Internal Intentions

What are your intentions?

That’s a big, vague, opening statement, isn’t it?

The author Kyle Cease describes an intention as defining and aiming toward an expansion. A goal is something you can understand. A goal is in the future. An intention is in this moment. A goal is an outcome. An intention is an internal direction. An intention is saying that you want to discover more of what you are and that you’re totally open to the fact that you may have no idea what that is. 

A goal might be to make a million dollars. You know what a million dollars is, so that may not be an exciting mystery that is going to cause you to leap into an unknown new level of yourself. When you have a defined goal, it actually can sometimes cap you at that level and prevent you from going deeper because you are attached to that external outcome. With an intention, you are surrendering the results and going into a deeper place that has no defined outcome - but it has an infinite amount of possibilities.

Having a specific external goal is like walking around with an oversize beach ball and trying to walk through doorways but constantly getting stuck. You have to look for the one doorway that can fit you and your beach ball at the same time. Having an intention is like having a nicely packed, uninflated beach ball that allows you to walk through many different-size doors and then blow up your beach ball when the time is right. A goal limits you to the one opportunity that you have mentally defined ahead of time. Your intention gives you the freedom to discover yourself and leaves you open to many opportunities that might match and support the new awareness that is emerging. And because you are discovering more of yourself, when an opportunity shows up, you are more aligned and able to take advantage of that opportunity.

So, instead of capping ourselves at the level of our mind’s goals, if we allow ourselves to go inward because we want to learn more about ourselves we can elevate ourselves to something even better. Your mind understands goals; your heart understands a feeling, an intuition, an insight. Your heart is leading you to something that is so much bigger than whatever your goal is. We have to be motivated by an inner intention instead of our external goals, otherwise, we‘ll be a slave to those goals and will miss out on the opportunity to truly express ourselves, create massive value, and shift the planet. 

For example, if you start writing a book but you don’t have an inner intention for why you are doing it, then your mind will latch on to the need for a specific outcome and ask questions like “How can I write a book that people will like?” or “What sells?” If you’re not leading with an inner intention that is driving you forward and listening to the inspired creativity of your heart, you’ll be a victim to the external results and opinions of other people. If instead, you have a powerful intention like discovering patience and evolving more into what you are, then you are creating on a new dimension beyond what already exists in the world, you will not be as affected by other people’s opinions, and you have the potential to create something truly groundbreaking. 

Take my good friend Edie Little; she just completed her book titled “How Wonder Woman Became A Smuggler”. In it, she describes numerous amazing stories such as her time as a drug smuggler and learning how to interact with people from that walk of life. Her story in chapter 49 of being held hostage in her own home by a Colombian hitman as collateral to ensure his organization received the cash proceeds from a delivered, um, shipment, makes for some intense reading. 

I mention her because she is a woman living from her inner intention - she always has been. She lives as an expat with her husband on an island in the country of Panama. They snorkel and provide guided tours exploring the fabulous marine life of this area. Her writing the book had nothing to do with attempting to reach some external goal, it was all driven by her true identity. She is expressing who she is rather than waiting to see what she gets from it. 

A part of her intention is to bring awareness and healing to the issue of domestic violence which she suffered from, and this book is a vehicle, a catalyst, for her to do just that. Her efforts to live from her inner self is indeed creating something groundbreaking that is set to help countless people in this journey.

Think about how many times in your life you have had an external goal and then how, once you finally achieved it, you were happy for a couple hours or days and then went back to chasing something else. The purpose here is to start replacing those temporary circumstantial goals with an inner intention that is not conditional. Your inner intention does not depend on circumstances. Your inner intention does not depend on whether people approve of you or not. Your inner intention does not compete with the external world.

Also, your inner intention is something you can tap into right now - it doesn’t take time or planning or money. If your inner intention is to connect to yourself more, you can start doing that immediately. Often, the only thing that is blocking us from living more from our inner intention is chasing an external goal. 

