Being Intentional

Rev. Amy Russell - 2009-01-04

Being Intentional
January 4, 2009
Rev. Amy Russell
All right, I might as well admit it. I know that some of you have been suspecting me all along, but I’m going to come out and tell you. I watch Oprah from time to time. Not only that. I actually enjoy it and believe some of that New Age stuff her guests talk about. Now you know. So, you probably also know that I have had some experiences in life that lead me to question my rational, scientific, reasonable approach to life. Because while I am fully in the No Supernatural beliefs camp- I happen to believe that some things that are not explainable fall in that category of the “mystery” of life. And that mystery of life stuff makes me open to the idea that while life is certainly all “natural”- there are no outside- of –nature elements in the universe- that we just don’t understand how it works. So, therefore, we can’t always explain why things work the way they work.
The idea of intentional thinking certainly can be looked at in two ways. The first way is the psychological, rational way of looking at cause and effect in people’s lives. In this rational view of intentional thinking, we think thoughts that lead to behaviors and that manifests consequences in our lives reflected by our thoughts. For instance, we might be thinking that we’d really like to find a new friend who’s interested in what we’re interested in. So, we might look on the internet on a web site that discusses something related to our interests and we might post a comment. The next day, someone sees our comment and responds to it. After a while, we discover we have a made a new friend by taking the action of getting involved in this internet discussion. This is the rational view of intentional thinking. Thought- cause, behavior- action, consequence- effect.
Now the other way of looking at intentional thinking goes beyond the course of rational thought and obvious action. This kind of intentional thinking is not really about thinking so much as it is about manifesting the deepest part of ourselves into our lives in ways that allow us to awaken the intuition that interacts in our lives without our even knowing it. Many believe that this kind of intentional thinking is about our spirit realizing it’s oneness with the universe and therefore beginning to flow naturally with the river of life. Our true desires may begin to become manifest in our daily lives, sometimes without us even being aware that we have made these intentions. Wayne Dyer calls this our “silent knowledge” when we invite the power of intention to play an active part in our lives. He says that intention is an “inner awareness” that we feel internally, and yet cannot really describe.
Many would call this phenomenon “serendipity” as we see unusual coincidences occur that we didn’t imagine could even happen. The word coincidence really means “that which coincides” or that which fits together- as in events that come together in a way we could not predict and cannot explain. But often it was a passing thought about what we really desired in our life that triggered this “fitting together”.
I’ve seen the power of intentional thinking at work in my life in small wonderful incidents of serendipity, like when someone you were thinking about just happens to call you at that moment. And I’ve seen this power work powerful transformations that were unexplainable. Let me tell you about the most powerful example I had of my intentions changing my life.
About a year after my husband died, I began to feel the beginning of wonderful healing at work in me. I started to wake up from my dark time and see possibilities for a new life. I even decided that I was lonely and was ready to start thinking about dating. After 24 years of marriage to one man, this was daunting, but exciting as well. I decided that this was an important decision and needed a ritual to honor it. I went to my husband’s grave and took off my wedding ring. I told him that I would always love him, but that I needed someone to love for the rest of my life. I felt a powerful message of Scott returning my intention with his blessing for my happiness. I took my ring and buried it near his headstone. I sent my intention out to the universe and I then let it go.
I didn’t plan about how I was going to meet someone. I didn’t start going out to bars, or going out to Internet dating services. Not that I shouldn’t have done those things. But for me, that didn’t seem to be the way I was going to meet someone.
About two months after I made this intention to the universe, I received a call from someone I had dated in high school, Bill Russell. He was calling from Louisville, Kentucky. We had had a brief contact over the years, just once when he talked with me and learned that I was happily married and living in Dayton with my husband and two kids. There was no reason for him to contact me again. But something had urged him to call me again. He just felt that there was a strong reason that he needed to contact me. In this call, he learned that I had lost my husband. After recovering from the shock of this news, he asked me if he could visit me in Dayton. He did a week later, and three weeks after that we were engaged to be married.
I believe that my intention, or you could call it a prayer, or a message was sent from the Universe to Bill and that he received it loud and clear. My life began manifesting my intention in a way that created the happiness that I sought.
Intentional thinking suggests that we view the future as we would like to see it, imagining our best, happiest selves in the circumstances we dream of. Intentional thinking isn’t just positive thinking; it’s using our imagination to see ourselves beyond our wildest dreams. Some would say our spirits are always yearning for fuller expression and our intentional thinking is a way to manifest that into who we are becoming. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” What is within us is our intuitive understanding of our best selves and we can use intentional thinking to put this into action in our lives.
