Note: Those for whom the Matrix V material was written will be able to read the following material and use discernment based on a unique experiential perspective.

On The Power of Intent

© 1997, 2000 by Lucius Ringwald

Author's note: This piece combines a series of essays that are part of a larger work in progress. All of the ideas expressed here are taken from personal experience, first and foremost; they have also been inspired, clarified, and supported by the works of many other authors. Sadly, I can name but a few of the people who have made contributions to this area of my exploration: these are Carlos Castaneda, Gary Zukav, John C. Lily, Fritjof Capra, Joseph Pearce, Richard Bach, and—last but not least—the eminent James Redfield. I have had to simplify many of the concepts I try to describe here, to conserve space and keep this from being more complicated than it already is. Thus, I don't recommend that you base your entire personal metaphysics on anything written here—or anywhere, for that matter.

Part I: Fundamentals of Intent

People in the West are taught that there is only one option open to human beings: living in the "Real World." This consensus involves much more than physical laws such as gravity and inertia; it encompasses all areas of our lives and our consciousness. Most Westerners are taught to believe in a place where competition is the rule and peace the exception, people's lives are irrevocably ruled by conflict, God (for those who believe that a God exists) is simultaneously a wise, loving presence and an unstable, war-mongering megalomaniac, and the only reality is a mechanistic, material universe that we can only interact with through matter. The last of these assumptions will be the main focus of this essay. 

The predominant Western paradigms hold that people can affect the world only with their physical actions—that influencing reality in any other way is either impossible or the exclusive province of a superior being (or beings). The latter point of view is a cousin to paradigms which portray the idea of a Creator as a force whose essence is separate from living beings—a “God” which is the only being worthy of trans-material perceptions and abilities. 

Along similar lines is the concept of predestination: the notion that no being alive, human or otherwise, has true command over its own existence, for all of us are at the mercy of a superior force(s). Viewed in the broadest sense, predestination is a thread that runs through many paradigms. The agent of control can be anything from fate, to instinct, to social pressure. This idea is present within the realms of religion, philosophy, science and the humanities, for none of these arenas is immune to beliefs which center around subjugation and victimhood. In most cases, believing in predestination disempowers the individual, for it prevents a person from trying to discover his or her true strength and ability. With the right spin, the concept functions as a great tool for those in power to keep people from realizing what they can truly accomplish, or from opposing power structures. 

Are we to accept the premise that we are little more than slaves to our vices, to others' beliefs and expectations about our identity, or to an all-powerful puppet-master that is completely beyond our grasp? For many people, the answer is "no." There are many options open to those who do not accept concepts of predestination and believe in the right to command their own lives. In the realm of metaphysical exploration, one of the highest expressions of such empowerment is found in the notion of Intent.

A multitude of worldviews, both ancient and modern, regard human beings as expressions of a great consciousness which runs through all of Creation. Each sentient being is seen as a unique spiritual essence which expresses the nature and purpose of the source. The implication is that each individual consciousness emulates fundamental principles underlying the Universe, such as creation, preservation, and destruction. In some of these worldviews, the power with which living beings are endowed goes even further: it is believed that all forms of life have the capacity not only to conceive of possibilities in the world around them, but to affect that world with a power called Intent. 

Spirit, Intent, and Will

Consciousness, and all of its creations, express the interplay of two fundamental forces. The first is Spirit, the creative and active aspect of consciousness that brings change and imagination into a real existence. Spirit's counterpart is a force called Intent. Intent is responsible for the constancy of the laws and structures which form the framework for all energy and life. The power of Intent allows the images of Spirit to take form as a reality, maintaining and preserving all the realities which Consciousness experiences. The dynamic, imaginative aspect of Consciousness conceives of the possibility for something to be created or affected; the purpose of Intent is to maintain form and structure in the new patterns. 

Intent is the crucial sustaining force behind the ongoing patterns and laws of reality. Without Intent, there would be no continuity in the manifestations of Creative consciousness; as soon as something is conceived, it would disintegrate. This would make it impossible for Consciousness to explore the nuances of any boundaries or distinctions; any given reality would be so ephemeral that it would be impossible for sentient beings to explore the many potentials for experience that the Universe offers. 

The structure and permanence made possible by Intent are integral not only to physical matter and energy, but to the awareness of all sentient beings. The power which preserves the laws of a certain reality is an expression of the same essential force that upholds patterns in the awareness of every living thing. 

The concept of Intent is not inherently at odds with the apparent “realness” of the material world. The laws that form the "Real World" in which most people seem to live are the result of an inconceivable amount of Intent (the history of which I do not claim to know). The human race, collectively, reinforces these laws by intending to experience only what lies within those boundaries. One cannot simply say, "that's it—I'm going to obey a totally different set of rules now," and expect the world to follow suit. The forces which hold the reality of the material world in place are far too strong for a person to escape their gravity on a whim. 
Science offers some support for the existence of alternate realities and other laws that own reality follows. Recent progressions in the world of scientific research take us into baffling phenomena that can only be explained by disregarding or radically altering long-standing views of what is "real." It may be that humanity is approaching a time when we collectively see the inadequacy of these antiquated models of reality, and seek a more expansive framework to explain the world in which we live. 

The paradigm shift toward a broader model of reality is playing itself out on a number of levels. While science continues to yield startling discoveries about the nature of reality, people involved in metaphysical exploration bring their developing knowledge (most of which has been around for millennia, in ancient mystical systems) closer to the forefront of social paradigms. I have found that one can take nothing for granted in life, so this is not a prophecy; it is more of a possibility that is likely to happen unless unforeseen events or interventions disrupt the natural flow of progression. 

Creative Power and Will

All sentient beings possess an innate force which can be called Creative Power—a living energy which is the source of all patterns of Intent. We access this power by focusing the Will. Will is the ineffable intermediary between awareness and choice, the force through which we Intend to enact changes in the world around us. Consciousness creates the basic conception behind an Intent, focusing our attention on unrealized or partially realized possibilities. Will takes this to the next step, giving form, substance and intensity to what we have conceived. The end result of the process is a projection, a pattern of Intent which we have shaped from our own Creative Power. [1]

Intent has almost infinite variations. The types of Intent that are available to sentient beings differs according to the restrictions—fundamental, conditioned, and self-created—which define each being's existence. The Intent that a being creates is determined by its inherent limitations and predilections, and by the choices that it makes from the array of opportunities before it. 

