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Intent is Everything
Copyright
Mellissa Seaman 2004 All Rights Reserved
What
do you want?
You
can’t take any action at all unless you know what you want.
Every action begins with the intent that drives the action.
Before you take a step forward, you intend it first, even if this is a
fleeting unconscious process. Many
of our daily intentions are made unconsciously.
You don’t really think about taking a step before you put out your foot
to move. And many of our actions
are done unconsciously as well, and for good reason – no need to consciously
consider each step as you walk down the street.
As you walk, as long as you have a general direction, you’re moving in
the right direction. But without at
least that direction, you’re lost, wandering, or stopped.
This holds true for your spiritual practice as well.
Without direction or Intent, you are lost, wandering or stopped.
What you want is important. Knowing
what you want is an art. This is
the Art of Intention.
Free
Choice
As
human beings, we have the gift and burden of Free Choice.
We choose what we do, under our current circumstances.
Sometimes our choices are limited by circumstances, but we do have
choice. Always.
And no one in the heavens or on earth can predict what a human is going
to do. We make some pretty wild and
crazy and illogical choices. Our
choices are so unpredictable that even Spirit doesn’t know which way we’ll
go next. This is our divine
gift. Free choice is a primary law
of earth. Our guides can’t come
down to help us without us making a choice to let them in.
“Ask and ye shall receive.” “Turn
your life over to your Higher Power.” The
great truths make it clear that it takes human Will to open the door even to
God. God does not come down and
meddle and fix everything. This
Earth is our playground to explore and learn. We are the ones in the bodies, so
we are the ones in charge down here. If we want help from the cosmos, we must
ask. Asking for help from the
angels opens a great big door above me to all of the angels who would love
nothing more than to help me, and needed only to be given permission through my
asking.
Directing this power of Free Choice is also called forming and stating an
Intention.
What
is Intent?
In shamanic practice, Intent is everything.
Intent, or intention, is an expression of what you want to happen. For
example, in writing this article my intent is to provide you, the reader, with
information and tools that you can take into your life and utilize on your
unique spiritual path. Without this
Intent, I would have no motivation to write this.
I would have no help from my Spirit Guides in setting out these words,
because I never would have known what to ask them for.
I simply would not take the time to do it.
I wouldn’t be motivated.
In shamanism and prayer and magical practice and anything else, your
Intent is the steering wheel for your work.
It provides the direction for your energy.
The more specific and motivated you are in your Intent, the more power
you have in moving forward.
Intent is comprised of two aspects, the specificity of what you want in
accordance with your Highest Good, and how much you want it – your desire.
Specificity
A
specific intent gets specific results. So
the first question you must ask yourself is what do you want?
This seems deceptively easy. You
may ask for a loving relationship to come your way.
This is a relatively general request.
Or you may focus your request to ask for a committed loving relationship
that leads to the formation of a family with a couple kids and a dog.
This is a bit more specific. Or
you may ask for a red-headed Irish spouse who loves shortbread and playing
checkers.
Picture a broad laser beam searching your world like a roving spotlight.
A general intent is like this wide laser beam that illuminates many
things. A very specific intent is
like a narrow laser beam that cuts sharply and distinctly through the Universe,
attracting only that very narrow choice or outcome.
At this point, you my hear your Grandma’s voice in your head warning
you about the dangers of choosing what you want in life… “Be careful of what
you ask for – you jus
t m
ight
get it!” There is a balance
between being specific enough in our choices and intentions that we draw the
desired result to us, without being too specific to exclude an unexpected
opportunity or surprise gift from the Universe that doesn’t fall within our
limited parameters. This is where
it is helpful to understand and utilize the concept of the Highest Good.
Intend
the Highest Good
One
kind of general Intent is to state your intent for the Highest Good.
This is like praying to God “Thy will be done” – a conscious
statement that you are not sure which choice is best, but you want the best
result for everyone. The Highest
Good is the perfection of the Divine Plan, leading to peace, love, unity… the
good stuff. Your own Highest Good
is that which leads to your personal evolution as guided and directed by your
Higher Self – the over-reaching part of your soul that knows all about the
lessons you are here to learn, who wants you to learn them in the best way
possible resulting in the most good for your spiritual evolution.
Your Higher Self is the one who knows what’s in your Highest Good.
Your conscious self doesn’t always know this, because your conscious
self is the one here on Earth with the desires, hungers, passions, and
distractions of living a material life in a physical body.
While we’re here on Earth, we can’t see the bigger picture like our
Higher Self can. But we CAN choose
what is in our Highest Good, provided we do not restrict the results too much.
For example, “I intend to find the career that serves my
Highest Good at this time…. unless i
t m
akes
under 50K, has no benefits package, or is more than 10 miles drive from my
house.” Um, now you’re
restricting the access of your angels and helpers to direct you towards the job
that is in your highest good if it does no
t m
eet
with all of your demands.
