The Power of Intention Page 9
Extend acts of kindness, asking for nothing in return.Anonymously extend financial aid to those less fortunate, and do it from the kindness of your heart, expecting not even a thank you. Activate your magnificent obsession by learning to be kind while keeping your ego—which expects to be told how wonderful you are—out of the picture completely. This is an essential activity for connecting to intention because the universal all-creating Spirit returns acts of kindness with the response: How may I be kind to you?
Pick up some litter and place it in a proper receptacle and tell no one about your actions. In fact, spend several hours doing nothing but cleaning and clearing out messes that you didn’t create. Any act of kindness extended toward yourself, others, or your environment matches you up with the kindness inherent in the universal power of intention. It’s an energizer for you, and causes this kind of energy to flow back into your life.
This poignant story “The Valentine,” by Ruth McDonald, illustrates the kind of giving I’m suggesting here. The little boy symbolizes the magnificent obsession I just referred to.
He was a shy little boy, not very popular with the other children in Grade One. As Valentine’s Day approached, his mother was delighted when he asked her one evening to sit down and write the names of all the children in his class so that he could make a Valentine for each. Slowly he remembered each name aloud, and his mother recorded them on a piece of paper. He worried endlessly for fear he would forget someone.
Armed with a book of Valentines to cut out, with scissors and crayons and paste, he plodded his conscientious way down the list. When each one was finished, his mother printed the name on a piece of paper and watched him laboriously copy it. As the pile of finished Valentines grew, so did his satisfaction.
About this time, his mother began to worry whether the other children would make Valentines for him. He hurried home so fast each afternoon to get on with his task, that it seemed likely the other children playing along the street would forget his existence altogether. How absolutely horrible if he went off to the party armed with 37 tokens oflove—and no one had remembered him! She wondered if there were some way she could sneak a few Valentines among those he was making so that he would be sure of receiving at least a few. But he watched his hoard so jealously, and counted them over so lovingly, that there was no chance to slip in an extra. She assumed a mother’s most normal role, that of patient waiting.
The day of the Valentine box finally arrived, and she watched him trudge off down the snowy street, a box of heart-shaped cookies in one hand, a shopping-bag clutched in the other with 37 neat tokens of his labor. She watched him with a burning heart. “Please, God,” she prayed, “let him get at least a few!”
All afternoon her hands were busy here and there, but her heart was at the school. At half-past three she took her knitting and sat with studied coincidence in a chair that gave a full view of the street.
Finally, he appeared, alone. Her heart sank. Up the street he came, turning every once in a while to back up a few steps into the wind. She strained her eyes to see his face. At that distance it was just a rosy blur.
It was not until he turned in at the walk that she saw it—the one lone Valentine clutched in his little red mitt. Only one. After all his work. And from the teacher probably. The knitting blurred before her eyes. If only you could stand between your child and life! She laid down her work and walked to meet him at the door.
“What rosy cheeks!” she said. “Here, let me untie your scarf. Were the cookies good?”
He turned toward her a face shining with happiness and complete fulfillment. “Do you know what?” he said. “I didn’t forget a one. Not a single one!”
Be specific when you affirm your intentions to raise your energy level and create your desires. Place your affirmations in strategic places where you’ll notice and read them throughout the day. For example: I intend to attract the job I desire into my life. I intend to be able to afford the specific automobile I envision myself driving by the 30th of next month. I intend to donate two hours of my time this week to the underprivileged. I intend to heal myself of this persistent fatigue.
Written affirmations have an energy of their own and will guide you in raising your energy level. I practice this myself. A woman named Lynn Hall who lives in Toronto sent me a beautiful plaque that I look at each day. In her letter she stated: “Here is a gift for you, written solely for you in an effort to convey heartfelt gratitude for the blessing of your presence in my life. That said, I am sure that the sentiment is a universal one speaking for every other soul on the planet who has experienced the same good fortune. May the light and love that you emit forever reflect back to you in joyful abundance, Dr. Dyer.” The beautiful etched-in-soul plaque reads like this:
Spirit
Has found
Great voice
In you.
In vibrant truths,
And joyful splendor.
Spirit
Has found
Revelation
Through you,
In resonant
And reflective ways.
Spirit
Has found
Celebration
Through you,
In infinite expanses
And endless reach.
To
All those
Awakened
To the
Grace of
Your gifts—
Spirit
Has found
Both
Wings
And
Light.
I read these words daily to remind me of my connection to Spirit, and allow the words to flow from my heart to yours, fulfilling my intentions and hopefully helping you do the same.
