The Power of Intention Read online

  How do you enter into the spirit of intention, which is all about feelings expressing life? You can nurture it by your continual ongoing expectation of the infallible spiritual law of increase being a part of your life. We saw it through our imaginary capacity to see higher vibrations, and we heard it in the voice given to it by spiritual masters throughout the ages. It’s everywhere. It wants to express life. It’s pure love in action. It’s confident. And guess what? You are it, but you’ve forgotten. You need to simply trust your ability to cheerfully rely upon Spirit to express itself through and for you. Your task is to contemplate the energies of life, love, beauty, and kindness. Every action that’s in harmony with this originating principle of intention gives expression to your own power of intention.

  Your Will and Your Imagination

  There’s no disputing the existence of your free will. You’re a being with a mind capable of making choices. Indeed, you’re in a continuous state of deliberate choice-making during your life. This isn’t about free will versus predetermined destiny, but look carefully at how you’ve chosen to rely on your ability to will yourself toward whatever you desire. Intention, in this book, isn’t about having a strong desire and backing it up with a pit-bull kind of determination. Having a strong will and being filled with resolve to accomplish inner goals is asking ego to be the guiding force in your life. I will do this thing, I will never be stupid, I will never give up. These are admirable traits, but they won’t reconnect you to intention. Your willpower is so much less effective than your imagination, which is your link to the power of intention. Imagination is the movement of the universal mind within you. Your imagination creates the inner picture that allows you to participate in the act of creation. It’s the invisible connecting link to manifesting your own destiny.

  Try to imagine willing yourself to do something that your imagination doesn’t want you to do. Your will is the ego part of you that believes you’re separate from others, separate from what you’d like to accomplish or have, and separate from God. It also believes that you are your acquisitions, achievements, and accolades. This ego will wants you to constantly acquire evidence of your importance. It pushes you toward proving your superiority and acquiring things you’re willing to chase after with hyperdedication and resolve. On the other hand, your imagination is the concept of Spirit within you. It’s the God within you. Read William Blake’s description of imagination. Blake believed that with imagination, we have the power to be anything we desire to be.

  I rest not from my great task!

  To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes of Man

  Inwards into the Worlds of Thought;

  Into eternity, ever expanding

  In the Bosom of God,

  The Human Imagination

  — from Jerusalem by William Blake

  Now go back to the idea of willing yourself to do something when your imagination says no. An example of a fire walk comes to my mind. You can stare at those hot coals and will yourself to walk across them, and if you rely exclusively on your willpower, you’ll end up with severe burns and blisters. But if you imagine yourself divinely protected—in Blake’s words, in the Bosom of God, and can see yourself in your imagination able to be something beyond your body, you can accomplish the fire walk unscathed. As you imagine yourself impervious to the heat of the red-hot coals, you begin to feel yourself as something beyond your body. You visualize yourself as stronger than the fire. Your inner picture of purity and protection lets you will yourself to walk across the coals. It’s your imagination that allows you to be safe. Without it, you’d be scorched!

  I recall imagining myself being able to complete my first marathon run of 26-plus miles. It wasn’t my will that got me through those three and a half hours of continuous running. It was my inner imagination. I tuned in to it and then allowed my body to be pushed to its limit through my will. Without that image, no amount of will would have been sufficient for me to complete that endeavor.

  And so it is with everything. Willing yourself to be happy, successful, wealthy, number one, famous, the top salesperson, or the richest person in your community are ideas born of the ego and its obsessive self-absorption. In the name of this willpower, people run roughshod over anyone who gets in their way; cheating, stealing, and deceiving to accomplish their personal intention. Yet these kinds of practices will ultimately lead to disaster. You may achieve the physical goal of your individual intention. However, your imagination, that inner place where you do all of your living, won’t allow you to feel peaceful.

  I’ve used this power of imagination over my will in the production of all of my life’s work. For instance, I see myself as having already completed this book. This thinking from the end causes me to behave as if all that I’d like to create is already here. My credo is: Imagine myself to be and I shall be, and it’s an image that I keep with me at all times. I don’t complete a book because I have a strong will to do so. That would mean I believe that it’s me, the body named Wayne Dyer, that’s doing all of this, whereas my imagination has no physical boundaries and no name called Wayne Dyer. My imagination is my very own “chip off of the old block” of intention. It provides what I need, it allows me to sit here and write, it guides my pen in my hand, and fills in all the blanks. I, Wayne Dyer, am not willing this book into reality. My picture of it is so clear and precise that it manifests itself. In ancient times, a divine being named Hermes wrote:

  That which IS is manifested;

  That which has been or shall be, is unmanifested, but not dead;

  For soul, the eternal activity of God, animates all things.

