CHAPTER 2
That Is Not What I Intended
Sit back comfortably in your chair. Place your feet flat on the floor and lay your hands in your lap loosely. Close your eyes and begin to relax, breathing slowly and deeply. Let all tension slip away as you exhale and let your body relax from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. Send your attention down the length of your body to release this tension as you go along. When you are satisfied that your body is releasing its clench, turn your attention onto your emotional state. Let all of the cares of the day come to the surface as you inhale and release each one as you exhale. Nothing in your emotional set needs to be acted upon in this moment, so let it go. There is nothing there in your feelings that can hurt you or stand in your way. Relax and go deeply into the quiet your stilled emotions leave behind.
Turn then to the mental body and the rampant thoughts which careen through your mind. With each inhale, bring those stirred up thoughts to the surface, actively open yourself to them so that they become louder and more obvious. Then with each exhale, release them. Let go of any thoughts you find yourself latching onto and trying to follow. Notice how easy it is to get caught up in your thoughts, especially if you are not paying attention to the thinking of them. Let go attentively now and relax into the inner quiet as they calm of themselves.
Offer yourself the intention now of opening yourself to the impulses of your spiritual body. Don't try to script what those impulses might be or what they might be like. Simply intend that you will be open to them as they come along. These are more subtle than thoughts. They will not be experienced like thoughts or feelings, more like stirrings or longings without form or idea. Until you feel well settled in this realm of experience, do not hang onto whatever comes in. Just let it go as well but remain as open to the flow as you can. Once you do feel well settled here, let this question come to the surface of your mind and heart. State it with as much internal volume as you can muster and then let it go too and sit back and observe, noting the swell of response from within. The question to state then is: "What do I most deeply want?" You are seeking the longing of your soul for your life. You will have pondered this topic for a while before attempting it. We assure you that it IS available to you. Your purpose in life is not hidden. It is right out in plain sight. You just have not known how to put it into words and actions. Do that now. Let those words and images take shape before you in this quiet space. When you have something concrete enough to identify, move on without stopping to judge or analyse. It is enough to remember what you get in this exercise. You can do pretty much anything you wish with the rest of your meditation. Enjoy!
Do this process over and over until you feel sure that you have found something as large as your soul. Repeat the process until you find an idea so universal that you begin to see how every moment of your life has been held within it. Until you see that every act in your life has been an attempt to realize this universal goal.
You will refer back to this answer to a most basic question over and over, refining and expanding it until the day you give up the ghost. And then you will continue as well. Do not be so sure you are ever done with this search but know that every pass at it brings you closer to its realization.
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All of creation begins with awareness. As this awareness is primal and shared by all of creation, it is unity in essence. It ties all of creation to that unity of being and in so doing makes all of creation in the now, without beginning or end. All IS in this moment! OK! Cool! Big Deal!
As this primal and all inclusive awareness which we could call God turns in upon itself, becoming aware of itself, it launches its primal statement of intent, "I AM!" As creation continues following the same even more complex inward turning of awareness, the intent of each creation grows more dense and complex and yet each succeeding layer of that intent remains an integral part of the experience of creation as a whole. Your intent as a being can be found in each of your cells as well as in your own consciousness. Each molecule and atom of your body knows your primal intent. Every feeling and thought which underlies your experience in daily life contains the intent which powers your life.
This is a constant thread which runs through the mosaic of your life in your present form. It permeates every aspect of your existence. Your access to power is through aligning your conscious will to that primal intent. Your access to joy is through accepting that primal intent as your own. In the previous chapter, we suggest that you cannot embrace your true identity by projecting your thoughts about reality onto the infinite spirit that you are. To discover your true identity, you must open yourself to it. To discover your true intent for your beingness, you must acquiesce to that intent. Thus far, you have used much of your life force to impose upon reality ideas about its nature that you have been taught by others. You have made those ideas your own and thrust them before you into life. Surprise! They come reflected right back to you to prove that you were right. You have struggled through life to reach the point of realizing this process in action. You have fostered a new attitude that perhaps you could be wrong after all. Perhaps reality is a vast fabric that you have painted with your beliefs about it which have then become the reality you experience. In a manner of speaking, your will has then become God's will.
