A young man sits talking with his pastor before his marriage. "How do you know?" he inquires. Like many people about to marry, they want to make sure this is the right one because the decision will inevitably change their lives in some, probably many, ways. The pastor gives him some signs, but mostly says, "You just know."
Not unlike the young man about to marry, over the years many of my friends and clients have asked me about the guidance I receive. "How do you know?" some ask. "How do you get it?" others want to know.
Yesterday in a meandering conversation with a former Intentional Living Intensive client, now friend, we wandered into the topic. This time it was me attempting to establish parameters for myself. My most important guidance, or what I assume to be my most important, has usually been boldly clear to me, and many times it has been the response to a simple question. Often a booming voice spoke to me in a bold but loving way.
When I knew that it was time for me to leave Eugene, Oregon, 22 years ago, I stated simply, "I want a more friendly environment in which to live. I asked, "Where would you have me go?" Instantly, I received the names of three cities "you should explore." Over the next 18 hours, I received six "signs" about the Research Triangle Area of North Carolina. The last was a banner headline of my Oregon newspaper, which read: "Raleigh/Durham named best place to live."
Almost a decade after settling into my home in Durham, N.C., I found myself writing the words, "You are to move to Washington, D.C." while I was journaling. I tried to ignore them. I liked living in N.C. I had never considered living in Washington, what to me seemed like a "big city." I had usually lived in smaller cities and just didn't have a clue how to move into a city that I didn't know, without a job, and knowing almost no one. The prospect was overwhelming.
Other times I've gotten repeated guidance that I wasn't excited about receiving, and it has persisted. Over a couple of years, I had frequently gotten guidance to take a month-long pilgrimage to a place where English wasn't the dominant language, make no plans, take very little cash and no credit cards. I would be guided I was told. I wasn't ready. Finally, on a flight between two islands in Greece at the end of a physically exhausting conference, the bold voice was there again, this time tinged with more than a little impatience.
The message was the same except for a couple details to take the wiggle room out for me. "You are to return to Greece within three months for a pilgrimage. You are to make no plans, take very little cash and no credit cards." The open-endedness of previous guidance was erased by very specific place and time frames. I did receive two very small details over the intervening three months, but mostly I went with little more than initially directed. It was a wonderful, growthful, and insightful exploration. I will never be the same.
Insights haven't always been of the life-changing kinds, like moving across the country or going to an expensive tourist country with no credit cards and very little cash. On one of my open-ended vacations a few years later, as the day was growing toward an end, I said to my travel partner, "I wonder where we should stop." Within 1/4 of a mile, a large billboard stated simply in foot-high letters, "This is your place." It was.
Although it has been a long time since I had one, I used to occasionally, I have what I call a "cosmic marquee." Like a theatre marquee, a message for me is highlighted by flashing lights around it. The "cosmic marquee" seems to be reserved for really big messages.
Whether big or small, much of my guidance has been very specific. However, other times, it has been subtler. When I find myself having the same conversation with several clients in the same day or two, I believe that to probably be a sign that I should give the topic some inner reflection. When I have done so, it has usually ended up being dead-on for me.
Other times, words just come out of my mouth as if I didn't know the source but was keenly aware it was my mouth that was moving. In the years just after my first two books came out, I did a lot of keynoting, and because I was being paid very well, I always dutifully wrote my speeches in advance. But once I started speaking, other words came out. At some point, I started a file called, "Speeches I never gave." I've also found myself asking coaching clients questions that meant nothing to me, but were spot-on for the recipient.
Yesterday's conversation went in a different way, though. We talked about the even subtler forms of guidance. A hunch. An explained desire to do something I've never done. My intuition? Maybe my insatiable quest for adventure?
Recently, I've had the urge to get on a Greyhound bus and travel across the northern part of the US...in January. Really?! Our wind-chill factor in Washington today is 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and I don't even want to go near a window much less travel across the breadth of the country in places that often get much colder than this. This isn't a lingering desire I've suppressed that is emerging from the depths of my psyche. Although I've often jumped on a bus for travel in Europe, I've never even considered going anywhere on a bus in this country.
Is that guidance, I wondered to my client/friend? I do know that timing is critically important when following guidance. Not unlike the Butterfly Effect, which describes the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in New Mexico causing a hurricane in China, there are a lot of moving parts in God's world. God knows the plan, but the rest of us don't get the site map.