Over the course of my experiences—in mystical exploration and simply paying attention to the world around me—I have come to believe that all living beings focus the power of Intent with their consciousness. Out of all the forms of life I have encountered, humanity seems to possess the greatest potential to create and Intend. For this reason, the essay from this point on will focus on human beings in particular. 

Humanity has already proven its ability to enact change at an almost godlike level, and this is usually without any conscious command over our power to Intend. In every moment, we choose how to use our fantastic potential. Considering the human race's track record of "choices" over recent millennia, it is hardly surprising that those who possessed the most advance transmaterial knowledge often chose to conceal their secrets from most of the global populace.

One might ask, "If our potential is really so incredible, why do we appear to be so limited? What happens to all of that power?" It might seem absurd to some, but human beings actually use most of their vast store of Creative Power making sure that their lives remain structured, comfortable, and full of familiarity. This applies to everyone alive (or at least, this is true to my knowledge). Even those who have an extraordinary level of Creative Power available to them only have access to a fraction of their true potential. 

It takes in incredible amount of Intent to maintain a relatively stable, "normal" state of being. This might seem like a farfetched statement from the standpoint of ordinary Western assumptions, for people in the West have been taught to think of reality as a given, something that is just “there" whether we like it or not. In fact, the nature of reality is largely a function of our perceptions, or as Castaneda put it, "a matter of where we place our attention." 

It's easy to take for granted the multitude of details that allow us to live in a world which almost always falls within our expectations of what it will be. What few people in our society realize is that all of us divest an incredible amount of Creative Power in efforts to maintain continuity within our inner and outer realities. If we could select a large number of these patterns, and instantly free up the creative energy that maintains them, the level of Intent available to us would be incredible. The bad news is, it's not that easy. It takes us years (possibly even lifetimes) to establish the most steadfast structures and limitations in our lives, and we need to put just as much energy and focus into undoing them. 

The Realms of Intent

Directing and focusing mental energy creates the structures through which people define and understand their reality. Beliefs and impressions form the underpinning of our experience of reality, our ideas about other people, our opinions and feelings about events in our lives, and perhaps most importantly, the inner landscape of the psyche. 

Human beings influence three main elements of our existence with the power of Intent: destiny, reality, and identity. Respectively, by focusing Creative Power into Intent, human beings affect the course and nature of events in their lives, and the boundaries of their personal realities, and the images and structure of the self. The patterns that arise in each realm of Intent are closely intertwined. 

Childhood conditioning

Most people see little evidence of their relationship to the first two realms of Intent—destiny and reality. The main reason for this is that most people in the civilized world have a deeply ingrained certainty that they are separate from these two aspects of life. People begin to adopt these restrictive models of what is real or humanly possible in the early stages of childhood. 

In the first years of life, human beings experience a natural connection to Abstract levels of consciousness. This receptivity allows young children to perceive a wide spectrum of transmaterial aspects of their existence. In the process of early socialization, however, most people are conditioned to filter out all but the material levels of perception; just as they approach a level of cognitive functioning which would allow them to rationally comprehend insights into the transmaterial, people cease to perceive it. 

As children grow up, they naturally learn to channel their Intent into creating structure and focus in their own consciousness. Socialization in Western countries directs this process so that children create ever more rigid boundaries to their existence as they mature. They gradually align their beliefs and perceptions with the predominant consensus, eventually reaching a point at which most of their creative energy is devoted to preserving restrictive structures. [2]

There are also unconscious forms of socialization, which lead children to automatically uphold materialistic limits of experience. For instance, there is a learned pattern in which people suppress any perceptions or insights that threaten the sanctity of their most deep-rooted boundaries, by automatically "burning" any extra creative energy that would cause a shift from their conditioned worldview. 

Conditioning is a powerful force in the psyche, but fortunately, it is not immutable. Given enough time, conditioned patterns can be identified, reexamined, and eventually, changed. All of us have powerful and deep-rooted preconceptions about reality and destiny, but those models aren't absolute. The act of sincerely Intending to overcome limits in our own understanding can lead to a fundamental expansion, in which our awareness of reality, of ourselves, and of our connection to life itself take on new directions. 

Investing Intent

The Creative Potential is the total amount of Creative Power that each being has available to shape into Intent. As I already mentioned, humans have a great deal of Creative Power available to us, but most of it is already being used. Our innate capacity for Intent never changes, but the level of overall power that we can consciously use at a given time depends on many different factors. Some of these are beyond our control, but there are others that we can influence. The most crucial of these is the state of our consciousness: how we invest Creative Power in specific beliefs, perceptions, and purposes.

Two main elements of our awareness are responsible for shaping Creative Power into Intent: belief and purpose. The Intent which arises from our beliefs manifests the context of what we experience—the physical laws, the patterns of "fate" that fall outside of our conscious preferences or expectations. Purposes tend to function in a more interactive way: they produce Intent which determines events based on our desires, hopes and fears. The course of one’s life reflects these two sources of Intent, mixed with all of the outer changes that people make as they go along. It could be said that our beliefs set the stage, and then co-write the script along with our purposes and outward actions.

Intent is a very different thing than intention. Intentions are purposes that we try to fulfill using all the means available to our conscious awareness (such as innovation, planning, and physical action). Intent, on the other hand, can contribute to the fruition of a certain purpose by influencing events outside our conscious capabilities. 




Major forces behind Intent

Intent is Creative Power that has been commanded to fulfill a design, through a combination of thought and emotion. When we emotionally fixate on a certain possibility—regardless of whether we are feeling hope, fear, rage, or love—we release an encapsulated portion of our Creative power. This projection which has been programmed to bring about the fruition of our purpose. 

Behind every purpose is an emotion. A projection of Intent, like a purpose, is intrinsically connected to our emotions; it is empowered by the feelings that we associate with a goal, expectation, or belief. The power and quality of a person's Intent is determined by the emotional energy that goes into its formation. (I will expand on this point in a later section.)

Imagination is also a powerful creative force behind Intent. Before we can clarify the purposes that shape our Intent, we must imagine them. The human imagination provides the groundwork, by allowing us to glimpse the possibilities which can eventually become new realities. 

