The role intention plays within the human condition is, on the surface, a simple one; you think of something you mean to do and then decide whether to do it. However, as is with all things simple, scratch beneath the surface and you will discover intention isn’t as straightforward as it may first appear to be. Your intention is derived from a myriad of complexities created by your thought processes. This includes your initiative and ingenuity both of which reside within the convoluted depths of your unconscious.
Intent is found in human beings and animals, and since plants have a consciousness, feelings, and the ability to communicate, recognise kin, make decisions, and count, it’s not too much of a stretch to include them. Everyone displays four types of intent, affirming where you are mindful, controlling, where you wish to persuade, defending is when you need to stand your ground, and relinquishing when you give way.
Being a conscious, powerful, internal, mindful force, your intention is the result of a cocktail of ideas that produce focused formulations that are influenced by your unconscious and driven and actualized by motivational purpose. Apart from providing a road map as to how your brain and mind work, this force pushes you toward or drives you away from whatever you do or don’t want, thus enabling you to steer your way through life.
Embedded deep within your desires and your code of behaviour, intention helps you define and determine the quality of what you truly feel about something. In turn, this helps you make decisions that enable you to discover what truly matters to you and why, rather than simply focusing on the shallow levels that merely give you the results of your actions without you being mindful of consequences created by them, intentional or otherwise.
However, the complexities involved in your intentions also involve you applying both objective and subjective knowledge. This coupled with the fact that your survival instincts demand that you are fundamentally a self-serving individual, as we all are, causes the concept of your intention to have blurred lines, and the upshot of this doesn’t usually become apparent until your intention has been acted upon. Throw your id, ego, and superego into the mix and what you have is a lethal weapon that if used without your intuition and moral integrity results in the best of your intentions resulting in the worst of outcomes.
An example of this is when it’s the end of a long day at work, it’s late, you’re tired, you leave work, get into the car, and drive home, as you do every day. When you get into your car, you do not have the intention of causing an accident, but you do. The fact you had no intention of harming anyone when you got into the car to drive home is irrelevant because it doesn’t lessen the damage and pain you caused the innocent parties involved. Even so, whether you had intent or not to harm someone will be taken into account when you are being charged.
Furthermore, saying or thinking that the accident wasn’t intentional unintentionally justifies, diminishes, and/or excuses the consequences of your actions, and brings little if any comfort to the victims. However, being such an instinctual and understandable excuse can reveal self-aghastment and mortification of the repercussions of your actions when coming from a soulful and heartfelt place, which can bring comfort to the victims.
Therefore, if you have the willingness to look, you will find that intent lifts the veil between the internal and external workings of your mind to reveal the truth of who you are once you have put your intention into practice. As you lift the veil, you open the door to the workings of Spirit in your life, which involves mending what has been broken within you which repurposes you for greater things beyond your present imaginings. Once you step across that threshold you connect to the higher purpose that lies behind your internal intention and your external state of being. This enables you to turn adversity into an advantage and tragedy into a triumph, no matter how terrible and heart-wrenching the adversity or tragedy is for you to endure.
From the spiritual perspective, it must be remembered that the mind is of the etherics since it transcends time and space. Therefore, every thought or intention you have on the Earth plane is propelled into the etherics where it creates a life of its own in an alternative reality in which your plan is played out. The fact you don’t materialise your thoughts or carry out your intention on the Earth plane is irrelevant – such is the power of thought.
This means that if your thought or intention is of a moral value, you seamlessly and effortlessly step onto the higher path and reconnect to a higher power – hence the saying “It’s the thought that counts” because, under those circumstances, it does. Walking the higher path enables you to begin the process of embracing being repurposed through your flaws so you can grow and evolve as a human being.
However, irrespective of whether you are consciously aware of it or not, if your intention holds a hidden agenda that is self-serving over and above what is required at a survival level, then you remain walking the lower path. You will continue to do so until the spiritual purpose that lies deep within the hidden agenda has been served by which time you are ready to embrace repurposing and find yourself walking the higher path without you even realising it.
Article by More to Life Elder – Elizabeth Francis
Article published in More to Life – Edition 66