Let's say I am supposed to bump into someone at a truck stop near Fargo, North Dakota, on January 25. I have to take the bus because if I was driving, it is a place I wouldn't stop. The encounter may be brief, maybe totally unmemorable. In the course of a casual conversation, say with a waitress while ordering lunch, I say something that makes her understand an aspect of her life differently. We don't talk about going back to college or moving to Arizona, but there is something that is said that makes her connect to doing those things. As a result of those bold moves, she makes a discovery in her research that alters the course of humankind.
If I didn't leave until weather is more pleasant in spring, I don't make that connection, which means that a conversation we may have had never happens. Following guidance isn't like using God as your personal travel agent. It is very precisely about allowing God to change the world through you.
Think about Moses saying to God that he doesn't want to go that way because there's no way to get around the sea. How could he have known? He just followed his guidance.
So, back to the question, "How do you know?" As I sit in my apartment contemplating whether I want to walk half a block in this weather to get to a car to go to a dance tonight, I ponder, "Do I really want to get on a bus and travel across the northern US?" It is a question heavy on my heart. My intention is to make the world a better place, and if this is guidance, I would do almost anything to do my part. Yet, what if this isn't guidance, and traveling on a bus in January is really a fool's errand I'd rather avoid? How do I know?
I will meditate on this more...and ask simple questions. In the end, I will trust that with my intentions clear, I will know in my heart what I am to do.
Showing posts with label know in your heart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label know in your heart. Show all posts
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Remember Who You Were Going To Be
This afternoon I saw a bumper sticker that admonished, "Remember who you were going to be." I literally stopped in my tracks and stared at it. "Hmmm!" I thought. "Remember who you were going to be." I thought again, "I haven't a clue who I was going to be." I mean really what I wanted to be.
This evening I watched a movie in which a man knew that he'd always wanted to be the world's best barista, and the female love interest, who is an excellent human resources manager, always wanted to be an illustrator. As I watched this scene of the movie, it reminded me of the bumper sticker. I muted the TV during the commercial and thought about it again, but I wasn't any closer to an answer than I'd been a few hours earlier.
I am not sure if it was when I grew up or where I grew up, but options were never there. I started to write, options were never available, but, of course, that isn't true. There were lots of options; I just didn't know about them. Then I started to write, options were never presented to me. That isn't true either. Well, it is. Options weren't presented to me, but a lot of things were not presented to me. I found them anyway. That's just an excuse.
Pretty much girls in my high school in Indiana had three options: become a homemaker or go to college and become either a teacher or a nurse. Since I had an aversion to blood, being a nurse was never a serious consideration. I was pretty smart, and I loved to learn. Not going to college was never a consideration. That sort of left being a teacher.
When I was about 16, I attended a church camp "life recruit week." The intention was to get kids to become ministers, missionaries, and the like. I was inspired. That is what I would do. But, of course, as a girl, I could only become a minister of education--that's a fancy name for a teacher and/or being in charge of teachers. But, I really did feel called to do God's work, just not the way the people at the camp had in mind.
The truth is I have a number of gifts and talents, and I've enjoyed a lot of things I've done. Yet, I've never really had a drive to be any one thing. It ends up that teaching is something I'm fairly good at, and it has ended up being part of almost every job I've ever had. I particularly enjoy mentoring people. I think it is the one-on-one customized teaching of mentoring and coaching that I like best.
I've also been writing since I could hold a pencil, and it ends up that writing has ended up being part of every job I've even had. I can remember having the realization when I was almost done with the first draft of Leading from the Heart that my commitment to serving God 20 years earlier was finally coming to fruition. My ministry was the business world, I thought, and my medium was the written word. As the books become popular, I started doing more keynote speaking. It was kind of teaching, just to a bigger classroom.
A few years later when I created the intentional living intensives, I was sure I was exactly where I should be. They allowed me to be out in nature with clients and to move around. At the same time, I was able to engage my love for healthy but delicious food as I cooked for my clients. Best of all, I was able to see each of them find the truth of who they were. I remember thinking several times that it just couldn't get any better.
My writing, speaking, and coaching business was really joyful and fulfilling, but not because I had dreamed that life, I just sort of slid into it. Compared to those who have an inner drive to be something, it almost seems like cheating, but I was so happy. Should it matter how I got there?