The Abstract connection

Becoming directly aware of one's Intent goes hand in hand with being more open to intuition. Intent projections may seem to be something separate from our identity, but they are actually centered within the psyche, in the areas that Castaneda calls the Abstract. The Abstract mind, which corresponds to the theta brainwave state, possesses knowledge that could be called "super-conscious;" not only does it have access to our suppressed transmaterial faculties, but its attention span is more immense than we can currently fathom. This is the area from which much of our intuition arises, and the region in which patterns of Intent can be consciously engaged.

Intent is always an extension of our consciousness, even when its influence bears on events far away from us. Most projections seem to operate independently of our conscious focus, but this is the external equivalent to suppressed thoughts and emotions which, regardless of whether we know it or not, affect the way we think and behave. We have a psychic connection to every existing pattern of Intent that we have created, and are, in fact, constantly engaging and redefining these extensions of our essence. One implication of this is that by becoming aware of the presence of patterns of Intent that we have formed, we can learn to play a more conscious part in directing the course of our lives 

Intent projections have a powerful connection to levels of one's psyche that perceive the multilinear Continuum of time, and they can access this knowledge to increase the likelihood of certain outcomes. One might construe this to mean that Intent can "make" events happen—a kind of self-created predestination—but this is not what is really happening. Some metaphysical models posit that the human will can "reach into the future," attracting certain possibilities so that they become more likely as they draw closer to the present. In my experience, Intent works through a different dynamic. Projections of Intent that focus on future possibilities can steer the course of the present through the events that lead toward a certain future. I should warn the reader that more often than not, deliberate attempts to influence events in this way will result in disappointment, or worse—"Karmic backlash." One should not forget the intent aspect of Intent when deciding whether to access such faculties.

Restoring the Creative Potential

Most human beings utilize a level of Personal Power that is nowhere near their full Creative Potential. This is not a natural deficiency that we are stuck with for life; it is a matter of something not being available, rather than something not existing. The problem is that most of people's Creative Power is already invested in specific patterns of Intent, and what remains is often used in unconstructive ways. Much of this results from people having scattered attention and being unclear on what they want to accomplish, but most of it is a matter of patterns that people have already established—fixed, limiting patterns of identity, destiny, and reality that we constantly reinforce with our awareness. 

Castaneda speaks of "storing power" as one of the central goals of a Man (or Woman, presumably) of Knowledge. Storing power is a process of first becoming aware of the ways that we invest Creative Power in useless patterns of Intent, and then deliberately divesting those patterns of their underlying energy. The result is for one's overall Creative Power to increase by degrees, giving one a much greater ability to consciously focus Intent, as well as making one's experience of life more intense and profound. 

It takes an incredible amount of Creative Power to preserve our fundamental beliefs and expectations about the world and our identity. Preservation is an important aspect of our existence, but it is meant to be balanced with change and exploration. When people become too fixated on sustaining the Intent that they have already created, they enter a vicious cycle in which the sustaining aspect of Intent saps most of their Creative Power, compromising their power to explore new possibilities.

Humanity, as a whole, has a severe imbalance between the creative and sustaining aspects of our being. The most prevalent social paradigms emphasize conforming to rigid perspectives and seeking a final destination in our understanding. People learn to use so much of their Creative Power to preserve preexisting patterns of Intent that little remains with which to create new ones, or to facilitate the evolution of existing patterns. 

Society plays a major part in people's deficiency of Creative Power, but to understand this problem, we need to examine it at a microcosmic, level: what are the patterns of thought, feeling and behavior most responsible for depleting people's Creative Power? 

People use vast amounts of their innate Power in a constant repetition of certain patterns of Intent. As I discussed in previous chapters, people draw a great deal of security from what is most stable in their lives, and the desire to preserve stability takes root in the ego. [3]

People unconsciously channel their Creative Power toward preserving stability in the three major realms of intent: identity, destiny, and reality. Respectively, this means constantly repeating familiar routines of thought and behavior, drawing the same kinds of events to themselves through their expectations, and shaping their experiences to fit a rigid view of reality. When we channel most of our Creative Power into maintaining fixed and familiar patterns of Intent (the ego's agenda for our lives), we reduce the number of positive changes that occur in our sense of self, the course of our experiences, and our awareness of reality. [4]

Every time we shape a pattern of Intent, we use up a certain amount of our Creative Power. The basic power is still there—our Creative Potential can't change, it can only be allocated and reallocated—but once we have given form to some of our Creative Power, that power will be tied up until we either change or undo the pattern.

Recovering misdirected Creative Power is a process of deliberately, and systematically, releasing our hold on a specific projection. We must be careful to use discretion, rather than tying to undo every pattern that we identify; some patterns of Intent provide us with much of the joy and hope in our lives, and these are often the most rigid projections that we encounter. In my experience, the crucial distinction that one should make is whether resolving a pattern of Intent can help our personal growth without seriously affecting our happiness. 

Put simply, it all comes down to identifying wasteful Intent: fixed projections of identity, destiny, or reality that prevent us from increasing the level of happiness and meaning in our lives. Some of these projections can be traced back to an isolated moment or brief period of time, but others have a more ongoing history. As you might have guessed, approaching the latter type tends to be a more grueling challenge than the former. 

The most deep-rooted patterns of Intent have formed gradually, growing stronger over a long period of time (possibly even throughout more than one lifetime). It is not enough, however, to address the patterns themselves; to achieve a lasting resolution, we must try to resolve the aspects of our identity which sustain them. 

End Notes:

[1] Those who are familiar with Castaneda's works, especially The Fire From Within and The Power of Silence, will no doubt recognize the parallels.
[2] Restrictive does not necessarily imply "wrong." Any given worldview contains some elements of truth, but if people consider that worldview immutable, they will subvert their own expansion toward a more complete understanding.
[3] : “The ego,” as I define it, is not the same as Freud or Jung’s conception of same. I apologize for any confusion that this might cause.
[4] This idea is just as valid when we take it in a psychological context, without the metaphysical element of Intent.

The Intent of Reality

Most people on Earth believe that reality is defined by certain absolute boundaries. To give a somewhat obvious example, most people believe that human beings' abilities are limited to the rational mind and the five physical senses. This consensus is becoming less popular in many segments of society, while other social groups seem to be even more dogmatic about the alleged limits of human potential. 

