What do you want?

You can’t take any action at all unless you know what you want.  Every action begins with the intent that drives the action.  Before you take a step forward, you intend it first, even if this is a fleeting unconscious process.  Many of our daily intentions are made unconsciously.  You don’t really think about taking a step before you put out your foot to move.  And many of our actions are done unconsciously as well, and for good reason – no need to consciously consider each step as you walk down the street.  As you walk, as long as you have a general direction, you’re moving in the right direction.  But without at least that direction, you’re lost, wandering, or stopped.   This holds true for your spiritual practice as well.  Without direction or Intent, you are lost, wandering or stopped.  What you want is important.  Knowing what you want is an art.  This is the Art of Intention.

Free Choice

As human beings, we have the gift and burden of Free Choice.   We choose what we do, under our current circumstances.  Sometimes our choices are limited by circumstances, but we do have choice.  Always.  And no one in the heavens or on earth can predict what a human is going to do.  We make some pretty wild and crazy and illogical choices.  Our choices are so unpredictable that even Spirit doesn’t know which way we’ll go next.   This is our divine gift.  Free choice is a primary law of earth.  Our guides can’t come down to help us without us making a choice to let them in.  “Ask and ye shall receive.”  “Turn your life over to your Higher Power.”  The great truths make it clear that it takes human Will to open the door even to God.  God does not come down and meddle and fix everything.  This Earth is our playground to explore and learn. We are the ones in the bodies, so we are the ones in charge down here. If we want help from the cosmos, we must ask.  Asking for help from the angels opens a great big door above me to all of the angels who would love nothing more than to help me, and needed only to be given permission through my asking.

 Directing this power of Free Choice is also called forming and stating an Intention.

What is Intent?

 In shamanic practice, Intent is everything.

 Intent, or intention, is an expression of what you want to happen.  For example, in writing this article my intent is to provide you, the reader, with information and tools that you can take into your life and utilize on your unique spiritual path.  Without this Intent, I would have no motivation to write this.  I would have no help from my Spirit Guides in setting out these words, because I never would have known what to ask them for.  I simply would not take the time to do it.  I wouldn’t be motivated.

 In shamanism and prayer and magical practice and anything else, your Intent is the steering wheel for your work.  It provides the direction for your energy.  The more specific and motivated you are in your Intent, the more power you have in moving forward.

 Intent is comprised of two aspects, the specificity of what you want in accordance with your Highest Good, and how much you want it – your desire. 

Specificity

A specific intent gets specific results.  So the first question you must ask yourself is what do you want?  This seems deceptively easy.  You may ask for a loving relationship to come your way.  This is a relatively general request.  Or you may focus your request to ask for a committed loving relationship that leads to the formation of a family with a couple kids and a dog.  This is a bit more specific.  Or you may ask for a red-headed Irish spouse who loves shortbread and playing checkers.  

 Picture a broad laser beam searching your world like a roving spotlight.  A general intent is like this wide laser beam that illuminates many things.  A very specific intent is like a narrow laser beam that cuts sharply and distinctly through the Universe, attracting only that very narrow choice or outcome.  At this point, you my hear your Grandma’s voice in your head warning you about the dangers of choosing what you want in life… “Be careful of what you ask for – you jus t m ight get it!”  There is a balance between being specific enough in our choices and intentions that we draw the desired result to us, without being too specific to exclude an unexpected opportunity or surprise gift from the Universe that doesn’t fall within our limited parameters.  This is where it is helpful to understand and utilize the concept of the Highest Good. 

Intend the Highest Good

One kind of general Intent is to state your intent for the Highest Good.  This is like praying to God “Thy will be done” – a conscious statement that you are not sure which choice is best, but you want the best result for everyone.  The Highest Good is the perfection of the Divine Plan, leading to peace, love, unity… the good stuff.  Your own Highest Good is that which leads to your personal evolution as guided and directed by your Higher Self – the over-reaching part of your soul that knows all about the lessons you are here to learn, who wants you to learn them in the best way possible resulting in the most good for your spiritual evolution.  Your Higher Self is the one who knows what’s in your Highest Good.  Your conscious self doesn’t always know this, because your conscious self is the one here on Earth with the desires, hungers, passions, and distractions of living a material life in a physical body.  While we’re here on Earth, we can’t see the bigger picture like our Higher Self can.  But we CAN choose what is in our Highest Good, provided we do not restrict the results too much.    For example, “I intend to find the career that serves my Highest Good at this time…. unless i t m akes under 50K, has no benefits package, or is more than 10 miles drive from my house.”  Um, now you’re restricting the access of your angels and helpers to direct you towards the job that is in your highest good if it does no t m eet with all of your demands. 