Your inner intention is your superpower. It is what turns you from Clark Kent into Superman or Wonder Woman. When you connect to your inner intention, it is like finding the nearest phone booth and putting your cape on. All you have to do is shift yourself in a moment where you are pulled into the mental habit of chasing an external goal and move back into your intention - to experience freedom, to express yourself - whatever it is. In any situation that is challenging, when you connect to your intention instead of the situation, you will experience an entirely new level of strength. 

I realized this when I was a student in Air Force pilot training. This intense 1 ½ year program determined the trajectory of my military career; there were already some pretty big hurdles we had to clear to get to this program, then the program had even more exacting requirements. You could be sitting pretty on a Monday and be on the ropes Friday, potentially facing the prospect of elimination. 50% of my original class either rolled back to more junior classes due to a sickness, or they washed out of the program. 

Although I didn’t have language for it at the time, I found myself not living from my inner intention but rather chasing the external validation of my instructors. I was doing fine, but I had put aside the inner strength and found myself, for a period of time, weathervaning to the whims of my instructor pilots. It was only after disconnecting for a weekend and getting quiet that I reconnected with my inner intention, my inner strength, and I re-engaged and operated from the internal intention rather than external factors. As a result my performance improved even more; when I didn’t let the external validation of others, in this case my instructors, determine my performance I became even stronger. 

What would happen if you actually started to live as your inner intention? What would it be like to be peace instead of decades of old stories of unworthiness and regret? What would it be like to be freedom instead of all the patterns that your parents and ancestors handed down to you? What would it be like to be abundance instead the worry of not being enough? 

This is living as something instead of chasing something that you think will maybe help you feel a little better for a little while sometime in the future. When you are chasing, you are trying to create a feeling through something external that will only temporarily make you feel the way that you want to feel. We need to stop looking for the cheap substitute of something that we already have.  

As Cease points out, it is like you are constantly on the gameshow Let’s Make a Deal and choosing between the door that your inner intention wants (door #1) and the door that your unconscious egoic identity wants (door #2). Your heart is constantly trying to get you to choose door #1 which has creativity and fulfillment and abundance behind it, but your mind is trying to convince you to pick door #2, which just has cold pizza and sadness behind it. When you listen to your old story and pick the door that has cold pizza and sadness behind it, you miss out on all the amazing things that were behind door #1, but you don’t even know about that - you only know that you at least got the semi-joy of eating cold pizza. So whenever it’s time to choose between the two doors again, your mind reminds you of that tiny amount of joy you got from the cold pizza and tells you how much you’ll be missing out on if you don’t pick that door again. We’re constantly choosing cold pizza and sadness because of a fear of missing out on it - and ignorant of what is beyond it. 

Like I have spoken on in earlier podcasts, the world is living on autopilot, constantly picking door #2 and making us feel like we should too. It wraps door #2 up in a bow and tries to convince us how amazing it will be once we choose it. You only have to buy billboards and ad space for something if it is a door #2 choice. You only have to hire a sexy model to promote something if it is not good for you. Nature does not have billboards. Meditation doesn’t have infomercials. You never get interrupted during dinner by a telemarketer reminding you to spend quality time with your family. The truth does not need manipulation. It is fairly obvious what the door #2s of this world are, but somehow many of us are still being tricked into choosing the things that pull us away from what we are and into an addictive habit that closes us off from our soul. 

There is so much abundance waiting for us if we stay connected to our inner intention, have a little faith, and start to pick door #1 - even when it is painful and we know that we are going to miss out on something that gives us pleasure. There is something so much bigger than pleasure out there. There is something so much more fulfilling than distraction. There is something so much more permanent than external success. Replace your door #2s with door #1s, create a new identity that is connected to the vision and power that are available in this moment, and discover what you actually are in the process.

I hope this has been of help to provide clarity and guidance; and as always, best to you!