Some of the most the fundamental and widely held beliefs in Western cultures focus on the nature of reality. Westerners tend to view reality as an unchanging entity—a continuum defined by immutable boundaries which we, as sentient beings, have no power to influence. This social paradigm expects us to accept two contradictory assumptions: we learn to believe that the only beliefs which we can trust are those which we validate in our experiences, but we are also supposed to accept the premise that many types of experience are not valid or “real” because they do not fit this rigid worldview. 

In many non-Western cultures, people grow up learning to conceptualize reality in a broader context. What I find especially interesting is that, in contrast to the blind faith that is common in the Abrahamic religions, many of these people assert that their metaphysical beliefs are founded on first-hand experience. Furthermore, these cultures encourage their members to apply alternative models of reality in ceremonial practices that affirm that there is, indeed, more available to humanity than the material universe. There are groups of people throughout the world for whom practices such as fire-walking, miracle healing, or out-of-body experiences are an accepted occurrence. 

Westerners’ belief that there is one objective reality reflects the Scientific-Rationalist mentality that is at the core of our worldview. The empirical approach is an effective approach to validating truth, but when taken to extremes it becomes a cage for one's understanding. It seems that most Westerners world's obsession with our culturally prescribed notion of "objectivity" has led them to overlook some fundamental elements of human existence. Intent is only one such element; there are scores of others. [1]

Members of Western cultures tend to be skeptical of metaphysical explanations for anything, especially when it entails becoming directly involved with something beyond the material world. This is not, contrary to popular belief, because we are enlightened and free from superstition. Numerous stigmas and taboos surround the idea of metaphysical abilities, and the voice of scientific reason is not the only party involved. I will list three psycho-social factors that work to suppress the exploration of metaphysics in the West.

First, many people have put a stigma on religion in general. In many cases, the concept of "religion" extends to everything of a metaphysical nature, and more empirical forms of exploration are lumped together with subjects such as the words of the prophets or the reality of hell. 

Second, even those who consider unconventional views of reality are often more eager to believe in something that is almost impossible to prove, or to go in the opposite direction, seeking out a few easy, pre-packaged formulas for expanding their minds and not looking for any further validation. James Redfield's book, The Celestine Prophecy, illustrates both of these tendencies. Millions have read it, and some of them have tried to apply aspects of it to their lives, but for all intents and purposes, it seems that most people who bought it in the mid 1990s have forgotten about it now that the hubbub has passed. I am curious how many people, out of the scores who bought Redfield's book at the peak of its success, were inspired to explore beyond the simplified lessons and techniques that it teaches. 

Lastly, most metaphysical phenomena, abilities and perceptions are not considered scientifically valid. Since all "religious" concepts are considered to be based on unverifiable claims, they are given an equal measure of disregard. Intent is even more "far out" than other notions such as energy consciousness, for researchers cannot currently hope to prove its existence by acceptable standards. [2] The theory of Intent assumes that human awareness functions at a superconscious level outside of both time and the physical space of the body. The concept of intuition, which closely relates to Intent, also crosses over into time as well as space. Our most prevalent models of reality don't come close to accounting for such mechanics. 

Redefining the Real World

Sentient beings create, influence, and maintain realities by commanding the power of Intent. The existence of the "real world" that we perceive is maintained by the collective Intent of all of the sentient beings who inhabit it and have inhabited it in the past. To inhabit a reality is to have our consciousness solidly focused within the boundaries that make it up; in the Real World, this means remaining within our bodies (at least while we're awake), following laws such as gravity without any disparities, only perceiving what the consensus tells us we can perceive, and not experiencing other worlds or alternative versions of this one. 

The Intent of reality changes in accord with a change in our objective awareness of what is real. There are many ways to accomplish this awareness (some easier than others). Take intuition, for example; by some accounts, developing one's intuition is not as difficult as many people would think. Since all people have flashes of intuition from time to time, learning to systematically recognize our hunches can strengthen our conscious connection to this ability, and every time a wild hunch is confirmed, we validate that this it ability has an objective existence. The change in perspective that occurs is quite profound: one has gone from a present-centered paradigm of time to one that acknowledges probable futures. 



The Continuum of Reality

The process that produces our experience of reality is akin to running a reel of film through a movie projector. The screen is the overall space-time Continuum, the film is the particular space-time that each of us inhabits, the projector is our consciousness, and the projector’s light bulb is the creative power which allows us to change all of these parameters. In this analogy, Intent is the material that makes up the "film," our consciousness is directing the movie, and the will is the dynamic force that affects the plot. The light bulb is the spirit, something that is much more difficult to comprehend. 

To introduce another analogy, the Continuum of reality functions as a computer, which is subject to an infinite number of “programs” of Intent. Some of these are unchangeable, and exist in the space-time continuum's equivalent to “read-only memory." An example is the program which maintains gravity as a law for the material universe. Other aspects of the space-time Continuum can be influenced by the will of living beings. Most people influence this Continuum on a strictly unconscious level, but by bringing conscious focus to their Intent, people can affect the "programs" of their experiential reality in interesting ways. 

There have been many accounts from India and non-industrialized cultures of people who are able to levitate, walk over hot coals that should be burning off their clothing by all rights, or perform other supposedly impossible feats. Many "logical explanations" have been proposed to debunk these phenomena, and I find some of these arguments convincing (in some fire-walking rituals, for example, the coals used are not dangerously hot and the people who perform the ceremony have heavily callused feet). It is important, however, to consider that less materialistic explanations may hold for some of these cases. 

This is not primarily a research paper, but I have read a number of studies in which researchers could not give a logical explanation for the apparently miraculous that a person displayed. Two subjects in this category is "miraculous" healing (of oneself or others) and fire walking rituals. Out of the many books that discuss bending the rules of reality, I have found Joseph C. Pearce's The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, James Redfield's The Celestine Vision, and Michael Murphy's The Future of the Body to be especially informative. 

Mystics from many different regions of the Earth claim that they have learned to reprogram the parameters of their personal reality. In other cultures, people are raised to believe that human beings can "bend the rules" in certain ways. Faith healers who perform legitimate miracles are utilizing the same basic skills but in a different context. What if some people can accomplish "impossible" feats because they believe in, and thus intend, a reality in which those things are possible? Fire-walkers have been brought up in an environment in which they observed others walking across the hot coals, and thus experientially "know" that it is also possible for them to do so. A medicine man or bona fide faith healer could administer miraculous treatment through an absolute conviction that he or she is a conduit for a higher power. Though it is very difficult for most Westerners to consider, we also have the power to redefine the boundaries of what is possible or even real, by changing the Intent of our reality. 