 I recommend that you, right now, state out loud your Intent that everything in your life from this point forward be guided in the direction of the Highest Good – for yourself, and, if you are willing, for Highest Good of the Earth and all of her children.  You may choose to make this an overriding Intent, so that whenever you ask for specific things, there is an agreement between you and Spirit that if what you ask for is not in your Highest Good, you don’t really want it.  I have found this a very useful “catch-all” for when I’m praying and manifesting.  It prevents me from using my shamanic tools to do something that is not in my Highest Good, or that could upset the balance of the Earth and the others I share her with.

Desire

 Desire fuels intent.  It is the motivation for creating intent in the first place.  Intent is driven by your wanting.  Intention answers the question “What do you WANT?”   The more you passionately desire your objective, the more power is behind your Intention.  Following with the laser beam analogy, if specificity controls the intensity of the laser beam, your passionate desire for the intended result is the light source for the laser beam.  The burning desire in your heart drives the brightness of your laser beam.  As you see in your day-to-day life, people who are passionate about their projects tend to be more successful than those who piddle around with a hobby.  Passionate desire fuels dedication, and it powers your Intent.

 Faith

 Faith removes obstacles and skips over your own self-sabotaging techniques.  Your Faith that all will be well, that all will be according to the Highest Good, is the closest thing to a guarantee you’re likely to get in this world.  Your Faith can move mountains – mostly the mountains your ego has painstakingly created to make sure you’re not too effective in life. 

 We sabotage ourselves all the time.  It’s part of our training from early in life.  We are encouraged to fall in line, to do as we are told, and to not shine too bright so as to attract attention.  All of these self-sabotaging energies must be dealt with as you move forward on your path to wholeness.  Your best tools to overcome self-sabotage are Faith and Courage.  Even when your brain is telling you you’re crazy, and your ego is afraid of looking foolish, and your academic mind is complaining about the lack of evidence to back all this up, your Power is in the background with full Faith and Courage pushing you onward into the Great Unknown because it is in your Highest Good to go there.

Intent Transmission is Constant & Universal

We are constantly transmitting our Intent out into the Universe.  Each thought we have, all day every day, is sending out a laser beam of Intention.  Each person walking the earth is constantly transmitting lots of laser beams outward, and these are affecting the energy all around them. 

 As a woman appraises herself in the mirror and finds herself beautiful, she sends that transmission outward.  Other people resonate with that transmission, and find her attractive.  As she swears in her car at another driver she imagines is purposefully torturing her with inattentive driving, that transmission is sent out, and others who resonate with the judgment against other drivers are drawn to her.  She will likely encounter more frustration on the road that day, since that is the energy she is calling in.

 You can probably feel this in your day-to-day life.  Some people walk into a room with such positive vibrations, that everyone in the room perks up with a smile.  Other people carry such negative transmissions that, without even “doing” or saying anything, they can irritate people in the room.  Some people are so comfortable with money and wealth that they transmit abundance to the Universe, and abundance always finds them.  Some people with the opposite transmission are stuck in Poverty Consciousness – a term that is more & more widely known as people open up to their responsibility to co-create their own lives with the Divine.  Someone stuck in Poverty Consciousness is constantly pinching pennies, living as if they will be destitute tomorrow – regardless of how much money they actually have in the bank.  This attitude transmits lack of abundance into the Universe, and so people, situations, and opportunities that resonate with lack of abundance come back to that person.

 Part of the Shamanic path – or any spiritual path, really – is to take responsibility for the Intent you are transmitting into the Universe on a constant basis.  The challenge is to become conscious of what you are transmitting.  Most of our thoughts are unconscious defense mechanisms.  When we are willing, however, to see our own challenges and difficulties – our “imperfections” – without shying away, then we can dissemble these defense mechanisms, and become more conscious in our thoughts and actions.  From a place of consciousness, we can then choose to change our thought patterns to ones that support the Highest Good.

 Affirmations, positive attitude, meditation to clear the negative thought patterns, prayer, and consciously shifting from negative to positive thoughts are all ways to consciously utilize the truth of transmission.  Because we have Free Choice, we are capable of literally changing our minds, of choosing our thoughts, of choosing which emotions to give energy to.  Through focusing our Intent, we have the power to shape our own Lives.