What is INTENTION?

Thank you Paula Peterson! This article gave me an idea on making one of the treatments I do more efficient. Now putting that idea into practice, waiting on the results…

What is INTENTION?

What does it take to manifest our true heart's desire and live according to our soul's purpose?

For the most part, the answer lives in the original meaning of intention: "the act of stretching out" or the "state of mind in which an act is done."

When we create, when we manifest, we are in a state of "intending". The words intention and attention emerged out of the same ancient root word and are similar in nature. We can't have one without the other. When we create, it is the focus of our attention and the power of our intention that makes it happen.

Through intention, we tend (pay attention) to the thoughts, feelings, action and form that relate to the ideas, wishes, dreams, desires and visions that we want to manifest.

As an analogy, it's similar to tending a garden: if we want to have a lush and healthy garden with beautiful plants and flowers, then we use our attention to focus on all the ways in which we can bring this about.

To grow your beautiful garden, you take the time to find the healthiest materials in which to build it: healthy seeds, good water, nutrient-rich soil, healthy organic fertilizers, optimum growing climate and environment. Then you add your focus, physical efforts, attitude, patience and time. The entire combination can be summed up into one word: attention!

Through the focus of our attention we make it happen. The kind of attention you put into your garden will make all the difference in the world. If a garden lacks attention it soon withers and dies, becomes wildly overgrown or the weeds take over.


Where is Your Attention?

Is the larger portion of your attention on the recent argument you had with your spouse ... going over and over the details of what was said or done?

Or are you worrying about the mistakes you made at work and how it may affect your reputation ... or promotion ... or raise?

Do you dwell on a current health issue and how it keeps you from doing this or that?

The list of situations is endless. Furthermore, when strong emotions accompany our attention, it increases the magnetic power of our focus a thousand-fold. Consequently, we will attract more situations that elicit the same kind of emotional response --- which in turn triggers the corresponding thoughts and beliefs about our self, the events of our lives and the world around us.

On the other hand, when our attention is accompanied by inspiration, enthusiasm, passion and a positive outlook ... then that, too, becomes a powerful magnet that will continue to attract the situations that will produce an increase in enjoyable and positive opportunities.

What kind of attention do you place upon the experiences you want to happen in your life? If your hopes and dreams of success in certain areas of your life are peppered with frequent doubt, fear, restriction, worry, unworthiness - then you will sabotage the outcome. Either your success will be delayed by months or years ... or it won't happen at all.

Some aspects about our life are easier to focus attention on ... and wa-la! ... it becomes almost instantly manifest. Other aspects are harder and take longer. Perhaps, it's because most of us were not trained to use the power of our minds to focus our attention in this way. Instead, most of us were taught from childhood on to use our minds and attention to memorize facts from a book, follow the rules, be like everyone else, be compliant, listen and obey the authorities, etc.

Few of us were trained to freely use the power of our minds and attention in creative fashion. Therefore, the neuronal pathways of our brains are deeply etched along the lines of following, obeying and memorizing. Consequently, we know those "trails" pretty well and they've become a habit. In fact, we know them so well, that we walk those same paths over and over in our minds in a rather unconscious manner.

How many times have you driven the same road nearly every day around the same time and not even notice the scenery? You may have even arrived at your destination and not remember much about how you got there or what you saw along the way. During those times, your subconscious mind had taken over the wheel while your thoughts and attention were elsewhere. This is very similar to how most of us navigate through life: the habits of thinking and behaving become so deeply etched in our brains that we can do most of it subconsciously without paying much attention.

But what about the unique and the unusual; the different and the new; the stretch beyond the known into the unknown and the stretch beyond the mundane into the mystical?

Few of us have had anyone train us or encourage us to venture into those realms. Perhaps this is why those particular neuronal pathways of our brain are not very well developed, nor worn away into familiar trails. Since the vast majority of humanity tend to follow along and pretty much do the same things over and over ... it becomes a real task of courage and perseverance to try something new and forge a new trail for ourselves.

In this respect, a new path - like a new endeavor - can seem daunting. It can, for a while, be more of a relief to stay on the same old familiar path and be surrounded by the same old scenery: nothing new, nothing threatening, and not much change.