I recommend that you, right now, state out loud your Intent that
everything in your life from this point forward be guided in the direction of
the Highest Good – for yourself, and, if you are willing, for Highest Good of
the Earth and all of her children. You
may choose to make this an overriding Intent, so that whenever you ask for
specific things, there is an agreement between you and Spirit that if what you
ask for is not in your Highest Good, you don’t really want it.
I have found this a very useful “catch-all” for when I’m praying
and manifesting. It prevents me
from using my shamanic tools to do something that is not in my Highest Good, or
that could upset the balance of the Earth and the others I share her with.
Desire
Desire fuels intent. It is
the motivation for creating intent in the first place.
Intent is driven by your wanting. Intention
answers the question “What do you WANT?”
The more you passionately desire your objective, the more power is behind
your Intention. Following with the
laser beam analogy, if specificity controls the intensity of the laser beam,
your passionate desire for the intended result is the light source for the laser
beam. The burning desire in your
heart drives the brightness of your laser beam.
As you see in your day-to-day life, people who are passionate about their
projects tend to be more successful than those who piddle around with a hobby.
Passionate desire fuels dedication, and it powers your Intent.
Faith
Faith removes obstacles and skips over your own self-sabotaging
techniques. Your Faith that all
will be well, that all will be according to the Highest Good, is the closest
thing to a guarantee you’re likely to get in this world.
Your Faith can move mountains – mostly the mountains your ego has
painstakingly created to make sure you’re not too effective in life.
We sabotage ourselves all the time. It’s
part of our training from early in life. We
are encouraged to fall in line, to do as we are told, and to not shine too
bright so as to attract attention. All
of these self-sabotaging energies must be dealt with as you move forward on your
path to wholeness. Your best tools
to overcome self-sabotage are Faith and Courage.
Even when your brain is telling you you’re crazy, and your ego is
afraid of looking foolish, and your academic mind is complaining about the lack
of evidence to back all this up, your Power is in the background with full Faith
and Courage pushing you onward into the Great Unknown because it is in your
Highest Good to go there.
Intent
Transmission is Constant & Universal
We
are constantly transmitting our Intent out into the Universe.
Each thought we have, all day every day, is sending out a laser beam of
Intention. Each person walking the
earth is constantly transmitting lots of laser beams outward, and these are
affecting the energy all around them.
As a woman appraises herself in the mirror and finds herself beautiful,
she sends that transmission outward. Other
people resonate with that transmission, and find her attractive.
As she swears in her car at another driver she imagines is purposefully
torturing her with inattentive driving, that transmission is sent out, and
others who resonate with the judgment against other drivers are drawn to her.
She will likely encounter more frustration on the road that day, since
that is the energy she is calling in.
You can probably feel this in your day-to-day life.
Some people walk into a room with such positive vibrations, that everyone
in the room perks up with a smile. Other
people carry such negative transmissions that, without even “doing” or
saying anything, they can irritate people in the room.
Some people are so comfortable with money and wealth that they transmit
abundance to the Universe, and abundance always finds them.
Some people with the opposite transmission are stuck in Poverty
Consciousness – a term that is more & more widely known as people open up
to their responsibility to co-create their own lives with the Divine.
Someone
stuck
in Poverty Consciousness is constantly pinching pennies, living as if they will
be destitute tomorrow – regardless of how much money they actually have in
the bank. This attitude transmits
lack of abundance into the Universe, and so people, situations, and
opportunities that resonate with lack of abundance come back to that person.
Part of the Shamanic path – or any spiritual path, really – is to take
responsibility for the Intent you are transmitting into the Universe on a
constant basis. The challenge is to
become conscious of what you are transmitting.
Most of our thoughts are unconscious defense mechanisms.
When we are willing, however, to see our own challenges and difficulties
– our “imperfections” – without shying away, then we can dissemble these
defense mechanisms, and become more conscious in our thoughts and actions.
From a place of consciousness, we can then choose to change our thought
patterns to ones that support the Highest Good.
Affirmations, positive attitude, meditation to clear the negative thought
patterns, prayer, and consciously shifting from negative to positive thoughts
are all ways to consciously utilize the truth of transmission.
Because we have Free Choice, we are capable of literally changing our
minds, of choosing our thoughts, of choosing which emotions to give energy to.
Through focusing our Intent, we have the power to shape our own Lives.
***********************
Mellissa Seaman is a co-founder
of San Diego Circle
and founder of Heart
Wisdom. She provides profound energetic healing sessions, teaches
workshops, leads rituals, and writes articles on spiritual awakening, healing,
and sacred living. Reach Mellissa at info@heartwisdom.net.
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