception, intention sets in motion how your physical form will appear and how your growing and aging process will unfold. It also sets in motion your nonphysical aspects, including your emotions, thoughts, and disposition. In this instance, intention is infinite potential activating your physical and nonphysical appearance on Earth. You’ve formed out of the omnipresent to become present in time and space. Because it’s omnipresent, this energy field of intent is accessible to you after your physical arrival here on Earth! The only way you deactivate this dormant force is by believing that you’re separate from it.
Activating intention means rejoining your Source and becoming a modern-day sorcerer. Being a sorcerer means attaining the level of awareness where previously inconceivable things are available. As Carlos Castaneda explained, “The task of sorcerers was to face infinity” (intention), “and they plunged into it daily, as a fisherman plunges into the sea.” Intention is a power that’s present everywhere as a field of energy; it isn’t limited to physical development. It’s the source of nonphysical development, too. This field of intention is here, now, and available to you. When you activate it, you’ll begin to feel purpose in your life, and you’ll be guided by your infinite self. Here’s how a poet and a spiritual teacher describes what I’m calling intention:
O Lord, thou art on the sandbanks
As well as in the midst of the current;
I bow to thee.
Thou art in the little pebbles
As well as in the calm expanse of the sea;
I bow to thee.
O all-pervading Lord,
Thou art in the barren soil
And in the crowded places;
I bow to thee.
— from Veda XVI by Sukla Yajur
As you make your metaphorical bow to this power, recognize that you’re bowing to yourself. The all-pervading energy of intention pulses through you toward your potential for a purposeful life.
How You Came to Experience Yourself As
Disconnected from Intention
If there’s an omnipresent power of intention that’s not only within me, but in everything and everyone, then we’re connected by this all-pervading Source to everything and everyone, and to what we’d like to be, what we’d like to have, what we want to achieve, and to everything in the universe that will assist us. All that’s required is realigning ourselves and activating intention. But how did we get disconnected in the first place? How did we lose our natural ability to connect? Lions, fish, and birds don’t get disconnected. The animal, vegetable, and mineral worlds are always connected to their Source. They don’t question their intention. We humans, however, with our capability for presumably higher brain functions, have something we refer to as ego, which is an idea that we construct about who and what we are.
Ego is made of six primary ingredients that account for how we experience ourselves as disconnected. By allowing ego to determine your life path, you deactivate the power of intention. Briefly, here are the six ego beliefs. I’ve written more extensively about them in several of my previous books, most notably Your Sacred Self.
1. I am what I have. My possessions define me.
2. I am what I do. My achievements define me.
3. I am what others think of me. My reputation defines me.
4. I am separate from everyone. My body defines me as alone.
5. I am separate from all that is missing in my life. My life space is disconnected from my desires.
6. I am separate from God. My life depends on God’s assessment of my worthiness.
No matter how hard you try, intention can’t be accessed through ego, so take some time to recognize and readjust any or all of these six beliefs. When the supremacy of ego is weakened in your life, you can seek intention and maximize your potential.
Holding on to the Trolley Strap
This is a practice I find exceedingly helpful when I want to activate intention. You may find that it works for you, too. (See Chapter 3 for an entire chapter describing ways to access intention.)
One of my earliest memories is of my mother taking her three boys on the streetcar on the east side of Detroit to Waterworks Park. I was two or three years old, and I recall looking up from the seat and seeing the hand straps hanging down. The grown-ups were able to hold on to the straps, but all I could do was imagine what it would be like to be so tall as to grab those straps way above my head. I actually pretended that I was light enough to float up to the hanging handles. I then imagined feeling safe and the trolley taking me where it was destined to go, at whatever speed it chose, picking up other passengers to go along on this glorious adventure of streetcar riding.
In my adult life, I use the image of the trolley strap to remind myself to get back to intention. I imagine a strap hanging down about three to four feet above my head, higher than I’m capable of reaching or jumping up to grab. The strap is attached to the trolley, only now the trolley symbolizes a flowing power of intention. I’ve either let go of it or it’s just out of my reach temporarily. In moments of stress, anxiety, worry, or even physical discomfort, I close my eyes and imagine my arm reaching up, and then I see myself float up to the trolley strap. As I grab the strap, I have an enormous feeling of relief and comfort. What I’ve done is eliminate ego thoughts and allow myself to reach intention, and I trust this power to take me to my destination, stopping when necessary, and picking up companions along the way.
