The Power of Intention

From two popular thinkers/writers...

First. psychologist/spiritual director/NPR-pledge-time-television host Wayne Dyer talks about “the power of intention,” defining intention as something that emanates from God, something that more traditional theology calls “the will of God.”

Second, Peruvian Carlos Castaneda, in the voice of his fictional Yaqui shaman Don Juan, writes:

In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which the shamans call intent[ion], and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to inten[ion] by a connecting link.

I wonder if it is safe for us to assume that we are living a life in consonance, in sync, with “intention” when we find ourselves embracing and visualizing creativity and kindness and love and beauty and growth and plenty and openness to newness.

If that’s the case, then “sin” might well be described as being “closed off,” separated, quarantined, and isolated from creativity and kindness and love and beauty and growth and plenty and openness to newness, reminiscent of how Martin Luther described the essence of sin: "das Herz drehte ganz sich innen auf sich” – "the heart all curved in on itself.”.

Rather than looking at faithfulness as following a list of inviolable rules, the suggestion is that a life that follows Jesus not because it has to but because it wants to will be one that turns its attention and its intention, away from itself and toward others. That life will be the life that is most rewarding and most “in rhythm” with the “intention,” or the “will” of God.

It seems to me that so much of the stories of Jesus in the Gospels are all about two affirmations about the “power of intention” that are peculiar to Jesus and his followers. The first is that even though Jesus, and if Jesus, then God, forgives us and loves us, Jesus, and if Jesus, God, has very lofty expectations for those of us who want to follow him. One of those lofty expectations is that we will live not solely or even primarily for our own good, but also and most of all for others. Another is that, even though Jesus, and if Jesus, then God, forgives us and loves us, Jesus, and if Jesus, then God, holds us accountable, and that there are consequences for our behavior.

But maybe not at all like Dante’s Inferno or eternal punishment or anything of the sort, but consequences here and now. The consequences of being “all turned in on ourselves,” and away from “the power of intention,” – our callousness toward the needs of others, our insensitivity to the most vulnerable among us, our automatic embrace of officially sanctioned violence as the best tool for solving disputes among groups of people, tribes, nations, our inability to let go of “the fears that long have bound us,” our continuing insistence that there are different “kinds” of people and some are better and some are worse and some are loved more by God and some are despised – all of that is its own punishment. The bottom line is that when we insist on being “all turned in ourselves” it is impossible for us to approach what God intends for us. Turned inward, toward isolation, our lives are diminished, our relationship with God becomes nostalgic and imaginary and non-existent, and we deny the unity that the power of intention assumes.