But like a tight bud that must finally heed the urgings of its fundamental nature and burst forth into flowering new growth, we, too, must finally heed the fundamental yearnings of our deeper nature to move forward and break free of the old, limiting habits ... otherwise we wither and spiral downward into depression, despair and often illness.

It has been proven through clinical research that loss of mental clarity, early senility, dementia and other illnesses of the mind - like Alzheimers - are greatly aggravated by sticking with familiar habits for years and years without introducing much of anything new into ones life.


Personal Experience

From personal experience, I have seen how applying intention consciously in certain areas of life have worked extremely well while in other areas it's harder.

It seems that the stronger our beliefs are in some areas, the deeper those pathways run through our brains until some of them become menacing trenches. Picture yourself in a deep trench where the only way out is to have someone reach down and pull you out or they throw in a rope or a ladder! Sadly, many will stay in that trench for a very long time before calling for help.

When it came to my own experience of overcoming a major obstacle, it was the biggest challenge in my life at that time: to heal myself of serious, chronic, life-threatening illness.

How was it that I was able to heal myself of these ailments that severely limited me for the first 40 years of my life?

It all boils down to intention and the kind of attention I put into healing and achieving health. My success in this area came about because I made it a priority in my life. Achieving health became far more important than anything else: it was more important than money, more important than a relationship, more important than owning a house, more important than having fame or owning all those things that many of us were taught were most important - but never really are.

It took a lot of hard work and a colossal amount of my attention. Yet because I was deeply dedicated, my intention and the amount of attention I put into it became a magnet for anything and everything that could help me achieve it: the right people miraculously came into my life as guides; the perfect books appeared; the most appropriate classes and workshops showed up; the finest health practitioners showed up; the best opportunities for growth and change presented themselves to me.

After years of determination, perseverance and applying the knowledge gleaned from many sources I now have a level of health and vitality that I thought would never be possible for me. I persevered in spite of set backs, back slides and slow progress. In spite of the hurtles, my efforts totally paid off.

Now I'm learning to apply this same kind of determination into other areas of my life. Its a challenge for sure, because those ol' neuronal pathways are pretty deeply etched in some areas. But like all good things worth striving for, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.


We Are Creating All the Time

Most of us are unaware that we are creating all the time - every minute of every day. Our attention is always working and focused on SOME thing. In fact, wherever our attention happens to be in any given moment, that's where the energy goes.

Think of it this way: your attention is like a magnet. And like a magnet, your attention attracts certain images, events, situations, beliefs and thoughts.

Do you believe that BMW owners are always reckless drivers? Then guess what? You'll likely attract all the reckless BMW drivers on the road to prove your point!

I knew a man who strongly believed just that ... and guess what? He got to prove his point quite frequently - which gave him the opportunity to verbally vent any accumulated hostilities through some shocking language (I had to cover my ears!). Although I was a passenger in the same car, I never saw the reckless BMW drivers. What I did see were people driving BMWs ... however, what he perceived as horrible reckless driving was not evident to me. I simply was unable to see it even though I was looking out at the same scene at the same time.

Standing next to a woman in a workshop while we're both looking straight at the speaker, I heard this woman complaining offensively about the speaker's attitude, body language and choice of words. Although I was looking at the speaker at exactly the same moment the woman was making her assessment, none of her observations were evident to me. I wondered what she was seeing that I could not see at all. Where was this woman's attention? Did she tend to dwell on some other incident - like an unpleasant interaction with a spouse? a sibling? a parent?

The more unconscious a person is about why they do what they do the more often their perceptions are skewed: they are simply not aware that their observations are being filtered through some old habits of thinking.

What you intend will surely come about ... either consciously or unconsciously. What ever holds your attention will surely hold you. Your attention and the amount of emotional force behind it gives it the power to become form. It MUST manifest itself - 'cuzz that's the way things work around here!

We can either create through unconscious intention or we can create through conscious intention. The choice is ours.

By increasing our awareness of our thinking habits and questioning ourselves on why we do what we do - we increase our ability to consciously direct the power of our intention. The intention we hold behind any act is the key to the outcome we will attract.

So be careful what you wish for ... it will likely come true!

Namaste' ~ Paula Peterson