As frequently as possible, hold thoughts of forgiveness in your mind. In muscle testing, when you hold a thought of revenge, you’ll go weak, while a thought of forgiveness keeps you strong. Revenge, anger, and hatred are exceedingly low energies that keep you from matching up with the attributes of the universal force. A simple thought of forgiveness toward anyone who may have angered you in the past—without any action taken on your part—will raise you to the level of Spirit and aid you in your individual intentions.
You can either serve Spirit with your mind or use that same mind to divorce yourself from Spirit. Married to the seven faces of spiritual intention, you connect to that power. Divorced, your self-importance, your ego, takes over.
Here’s the final obstacle to making your connection to intention.
Your Self-Importance
In The Fire from Within, Carlos Castaneda hears these words from his sorcerer teacher: “Self-importance is man’s greatest enemy. What weakens him is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow man. Self-importance requires that one spend most of one’s life offended by something or someone.” This is a major impediment to connecting to intention; you can all too easily create a no match here.
Basically, your feelings of self-importance are what make you feel special, so let’s deal with this concept of being special. It’s essential that you have a strong self-concept and that you feel unique. The problem is when you misidentify who you truly are by identifying yourself as your body, your achievements, and your possessions. Then you identify people who have accomplished less as inferior, and your self-important superiority causes you to be constantly offended in one way or another. This misidentification is the source of most of your problems, as well as most of the problems of humankind. Feeling special leads us to our self-importance. Castaneda writes later in his life, many years after his initial emergence into the world of sorcery, about the futility of self-importance. “The more I thought about it, and the more I talked to and observed myself and my fellow men, the more intense the conviction that something was rendering us incapable of any activity or any interaction or any thought that didn’t have the self as its focal point.”
With the self as a focal point, you sustain the illusion that you are your body, wh
ich is a completely separate entity from all others. This sense of separateness leads you to compete rather than cooperate with everyone else. Ultimately, it’s a no match with Spirit, and becomes a huge obstacle to your connection to the power of intention. In order to relinquish your self-importance, you’ll have to become aware of how entrenched it is in your life. Ego is simply an idea of who you are that you carry around with you. As such, it can’t be surgically removed by having an egoectomy! This idea of who you think you are will persistently erode any possibility you have of connecting to intention.
Seven Steps for Overcoming Ego’s Hold on You
Here are seven suggestions to help you transcend ingrained ideas of self-importance. All of these are designed to help prevent you from falsely identifying with the self-important ego.
1. Stop being offended. The behavior of others isn’t a reason to be immobilized. That which offends you only weakens you. If you’re looking for occasions to be offended, you’ll find them at every turn. This is your ego at work convincing you that the world shouldn’t be the way it is. But you can become an appreciator of life and match up with the universal Spirit of Creation. You can’t reach the power of intention by being offended. By all means, act to eradicate the horrors of the world, which emanate from massive ego identification, but stay in peace. As A Course in Miracles reminds us: Peace is of God, you who are part of God are not at home except in his peace. Being offended creates the same destructive energy that offended you in the first place and leads to attack, counterattack, and war.
2. Let go of your need to win. Ego loves to divide us up into winners and losers. The pursuit of winning is a surefire means to avoid conscious contact with intention. Why? Because ultimately, winning is impossible all of the time. Someone out there will be faster, luckier, younger, stronger, and smarter—and back you’ll go to feeling worthless and insignificant.
You’re not your winnings or your victories. You may enjoy competing, and have fun in a world where winning is everything, but you don’t have to be there in your thoughts. There are no losers in a world where we all share the same energy source. All you can say on a given day is that you performed at a certain level in comparison to the levels of others on that day. But today is another day, with other competitors and new circumstances to consider. You’re still the infinite presence in a body that’s another day (or decade) older. Let go of needing to win by not agreeing that the opposite of winning is losing. That’s ego’s fear. If your body isn’t performing in a winning fashion on this day, it simply doesn’t matter when you aren’t identifying exclusively with your ego. Be the observer, noticing and enjoying it all without needing to win a trophy. Be at peace, and match up with the energy of intention. And ironically, although you’ll hardly notice it, more of those victories will show up in your life as you pursue them less.
3. Let go of your need to be right. Ego is the source of a lot of conflict and dissension because it pushes you in the direction of making other people wrong. When you’re hostile, you’ve disconnected from the power of intention. The creative Spirit is kind, loving, and receptive; and free of anger, resentment, or bitterness. Letting go of your need to be right in your discussions and relationships is like saying to ego, I’m not a slave to you. I want to embrace kindness, and I reject your need to be right. In fact, I’m going to offer this person a chance to feel better by saying that she’s right, and thank her for pointing me in the direction of truth.
