The Power of Intention
Notes from “The Philosopher’s Notes’ discussion” about the book: The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer
- Intention
- Serotonin
- Act ‘as If’
- Making everything sacred.
- Saying ‘yes’ to life
- Connect to service, find your purpose in serving
- Be what you want/desire to be
- Being inspired (in spirit)
- Choosing ’empowered’ friends
Intention
Absolutely everything that exists in the entire Cosmos is attached to “intent” by a connecting link.
There are 4 steps to intention:
- Discipline
- Wisdom
- Love
- Surrender
- START: What’s one thing that you could be doing now, that is consistent with your higher self, that will have the highest possible benefit in your life?
- STOP: What’s one thing that you continue to do although you know it’s not consistent with your higher that if you stopped doing – would have the greatest benefit of your life?
It takes discipline to develop habits, and then habits create disposition.
Discipline > until it’s habitual > then it’s disposition.
Tolle: 80-90% of our thoughts / actions are habitual (but are they what we actually want?)
7 ‘faces’ of Intention:
- Creativity
- Kindness
- Love
- Beauty (seeing it, and being it)
- Expansion (everything in the universe is expanding, including the universe, so having the sense of expansion – am I thinking expansion or contraction? am I expanding? and growing? or am I contracting?)
- Unlimited Abundance
- Receptivity (an openness to the world, allowing the divine to flow through us)
How can you be more creative today? How can you be more kind today? How can you show more love today? How can you see more beauty today? How can you be more loving today? How can you be more expansive today?, etc.
Serotonin (the ‘happy’ drug):
- If ‘I’ do something kind, I will have serotonin released into my brain
- If I do something kind for ‘you’, then ‘you’ will also have serotonin released into your brain
- Everyone who ‘saw’ it, would have serotonin released into your brain
If you don’t feel well, it’s a compassionate wake-up. If you are feeling dis-empowered, helpless, depressed, etc. then that’s a good sign that you’re disconnected from source – a sign that you need to get more connected: kindness would be one of the key things you can do.
Act ‘as if’
- Act as if everything you desire is already here.
- Treat yourself as if you already are what you’d like to become.
Let’s imagine the outcome. You wouldn’t have the desire, unless you had the ability to manifest the outcome. The outcome is divine as anything else you can imagine. If we’re ‘attached’, if we’re clinging to what it should look like, or a timeline it should happen, that’s where the ‘suffering’ comes in. Just get clear on who you want to be. Who is that person? How would that person see the world? If in fact you ‘already were’ someone who has created that desire – if you had already ‘done’ that, and you were living from that ‘end point’, and you ‘are’ that person – how would you feel right now? Who would you be ‘right now’?
Expansion v’s Contraction
It’s expansive to imagine all that you can be. You experience a contraction when you ‘fear’ that you can’t be that. It’s contracting to ‘not’ let it come through.
What would it feel like if you gave yourself the freedom just for a moment to allow the expansiveness of ‘what is the most divine vision for yourself?’
Act as if you are ‘that’ person now. Because that person doesn’t contract in fear in challenging situations. The person “is” the one that is already ‘being’ that. Act as if you are already the one who has ‘mastered fear’. That you already are the enlightened version of yourself. What would the enlightened version of yourself do?
Segment Intending
Abraham (Esther & Jerry Hicks) teaches this.
When you’re taking a shower, what’s your intention? When you’re in a relationship, what’s your intention? In this moment, what’s your intention?
And the more conscious we bring to it, the more we’ll find not to be careful what you ask for, but be careful about ‘not’ asking. Be aware, and be blissful, because it’s going to come. Walk into situations as if you have already done it. If you want to ‘be this’ – then the only way you are ever going to be that, is if you to start to consistently be that now. Start practicing being who you want now and embrace that – not with attachments or fear, but in this moment – be that. Then by definition I ‘am’ that. And it unfolds in a way that you can’t anticipate.
What do you want? Treat yourself as if you are already what you’d like to become.
Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.
If you think the problem is ‘outside of you’ then you’ve got a problem – the problem is never outside of us. The world is a movie screen, and how we see the world is like a projector’s lens. If there is something wrong on the screen, there’s something wrong on the lens.
If you want to feel connected to your own purpose, know this for certain: Your purpose will only be found in service to others, and in being connected to something far greater than your mind/body/ego.
You will feel most ‘on purpose’ when you are giving your life away by serving others. When you’re giving to others, your planet and to your source, you’re being purposeful. Whatever it is that you do, if you’re motivated to be of service to others while being authentically detached from the outcome, you’ll feel on purpose, regardless of how much abundance flows back to you.
Go a month without any goals, just live consistently with your purpose, make ‘that’ your practice. There’s no goals, there’s purpose. Are you at integrity with your purpose.
Viktor Frankl, holocaust survivor & psychologist said that anything can be taken from you, but your last freedom, is your freedom to choose how you respond to this moment. He also said in his book Man’s Search for Meaning:
Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it, and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness can not be pursued. It must ensue. And it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Whereas the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen and the same holds for success. You have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on and carry it out to the best of your knowledge, then you will live to see, that in the long run, success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.
Authentic Happiness (book) states that the Science of Happiness is knowing your strengths and using them often.
If you want a meaningful life, know your strengths, use them often on something bigger than yourself. Truly give yourself to the world.
What are you seeking?
You must be what it is you are seeking. This is a universe of attraction and energy. You can’t have a desire to attract a mate that is confident, generous, non-judgemental and gentle and expect that desire to be manifested if you are thinking or acting in non confident, selfish, judgemental or arrogant ways.
If you want to be this, this and this, you are not going to attract it by being the opposite.
In any given moment, I can choose to be more compassionate or less compassionate. I can choose to be more kind or less kind. Act as if you already were the most confident, kindest, loving person that you can be.
You are not ‘acting’ in the sense of ‘not-being that’, when you are acting it – you ARE being that. Therefore you are that. There is a process of ‘integration’ when something inside you may not believe it, but in the process of integration, you are becoming that which you want to be, and that which you now are.
In-spirited
If you have ever felt inspired by a purpose or calling, you know the feeling of spirit working through you . Inspired is our word for in-spirited.
When do you feel most alive? When is spirit/the divine working through you? What can you do to experience that more and more and more?
Say to yourself: I’m here on purpose. I can accomplish anything I desire and I do it by being in harmony with the all providing creative force in the universe
If you are clear on what you want to do, there are very few things that you can’t actually do.
Our deepest ‘being’ is in our ‘becoming’. It is when we’re becoming, and fully, intensely embracing that process, that we are actually most alive. Outside of any ‘should’s’, and just ‘being’, the next highest expression of ourselves, becoming our higher selves, is the essence of our being.
Tolle: You can tell how well you are doing your practice (in the power of now) by how much peace you feel.
Say ‘Yes’ to Life
One of the most effective things for transcending ordinary and moving into the realm of extraordinary, is saying ‘yes’ more frequently – eliminating ‘no’ almost completely. Saying ‘yes’ to life. Say ‘yes’ to your family, your co-workers, your business.
Feel the energy between ‘no’ and ‘yes’.
The idea of ‘no’. If you actually say the word ‘no’. ‘No, no, no, no, no’, you can feel a down, down, down, down, down. Say ‘yes’. ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes’, there’s an opening. There’s almost a contracting and expanding.
Choose ’empowered’ friends
When you meet anyone, treat the ‘event’ as a holy encounter.
True nobility isn’t about being better than someone else, it’s about being better than you used to be.
Don’t compete, don’t compare.
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