As it ends up, the economy went bust, and my business went bust with it. It didn't matter any more. Since then, I've been teaching, writing, speaking, and coaching in a number of different settings, but somehow I've never reached that deep spiritual "flow state" in which I used to live most of my life.
This week I was at a continuing education training for coaches. The teachers were sharing lists of questions, and after a few minutes, I spoke up. I said, "I'd like to advocate for intuition. I've been coaching for over 25 years, I said, and I've always been able to be still, listen to my heart, and just hear the perfect question....Even when the question makes no sense to me, it always makes perfect sense to my client." That is how I wrote too...and spoke. That is the world I used to live in.
This evening after pondering "Remember who you were going to be" for several hours, I have come to remember what I used to know. Being who you were going to be doesn't have anything to do with choosing from a menu of careers and intellectually choosing what I will be. Being who I was going to be has everything to do with what I said to those coaches, "being still, listening to my heart," and doing what I hear.
So it was that I got to my flow state life. It isn't cheating. I think that is how we were designed. Listen to our hearts, and they will always guide us.
All those things that I've struggled with over the almost-year I've been writing this blog? There should never be a struggle. There should only be listening to what my heart knows. That is what this blog is about. I am most grateful for today's bumper sticker for reminding me how to remember. The heart always knows.
This evening I watched a movie in which a man knew that he'd always wanted to be the world's best barista, and the female love interest, who is an excellent human resources manager, always wanted to be an illustrator. As I watched this scene of the movie, it reminded me of the bumper sticker. I muted the TV during the commercial and thought about it again, but I wasn't any closer to an answer than I'd been a few hours earlier.
I am not sure if it was when I grew up or where I grew up, but options were never there. I started to write, options were never available, but, of course, that isn't true. There were lots of options; I just didn't know about them. Then I started to write, options were never presented to me. That isn't true either. Well, it is. Options weren't presented to me, but a lot of things were not presented to me. I found them anyway. That's just an excuse.
Pretty much girls in my high school in Indiana had three options: become a homemaker or go to college and become either a teacher or a nurse. Since I had an aversion to blood, being a nurse was never a serious consideration. I was pretty smart, and I loved to learn. Not going to college was never a consideration. That sort of left being a teacher.
When I was about 16, I attended a church camp "life recruit week." The intention was to get kids to become ministers, missionaries, and the like. I was inspired. That is what I would do. But, of course, as a girl, I could only become a minister of education--that's a fancy name for a teacher and/or being in charge of teachers. But, I really did feel called to do God's work, just not the way the people at the camp had in mind.
The truth is I have a number of gifts and talents, and I've enjoyed a lot of things I've done. Yet, I've never really had a drive to be any one thing. It ends up that teaching is something I'm fairly good at, and it has ended up being part of almost every job I've ever had. I particularly enjoy mentoring people. I think it is the one-on-one customized teaching of mentoring and coaching that I like best.
I've also been writing since I could hold a pencil, and it ends up that writing has ended up being part of every job I've even had. I can remember having the realization when I was almost done with the first draft of Leading from the Heart that my commitment to serving God 20 years earlier was finally coming to fruition. My ministry was the business world, I thought, and my medium was the written word. As the books become popular, I started doing more keynote speaking. It was kind of teaching, just to a bigger classroom.
A few years later when I created the intentional living intensives, I was sure I was exactly where I should be. They allowed me to be out in nature with clients and to move around. At the same time, I was able to engage my love for healthy but delicious food as I cooked for my clients. Best of all, I was able to see each of them find the truth of who they were. I remember thinking several times that it just couldn't get any better.
My writing, speaking, and coaching business was really joyful and fulfilling, but not because I had dreamed that life, I just sort of slid into it. Compared to those who have an inner drive to be something, it almost seems like cheating, but I was so happy. Should it matter how I got there?
As it ends up, the economy went bust, and my business went bust with it. It didn't matter any more. Since then, I've been teaching, writing, speaking, and coaching in a number of different settings, but somehow I've never reached that deep spiritual "flow state" in which I used to live most of my life.
This week I was at a continuing education training for coaches. The teachers were sharing lists of questions, and after a few minutes, I spoke up. I said, "I'd like to advocate for intuition. I've been coaching for over 25 years, I said, and I've always been able to be still, listen to my heart, and just hear the perfect question....Even when the question makes no sense to me, it always makes perfect sense to my client." That is how I wrote too...and spoke. That is the world I used to live in.
