I have so many intentions competing with one another! I could say the same for defenses, thoughts and actions. In my limited awareness world of duality, I always produce two intentions and attend to one. That is, for every intention I’m aware of, its counter balances duality.
Because I an aware of only one thought at a time, I’m usually aware of no more than one of my intentions. Although focused on one thought, there are myriad others contending for my attention. Just like intentions, my thoughts scream out for my attention, “Look at me! Look at me!” “No! Look at me! Look at me!”
Attention is the food of thought and intention. Thoughts or intentions to which I pay attention tend to grow and prosper. That doesn’t mean those I don’t pay attention to die. They just don’t grow as fast – and in some cases die away.
At least that’s how it appears to me. “Focus on your goals!” to achieve them, I’ve been told many times. And yet, sometimes, I find myself in the position of saying something like, “I didn’t intend to hurt your feelings.” In other words, an unconscious hidden intention surfaced and surprised me. Maybe forcing me to acknowledge it with my attention.
The Priority Game
There seems to be two main parts of my being:
- Physical – the projection
- Psyche – the projector
The projection is useful because the projector perceives it. I project every thought. Not all of them do I attend to. This because of my limited awareness – that comprehends the tiniest fraction of the myriad of thoughts I project.
To conserve energy and keep my story linear, attention focuses awareness from the myriad of intentions down to one at a time. Prioritizing intentions in this serialization helps me avoid overloading my circuits! It also keeps my story straight, which in turn, gives me a sense of rightness. I at least feel I’m okay when my story is linear. Thus, the value of a “good [serial] memory” that recalls events in their “proper” order. That proper order is the order that matches the singular direction of my linear story.
To that end, I must apply my attention first and foremost to defending my safety and benefit. My initial defense of that attention is my intention to feel safe. This intention to defend becomes the default behind my behaviors. This includes “on guard,” fight, and flight behaviors.
All this to prove to myself that I’m vulnerable to being less than whole – while intending to remain whole. This bias for wholeness in an environment of vulnerability can appear in some strange ways. For example, a person might survive an impossible situation and then feels they are somehow invulnerable to destruction. Maybe they feel they are a divine appointee – like a prophet. Maybe they feel a cause to which they must apply themselves.
Their attention to a life-threatening experience with defensive logic based in a premise of vulnerability tends to connect their biased intention for wholeness with its opposite.
Intention as Initial Defense
What if my intention is my initial defense of one concept over another? A part of the mechanism that turns all-at-once lateral thinking into one-at-a-time linear thinking. Why a defense against what I want – wholeness?
In linear-thinking, I can only define all-at-once wholeness in terms of one-at-a-time un-wholeness. In that way of thinking, there is always this sense that I must seek wholeness – rather than accept that I am wholeness.
To serialize my story, I assign intentions based on how much they confirm my concept of wholeness. This would require that I see myself as whole only in relation to someone or something else – a serialized comparison. In my relationships, therefore, I perceive others that support my limited thinking as whole (good/right). And those that don’t as unwhole (bad/wrong).
I define these intention assignments as accountability. Thus, equating my conscious intentions with subconscious accountability. I expect to get what I intend to get. And because the equation is false in limited awareness, I sometimes don’t get what I consciously intend. “Oops! Sorry! I didn’t intend that you should get hurt…” and etc.
Stewardship Over My Intentions
This takes me to the concept of stewardship – governance. Accountability provides that I have governance over my own physical and psychological being. Important, as these are the two main parts of my being. As the steward with power to govern my thoughts, I have the capacity to learn and change. As I learn how my equations affect my conscious intentions, I can practice governance over them. I can turn intention from initial defense to something else. That “something else” may just be the key to transforming limited to unlimited awareness.