Most people's perceptions come about as their Intent grounds them in what the Western consensus defines as the Real World, but this is by no means the only reality available to human beings. Native American mystics have said that this world, the world of matter, is only a dream, and that the Spirit World is the actual reality. At face value, both of these views are true, but in another sense, the material world and the Spirit World are both subjective realities: they exist as cohesive worlds because of those who Intend their parameters.

Most people's perceptions come about as their Intent grounds them in what the Western consensus defines as the Real World, but this is by no means the only reality available to human beings. Native American mystics have said that this world, the world of matter, is only a dream, and that the Spirit World is the actual reality. At face value, both of these views are true, but in another sense, the material world and the Spirit World are both subjective realities: they exist as cohesive worlds because of those who Intend their parameters.


The Intent of Destiny

All of our thoughts and emotions generate patterns of intent. These projections possess a property of limited sentience and volition, and use any means at their disposal to bring the intended aim to fruition. We affect our destinies when we focus on a purpose for some aspect of our lives. When we direct our attention to purposes, we transmute our Creative Power into patterns of Intent which work to enact specific changes in the course of our lives. Emotions are the primary catalyst for this process of transmutation. 

There may be a God or other higher powers involved in the fate of human beings, but much of what happens to us is a product of our expectations and ambitions. Conscious actions have an undeniable effect on each person's destiny, but there are also "active" aspects of how people conceptualize their destiny and what they would like their destiny to become. One way that this principle reveals itself is in the relationship between conviction and follow-through: when people have strongly made up their minds about doing something, the events in their lives events seem to support their Intent. 

Paradigms of Destiny

Each person has a unique paradigm about destiny. This paradigm is comprised of one's deepest expectations and beliefs about how events in one's life will proceed. Some aspects of this paradigm may be conscious, while others are deeply internalized to the point of unconsciousness. The level of awareness depends a great deal on how much one believes that there is a higher meaning intrinsic to the course of events of one's life; atheists, for example, assume that whatever happens to them arbitrarily, while members of most religions ascribe many events to a higher power. 

The idea of "projecting one's destiny" offers some insight into why people who feel extremely involved with a spiritual philosophy often claim to have a greater amount of meaningful, synchronistic events in their lives. When one sincerely believes that God, Krishna, their Higher Self, or Intent has a hand in everything that occurs, one's personal destiny will reflect and reinforce this higher order. When one believes that all events follow a haphazard pattern, on the other hand, one will have much fewer fortuitous encounters. 

People's notions of destiny act as a self-fulfilling prophecy; they may, in fact, be the single greatest factor in determining the patterns of events in each person’s life. This is captured in the often cited Biblical euphemism, "Ask, and you shall receive." What we believe "life" will give us, it will obediently deliver. 

Patterns within destiny

There is no cut-and-dry way to learn about Intent, but certain strategies can help in the process. One of the most useful ways to learn how Intent influences our destiny is to examine the recurring patterns in our lives. I have heard many people say that specific types of events and themes are such a constant part of their lives as to defy logical explanation. What people perceive in these instances are prominent patterns of Intent that shape their individual destinies. 

Destiny is a product of our consciousness. Since people's thoughts and feelings are perennially creating patterns of Intent, the patterns in our individual destinies are a direct reflection of our ideas about ourselves. The aspects of our identities that have the most prevalence in our consciousness have an equally powerful Intent, so these attributes determine the primary patterns of Intent in our unique destinies. Herein lies one of the keys to identifying our own patterns of Intent: by paying close enough attention to the events in our lives, we can find out what our most prevalent projections are. It is basically a process of backwards engineering. 

In addition to teaching us about Intent, examining common patterns can make us more aware of our inner world. When one invests a lot of energy in a certain view of oneself, the events in one's life will naturally reinforce that self-image. One implication of this is that by paying close attention to the patterns in our lives, we can recognize aspects of ourselves that we normally overlook or take for granted. 

Intending empowerment

When people's sense of their own identity centers on the belief that they're powerless against certain forces, their lives will reflect back exactly what they project. Some common objects of disempowerment are an addictive behavior pattern, a bad luck streak, or a limiting judgment that someone else directs at a person. People who allow themselves to be "victims" of these forces will repeatedly find themselves in situations where their sense of powerlessness is confirmed. Unfortunately, people are often too caught up in a conflict, or just don't have the right frame of reference, to realize their own role in perpetuating these cycles of events. 

The more we believe that we are victims, the more our experiences will validate that preconception. When we expect to encounter situations in which we are powerless to external or internal forces—abusive relationships, addictions, and others' judgments are a few common examples—we will draw these sorts of experiences into the course of our destiny. At an unconscious level, people Intentionally attract these patterns to themselves, validating their feelings of powerlessness. 

All of us have an innate power to overcome patterns of victimization, but there are some powerful internal obstacles to achieving this. One of these is the assumption that there is no other way to be than the victim pattern—a sense of pessimism or naiveté about one's true ideals. Other obstacles involve a more conscious resistance to changing how we see ourselves; the self-image is something that we can fall back on even when all of the other securities in our lives seem to have fallen apart, so the ego will not easily give up these givens. 

Most people are completely capable of transforming patterns of disempowerment into opportunities for growth. [3] This is not easy, and in general there are no instant results, but every success that one makes is well worth the time and effort. The objective is to recognize situations in which we are disempowered, and then shift our preconceptions and goals so that instead, the encounters lead us to a greater sense of wholeness and integrity. Each person has the potential to accomplish this, but doing so requires a great deal of strength, for the ego desperately holds on to feelings of disempowerment in order to justify its sacred cows—the boundaries of our conscious existence. When to make these deep changes in outlook, we engage the power of Intent through our will, regardless of whether we know that this is happening. Remember, everyone already "knows" the most vital applications of Intent; acknowledging the dynamics just makes our efforts more conscious—and thus, more effective. 

