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.

Doubt

On Sunday (1/12/14,) I wrote that our assistant rector had said that we find God by being vulnerable.  Sunday afternoon I was reading a book in which the author twice dropped the line, "Doubt is how you find God." Unless I missed something, it really never went anywhere directly, but the line really piqued my interest. In one day, more than one way to find God. Or, is it really the same?

Doubt implies that we don't know, at least not for sure. Maybe we think we know, but we don't trust what we know.  This whole thing about listening to guidance: how can we know; I mean, really...for sure?  Is what we think we are getting real, or isn't it?  Most often when I ask for guidance, I say, "Give me a sign--a real clear sign that even I can get." My silent prayer is to make it so definite that there will be no confusion.

For years, my guidance came strong and clear...and often almost immediately.  In recent years, not so much.  What I get is muddled, or I get contradictory guidance, and I don't know which is true.  In truth, I don't think the guidance was any more clear before: I think that I had less mind chatter.  Less to muffle the messages. 

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, author of A Stroke of Insight, is a Harvard-trained MD, who studied brains.  At 37, she had a massive stroke that disabled the left side of her brain for weeks.  She couldn't talk, and the mind chatter stopped.  When she was forced to live in her right brain (some might say she was in her right mind,) she says she experienced complete and utter peace.  She was aware of people and events around her, only no matter what happened she was peaceful. 

I believe that no mind chatter = no doubt.  If we can still the mind, the messages come strong and clear.  In that place of peace, we are probably more vulnerable than anywhere else, and at the same time we know we are completely safe. I have never had a time when I clearly followed guidance that things didn't work out. They didn't always work out the way I would have liked or a way that was easy, but they worked. 

Back in the day when the messages came strong and clear, I didn't question; I just followed.  I didn't allow doubt: I allowed God.  Oh, if my left brain became engaged, usually through questioning of some other person, doubt would bubble up...and quickly.  I would find my vulnerability almost instantly in the doubt.  In truth, I think that was when I really became vulnerable, but I just couldn't see that the second-guessing was what created the vulnerability.

The image that comes to me is of an egg in boiling water.  I think that the doubt and vulnerability are like the boiling water that keep things stirred up. Yet the moment the water is pulled away from the heat source, and the boiling stops, the egg drops to the bottom of the pan instantly. All is still. The egg lies there in the quiet water, easy to see and touch.  As long as our mind chatter keeps things boiling, we can't pay much attention to God.  When we still, it is like the water calming. It is almost as if God is in the middle of the doubt and vulnerability, and all we have to do to find it is calm to know.

Science has taught us that what is real is what we can touch, feel, see, or hear. Yet, most religions have some concept of God as mystery--that which cannot be known.  For most of us, we feel most vulnerable when we don't know.  Caught in the conundrum between what we have learned academically and what we know in our hearts, doubt boils around God.  The mystery brings doubt and vulnerability...and peace and clear guidance.  It is all in the same pot.  Which will get my attention?  I am confident that when I can still the doubt and be comfortable with the vulnerability, I will find God.  And when I do, I will find the complete and utter peace that Dr. Taylor found. There I will find the answers.

Choosing Vulnerability

Today was our last Sunday with  Michael Angell as Assistant Rector at our church.  (Cool name for a man of God, wouldn't you say?) Michael has been very special in my personal spiritual development, and I will miss him terribly.  Although he is just a man in his twenties, he has the wisdom of an old soul.  His sermons have often touched me profoundly, sending me home to meditate on a thought or phrase.  So, it seems appropriate that his last sermon as Assistant Rector should have sent me pondering deeply.

Although his overall message was something different, as he often does, Michael buried a provoking thought in his homily.  "We don't find God from being perfect," he said.  "We find God by being vulnerable."  Vulnerability.  Much of what our popular culture teaches us about life is how to keep ourselves from being vulnerable--how we can protect ourselves from every possible thing that might make us helpless physically, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. "How do we armor ourselves from being hurt?" is shouted to us almost from birth.

I wrote a book on transforming fear, yet I find myself imprisoned by fear of vulnerability.  Yesterday, I told me friend that until recent years I'd never made a decision, based on money.  Yet, I continued, facing retirement was few assets and a long life expectancy, I have been increasingly paralyzed from doing what I know is right in my heart for fear of financial vulnerability.

My heart has been seriously broken several times, and this month it will be 20 years that I have been grieving the end of my marriage.  I say I would really like to have someone else in my life.  But would I?  Would I be willing to be vulnerable to the potential pain, in exchange for the gifts that come with love? Even if I would allow myself to be so emotionally vulnerable, would I even know how?  I am not sure after so many years of guarding my heart that I would know how.

Over the last year, I've slowly been losing the short-range functionality of my right eye.  For all intents and purposes, it is now gone.  There is a surgery that could restore my vision. The success rate is 99%, but if the surgery is not successful, I will lose my vision in that eye.  I am skittish.  Really!? I've lost functionality. Could losing my sight in that eye be so much worse? And, of course, the surgeons are really frightened of being legally vulnerable if I lose my sight.  It is like we are pulling each other back in the face of all reason.

So, if we find God in vulnerability, I have more than enough opportunity to have a really first-rate encounter with the divine.  What is the problem here, Kay? 

Two days before I withdrew from the world to begin writing Leading from the Heart was my birthday.  I had a party with all my closest friends to wrap myself in their love as I went into a truly vulnerable spot--allowing God to use me to share a message with the world.  I didn't know if I'd be successful, or how it would work, but I had to try.  At that party, my niece gave me a birthday card that said, "If we are forced to leap off a cliff, either a bridge will appear or we will learn to fly." 

I think this may be how vulnerability works.  If I am willing to leap off the vulnerability cliff, either God will catch me or I will learn to fly.  Neither of those seems like such a bad option. As I stand at the precipice of vulnerability, I feel myself wrapped in the love of friends and angels cheering me and ready to meet God in the vulnerability. And, so I send Michael off on his own spiritual adventure, knowing that his parting gift to me has been my wings of vulnerability.