In some of my earlier works, I’ve called this process the pathway to mastery. The four pathways may be helpful to you here as steps toward activating intention.
Four Steps to Intention
Activating your power of intention is a process of connecting with your natural self and letting go of total ego identification. The process takes place in four stages:
1. Discipline is the first stage. Learning a new task requires training your body to perform as your thoughts desire. So, eliminating ego identification doesn’t mean disconnecting from your relationship with your body, but rather, training your body to activate those desires. You do that with practice, exercise, nontoxic habits, healthy foods, and so on.
2. Wisdom is the second stage. Wisdom combined with discipline fosters your ability to focus and be patient as you harmonize your thoughts, your intellect, and your feelings with the work of your body. We send children off to school telling th
em: Be disciplined and Use your head, and call this education, but it falls short of mastery.
3. Love is the third stage. After disciplining the body with wisdom, and intellectually studying a task, this process of mastery involves loving what you do and doing what you love. In the world of sales, I call it falling in love with what you’re offering, and then selling your love or enthusiasm to potential customers. When learning to play tennis, it involves practicing all of the strokes while studying strategies for playing the game. It also involves enjoying the feeling of hitting the ball and of being on the tennis court—and everything else about the game.
4. Surrender is the fourth stage. This is the place of intention. This is where your body and your mind aren’t running the show and you move into intent. “In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link,” is the way Carlos Castaneda describes it. You relax, grab the trolley strap, and allow yourself to be carried by the same power that turns acorns into trees, blossoms into apples, and microscopic dots into humans. So grab that trolley strap and create your own unique connecting link. Absolutely everything in the entire cosmos includes you and your disciplined, wise, loving self, and all of your thoughts and feelings. When you surrender, you lighten up and can consult with your infinite soul. Then the power of intention becomes available to take you wherever you feel destined to go.
All of this talk of intention and surrender may cause you to question where your free will fits in. You might be inclined to conclude that free will is nonexistent or that you become whatever your program dictates. So, let’s take a look at your will and how it fits into this new view of intention. As you read the next two sections, please keep an open mind, even if what you read conflicts with what you’ve believed all your life!
Intention and Your Free Will Are Paradoxical
A paradox is a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement, even if well founded. Intention and free will certainly qualify as being paradoxical. They conflict with many a preconceived notion of what’s reasonable or possible. How can you possess free will and also have intention shaping your body and your potential? You can fuse this dichotomy by choosing to believe in the infinity of intention and in your capacity to exercise free will. You know how to think rationally about the rules of cause and effect, so try your intellect on this.
Obviously, it’s impossible to have two infinites, for then neither would be infinite; each would be limited by the other. You can’t divide infinite into parts. Essentially, infinite is unity, continuity, or oneness, like the air in your home. Where does the air in your kitchen stop and the air in your living room begin? Where does the air inside your home stop and the air outside start? How about the air you breathe in and out? Air may be the closest we can come to understanding the infinite, universal, omnipresent Spirit. Somehow, you must travel in thought beyond the idea of your individual existence to the idea of a unity of universal being, and then beyond this to the idea of a universal energy. When you think of part of a whole being in one place and part in another, you’ve lost the idea of unity. And (keeping an open mind as I beseeched you earlier), get this! At any moment in time, all Spirit is concentrated at the point where you focus your attention. Therefore, you can consolidate all creative energy at a given moment in time. This is your free will at work.
Your mind and your thoughts are also thoughts of the divine mind. Universal Spirit is in your thoughts and in your free will. When you shift your thoughts from Spirit to ego, you seem to lose contact with the power of intention. Your free will can either move with Universal Spirit and its unfolding, or away from it toward ego dominance. As it moves away from Spirit, life appears to be a struggle. Slower energies flow through you, and you may feel hopeless, helpless, and lost. You can use your free will to rejoin higher, faster energies. The truth is that we do not create anything alone; we are all creatures with God. Our free will combines and redistributes what’s already created. You choose! Free will means that you have the choice to connect to Spirit or not!
