Why Set Intentions?

 “You are what your deepest desire is. As your desire is, so is your intention. As your intention is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.” - from the Upanishads, Vedic text.

Why set intentions?

Intentions provide the ability to stay focused on core values. Never confused with a goal, an intention  flows with life's goals and how one engages with other individuals. Intentions align with an aim, purpose or attitude. They are heart driven and evoke feeling and purpose. Setting them brings heart and mind into alignment.

Everything in life begins with intention. 

Intentions provide the creativity that assists all needs.

The sense of well-being and reduction of emotional chaos will improve with intentions.

Wayne Dyer said, "Our intention creates our reality."  Many have heard, "What you think, you become."

During a yoga class or meditation, a focus on a specific intention brings the mind, thoughts, and heart into reality.

Setting an intention may involve a clear wish, a word, or phrase that's positive. Stay Open. Embrace: Strength. Softness. Compassion. Peace. Freedom. Connect with others.

Consider these intention initiators:

What matters the most to you?

What would you like to create, or nurture in your life?

What would you like to let go of?

How do you feel when you are your happiest self?

What fears would you like to release?

For what are you grateful?

Begin each day with clarity.

When you awaken, use the first minutes lying in bed to think about intentions. 

Once you have set your intention, revisit it during the day. 

Bring it into your mind's center when frustrated or fearful. It will assist to connect with what matters the most to you.

"Intentions compressed into words enfold magical power." - Deepak Chopra

Write into Black and White

By moonlight, we see in black and white. We cannot see colors. There is something fascinating and valuable about seeing the world that way. We see only what is essential. We see form emerging from a sea of blackness . . . . We can look at the world so familiar by daylight and seat anew in the black and white of moonlight. - Ming-Dao Deng, from The Lunar Tao: Meditations in Harmony with the Seasons.

Take several photographs with a cell phone and turn them into black and white.

Write into the darkness of shapes and shadows.

Search for new meaning in the areas of light.

Let emotions arise.








What do you find in the black and white of moonlight?

Peel the Orange

How often do you react to a situation you perceive as conflict rather than consider it a two-sided conversation?  No one likes to compromise because it feels like a defeat when each person involved must relinquish something. Consider a flow of the three C’s – Conflict. Calm. Conversation. Creativity. Collaboration..

In order to achieve collaboration, a calm must precede conversation and negotiation. Consider a simple scenario. With one orange and two individuals, one wants a drink, the other wants to make orange cake. If they split the orange in half, they will not have a desired result.

Moving to the next level of thinking – creativity and compromise, the two need to take time to consider what each person actually needs from the orange. One person needs the juice, the other needs the pulp and rind. If they compromise in this way, both will have something not considered before; not half of what’s needed.

The next time you find yourself in a conflict situation, consider the other C’s. 

l. Move away from the heat and emotion of the conflict. Discuss a subject far removed; even the weather.

2. In calm conversation, discuss what each person needs. Take notes, do not talk, just listen to the other person’s viewpoint. 

3. Take time away and write what you heard. Make two columns.  In the first write what you heard.   In the second, respond with your needs and views.

4. Consider how a third situation will move beyond compromise and into collaboration.

5. Return to conversation. Develop a metaphor to represent the idea of collaboration. How can you peel the orange?

This technique requires creativity, patience, time and thought.  You will benefit from the results and wisdom gained. 

Try peeling the orange today.

Like an Elephant Needs a Bicycle

What's as unnecessary as an elephant needing a bicycle? Elephant metaphors abound in speech and literature.

Kings of Siam offered a rare white elephant to noblemen who had fallen out of favor. The cost of feeding and caring for the creature destroyed the recipient.  This evolved into using “white elephant” to refer to an expensive and wasteful construction project.

Then a white elephant became an undesirable possession. A white elephant sale attracted individuals who found value in others' discards. In his story, "Hills Like White Elephants," Ernest Hemingway led the reader to decide the value.

An elephant in the room refers to an obvious situation no one wants to acknowledge.  When the elephant changes colors, a pink elephant refers to an intoxicated person's hallucination.