Now some of you will see a paradox between the idea of putting forth this goal oriented thinking with the Buddhist idea of just being in the here and now and accepting what is. I always have a problem making these two thoughts come together. If you can imagine the letting go of the feeling of having to control everything that happens to us and instead imagine a life where we are our happiest and allow ourselves to flow with whatever way life is going to take us to get there. That means we don’t get to control how things happen, but we can certainly influence the shape of our lives in the future. We create the lives that we want for our souls, but not necessarily what that life looks like.
At the heart of this philosophy is the ability to love yourself. If we don’t see ourselves as worthy of being loved, being successful, or having abundance in our lives, we can never manifest those dreams. I think this is what gets in our way the most- not understanding that we deserve our own happiness and that it’s possible.
Being able to imagine what would make you happy is of course, the first step in intentional thinking. We often think that we aren’t smart enough, good-looking enough, or worthy enough to even imagine a life where we would be happy. Often we imagine a life where we have more money, or a better job, or even a better looking partner, but we’re really not sure that this would make us happy. Or that we would deserve this kind of life.
Many people measure their self worth by low level standards of money, success, or beauty. And we sometimes find ourselves not able to compete with people around us who we see as somehow better and more deserving than ourselves. If we accept who we are and then create a dream of a life that would be our kind of happiness, not the kind of ego satisfying life that we see making people happy on television, then we might imagine a real happiness.
Sometimes what we create as dreams are not what manifests as our happiness. In other words, we may have intentions to become very rich. And we may believe that is what will make us happy. We may create an abundance in our lives because we start believing in our worthiness. But it may turn out that it isn’t wealth that makes us feel rich- it may be a creative job, or a deep relationship, or a way of giving to others that actually makes us feel rich.
…Many times in my life it has been my experience that the most powerful starting point for any endeavor is not the question what do I want, but what does Life (God, Consciousness) want from me? How do I serve the whole?…
- Eckhart Tolle, The New Earth
If we see our life as an interdependent part of the whole of life, we can broaden what we want for our own lives into something that would benefit all of the planet. What does the earth need to heal itself, make itself whole? The intentional thinking we do for ourselves then becomes an intent to no longer see ourselves as separate from others. We make intentions for our own lives that benefit others. The abundance we can see for ourselves becomes an abundance for everyone.
Whether you see intentional thinking as a spiritual force connecting you to the Universe, or if you see intentional thinking as a way to influence and change the thoughts and actions that you take to move in a guided direction- both ways of using intentional thinking can be life-changing.
Many would say that it isn’t so important what happens in our lives as it is what we do with what happens. If our intention is to change any situation that befalls us into a beneficial, growing experience, then we no longer view life as difficult and painful. Denise Bissonnette, an author writing about intentional thinking says this:
Every thought that we allow to enter our mind has the power to either renew or deplete our spirit, to nourish the best in us or to steal our thunder. What we tell ourselves about our circumstances completely influences how we feel about them and it colors our experience. With that being true, it is nothing less than astounding that we put so little attention into “how” we think!
- Denise Bissonnette, True Livlihood Newsletter
Eckhart Tolle reminds us that if we live in the moment as Buddhism suggests, that we no longer live within what we might consider our limiting life experience. If we see our situation as painful, we are basically looking at the past and predicting that our future will also be painful. But living in the moment, he suggests, and being mindful about what we see around us, can only be a moment of wonder. If we live with the intention that each moment can be a moment of wonder, we then change how we experience our lives.
Some of you may have heard about a movement or a program called “The Secret”. The author of the book, xxx, by Lynne Taggert, created a DVD and a whole movement formed around an idea based on intentional thinking. Basically, the philosophy teaches that you make an intentional thought and you believe in it’s trueness, you actually see this desire happening in your life, you begin to believe that it has happened already, and you will manifest this desire in your life. This is basically what intentional thinking is all about. I respect this belief and see it’s power. However, as in anything that offers people a way of transforming their lives- it can be seen as a magic spell. Abracadabra, alacazam,and you change your life. I don’t believe that intentional thinking is magic. It might be magical, but it basically is about your deepest truest commitment toward transforming your life. It’s up to each person, to hold their intentions in their hearts and minds and find a way of imbedding this intention in every thing they think and do. And when someone truly dedicates oneself to their intention and that intention is the best thing for them and for others, then I believe the wisdom that is buried deep inside each of us begins to flow with the river of the universe and we see change in our life.
This is truly one of those “mysteries of life” the way it works. How our own spirits merge with the flow of the interdependent web and become one to guide us toward what is best and truest for our lives. When transformation happens in life, it is a mystery, one that gives us awe. For the mysteries of life, we give thanks.