People get used to certain cycles repeating themselves in their lives; they come to take a lot of comfort from knowing what to expect and how to proceed. To rechannel our Intent to a more genuine kind of empowerment, we need fundamentally change our psychological motivation, so that we prioritize growth and higher values over stability and ego-affirming qualities. Sometimes, to be truly empowered, we must be willing to be unsure, for that is what it takes to create an intense, dynamic and fulfilling destiny for ourselves. 

Purpose and emotion

Four categories of emotional states act as the strongest fuel for the Intent of destiny: fear, expectation, desire, and higher purpose. Respectively, people attract experiences which: 

Confirm their fears, or allow them to retaliate against what makes them afraid; 

They expect or suspect will come to pass; 

Fulfill a desire for comfort or luxury; and, 

Serve a purpose associated with "higher" values, such as personal growth, creative expression, helping others, or bringing about what is seen as a positive change in the world. 

There are many other variations (and I may have also overlooked one or more categories), but one can use this list as a point of reference for identifying the origin of one's own Intent or the Intent of others. The list could also be applied to non-metaphysical dynamics of the psyche, as a way of identifying garden-variety motivation ("intent" without the capital I). 

Luck and synchronicity

How “lucky” a person is depends on a few factors. Two important factors are the power and clarity of one's Intent. Another factor is one's overall creative power. The surest way to increase this level is to do a lot of internal work. When people seek to overcome dualistic, limited aspects of their consciousness, they free their creative power from many draining patterns of Intent. The more we regain wasted and misused creative power, the more potent our ability to Intend becomes. Greater “luck” follows, for luck is usually an expression of unconscious Intent that attracts what we want or need. 

The other main factor that determines luck is our expectations about how lucky we will be—which brings us back to one's paradigm of destiny. When we see ourselves as lucky, we experience greater luck; when we feel unlucky on the other hand, we will have less good luck, and sometimes, "bad" luck as well. 

Learning about Intent makes it is possible to become much "luckier," but I strongly recommend that people use caution when considering how to go about this. There is a delicate balance in the way that events play out in our lives, and if we wantonly upset this balance because we think that it would be "cool" to be luckier in a certain way, we may suffer harsh ramifications later on. A person might find, for example, that her luck in getting material objects has increased but that she no longer has so many meaningful interactions with strangers. 

If you seek to increase a certain kind of luck in your life, there are two things that you can do which are helpful in deciding an approach. The first is to ask yourself whether the pattern is there for a reason, and if so, determine whether you would really benefit from trying to change it. If you have done this, and it seems that no ill would result if your luck were to improve, I strongly recommend not trying to change the pattern directly through Intent. Conscious Intent is often unreliable, especially when self-interest is involved. A safer alternative is changing your preconceptions about what you deserve. 

When we just direct Intent toward getting something that we desire, we may not fully believe that we deserve it, consciously or unconsciously. The Intent for greater luck is out of accord with our "default" Intent, which can throw other patterns off-balance. If we, instead, go right to our expectations about what we will receive and what we deserve, we will not only increase our luck in a long-term capacity, we will also resolve an internal conflict. 

Intent is one of the main agents in what some people call synchronicity. Synchronicity is a way of attracting into lives what we feel we need, as well as what is simply useful or enjoyable. In some cases, this carries over to fortuitous encounters with people. Sometimes, we find the perfect person to help us with something important; other times, we're on the other side of the exchange. Helping others when we see such opportunities can increase the overall frequency of evolutionary synchronicity in their lives, by giving them affirmation that they can, and deserve to, experience this level of good fortune. 

Manifesting the ideal path

When our awareness is both balanced and expansive, we can focus our Intent to manifest an ideal course of events in our lives. Consciously intending that one’s life follow the most beneficial, productive path, free of the negative attraction created by internal conflicts, can help us live more purposeful and enriching lives. This doesn't entail accessing an unfamiliar power; unconsciously, everyone already manifests many events in their lives. Learning to affect the Intent of destiny is a matter of actively engaging a process that we know very well how to do, but were never taught to recognize. 

Part of bringing ideals to fruition is a matter of "manual labor:" doing our absolute best in the challenges that we face in life. Trying to embody our ideals as we go through life is hard work, but as the saying goes, there is no such thing as a free ride; no one will ever reach such an exalted state of consciousness that he or she no longer has to try. The serenity prayer does a good job of capturing this sentiment: if we make an earnest effort to accept what we cannot change, to face the challenges of our lives with courage, and to cultivate the discretion to know is which, our destiny will reflect this attitude back in the form of enriching events. 

Power and responsibility

Whether we benefit from developing any metaphysical faculty hinges on our awareness as much as any other factor. Learning to consciously perceive and direct Intent is an impressive achievement in itself, but will have little value if one does not apply this knowledge wisely. For instance, it can be exciting to recognize a striking example of synchronicity in our lives, but noticing these instances is pointless if we do not have the mindfulness to recognize the reason for these opportunities and the presence of mind to approach them responsibly. Intent can also be extremely harmful, for there is a powerful potential for unintended misdirection or conscious misuse. 

It is absolutely imperative that people's exploration of Intent be matched, if not exceeded, by their development of wisdom and self-reflection. When people explore the nuances of perceiving and commanding Intent, but brush over processes like overcoming dualistic awareness and developing intuitive guidance, they run the risk of disrupting the natural course of their destiny—or, worse yet, the destiny of others. Careless experimentation with the power of Intent can cause serious Karmic imbalances which are difficult or impossible to repair.

Anyone who approaches the point of being able to apply the power of Intent to destiny should have an integral sense of the "higher" qualities of self. When using Intent to bring about events, one must always be mindful that those events are for the good of all people, not only that of oneself. 

Consider the example of a person who has a bad cold, but cannot make an appointment at the hospital until the next week. This person channels a great deal of energy into an Intent to have an appointment that day, and lo and behold, a woman cancels her appointment for that afternoon, creating an opening in which the man’s doctor can look at his cold. Now, consider that the above mentioned woman was suffering from a terminal illness and died as a result of missing her appointment. Viewing one’s decision in this context would discourage most people from wantonly using their personal power in such a way.

If one attempts to influence probability with intent, and is unconsciously impelled to do so by the ego, one can seriously interfere with the natural order of events. Although this author does not believe in one God who controls all destinies, I have found that events sometimes fall into certain ideal patterns when left to play themselves out. Individuals who tap into primal power of Intent can seriously upset these patterns, especially when motivated by dualistic emotions. When people try to affect the course of events out of impatience, or a desire for revenge, the results can be disastrous. 

