How is your New Year so far? Going swimmingly I presume? Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? Have you broken them or are they still intact? For me, I stopped making resolutions over 20 years ago. You may wonder how come. The main reason is that they don’t work. Resolutions are made most of the time from a place of fear, regret, worry and genuine lack, so it’s no wonder that they are often broken, or worse yet, never even started. If resolutions don’t work, then HOW do things change? What IS it that spurs us on to do things differently, to make and effect actual life changes? Well, I would like to introduce you to INTENTION my friends. Intention is the setting in motion of an ‘idea’ of change, of a New way of being in your life and in the world. It is something that is set in the Invisible First, so that it may come into fruition in the physical manifest world. Now if you look up the actual definition of Intention you will see it says “A course of action that one intends to follow. An aim that guides action; an objective.” which is all still working from the outcome rather than the ‘thing itself’ which you are trying to attain. Here’s an example of the difference. Some, or many people, when making a resolution say ‘I’m going to give up eating chocolate cake’. Now, you would think “hey, that’s a good idea, I would like to stop eating chocolate cake too” however what is the thing you think of when your hear yourself say ‘I’m going to stop eating chocolate cake’? ….. Chocolate Cake! Why? Because our mind has a challenge processing the word not, stop, give up, and we only hear and focus on the last part of the sentence, the chocolate cake part. So when we are ‘resolving to stop _________ (fill in the blank) our mind goes to the blank rather than the word ‘stop’. Now, here’s the way you would set an Intention. Instead of the former statement, an intention is always set in the Positive, meaning, our mind and thus our actions, focus on the doing and completing of the activity. ‘My Intention is to eat healthy foods that nourish my body’. Now why didn’t I mention chocolate cake? Because you may enjoy a PIECE of chocolate cake, and still eat healthy foods which nourish your body. Your mind isn’t concerned with ‘what sweet, chocolate or bad thing’ you think you are doing, it is instead focused on the Joy of nourishing your body. So therefore an Intention is important because it gives our minds focus in a positive direction. Now that you know the difference between Intention and resolution, How come you need to have one? Well, without Intention our lives just go along with the waft of the wind. ‘What’s so bad about that?’ you ask. Well, when we really wish to accomplish things in our lives, it is spiritual discipline to have intention, to have a focus. So setting intentions in our lives, is actually a spiritual practice. Once you get used to setting an intention, you will see how easy it is to follow it. For example, I set the intention to meditate each night before I go to bed. When it is an intention there are no hard/fast rules, nor am I going to ‘beat myself up’ for missing a night, I mean it was an intention, not a resolution, so I have nothing to berate myself for. This is the highest form of loving ourselves, to set an intention, and when we don’t follow through to still love ourselves and start again today, or tomorrow. It is a much kinder way of being to ourselves to set intentions, it feels good, and the ‘success rate’ (if you will) is actually quite high, since we cannot fail our own intentions. So here we are 25 days into the New Year, I invite you to set an intention for yourself for the next 15 days, just to dip the toe into your spiritual water. See what you want to do, set the intention, and write it down. Read it every morning for the next 15 days and see where you are by Feb. 10th. My suspicion is you will find yourself much happier, and much healthier, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually than you ever were when you would make a resolution. Keep those Intentions High! Love Yourself First! ~ Dame Rev. Rio Rose
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 06:29:28 +0000
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