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Intent: Transitioning on 12/21/12
Our galaxy is ending a 26,000-year cycle, and the seasons turn. At the equinox, night and day reach a point of balance; for us humans, it can be a time of finding our own balance between the light and the shadow in our lives.
This can be a time of coming together: of the heart of the South and mind of the North; of the condor of the South and eagle of the North; of heaven and earth. All the prophesy and predictions for 2012--from the Q'ero of the Andes, The Hopi of the Southwest, and the Maya of Central America--offer us beacons of hope. We have great potential for shifting our consciousness and visioning a future we want to inhabit.
In this moment, how are you meeting the changes and challenges? What is your intent?
What Is Intent?
Intent is an energetic attitude, a purpose or plan, a way of organizing our perceptions. When intent comes from our three centers--power (belly), loving action (heart), and wisdom (third eye)--it arises from our whole being, not just our mind and thoughts. The difference is crucial.
Moving with intent sends an energetic vibration into the world. It affects our cells, our fields, and the web of life that surrounds us. It feeds what we are trying to create--personally, politically, globally--and affects the cumulative outcome of things.
Intent does not come from will, with which we try to push through things no matter what. Intent is different than desire, our mind's idea of what will make us happy, what we want, what we wish for. Intent is different than affirmations, the practice of positive thinking and saying what we want to believe over and over. Intent is also different from intention: in English usage, intention is action-oriented and goal-directed.
Intent includes the energetic attention, passion, spirit, and direction we choose to focus on as we move through the world. Intent comes from our essence rather than our thoughts: our third eye gives us the vision to see the whole. Our heart helps us feel our way into action with love, compassion, and intuition. Our power center in our belly helps us live with integrity.
True intent includes the whole: our body, mind, heart, and spirit, the light and the heavy, the sunlight and the shadow. True intent takes into account our weaknesses as well as our strengths, so it doesn't set us up to fail.
A Story of Radiant Intent
Joan, a student of mine, had a mastectomy a month after we began working together. Despite her surgery, despite the obvious loss, and despite the heavy feelings that accompany cancer, she was radiant. Instead of becoming totally focused on her illness, Joan engaged her three centers as she visualized all the parts of and participants in her treatment coming together to support her.
Part of Joan's energetic response, her intent, was to work with, not fight against the dis-ease in her body. She understood, in her heart, that the energy of fighting simply engenders more fighting; she needed a different stance. This perception alone was a major deviation from our dominant thought patterns and medical models: we have all been trained to think about fighting cancer and disease.
Joan practiced what Buddhists and shamans call "non-attachment to outcome". She focused her energy on what she called the "highest and best outcome," meaning that she did what she could, and entertained the possibility of perfect health while allowing for anything to happen. To do this, she had to focus on staying in her energy body, her three centers, as various emotions, fears, and responses from others arose. By moving the heavy energy through and out, she repeatedly released the idea that curing her cancer was the only acceptable result.
Joan told me she repeated her intent daily before surgery and during chemotherapy and recovery. Her intent went something like this:
I see an easy surgery, filled with light, love, and long-term healing. I intend that the light of the all the instruments use their highest intelligence for physical illumination and energetic healing. I intend a quick release of all toxins, energetic and physical, from drugs and anesthesia in my body. I see my healing as smooth, quick, and requiring minimal pain medication. I see a full reunion of body, soul, and spirit post-surgery.
I intend that my recovery be easy, radiant, empowering, and fast. I see my reconfigured body luminous in every cell, strong and healthy beyond my wildest dreams. I see the re-union of body and spirit ongoing, deepening, and shining into the world.
She spent a lot of time visualizing everyone--the surgical team, the hospital staff, the machines, the medications, and her body--working together cooperatively. Joan paid attention to the thoughts, attitudes, stories, and habits that had resulted in her physical imbalances, working to transform them as she discovered them (we all know this takes time and courage). She engaged with her community for support, making sure to spend time with those who understood her intent. She stepped aside, as much as possible, from those who responded by feeding fear and anxiety in their words and energetic responses. For example, when people said, "Oh, how terrible," Joan felt it triggered her fear, and did not help her stay aligned with her intent.
But Joan didn't depend on just vision and words. By releasing and filling energetically, and by keeping her centers of power, loving action, and vision focused and light-filled as much as possible, she moved with integrity. She modeled for me, and everyone who knew her, the power of intent to create change.
Developing Our Intent
Our consciousness and perceptions of what's possible are essential in forming intent. In general, we do not experience or expect things we do not think are possible.