When we embody the highest aspects of ourselves, we naturally focus Intent in a way that creates benevolent change, both within and outside of ourselves. Granted, it is difficult to maintain a totally benevolent state of Intent. It is not possible for us to Intend the highest possible ideal in every waking moment. The more we cultivate qualities such as compassion and mindfulness, however, the easier it is to emulate a powerfully benevolent Intent—not as beliefs, but as a total state of being. We can strive toward an ideal of experiencing a benign Intent throughout our consciousness, infusing it into every aspect of our reality. 

Negative manifestation

Some common forms of manifestation involve bringing undesirable events to fruition. For instance, when we "know" that something unpleasant is going to happen to us, we put out an emotional signal into the field of probability which greatly increases the chances that the even in question will be in our future. 

Negative manifestation, a process that is both unconscious and unconstructive, is probably the most common form of Intent that human beings use. This is quite unfortunate, considering that each person has the innate ability to directly increase the chances of joyful, evolutionary outcomes. Many people talk about trying to "change the world;" the irony is that an awesome tool for enacting such changes is there at their fingertips, being used without awareness or direction. 

Self-sabotage

When we're afraid that a certain probable event will not happen, we actually create an intent which works to prevent that ideal future from occurring. Fears and doubts about a certain outcome are projected as a sort of "anti-Intent;" this force aggressively works to nullify any Intent which surrounds the future that we hope will arise. 

A great deal of self-sabotage is somewhat conscious. When we form a goal in our minds, but have doubts about our ability to accomplish it, a thought process can occur in which we unconsciously oppose the dream, actually Intending its failure. One psychological root of this process is a need to protect ourselves from the disappointment that we might experience if we set our goals too high. This is mainly the work of the ego qualities in one's identity, the source of most misguided attempts at "protection" within the psyche. The ego draws on the power of conscious Intent (remember that at some levels, the ego recognizes esoteric principles, even if we don't consciously believe in them), combined with unconscious intuitive knowledge, to ensure that our dream's chance of fruition is cut off before we invest too much hope in it. 

We can further empower this self-sabotage by indulging the idea of our own victimhood, doubts about what we can accomplish, and a fear of feeling worthless if we fail. It seems easier to simply not try at all, or to make a halfhearted effort, going through the motions even though we believe it probably won't work out like we'd hoped. 

Even when some part of us wants to try, and knows that the attempt could deeply enrich us, another part wants just the opposite: to inhibit our highest ambitions, so that we won't have to ever feel unsure of ourselves. Among other things, this influence can cause us to miss many opportunities to grow as people. Many great dreams have gone unfulfilled because people have allowed those dreams to die before their time. We can increase the chances that our dreams will come to fruition by approaching them as the highest expression of our identity—in other words, by not indulging feelings of hopelessness and a fear of failing. 

The process of sabotaging hopes and dreams isn't totally unconscious, so we can notice it if we try. By being honest with ourselves and mindful of our thought processes, we can come to identify, and counteract, the impulse toward self-sabotage. A more difficult endeavor is learning to recognize, and gradually overcome, the more long-standing patterns of not giving our dreams a chance. When we do manage to get out of the rut of these cycles, however, we find our lives expanding in amazing, invigorating new directions. In spite the ego's nagging voice, one can't help but realize that it was all worth it. 

There is a strong psychological element to this process: the premise would be just as valid if we removed the metaphysical component (Intent) altogether. The idea of esoteric dynamics which relate to the intra-psychic process doesn't really affect the theory's content (though it won't always help in the "credibility" department). People certainly don't need something like Intent to sabotage the fruition of their hopes; you could just as well think of "negative manifestation" as something that people accomplish through thoughts and actions alone. 

My own experiences have led me to believe that the force of Intent does exist, and that self-sabotage is an area in which Intent especially bears on people's lives. The reader is encouraged to take any or all of this metaphorically if he or she has not found evidence of these dynamics. 

"The power of negative thinking"

Unpleasant or entropic events in a person's life often result from patterns of Intent that are connected to pessimistic views of fate. Whether consciously or unconsciously, all of us harbor some cynical ideas about our destiny. In accordance with the adage "Ask, and you shall receive," our Intent dutifully reflects these ideas back to us as patterns of events. 



When we go through circumstances that seem cruel and unfair, there is a certain comfort that arises from telling ourselves that life is cruel, dangerous, meaningless, or unfair. Engaging in this kind of thinking can bolster powerful patterns of Intent that revolve around our basic expectations for how life will proceed. The more we reinforce pessimistic views of fate, the more our destiny reflects this imprinting. 

The same applies to specific patterns of events our lives, from romantic relationships to our success in finding work that we enjoy. All of our beliefs about how our lives will "naturally" flow reinforce patterns of Intent that cause our fate to do exactly what we expect from it. 

Destiny and Guidance

As I said earlier, each of us possesses a certain amount of creative power which we shape into intent at different levels of our being. The ego and our usual conscious awareness monopolize a great deal of this power, but some intent is available to the unconscious Abstract aspects of the self . At an unconscious level, our highest ideals for wisdom can work in conjunction with faculties such as intuition and Intent, to produce a benign presence of synchronicity and guidance in our lives. This element can aid us in coming to critical realizations and encountering situations which are important to the overall course that our lives will take. 

Intent and Intuition

There are many areas in which Intent and Intuition cross over, and it is easy to get confused when one is exploring both of these faculties. To gain control over our intuition, we must reach a level of the psyche that is usually unconscious: the Abstract mind. From this state of consciousness, one has some capacity to access our usually suppressed awareness of probability fields. 

Intuition isn't always the sort of thing that one can do on command, such as determining a specific events. More often, it is a matter of sensing strong undercurrents in our lives life. Intent takes this a step farther; in conjunction with intuition, it allows us to recognize which of these undercurrents we can affect. 

Extending one's awareness to probabilities in the future is connected to the third Chakra, the energy center in the solar plexus area. By becoming aware of the sensations and abilities connected with this Chakra, one can connect to future possibilities. It is as if there are tiny fibers of our being extending around us in every direction, and some of these actually extend beyond three-dimensional space, through time. When we have access to a high level of intuition, it can be an amazing tool to use in guiding our life toward the most beneficial experiences. 

