The Power of Intention

Brandon West, Contributor
Waking Times

What is the power of intention? Moreover, what does it mean to connect to the power of intention? In this article we will not explore what intention is exactly, because I don’t believe anybody can really know that. However, we can most definitely use intention and experience it directly for ourselves which is what you will gain from reading this article.

Carlos Castaneda described intention as follows based off of the description he was given by his teacher, Don Jan:

“He said that in the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which sorcerers call intent, and that absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link. Sorcerers, or warriors, as he called them, were concerned with discussing, understanding, and employing the connecting link. They were especially concerned with cleaning it of the numbing effects brought about by the ordinary concerns of their everyday lives.” (The Power of Silence, p.12)

In essence intention is another name for universal consciousness, or for the infinitely dense field of energy (vacuum energy) from which all of creation arises. Intention is another name for the impersonal and infinite universal force which is intending all of creation into being simultaneously, including ourselves, and maintaining that creation. In the exact same way that we can intend an image into our imagination and then maintain it there, I believe this is precisely what creation is, but on a universal scale.

So what does it mean for us to use the power of intention, to connect to intention, and to live with intention?

Connecting to Intention, and Intending Reality into Being

I deeply resonate with Don Juan’s other description of what it means to use intention and to actually intend something, which helped me to greatly clear up my understanding of using this force which we connect to. In essence he described intending something as: silently willing something into being.

Not thinking something into being, but silently willing something into being which is a specific energetic state. It is a state not characterized primarily by thought, but by a powerful feeling and a state of being where from your inner silence radiates a powerful knowing and energetic connection or bond with this future reality you are focusing on.

Until we have reached that specific state, we have intended nothing. Nor have we connected to the universal power of intention.

In order to become a dreamer, Don Juan advised Carlos Castaneda in this way:

Don Juan: How can you convince yourself you are a dreamer when you know you are not? Intending is both: the act of convincing yourself you are indeed a dreamer, although you have never dreamt before, and the act of being convinced.

Castaneda: Do you mean I have to tell myself I am a dreamer and try my best to believe it? Is that it?

Don Juan:Intending is much simpler and, at the same time, infinitely more complex than that. It requires imagination, discipline, and purpose. In this case, to intend means that you get an unquestionable bodily knowledge that you are a dreamer. You feel you are a dreamer with all the cells of your body. (The Art of Dreaming, p.26)

Don Juan advised Carlos Castaneda to do this in order to become a dreamer, but in reality we can use this same concept to become anything that we desire and are called to become.

In essence you want to arrive at an unquestionable certainty that what you are intending is your reality, and that you already are what you desire to be. And it is this which I believe to be the essence of ‘silently willing’ or in other words, intending.
But how do you arrive at this unquestionable bodily knowledge or feeling? Is it something that can be cultivated? The answer to that question is repetition, and learning how to discipline our imagination, and emotions through repetition and diligent practice.

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

We are not as fixed as we have been led to believe. Biologically or in terms of our personality and potential, in every sense of the word.

We all have magnificent potential, but in order to reach that potential we must change. For if we did not need to change, then we would already be living and expressing our highest potential. We must change our thoughts, emotions, beliefs and habits which are in essence our personality.

Don Juan admonished Carlos Castaneda:

“…not merely to think about what he had told me but to turn his concepts into a viable way of life by a process of repetition. He claimed that everything new in our lives … must be repeated to us to the point of exhaustion before we open ourselves to it. He pointed out that repetition is the way our progenitors socialized us to function in the daily world.” (The Art of Dreaming, p.34)

Repetition is the manner in which we have learned almost every skill which today we take for granted. From language, to motor function. Through repetition we retrain literally our state of being which transforms us into a new person, and thus our life transforms because it is only a reflection of our state of being. Achieve this by training yourself to assume the powerful feeling and “unquestionable bodily knowledge that you are” whatever you desire to be.

While this requires enormous effort, it does not need to be a difficult or daunting task because if we can learn to love this self-discipline we will become truly powerful. For this type of work not only leads to personal transformation, but towards consciousness evolution as well.

Many of us have tried to change our thoughts or to create new habits, or to manifest, and have failed, but that does not mean this process doesn’t work. It only means that we didn’t do it properly. It only means that we did not repeat the new state of being and bodily feeling of our intention to ourselves tirelessly until we were able to “turn these concepts into a viable way of life.”