When you let go of the need to be right, you’re able to strengthen your connection to the power of intention. But keep in mind that ego is a determined combatant. I’ve seen people willing to die rather than let go of being right. I’ve seen people end otherwise beautiful relationships by sticking to their need to be right. I urge you to let go of this ego-driven need to be right by stopping yourself in the middle of an argument and asking yourself, Do I want to be right or be happy? When you choose the happy, loving, spiritual mode, your connection to intention is strengthened. These moments ultimately expand your new connection to the power of intention. The universal Source will begin to collaborate with you in creating the life you were intended to live.
4. Let go of your need to be superior. True nobility isn’t about being better than someone else. It’s about being better than you used to be. Stay focused on your growth, with a constant awareness that no one on this planet is any better than anyone else. We all emanate from the same creative life force. We all have a mission to realize our intended essence; all that we need to fulfill our destiny is available to us. None of this is possible when you see yourself as superior to others. It’s an old saw, but nonetheless true: We are all equal in the eyes of God. Let go of your need to feel superior by seeing the unfolding of God in everyone. Don’t assess others on the basis of their appearance, achievements, possessions, and other indices of ego. When you project feelings of superiority, that’s what you get back, leading to resentments and ultimately hostile feelings. These feelings become the vehicle that takes you farther away from intention. A Course in Miracles addresses this need to be special and superior: Specialness always makes comparisons. It is established by a lack seen in another, and maintained by searching for, and keeping clear in sight, all lacks it can perceive.
5. Let go of your need to have more. The mantra of the ego is more. It’s never satisfied. No matter how much you achieve or acquire, your ego will insist that it isn’t enough. You’ll find yourself in a perpetual state of striving, and eliminate the possibility of ever arriving. Yet in reality, you’ve already arrived, and how you choose to use this present moment of your life is your choice. Ironically, when you stop needing more, more of what you desire seems to arrive in your life. Since you’re detached from the need for it, you find it easier to pass it along to others, because you realize how little you need in order to be satisfied and at peace.
The universal Source is content with itself, constantly expanding and creating new life, never trying to hold on to its creations for its own selfish means. It creates and lets go. As you let go of ego’s need to have more, you unify with that Source. You create, attract to yourself, and let it go, never demanding that more come your way. As an appreciator of all that shows up, you learn the powerful lesson St. Francis of Assisi taught: “ . . . it is in giving that we receive.” By allowing abundance to flow to and through you, you match up with your Source and guarantee that this energy will continue to flow.
6. Let go of identifying yourself on the basis of your achievements. This may be a difficult concept if you think you are your achievements. God writes all the music, God sings all the songs, God builds all the buildings, God is the source of all your achievements. I can hear your ego loudly protesting. Nevertheless, stay tuned to this idea. All emanates from Source! You and that Source are one! You’re not this body and its accomplishments. You are the observer. Notice it all; and be grateful for the abilities you’ve been given, the motivation to achieve, and the stuff you’ve accumulated. But give all the credit to the power of intention, which brought you into existence and which you’re a materialized part of. The less you need to take credit for your achievements and the more connected you stay to the seven faces of intention, the more you’re free to achieve, and the more will show up for you. It’s when you attach yourself to those achievements and believe that you alone are doing all of those things that you leave the peace and the gratitude of your Source.
7. Let go of your reputation. Your reputation is not located in you. It resides in the minds of others. Therefore, you have no control over it at all. If you speak to 30 people, you will have 30 reputations. Connecting to intention means listening to your heart and conducting yourself based on what your inner voice tells you is your purpose here. If you’re overly concerned with how you’re going to be perceived by everyone, then you’ve disconnected yourself from intention and allowed the opinions of others to guide you. This is your ego at work. It’s an illusion that stands between you and the power of intention. There’s nothing
you can’t do, unless you disconnect from the power source and become convinced that your purpose is to prove to others how masterful and superior you are and spend your energy attempting to win a giant reputation among other egos. Do what you do because your inner voice—always connected to and grateful to your Source—so directs you. Stay on purpose, detach from outcome, and take responsibility for what does reside in you: your character. Leave your reputation for others to debate; it has nothing to do with you. Or as a book title says: What You Think of Me Is None of My Business!
This concludes the three major obstacles to your connecting to intention: your thoughts, your energy, and your self-importance. Here are five suggestions for overcoming the obstacles and staying permanently connected to the power of intention.
Five Suggestions for Implementing the Ideas
in This Chapter
1. Monitor your inner dialogue. Notice how much of your inner speech focuses on what’s missing, the negative circumstances, the past, and the opinions of others. The more cognizant you become of your inner speech, the sooner you’ll be able to shift right in the midst of those habitual inner proceedings, from a thought of I resent what’s missing, to I intend to attract what I want and stop thinking about what I dislike. That new inner dialogue becomes the link connecting you to intention.