Omens

Subtle messages run through many events in the lives of human beings. There are many inconspicuous occurrences in our lives which communicate that we would benefit by taking a certain course. I am admittedly unable to give many authoritative statements about the source and nature of these portents , but I have come to a few basic conclusions (and far more speculations). I am relatively sure that omens are a real occurrence that everyone experiences, and that one source, at least, is a knowledge within the individual that wants to be recognized. Most of the following ideas are not firm beliefs, but rather considerations based on my experiences and on research of other philosophies' explanations.

I will begin with some basic observations about how omens work, without much speculation about their origins or purpose. Omens seem to present themselves at times when our logic, and the level of intuition that is consciously available, aren't enough for us to make a good decision about what to do, yet there is a crucial insight that we would benefit from knowing in that moment. They don't seem to happen in cases when we can make a good enough decision based on our current means; in other words, they usually don't pick up any slack for us. 

Omens seem to be absent at times when we don't need to know something, or when knowing a certain answer would actually work against our knowledge and happiness. We can "ask for a sign" all that we like, but unless there is something missing from our awareness that would truly help us, our wishing probably won't amount to anything. 

People who believe in omens often assume that these signs in our lives hearken from a higher power which guides our destiny. This is largely because people in Western societies have learned to explain mystical events according to the religious beliefs of the Abrahamic religions, which almost always portray trans-material knowledge as arising from a divine source outside of ourselves. This bias against the possibility that one's own unconscious efforts could be a presence of guidance gets back to the religions notion that human beings are "unworthy" of any abilities that are ascribed to God. 

While there may be unseen forces in people's lives, I have found that the clearest omens correspond to personal knowledge that is not fully conscious: that the intuitive aspect of the psyche can access Intent to communicate what it knows to us through events in our lives, when we won't recognize its message in any other way. 

Learning to understand the meaning of omens in our lives can give us important knowledge and direction that will allow us to choose a path which leads to enriching experiences—and avoid those that would be full of counterproductive difficulty or conflict. [4] These portents can forewarn us of potential negative situations, or can help us to recognize and seize a transformative chain of events. I believe that people should know that this awareness is available to them, so in the following section I offer some general guidelines for interpreting omens.

Interpreting omens

It is very hard to describe the process of interpreting omens, for the experience involves the Abstract aspects of our consciousness. There are certain patterns and relationships which we may find in the course of events, but if we pay too much attention to "figuring out" these recurrences, we will turn omens into an overly rational affair. Reading omens is primarily an intuitive process; the more we try to grasp them with beta-level rationality, the further we get from understanding their meaning. One might over-explain to the point of losing the essential meaning of an omen, or allow his ego to rationalize the occurrence in a way that reinforces a regressive pattern of thinking. In keeping with this, I won't attempt to describe different varieties of omens or a pat method for interpreting them, for this could give people misleading preconceptions about the true nature of these occurrences.

For example, we might look for omens and "find" them when some outer event confirms something that we want to believe. There is also a possibility of getting an inordinate sense of one's own importance--believing that life itself caters to one's every purpose by providing constant guidance. It's easy to let our rationality run wild, when we feel the elation of recognizing something which transcends the mundane rules that we have been told our existence follows. 

Intuitive understanding that isn't consciously available can come to our attention when our awareness is directed to something in our outer environment that evokes the knowledge in question. The object of this focus could be anything from a thought that we just had, a person engaged in some activity, a sign on the street, an event in nature, and so on. What stands out in our minds in these instances isn't usually the critical thing; the meaning of the experience is found not in the object, but in the unconscious knowledge that it triggers.

One way to become aware of the meaning behind an omen is to clear our minds of random thoughts, and replay the ideas that went through our minds when we had the feeling. Calming the rational mind's usual scattered level of activity can allow us to recognize these flashes of intuitive association, and understand the message inherent in such. We cannot do this while we are limited to our usual, beta-level way of focusing; we must quiet the concrete, deductive mind and suspend the ego's limiting preconceptions of what we can and can't do, so that the we can pierce through the veil and access the Abstract aspect of our consciousness.

In my experience, a peculiar feeling often accompanies omens. There are times when some part of us intuits that the course of our lives are about to shift in a dramatic way. These moments are accompanied by an ineffable feeling, as if there is a surreal quality to everything happening around us. When we get this feeling, it is likely that our Intent is acting upon our surroundings. The most important thing in these instances is that we pay close attention to what our attention has focused on, paying special attention to unusual events. Carlos Castaneda has often referred to omens in which animals behaved in strange ways, and many indigenous philosophies have complex systems for interpreting the divinatory meaning of such behavior. In my own experience, these signs are often the hardest to understand. 

Resistance to resistance

The more we channel our energy into Intending that our lives follow higher principles and ideals, the more our egoistic compulsions are accompanied by an inner knowledge that we should not pursue them. In certain cases when we knowingly indulge our egos, something might happen directly afterward that seems to remind us, in an uncanny way, that we made the wrong decision. This is especially true for moments which seem to bear heavily on our learning, or on our relationships with important people in our lives. They can, however, happen at any time that we have consciously suppressed our best judgment about what to do in a situation. 

These moments show us that we are empowering the mindful, growth-oriented aspects of our identity—as much as, if not more than, we're empowering the will of our egos. When we give the ego a lot of creative power to work with, and deprive other aspects, it can influence the events in our lives according to its ideals; our lives are full of familiar patterns and oriented largely toward superficial validation of our own worth. The same, however, happens when we nurture the "higher" qualities: when we embody our truest ideals, our lives follow a more meaningful course. 

Notes

[1] For those who want more examples, I recommend studying the history of Hindu philosophy. For millennia, people in India have been clued into aspects of reality that the Western world has barely noticed yet.
[2] Etheric energy fields have been confirmed in various studies, such as Kirlian photography and the subtle electromagnetic field that emanates from the human heart. Some sort of relationship between awareness and direct causality has been shown through research in quantum theory, but these findings to not even approach hard evidence of the theories I propose here. 
[3] I use the qualifier "most" because some people suffer from mental illness, or other extenuating circumstances that make it extremely difficult to achieve a normal level of clarity or emotional balance.
[4] Though, as I have discussed in other sections, it can be important for us to go through some difficult events