So, the answer to the questions, Do I have a free will? and Is intention working with me as an all-pervasive universal force? is Yes. Can you live with this paradox? If you think about it, you live with paradox in every moment of your existence. At the exact same instant that you’re a body with beginnings and ends, with boundaries, and a definition in time and space, you’re also an invisible, formless, unlimited, thinking and feeling being. A ghost in the machine, if you will. Which are you? Matter or essence? Physical or metaphysical? Form or spirit? The answer is both, even though they appear to be opposites. Do you have a free will, and are you a part of the destiny of intention? Yes. Fuse the dichotomy. Blend the opposites, and live with both of these beliefs. Begin the process of allowing Spirit to work with you, and link up to the field of intention.
At Intention, Spirit Will Work for You!
With your free will consciously deciding to reconnect to the power of intention, you’re altering its direction. You’ll begin to feel pleasant recognition and reverence for the unity of Spirit and yourself as an individual concentration of it. I silently repeat the word intent or intention to help me get my ego and my self-absorption out of the picture. I think often of this quote from Castaneda’s Power of Silence: “Having lost hope of ever returning to the source of everything, the average man seeks solace in his selfishness.” For me, personally, I attempt to return to the source of everything on a daily basis, and I refuse to be the “average man” that Castaneda describes.
Many years ago I decided to give up drinking alcohol. I wanted to experience continuous sobriety to improve my ability to do the work that I felt was burning inside of me. I felt called upon to teach self-reliance through my writing and speaking. Several teachers had told me that complete sobriety was a prerequisite for the work I was called to do. In the early stages of this dramatic life change, a power seemed to help me when I was tempted to return to my old habits of having a few beers each evening. On one occasion, in my state of wavering, I actually went out to purchase a six-pack but forgot to bring money with me. I never forget to take cash with me!
In the few minutes it took me to return home and retrieve the cash, I reevaluated the free will that would allow me to buy beer, and chose to stay with my intention. I found, as the first weeks passed, that these kinds of events started occurring with regularity. I’d be guided by circumstances that led me away from situations where drinking was a temptation. A telephone call might distract me from a tempting situation; a family minicrisis would erupt and deter me from a potential slip. Today, a couple of decades later, it’s clear to me that a firm handle on that trolley strap I described earlier allows me to be whisked along my path to destinations invoked eons ago by intention. And I also see that my free will is a paradoxical partner of the power of intention.
My awareness of intention as a power for me to reconnect to, rather than something my ego must accomplish, has made a huge difference in my life’s work. The simple awareness that my writing and speaking are manifested from the field of intention has been of immeasurable benefit to me. I’m awed by the creative energy when I get my self-importance and ego identification out of the way. Before taking the microphone, I send ego to the lobby or tell it to have a seat in the audience. I repeat the word intent to myself and feel myself floating up to this energy field of intention. I surrender and allow, and I find myself completely at ease, remembering tiny details in the midst of my speech, never losing my way, and experiencing the unique connection that’s occurring with the audience. Fatigue dissolves, hunger disappears—even the need to pee vanishes! Everything that’s necessary for delivering the message seems almost effortlessly available.
Combining Free Will with Intention
In mathematics, two angles that are said to coincide fit together perfectly. The word coincidence does not describe luck or mistakes. It describes that which fits to
gether perfectly. By combining free will with intention, you harmonize with the universal mind. Rather than operating in your own mind outside of this force called intention, your goal may very well be, as you read this book, to work at being in harmony at all times with intention. When life appears to be working against you, when your luck is down, when the supposedly wrong people show up, or when you slip up and return to old, self-defeating habits, recognize the signs that you’re out of harmony with intention. You can and will reconnect in a way that will bring you into alignment with your own purpose.
For example, when I write, I open myself to the possibilities of universal Spirit and my own individual thoughts collaborating with fate to produce a helpful, insightful book. But as I reconsidered my account of leaving alcohol behind me, I wanted anotherexample to put in this chapter of how intention collaborates with life circumstances to produce what we need.