We would ask you to consider that stepping out of this process might open you to a joy of which you cannot presently conceive. To open yourself to a construct of reality that your spirit self knows intimately could afford you glimpses of pure awareness, unbounded and ever expanding. Self awareness expanding infinitely is the intent of your beingness.
Now, you might ask, "why then do I live in a reality which seems to be so limited and full of turmoil?" Indeed, it does appear that your daily life has little to do with what we suggest is your primal intent. Because you have lived life as if the appearance of things is real and the essence of things is not real, you have consciously injected intentions of your own devising into your experience of the world around you. Through repetition and habit, many of those myriad intentions have become reflexive. You live them out unconsciously. You believe that bus coming down the street is real and so you don't walk out in front of it. Your intent is to keep your body alive. Beneath that intent to survive, sometimes well beneath it, is the intent to expand self awareness to infinity that we mentioned earlier. Layer upon layer of such intentions, to experience a larger reality in increasingly specific ways, has added up to block your view of the most primal desires that power your life. You may come to experience that bus as a spiritual essence which does not threaten your existence (as a spiritual essence) and thus free yourself of the bonds of your beliefs about its reality. For now, stay on the sidewalk but investigate the reality of that bus as it goes on by. Don't merely accept the appearance of reality reflexively.
Look back for a moment at the experiences of your life, gentle and harsh, joyful and sorrowful. Consider how each has added to the breadth of experience which you now include in your identity. Say to yourself, "I am the being who has experienced all of this and learned all this about myself as a result." Can you see how gathering all of the experience of life that you have, expresses the primal desire we have spoken about? The only difference between the life experience you have had thus far and the picture of infinite joy we have painted with our words and insisted can be yours is your conscious choice. You have chosen each aspect of the reality you have lived thus far. It is the result of your intent for yourself. Each moment of your life, you draft a statement of intent containing all that you believe is true about yourself and your reality, past, present and future. Your experience of reality springs directly from this statement.
Begin aligning yourself with a more primal intent, one that looks to the essence of things as the more real expression of spirit into matter. Begin living each moment as the creation of your own experience, designed to create an expanded self awareness with no limits. Practice often, releasing your awareness from the bondage of your conscious mind as we suggest in chapter one. Pursue an expanded awareness of each moment by delving into the nature of that passing bus, those busy people, that falling piano, Argh! OK! Maybe not the falling piano.
If you look at the circumstances in your life which so concern you and consume you, in the light of this expanded approach, more understanding of how they are constructed to fulfill your fundamental value system will be available to you. Your desire for more wealth, or love, or time in your life reflects your internal drive to expand. If you look only at the details though, you may miss the bigger picture, not seeing the forest for the trees. Shift your attention from one to the other often. Attempt to hold steady attention on both at once. This is a most important skill. It allows you to be conscious while in altered states as well as to be happy in unhappy circumstances.
Perhaps we can offer a definition of this word, intent, that we have been bandying about and thereby make an often ineffable concept more concrete. Of course, our definition may serve the opposite purpose just the same but we shall make the attempt anyway. An intent is actually a state of being which precedes a manifestation such as a thought, feeling or event. Intent is the building block for such expressions. Most often you will be aware of the expression first, having missed the experience of intent which the expression describes. As we have said, much of your intent is reflexive and unconscious. Therefore, much of your states of being are reflexive and unconscious as well. Too bad for you! It is to this level of awareness that you must turn to make effective change in your life experience.
When you encounter a situation which inspires an emotional reaction such as an angry encounter or a rude treatment by another, you are participating in the expression end of the process of intentional manifestation. You experienced the state of being which held the entire event before it took place. Perhaps it was a quick and fleeting moment in your life which fit your beliefs about reality and which you filled with enough power to make it concrete. In advance of the action you experienced the thoughts and feelings of your intent. If you had been aware of this intent at any time, you could make changes which would have affected the later event. Becoming aware of this layer of experience has obvious benefits. All of the life experiences which you have previously stumbled into half blind can become acts of will for you. You can become master of your own life by waking up to this more subtle layer of yourself.