This evening after pondering "Remember who you were going to be" for several hours, I have come to remember what I used to know. Being who you were going to be doesn't have anything to do with choosing from a menu of careers and intellectually choosing what I will be. Being who I was going to be has everything to do with what I said to those coaches, "being still, listening to my heart," and doing what I hear.
So it was that I got to my flow state life. It isn't cheating. I think that is how we were designed. Listen to our hearts, and they will always guide us.
All those things that I've struggled with over the almost-year I've been writing this blog? There should never be a struggle. There should only be listening to what my heart knows. That is what this blog is about. I am most grateful for today's bumper sticker for reminding me how to remember. The heart always knows.
Friday, March 14, 2014
What Holds Me Back?
Yesterday I wrote about my understanding of "intention" as an inner compass imprinted on the back of our hearts. It keeps us on track for what we are supposed to do in this life. Kind of like a "purpose" but bigger than a "job," our heart's intention includes things like gifts and talents we have to develop and spiritual lessons that we are to learn in this life.
Almost since I clicked "publish" last night I've been struggling personally with what holds me back. I don't think the answer is one thing but several (perhaps many?) things. All of those things might boil down to "fear." Most religions have some concept about what separates us from God is fear, so , given the closeness to God that our intentions are, should we be surprised that it is fear that often keeps us from realizing them?
There is the fear of leaping--doing something big that we've never done before, and we don't really know how to do. Fear of failure is a big one: "What if I leap and fail?" haunts many of us. I believe even bigger is the fear of success. "What if I leap and succeed beyond my wildest imaginings, what would I do?" Most of us might chuckle and think we'd like to have that problem, but when we look in the mirror we know that huge success can intimidate those around us, change relationships, and depending on how different our new world might be, make close friends and family uncomfortable to be around us.
One that I've struggled with often is the fear of success followed by failure. I did experience incredible success for many years before things crashed. Failure after success is way worse than being in the same spot before the success. I didn't really know how it could be until I'd been there. Relatively speaking, being in the same spot is not the same. (I think this may be why some fear success: they'd just rather never know what is on the other side.) Fortunately, I think I've mastered the spiritual lesson of resilience: I keep coming back in different manifestations.
Over the last 12 hours or so of thinking about what holds me back, I find myself repeatedly coming back to places I've been many times. Spiritual places. I really want to get this right. Some spiritual lessons I've repeated over and over again; I don't want to walk away from one without getting it right this time.
For instance, I'd like to be able to add "check" to the spiritual lesson that is being treated abusively by women who have power over me. Since my mother first initiated me into that lesson when I was about three, I have had several women (current boss included,) who have had power over me, that were psychologically abusive. The form has been varied from compromising my integrity--I walked away from that one--to threatening me financially. (Not so much on that one.)
Usually I have walked away from those women. What I know about spiritual lessons is that walking away must not be the answer or else the lesson wouldn't keep popping up. Over the last four years, I've attempted several things. None have produced satisfactory results, so that also tells me I haven't found the right answer or approach yet. My experience is that when we learn the spiritual lesson, it melts away almost instantly. So, yes, I am held back from walking away because I really want to dispense with this lesson. Enough already!
There is also what I will call economic reality. I admit that I was much more spiritually confident when I had a generous investment portfolio than since the dot.com bust wiped it out over a decade ago. Walking away from my current situation could have severe economic consequences when I have no cushion. I freely admit this fear. I also wonder if delayed gratification--something I haven't been so good at--could be the lesson. My experience is that when we get all the intentions aligned--service, lessons, talents--magic happens, so I am a bit skeptical about that as an excuse.
Everything I know intellectually tells me that, before I let go of what I have, I should have something to move toward. Honestly, I don't have the burning desire to do something different that I've had in the past. When I knew in my heart something I just had to do, it was easy to move forward.
I feel impatience from my heart--like it has been telegraphing something to me impatiently, and I'm just not getting it. I almost said to someone yesterday, "Sometimes we just have to close one door before another will open." I didn't. It seemed like I needed the advice as much as she did. But, while I intensely feel the impatience, I don't have any kind of compelling desire or vision for what's next.
(I remind old readers and inform new ones that I've taken some pretty dramatic leaps before, but I always knew what I wanted out of the transition. I left rainy Oregon to move to sunny North Carolina where I knew no one and had no economic prospects just because I'd wanted to live there since I was a child and in sunny climes for a decade. I also needed to be alone, so I could find myself, but that complicates the description. That cross-country move was an easy leap for me.)