  These are significant words to ponder as you think about reconnecting to intention and gaining the power to create anything that’s in your imagination. You, your body, and your ego, do not intend, do not create, do not animate anything into life. Set your ego aside. By all means, have an aim in life and be full of determination, but rid yourself of the illusion that you’re the one who’s going to manifest your heart’s desire through your will. It’s your imagination that I want you to focus on throughout the reading of this book, and view all of your determined goals and activities as functions of your imagination working, guiding, encouraging, and even pushing you in the direction that intention had for you while you were still in an unmanifested state. You’re looking for a vibrational match-up of your imagination and the Source of all Creation.

  Your imagination allows you the fabulous luxury of thinking from the end. There’s no stopping anyone who can think from the end. You create the means and surmount limitations in connection with your desires. In imagination, dwell on the end, fully confident that it’s there in the material world and that you can use the ingredients of the all-creative Source to make it tangible. Since the Source of everything proceeds with grace, and its alluring seven faces, then you too shall use this method and only this method, to co-create all that you were intended to be. Become indifferent to doubt and to the call of your will. Remain confident that through continued reliance on your imagination, your assumptions are materializing into reality. Reconnecting to intention involves expressing the same seven faces that the all-creating Source uses to bring the unmanifest into the manifest. If imagination works for God, then surely it works for you, too. Through imagination, God imagines everything into reality. This is your new strategy as well.

  Applying the Seven Faces for

  Connecting to Intention

  Having been in the business of human development for most of my life, the question I most frequently hear is: “How do I go about getting what I want?” At this juncture of my life, as I sit here writing this book, my response is: “If you become what you think about, and what you think about is getting what you want, then you’ll stay in a state of wanting. So, the answer to how to get what you want is to reframe the question to: How do I go about getting what I intend to create?” My answer to that question is in the remaining pages of this chapter, but my short answer is this: “You ge
t what you intend to create by being in harmony with the power of intention, which is responsible for all of creation.” Become just like intention and you’ll co-create all that you contemplate. When you become one with intention, you’re transcending the ego-mind and becoming the universal all-creative mind. John Randolph Price writes in A Spiritual Philosophy for the New World: “Until you transcend the ego, you can do nothing but add to the insanity of the world. That statement should delight you rather than create despair, for it removes the burden from your shoulders.”

  Begin to remove that ego burden from your shoulders and reconnect to intention. When you lay your ego aside and return to that from which you originally emanated, you’ll begin to immediately see the power of intention working with, for, and through you in a multitude of ways. Here are those seven faces revisited to help you to begin to make them a part of your life.

  1. Be creative. Being creative means trusting your own purpose and having an attitude of unbending intent in your daily thoughts and activities. Staying creative means giving form to your personal intentions. A way to start giving them form is to literally put them in writing. For instance, in my writing space here on Maui, I’ve written out my intentions, and here are a few of them that stare at me each day as I write:

  • My intention is for all of my activities to be directed by Spirit.

  • My intention is to love and radiate my love to my writing and any who might read these words.

  • My intention is to trust in what comes through me and to be a vehicle of Spirit, judging none of it.

  • My intention is to recognize the Spirit as my Source and to detach from my ego.

  • My intention is to do all that I can to elevate the collective consciousness to be more closely in rapport with the Spirit of the originating supreme power of intention.

  To express your creativity and put your own intentions into the world of the manifest, I recommend that you practice Japa, a technique first offered by the ancient Vedas. Japa meditation is the repetition of the sound of the names of God while simultaneously focusing on what you intend to manifest. Repeating the sound within the name of God while asking for what you want generates creative energy to manifest your desires. And your desires are the movement of the universal mind within you. Now, you may be skeptical about the feasibility of such an undertaking. Well, I ask you to open yourself to this idea of Japa as an expression of your creative link to intention. I won’t describe the method in depth here because I’ve written about it in a small book with an accompanying CD by Hay House called Getting in the Gap: Making Conscious Contact with God Through Meditation. For now, just know that I consider meditating and practicing Japa essential in the quest to realign yourself with the power of intention. That power is Creation, and you need to be in your own unique state of creativity to collaborate with the power of intention. Meditation and Japa are surefire ways to do so.

  2. Be kind. A fundamental attribute of the supreme originating power is kindness. All that’s manifested is brought here to thrive. It takes a kindly power to want what it creates to thrive and multiply. Were this not the case, then all that’s created would be destroyed by the same power that created it. In order to reconnect to intention, you must be on the same kindness wavelength as intention itself. Make an effort to live in cheerful kindness. It’s a much higher energy than sadness or malevolence, and it makes the manifestation of your desires possible. It’s through giving that we receive; it’s through acts of kindness directed toward others that our immune systems are strengthened and even our serotonin levels increased!