The problem, of course, is that this layer is more subtle. It is rare indeed to recognize the intent to be angry which lies beneath a situation which seems to have a life of its own as it unfolds to create a space for your anger. We assure you that the intent is certainly there. The steps to this more primal level of internal reality are surprisingly clear as you progress toward this state of awareness. The most fundamental step, though not the first, is to take genuine responsibility for your perception of reality. If you do not sincerely accept your power to create your life's experiences, you cannot begin to be aware of the mechanics of creation. Accept that you have infinite, though unconscious, creative powers and decide to become conscious of them. Accept that each moment, be it filled with triumph or sorrow, is your very own creation. Savour it and appreciate its intricate nuances and synchronicities. Accept that that beautiful sunset you are gazing at is your own personal perception, not more than superficially shared by anyone else. It is fleeting, ethereal and entirely yours.
From here, taking on the results of your inner emotions becomes much easier. Knowing you have created whatever drama is before you makes it easier to trace the threads of its creation. Knowing you have created this drama makes it is easier to choose to change your perceptions about it by changing how you think about it and choosing how you want to feel in the moment.
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We challenge you to participate in a little experiment. In a state of inner quiet, visualize yourself in a moment from your life which brims over with the happiest, most joyful feelings you have ever known. Please do not censor or withhold such feelings from yourself. No matter what kind of life you have lived or what others have told you about your worth, you DO deserve to have this feeling, always. So, throw yourself into this feeling, heart and soul. Let that expansive joy burst from your chest as it grows. Experience every sensation associated with this joy as it expands throughout your body, your feelings, your thoughts and your spirit. Let yourself own this feeling entirely. Practice it often. Give it a name or a sound or a song, some mnemonic hook to help you to recall it at will. Begin to call it forth during your days, for no particular reason save that you remember to and it feels good. This is not a technique merely to assuage an emotionally difficult experience. It is to be used to build a truly happy life. Continual joy is entirely under your command if you practice it. An entirely new base mood can be yours by practising this technique. From here you can learn to apply this technique to more specific desires that trouble you presently and so learn to make your dreams come true.
As this chapter's title suggests, your most primal intention, even your most immediate though mundane intentions, are riddled with conflict. It is the holding of conflicting intents that makes life such an unpredictable adventure; or a vale of tears if you are so inclined. If you sit down to enjoy your favourite dessert but simultaneously hold the intent that eating it will make you fat, you have a conflict of intent. Over the course of years such minor conflicts can cause big damage, the way a river cuts a gorge out of sheer rock or the ocean's waves can carve up the landscape. For a rich and fulfilling existence, reducing such conflicts will prove very useful. We are not going to be able to overemphasize this point. Every event in your life experience is constructed upon the framework of your intentions, from the most subtle and fundamental to your most mundane and physicalized intents. Any conflicts within the structure of intention which physical reality merely fleshes out will serve to distance you from the creative flow of spirit into matter. Such distance will leave you feeling like a victim of circumstances beyond your control. Even though such a feeling does not accurately describe reality, in its larger sense, it does become, over time, an integral part of your perception of reality and thus rules your life experience. Such a feeling of victimhood penetrates the psyche deeply and can easily become a belief which then colours every perception and structures your reality. Victimhood is one feeling that your human cultures foster with their agreement that there is an objective reality which functions in spite of your input. Most cultures foster it also by deciding that victims are somehow more righteous than perpetrators but that is another chapter entirely.
This is a concept well worth repeating. THERE IS NO REALITY OUTSIDE OF YOU. You are that large a being! This rich world that you experience with all the senses of the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies is entirely your creation. You cannot really be a victim of it because you create it. What we offer here are suggestions which lead to becoming a conscious participant in your own creation. You have been so successful at separating your conscious ego from the rest of your being that you have isolated one moment's experience from the next. You have held your idea of separation so tenaciously that you have managed to slow the expansion of spirit to a near stand still so as to experience "solid" matter. In so doing, you have separated from your own being an individuated identity, a flake so to speak, which feels a deep, powerful urge to reconnect. We are offering you encouragement to enlarge your identity and become conscious of your self in your wholeness.