We must inform the field and our subconscious mind (which are the same thing) tirelessly of our intentions until we resonate on the deepest possible level with the idea which has inspired us as to  banish all doubt and all incongruity within us. Then we will start to open up to and embody the power of intention.

Internal Congruence and the Power of Intention

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.”

The quote above is an invitation for us to transform ourselves and our lives by actively doing things differently.

In truth we should really re-direct all of the energy we dedicate to changing our external reality towards changing, or at least refining and honing our internal world because our external realities (our lives) are literally a projection of our inner world. In other words, we must redeploy our energy towards changing our internal reality: our inner image, and our emotions.

Imagination is an important component to using the power of intention, but one which I will cover later because I feel that mastering the practice of silently willing and feeling is more important. Emotion supersedes thought therefore if we can change our emotions, literally how we consistently feel, then our thoughts will change naturally to conform with that shift in emotional state.

Internal congruity is absolutely essential, and in many ways it is the key to living with intention and using the power of intention in our lives. Internal congruity arises when our thoughts are aligned with our heart (our emotions and our feelings), and when our actions are then aligned with our thoughts.

And when our actions are aligned with our thoughts, and when our thoughts are aligned with our hearts, then we are aligned with the universe because our heart center is our connecting link with spirit, with intention.

The universal force of intention is an unfathomable and impersonal consciousness and intelligence, but fundamentally it is energy. It is infinite energy. Therefore it is love. So when we align with love, and with passion, and with our inner truth – all those energies of the highest frequency – then we align with intention. And by achieving internal congruence between our emotions, our internal image, our thoughts, and our actions, then we resonate with the power of intention which is the force that intends reality into being and which makes existence possible at all (which from a logical perspective is an impossibility in and of itself).

Our greatest task in life is to cut away at the non-essentials within ourselves which is anything that does not enhance our connection with intent or which does not flow directly from intention itself. This process takes a lifetime as it is the process of cleansing our connecting link with the universe. But with each obstruction we cleanse, we gain enormous power, and we give ourselves the opportunity to step into inconceivable new worlds, states of being, and lives.When you have contradictory desires, passions, and dreams within you, you are obstructing the universal force of intention and obscuring your connecting link with spirit. For until we have honed our state of being and unquestionable bodily knowledge to a point our desires will not manifest in our lives because our old energetic state of being and the new one we are trying to cultivate will be in a state of destructive interference.

They will neutralize one another.

That means that we must be in absolute harmony with what we desire internally. We must know that we are worthy of that desire, know that we are fully capable of manifesting that desire, and we must feel as an “unquestionable bodily knowledge” that it is already our present reality.

Once again, this perfect internal alignment is brought about through sheer repetition. Diligent practice in other words. This knowing cannot be cultivated artificially. We can cultivate an internal image with our own power, with our thoughts, and we can imbue those images with the all-important energies of passion, desire, love, enthusiasm, and so on. But we cannot artificially create knowing.

Knowing occurs when our state of being is finally perfected once it has become precise and clear, and when our entire being – both the conscious and subconscious minds, our body, and spirit – are all in alignment. When that occurs the universe resonates with our desire because we will be informing it clearly of our intention for the first time. And when this desire, which is really just a finely tuned frequency, resonates with the universe, that is what we call a powerful knowing, silently willing, and an unquestionable bodily knowledge.

And that is what the power of intention feels like within your body.

Until you have experienced this feeling, then you have not yet tapped into the power of intention, and you are not tapping into your full potential either. That should not be a discouraging message by any means. On the contrary, it should be a message of hope. Because if you look at your life as it is now and all you have (or have not) created, realize now that everything you have done and achieved so far was what you have done without harnessing your true power.

Imagine now what you could create and who you could be if you mastered the art of tapping into the power of intention, and instead created with the power of the entire universe behind each and every one of your actions.

About the Author

Brandon West is the creator of Project Global Awakening. A website dedicated to the research of a variety of scientific and spiritual disciplines, and applying that knowledge to help you live an inspired life and change the world. Follow Project Global Awakening on Facebook, and Twitter.

This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.

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