Intention

The word "intention" has gotten thrown around a lot in recent years.  Mostly, God/the Universe or some mystical force is treated like "the great carhop in the sky," who willy-nilly gets people whatever they want.  A Jaguar F-Type S: check. A cruise of the Caribbean: check. iPhone 5S Gold: check.  Lose 20 pounds: no check unless you eat more healthfully and exercise, although focusing on it may help. 

Although there probably is no way to prove it in this world, I am pretty sure things don't work that way.  Oh, you might get those things, but I am pretty confident that the spiritual concept of intention doesn't work that way.  I realize that what I am about to say will probably put me at odds with a lot of New Agers, who actually like the carhop concept: it is a lot of fun, and, truthfully, focusing on something often makes it come true.  But that is not intention.  Some call it master-minding.  That works for me.  What doesn't work for me is calling it "intention."

I am pretty confident that "intention" is what we know in our heart--and only there.  We don't know it in our minds. We can't think it. We can't create it on earth. It is highly unlikely that it is about stuff. 

When I started this blog, my "intention" (spiritual use of the word) was that it would be about "intention." Over the months, though, the content has been all over the ballpark, yet more often than not, when I have posted many, if not most, days, a little voice has whispered to me something like: that was about "intention."  And, more often than not, I have regretted that I hadn't or couldn't write about it more directly. Yet I am not certain that intention can be written about more directly. 

I can tell you what I think the "tee-up" is.  But, in truth, "intention" is a daily, even hourly, process of discovering our soul's truth...and most days, what I have written has been what my soul was wrestling about that particular day.

I will attempt to describe the "tee-up," and I am forced to describe it in anthropomorphic terms, even though I am not sure that is how God exists.  Whatever form, I am nearly certain that the process would be similar.

Now, I ask you to imagine your soul, sitting with God, before you were conceived. For some reason when I imagine this, it always comes to me that I am sitting on a precipice overlooking a great canyon--think Grand Canyon, only more magnificent, if that is possible.  I don't think that it really matters where you imagine this; maybe the reason I imagine it so is that I connect deeply with nature and, when I think of the grandeur of the Universe, this is what comes.  (Although I have to say some of those scenes on the new "Cosmos," could entice me that it might be in a field of stars.)

So, as I was saying, I am sitting with God, and we do something like a mind-meld, except that it is a heart-meld: my heart becomes one with God.  In that moment, our combined heart does an assessment of my soul's history: it determines what my soul needs in order to grow. You might think about this as the famous "life review," but this is many lives review, and I am not sure, but I don't think it has nothing to do with other people.  I think it is an assessment of whether we stepped up to our potential, whether we contributed more to the world than we took, and whether we evolved as souls.

At that point, the way that I imagine this happening is my soul says whatever it is that it thinks it needs and with the combined energy of God simultaneously assesses what the world will need in my lifetime, and just at the moment we move to form a human embryo, we agree to perform service that will be needed and evolve our souls. In that instant, we are given special gifts and talents to assist in those two missions.

Now this is where the "intention" and "you-know-in-your-heart" part come in.  As soon as that compact or contract seals, this assignment for life is written on the back side of our hearts.  We can't see it, but we can feel it.  I have been coaching people around intention for 25 years.  I have never seen it fail that when a person detaches from their mind (key condition,) takes a few deep breaths, and tunes in to his/her heart, in that instant the person will know some crystalline truth that they didn't know a split-second earlier.

I think "monkey mind" is a Buddhist concept. In the modern world, it is increasingly difficult to turn off our minds.  Our obsession with technological gadgets feeds monkey mind.  (I am as guilty as anyone. I love my smartphone. And, I know it distracts me from what is important.) The busier our minds get, the harder it is to hear the still whispers from our hearts.  Thus the daily wrestling matches I've shared with readers, as I struggle to learn the truth of my heart.

The spiritual concept of "intention" is what is written on the backs of our hearts--the contract or compact that we entered into with All That Is in the split second before we became human. I am confident that complete alignment with that heart "intention" is the only way we find peace.  Finding it or hearing it or feeling it is how we accomplish the work of this life.  In the end, that is all that matters. 

Events that go on or people in our lives are props to allow us to do what we came here to do. That makes them no less important, perhaps more so.  It's just that the people and events have no meaning except to allow us to do our work, which makes them the very most important thing in life.

When we listen to what we know in our hearts, it will surely lead us the intention on the back side of each heart, and there is where we find God.