High minded words aside, how to proceed on this exalted path? First, we remind you that there can be no mistakes on your path. You are blazing a brand new trail and are inexorably pulled by your whole self so that there is only one direction you can go. Mistakes can only appear to occur in three dimensional reality where every particle exists relative to every other particle. We suggest you foster a belief that reality simply IS. There is no right or wrong, good or evil, this or that. The wholeness of reality is complete and perfect. You have not escaped that wholeness, merely forgotten it. The more you refer back to this idea and try to apply it to your life, the more evidence you will find to reinforce it.
The next step would be to assume responsibility for every perception you experience. Assume that each perception is your own creation no matter how separate from yourself it might appear. It may be difficult to remember that the whole wide world around you is really an idea when it seems so solidly real. It is, though, an idea and you have made it all up. Even the other people you encounter are you, making life up from many perspectives. You really are a large being! So, you really are making this all up. You are creating your reality. Such power you have! So, you can change whatever you want to change. You just have to embrace it first!
Assume that what is so, right now, is what you intended it to be. Even if you do not understand why or how. Begin looking at the intent behind the expression. Was it conflicted? Begin to sort out the various components of your intentions. You can only do this by accepting responsibility for the creation. Muddled intentions can seem pretty complex. With your growing self awareness, more and more of the matrix of beliefs which contribute to the mess will become apparent. To cut right to the heart of the matter will kick up all side issues more quickly. We suggest referring to your most primal intent for your life that we have previously discussed. That will lend an air of adventure to the most harsh situation. Your self concept which is based on this primal intent (expanding awareness of self) will shift and change and grow over time. It is, after all, the most exalted belief about yourself that you can presently articulate. As your skills in self awareness increase, you will articulate even more subtle levels of the self.
Going back to your experience in the physical world, look next to the exalted intent and see how it runs through your experience. This self concept, to explore, to love, to be aware, or what have you, will permeate even the most painful of life experiences. It will also encourage you to relax around the experience, to accept and love what IS more. Then, the intentions which conflict with your primal urge will come more easily to the surface. An atmosphere of self acceptance, embracing whatever you find yourself to be, will allow your inner conflicts to rise to consciousness with ease and grace. Once aware of them, you are free to choose anew to follow your most exalted desire. With each pass, each life experience which brings such conflicts to the fore, you will find more and more freedom with which you may choose how you wish to feel, think and live. We recognize that such a regime will unfold slowly, over time and be at times a struggle. However, you have become a complex creature, capable of infinite varieties of response. A little patience will pay off eventually. After all, there is only one way to learn patience. You gotta wait for it!
Consider for a moment the immensity of the creation which appears before you now. As soon as you make the leap to accept your identity as creator of the world you perceive, you access the power to make miracles. Of course, perceiving the miracles of your own making might prove to be challenging. We are suggesting a leap into a world view that your neighbours will not likely share. So far, you have lived a world view simply because it IS shared by those others that mean something to you (authority figures). You have even insisted that presenters of new ideas establish their authority by getting many others to agree with them before you will do so also. Indeed, you have accepted the authority of some who you do not even respect . We suggest you assume your role as the only authority for your reality. You have been so all along anyway. It has been your decisions that have structured your perceptions. You have accepted the definitions of reality that have shaped your world. To seek the wholeness of your self you must come to see that your life, your every thought and feeling, springs forth from deep within your own self. It unfolds in the perfect awareness of the deepest reaches of your spirit. Only when you resist your own inner purposes do you experience pain. By aligning your conscious intent to the flow of spirit through you, embracing what is and looking for larger awareness of who you are in the trappings of your life experience, you free yourself from suffering, pain and disillusionment.
We ask you to consider the possibility that your intent at the deepest reaches of your self is benign, loving and intelligent. At the level of direct, intelligent creativity which powers your experience of the world, you intend to provide yourself with the greatest joy you will allow yourself to feel, the greatest degree of self awareness you are willing to embrace, the most exalted experience of your divinity that you are capable of accepting.
On to Chapter 3
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