  Low energy thoughts that weaken us fall in the realm of shame, anger, hatred, judgment, and fear. Each of these inner thoughts weakens us and inhibits us from attracting into our lives what we desire. If we become what we think about, and what we think about is what’s wrong with the world and how angry and ashamed and fearful we are, it stands to reason that we’ll act on those unkind thoughts and become what we’re thinking about. When you think, feel, and act kindly, you give yourself the opportunity to be like the power of intention. When you’re thinking and acting otherwise, you’ve left the field of intention, and you’ve assured yourself of feeling cheated by the all-creative Spirit of intent.

  — Kindness toward yourself. Think of yourself like this: There’s a universal intelligence subsisting throughout nature inherent in every one of its manifestations. You are one of those manifestations. You are a piece of this universal intelligence—a slice of God, if you will. Be good to God, since all that God created was good. Be good to yourself. You are God manifested, and that’s reason enough to treat yourself kindly. Remind yourself that you want to be kind to yourself in all the choices that you make about your daily life. Treat yourself with kindness when you eat, exercise, play, work, love, and everything else. Treating yourself kindly will hasten your ability to connect to intention.

  — Kindness toward others. A basic tenet of getting along and being happy, as well as enlisting the assistance of others toward achieving all that you want to attract, is that people want to help you and do things for you. When you’re kind to others, you receive kindness in return. A boss who’s unkind gets very little cooperation from his employees. Being unkind with children makes them want to get even rather than help you out. Kindness given is kindness returned. If you wish to connect to intention and become someone who achieves all of your objectives in life, you’re going to need the assistance of a multitude of folks. By practicing extending kindness everywhere, you’ll find support showing up in ways that you could never have predicted.

  This idea of extending kindness is particularly relevant in how you deal with people who are helpless, elderly, mentally challenged, poor, disabled, and so on. These people are all part of God’s perfection. They, too, have a divine purpose, and since all of us are connected to each other through Spirit, their purpose and intent is also connected to you. Here’s a brief story that will touch you at the heart level. It suggests that those whom we meet who are less than able to care for themselves may have come here to teach us something about the perfection of intention. Read it and know that this kind of thinking, feeling, and behavior empowers you to connect to intention through matching its kindness with your own.

  In Brooklyn, New York, Chush is a school that caters to learning-disabled children. Some children remain in Chush for their entire school career, while others can be mainstreamed into conventional schools. At a Chush fundraiser dinner, the father of a Chush child delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he cried out, “Where is the perfection in my son, Shaya? Everything God does is done with perfection. But my child cannot understand things as other children do. My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do. Where is God’s perfection?” The audience was shocked by the question, pained by the father’s anguish, and stilled by the piercing query.

  “I believe,” the father answered, “that when God brings a child like this into the world, the perfection that he seeks is in the way people react to this child.” He then told the following story about his son, Shaya.

  One afternoon Shaya and his father walked past a park where some boys Shaya knew were playing baseball. Shaya asked, “Do you think they’ll let me play?” Shaya’s father knew that his son was not at all athletic and that most boys would not want him on their team. But Shaya’s father understood that if his son was chosen to play, it would give him a sense of belonging. Shaya’s father approached one of the boys on the field and asked if Shaya could play. The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates. Getting none, he took matters into his own hands and said, “We’re losing by six runs, and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team, and we’ll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning.”

  Shaya’s father was ecstatic as Shaya smiled broadly. Shaya was told to put on a glove and go out to play in center field. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shaya’s team score
d a few runs but was still behind by three. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shaya’s team scored again, and now had two outs and the bases loaded, with the potential winning run on base, Shaya was scheduled to be up. Would the team actually let Shaya bat at this juncture and give away their chance to win the game?

  Surprisingly, Shaya was given the bat. Everyone knew that it was all but impossible because Shaya didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, let alone hit with it. However, as Shaya stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shaya could at least be able to make contact. The first pitch came in, and Shaya swung clumsily and missed. One of Shaya’s teammates came up to Shaya, and together they held the bat and faced the pitcher waiting for the next pitch. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly toward Shaya. As the pitch came in, Shaya and his teammate swung the bat, and together they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shaya would have been out and that would have ended the game. Instead, thepitcher took the ball and threw it on a high arc to right field far beyond the reach of the first baseman. Everyone started yelling, “Shaya, run to first. Run to first.” Never in his life had Shaya run to first. He scampered down the baseline wide-eyed and startled. By the time he reached first base, the right-fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman who would tag out Shaya, who was still running.