The Power of Intention & Just Being Open...

Back in the 80's and 90's I was big on positive affirmations (let's be fair, weren't many of us who were interested in "New Age" thought?), the problem was that I used them not for my own happiness and well being, but mostly to obtain sales goals, first as a sales rep in international shipping and then as a partner with my ex-husband in a fine handmade gift business. Oh, and I was good at them. I usually hit my goals, but there was a definite schism within me that I did my best to ignor it. Still it dragged and nagged at me nonetheless. I also used positive affirmations in prayer for friends and family members who were ill, but while I quietly practiced and studied metaphysical Christianity for my own inner world, my outer world for the most part was that of a workaholic yuppie.<>

At the tail end of the 90's as my marriage was ending and my health challenges were starting to bring me to a standstill I tried to change and use positive affirmations for my health and financial stability and nothing much happened except that things got worse. They got very bad for a few years. Not that there weren't highlights, and I learned a heck of a lot about myself during those dark times, but my old routines just didn't work. In pain and confusion I blamed myself for not having the right attitude and for just about every other thing I could possibly be doing wrong. Surely I was thinking wrong thoughts to have brought such pain and financial challenges down on my head. I was terrified, but still little beacons of light came to my aid. I found the writing of Pema Chodron and Thich Nhat Hahn and many other wonderful writers. I began writing myself. I began, very slowy, in tiny increments, to meditate. It didn't ease the physical pain so much as it allowed me to stop suffering during it, making myself wrong for getting myself into such physical pain.

I realized I was thinking wrong. I was sick and I was trying to get well while carrying the world on my shoulders. And gradually I let go of much of the facade about myself that I thought made me acceptable and interesting and viable and sexy as a human being. I stopped blaming myself so much and looked around and realized that very bad things happen to good people all the time and they didn't necessarily do anything to cause it, they didn't necessarily have the wrong thoughts, and a bad attitude.

At the beginning of this year I decided to look again at two books of Deepak Chopra's, "The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire" and "The Book of Secrets." I realized over the years I had a big problem with having needs. I could have goals to accomplish but not primary needs for my own well being. When I was quite young, about 19 or so, a friend of mine was taking a philosophy class at UCI and said to me one day, "We have no needs only wants." He was quoting his teacher, who was quoting someone very famous whose name I'm forgetting. Something in my very young but guilt laden consciousness said, "yep, that's right." And it stuck for a long long time. Some of it still sticks today. Perhaps you know what I'm talking about in some secret dark corner of yourself. Maybe this is a part of our consumer consciousness - we can have wants for pretty shiny things, but not simple well being.

At the beginning of this year I decided I wanted to be open to new things. I had become very attached to a creative project that I had allowed to break my heart and get my ego wound up in ways I didn't like. I wanted to keep the good memories, the wonderful people I met, and the creative team I had the privelege of creating some beautiful things with, but I wanted to be open to a new way of being and let go of my fierce fierce pride and ideas of how others should, "do things right," (which is just another way of saying MY WAY) and wanted instead to focus, quite simply, on my own happiness. I realized that whenever I got involved in ego battles of my vision vs. someone else's I also ended up carrying more than my share of the work load - often more than my body can handle well.

So I decided to look again at Deepak, who I always enjoy, and I decided this time I was actually going to do the exercises. I am someone who wants to constantly walk before I can run. I want knowledge to come in epiphanies the way reading came to me as a child. I took to it like a duck to water. I have memories of sitting next to piles of books in first grade (when we used to learn how to read back in the olden days) and saying, "nope, too easy" to book after book after book. And my teacher beamed, and my parent's were thrilled, and I felt like a queen. Not to worry, math would bring me down to earth quick a year later.

But yeah, I love to swim as I learn new things, which means I don't like to stop and do those exercises where I have to take out paper, or sit still, or take away from the moment. Oh and of course I'm lazy. But I had started to create exercises myself in my own dating and romance writing, one in particular I'm proud of, and I realized I had absolutely nothing to lose by giving a try to Deepak's suggestions. I even, gulp, wrote down the little sanskrit sayings that are a part of his "Seven Principles" in "The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire" and began to chant a different one each night after I read (upon his suggestion) the intentions I'd written down for my life. In the beginning I admit my intentions were quite a bit like my old affirmations, they were very specific and there were several ones that concerned money. But as the days went by, and as I continued to read and then re-read the books (the bus is great for pondering concepts) my intentions shifted to focusing on mostly my inner happiness and well being, on allowing myself to continue healing and growing strong, on romance in a new way with someone who shared my values and beliefs (the quirky green spiritual ones, not the yuppie shiny ones), and well, basically enjoying a life I was proud to say was mine.

The shift at times was very subtle, just a shift in a thought, a feeling, but then I'd think of a new way to hone and phrase an intention in a way I liked better and I'd run home and scribble out the old intention and rewrite it. I did this again and again and again. I kept reading my intentions and kept chanting and I felt quite a bit of peace. Life wasn't perfect, but I had more and more moments of quiet joy. I met T and things were lovely. And then I decided that I should be moving faster and making more money and and and...things started to fall apart. My bladder was in constant pain. The new part time job that was to bring in so much more money felt apart almost right away, no new viable part time jobs were on the horizon. I complained constantly about my day job and felt frustrated I couldn't make things go my way, again.

I marinated in the quagmire for awhile, to the point that T and I were very very frustrated with each other, and finally I decided I needed to pull back, focus on my own thing and go back to my intentions (which I'd only been reading aloud about once a week by then if that). I honed them again. I went back to the chanting and focusing on being happy here and now. Things I'd been trying to make happen that just weren't started to fall in place again, like this site. T and I found a happier middle ground that left both of us time to pursue our own things, things that really mattered to us individually and helped us feel whole and grounded. Connections I thought I'd lost reappeared. Subjects for articles flowed more easily.

For the past two weeks I've beem trying something I've only done in my most desperate hours in prayer, and that's admitting in them that I simply don't have the answers. I don't know how to do "x" (insert your own problem/challenge/heart's desire here) but I know the universe does and I am open to being guided and I am open to staying open and trying not to cling to one idea, one solution as "it" for everything. I'm also open to the idea that an answer won't be permanent. Life is flux. It's here and here and here, it's now. And I've felt a fascinating shift of ease in my being. Oh sure, I still have worries, I'm not a saint, I don't have the answers - but I do feel I have some very good questions. And I'm open to the fact that the universe may have far more marvelous amd fascinating answers than I ever imagined possible.