Four Steps to Intention

Activating your power of intention is a process of connecting with your natural self and letting go of total ego identification. The process takes place in four stages:

1) Discipline is the first stage. Learning a new task requires training your body to perform as your thoughts desire. So, eliminating ego identification doesn’t mean disconnecting from your relationship with your body, but rather, training your body to activate those desires. You do that with practice, exercise, nontoxic habits, healthy foods, and so on.

2) Wisdom is the second stage. Wisdom combined with discipline fosters your ability to focus and be patient as you harmonize your thoughts, your intellect and your feelings with the work of your body. We send children off to school telling them: Be disciplined and Use your head, and call this education, but it falls short of mastery.

3) Love is the third stage. After disciplining the body with wisdom, and intellectually studying a task, this process of mastery involves loving what you do and doing what you love. In the world of sales, I call it falling in love with what you’re offering, and then selling your love or enthusiasm to potential customers.

4) Surrender is the fourth stage. This is the place of intention. This is where you body and your minds aren’t running the show and you move into intent. “In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link,” is the way Carlos Castaneda describes it. You relax, grab the trolley strap, and allow yourself to be carried by the same power that turns acorns into trees, blossoms into apples, and microscopic dots into humans. So grab that trolley strap and create your own unique connecting link. Absolutely everything in the entire cosmos includes you and your disciplined, wise, loving self, and all of your thoughts and feelings. When you surrender, you lighten up and can consult with your infinite soul. Then the power of intention becomes available to take you wherever you feel destined to go.

All of this talk of intention and surrender may cause you to question where your free will fits in. You might be inclined to conclude that free will is nonexistent or that your become whatever you program dictates. So, let’s take a look at your will and how it fits into this new view of intention. As you read the next two sections, please keep an open mind, even if what you read conflicts with what you’re believed all your life!