When I was younger, I tended to get a "wild hair," which I actually think may be a thunderbolt from the back of my heart, and, to paraphrase the ads, I just did it. Now I am more aware of the spiritual lessons. I may have just answered my question. If I get a thunderbolt from my heart, doesn't that imply that I can't get it wrong? I think it does. I am waiting for the thunderbolt. Judging from the impatience in my heart, I think it will be here soon.
Almost since I clicked "publish" last night I've been struggling personally with what holds me back. I don't think the answer is one thing but several (perhaps many?) things. All of those things might boil down to "fear." Most religions have some concept about what separates us from God is fear, so , given the closeness to God that our intentions are, should we be surprised that it is fear that often keeps us from realizing them?
There is the fear of leaping--doing something big that we've never done before, and we don't really know how to do. Fear of failure is a big one: "What if I leap and fail?" haunts many of us. I believe even bigger is the fear of success. "What if I leap and succeed beyond my wildest imaginings, what would I do?" Most of us might chuckle and think we'd like to have that problem, but when we look in the mirror we know that huge success can intimidate those around us, change relationships, and depending on how different our new world might be, make close friends and family uncomfortable to be around us.
One that I've struggled with often is the fear of success followed by failure. I did experience incredible success for many years before things crashed. Failure after success is way worse than being in the same spot before the success. I didn't really know how it could be until I'd been there. Relatively speaking, being in the same spot is not the same. (I think this may be why some fear success: they'd just rather never know what is on the other side.) Fortunately, I think I've mastered the spiritual lesson of resilience: I keep coming back in different manifestations.
Over the last 12 hours or so of thinking about what holds me back, I find myself repeatedly coming back to places I've been many times. Spiritual places. I really want to get this right. Some spiritual lessons I've repeated over and over again; I don't want to walk away from one without getting it right this time.
For instance, I'd like to be able to add "check" to the spiritual lesson that is being treated abusively by women who have power over me. Since my mother first initiated me into that lesson when I was about three, I have had several women (current boss included,) who have had power over me, that were psychologically abusive. The form has been varied from compromising my integrity--I walked away from that one--to threatening me financially. (Not so much on that one.)
Usually I have walked away from those women. What I know about spiritual lessons is that walking away must not be the answer or else the lesson wouldn't keep popping up. Over the last four years, I've attempted several things. None have produced satisfactory results, so that also tells me I haven't found the right answer or approach yet. My experience is that when we learn the spiritual lesson, it melts away almost instantly. So, yes, I am held back from walking away because I really want to dispense with this lesson. Enough already!
There is also what I will call economic reality. I admit that I was much more spiritually confident when I had a generous investment portfolio than since the dot.com bust wiped it out over a decade ago. Walking away from my current situation could have severe economic consequences when I have no cushion. I freely admit this fear. I also wonder if delayed gratification--something I haven't been so good at--could be the lesson. My experience is that when we get all the intentions aligned--service, lessons, talents--magic happens, so I am a bit skeptical about that as an excuse.
Everything I know intellectually tells me that, before I let go of what I have, I should have something to move toward. Honestly, I don't have the burning desire to do something different that I've had in the past. When I knew in my heart something I just had to do, it was easy to move forward.
I feel impatience from my heart--like it has been telegraphing something to me impatiently, and I'm just not getting it. I almost said to someone yesterday, "Sometimes we just have to close one door before another will open." I didn't. It seemed like I needed the advice as much as she did. But, while I intensely feel the impatience, I don't have any kind of compelling desire or vision for what's next.
(I remind old readers and inform new ones that I've taken some pretty dramatic leaps before, but I always knew what I wanted out of the transition. I left rainy Oregon to move to sunny North Carolina where I knew no one and had no economic prospects just because I'd wanted to live there since I was a child and in sunny climes for a decade. I also needed to be alone, so I could find myself, but that complicates the description. That cross-country move was an easy leap for me.)
When I was younger, I tended to get a "wild hair," which I actually think may be a thunderbolt from the back of my heart, and, to paraphrase the ads, I just did it. Now I am more aware of the spiritual lessons. I may have just answered my question. If I get a thunderbolt from my heart, doesn't that imply that I can't get it wrong? I think it does. I am waiting for the thunderbolt. Judging from the impatience in my heart, I think it will be here soon.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
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.
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.
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