Setting our intent to heal a physical injury provides a simple example. When we believe we can heal, we are motivated to exercise. When doing our exercises results in less pain, we keep doing them. When we feel our bodies become stronger and less stiff, that fuels our intent to keep up the exercise! When we stop, as we all do, and the pain returns, we have some choices: we can renew our intent. We can give up. We can try something different. We can make excuses. We can feed our fear of being disabled. We can vow to do the best we can.
Setting intent to have an open heart in a difficult relationship provides another example. If we remind ourselves daily that we want to keep our heart open, and our interactions with the person become easier, we are likely to continue. If we do energy releasing and filling practices to keep ourselves in alignment with our open heart, we get better at staying openhearted, and we'll feel more confident. But if the other person is oblivious, or takes advantage of our open heartedness, we'll have to reconsider our next steps, reconsider our intent.
Setting intent means to create a fluid membrane in our field so something different can enter. Setting an intent, and acting on it, is a way of magnetizing support from and connection with others who share our focus. Setting intent is a way to open the portals more clearly to our own path in life.
Our intent colors, drives, and fuels everything. Our intent impacts the larger field just as scientists have learned: the moment intent is framed, action begins; there is no time lapse. And just as others are affected by our intent, we are affected by theirs.
Think about the practice of gratitude. Over the last decade there has been a collective effort to help people learn gratitude, practice gratitude, and be inspired by expressions of gratitude. As the practice spread, friends talked and emailed each other, set up social media pages, encouraged each other. People thought of fun ways, like the "Free Hugs" viral movement, of being in gratitude. Knowing others shared the intent to live in gratitude helped each of us maintain our commitment! Feeling the effects around the world encouraged the intent. The same thing can happen in our families, our workplaces, and in the groups we engage with.
Intent, Creation, and Decree
Our words, and the intent they express, carry energy. It is really important to notice how we express what we are trying to manifest, in our thoughts, words, and behavior. Our observations can help us identify any hesitations we have, as well as the strength we are carrying. Only when we discover that we are putting limitations on the outcome can we address those limitations.
As Sandra Ingerman wrote in her Transmutation News,
"...We need to stop allowing the outside world to write our script. Our new script must be born from our inner world. We must use the depth of our senses to make our creations real... If we cannot get in touch with the true power of our own vivid images, our own internal songs of creation, the beauty of the fragrances we wish to smell, the taste of healthy food grown and cooked with love, and the feeling of touching the beauty of life, there is no power in our creation... If you wish for healing to take place at a particular location on the planet imagine reading a newspaper article that announces the healing has already taken place. Feel the feel of the newspaper in your fingers. Smell the ink. Experience yourself smiling as you read the article out loud, and hear the laughter of your friends as you share the good news."
Expressing intent as a decree is a way to engage our power, our heart-perception, and our internal authority. A decree helps us experience the world we are creating. Feeling it makes it more tangible; saying it feeds a different world and dreams it into being.
Here are some examples of decrees:
I see myself in a fulfilling, sustainable, stimulating job.
I create a world where the breath of spirit flows from heart to heart.
I see my family (self, partner, child) healthy, strong, energized, whole, and joyful.
I create a world where everyone perceives the living energy in all things.
It's good to fill in the details as we make heartfelt decrees. For example, if your intent is to be healthy, you might say with every meal, and every time of exercise, I feed my health, balance, and energy. I intend to strengthen muscles and release pain. I forgive myself everything I cannot do, and did not do.
If your intent is to lessen stress, you might remind yourself, as you breathe deeply, Worry causes heaviness. I see myself relaxed, light, and radiant.
If your intent is to support a friend struggling with sorrow, you might say (and believe), I see you finding your way with joy, or I see you moving through this time like a river, rather than Oh that is so awful. I feel so bad for you. In other words, you feel compassion for the friend's suffering, but avoid repeating and feeding that suffering, loss, depression, and so on in your conversation.
The more we envision our intent, the more possible it becomes! The more we act on our intent, the stronger it becomes.
As Andean mystic Americo Yabar says, "In any kind of situation, you have the choice of connecting with the energy that flows in the cosmos. You truly can transform that energy into love, and bring that love to all of your body. It's very different than 'personal power.' The important thing is to work with intent, and incorporate that cosmic energy transformed in love, in order to project that energy to the others."
Meg Beeler/Earth Caretakers
Copyright � 2012
 | | Connection Despacho, Mt. Tamalpais |
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