The elephant test refers to the difficulty describing an elephant. One just knows it when one sees it. In one story, six blind men had the task of describing an elephant. Each felt a different part and described the animal from that reference point: the trunk, a tusk, an ear, a leg, the stomach, and the tail.

Have you heard anyone say that they hope to “see the elephant” ? Individuals traveled miles to view an elephant in a circus parade or under the big top. As a result, any overwhelming experience could result in seeing the elephant.

P. T. Barnum advertised his elephant, Jumbo's size which led to referencing the name as a synonym for colossal. (Elephantine, is another synonym, though it also refers to ponderousness.) Dumbo from Disney fame has discovered its name thrown around in disrespect.

Other elephant attributes include superior intelligence and memory. Since they have poor eyesight, based on observations in zoos and circuses, they are not bothered by mice as some have believed.

Create your own elephant metaphors for a story or poem. Or, try the fox, duck, frog, or turtle.

The Learning Process

Does the ginkgo exclaim how hard it works during autumn? Do you hear shrieks of exasperation? Of course not.  It goes about its business of treeness and pushes its auxins.The yellow floods its leaves, then they drop and illustrate the street.

Why does the notion exist among human beings that effort equals result?  It reminds me of the "Little League" mentality that everyone gets a trophy for hard work. What happens when a batter swings at the third pitch and misses?  He's out! It doesn't matter how hard he tried. The effort did not produce a result.

Imagine the man who loves to work with his hands. He carves boxes designed with robins and roses. Purchasers love his work. One day he decides to take a ceramics class to learn how to throw pots. He spends four weeks throwing clay and the pots lean right and left. Some have thin sides and heavy bases. The wheel races, his fingers slipping in the water. Drippings cover him with gray. He's worked so hard with his hands but this new procedure defies his understanding. The result does not represent his accomplishments of the past. What has he learned from the process?  He thought he could just crank it out as an artist but did not realize the nuances and techniques necessary to learn a new skill. Does he keep trying?

Hard work has value as it improved discipline and provides the opportunity for results.  Many times one must fail in order to succeed.

Think about learning a new skill.  How did "hard work" translate into result. . . or not? 

How did failure assist the process?

Find Shizuka

According to the photographer Masao Yamamoto, shizuka means "cleansed, pure, clear and untainted."

One of his artistic practices is to wander and wonder around forests looking in the soil for "treasures" that emanate shizuka. In his definition, the term does not mean scrubbed or sanitized. His interest involves a pristine environment, unspoiled by civilization.

Begin your search for a wonder.

Find pure, clear, untainted.

Autumn Palette

Take time to investigate the palette of nature's colors.

The music of the far-away summer flutters around the Autumn seeking its former nest. ~Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

  

[T]here is a harmony
In autumn, and a luster in its sky...
~Percy Bysshe Shelley

I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.

 – Bernard Malamud

The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest eve...
~William Blake (1757-1827), "To Autumn"

Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees. ~Faith Baldwin

The leaves enjoy tag games on the sidewalks and streets.

The crimson's so bright, ya gotta wear shades.

Big Sky Mind

The sky contains everything that arises. It is boundless with the horizon only a boundary that cannot be reached.

Awareness has the qualities of luminosity and limitless. It is present among, between, behind and beyond all ever-changing phenomena.

Big Sky Mind opens you to seeing that your true nature is awareness within.


Turn your attention to the sky.

Find the Power

"I want to dig out what is ancient in me, the mistaken-for-monster . . . and let it teach me how to be unafraid again." - Scherezade Siobhan

Author Elizabeth Gilbert says, "the central question upon all creative living things: do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?"

Discover the brave and brazen.

Bring forth the treasures.

Energize and express the Power in your life.

A Taste of Tao

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. - Lao Tzu

The named is the mother of the ten thousand things. 

Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. 

Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations. 

These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. 

Darkness within darkness. 

The gate to all mystery. 

          - from Tao Te Ching translated by Gia Fu Feng and Jane English

Lao Tzu (his name is sometimes written Lao Tse or Lao Zi, also known as Li Erand Lao Dan) was born in Honan on March 24th in the year 604 BC. Called the “Old Master,” his name means “old-young.”

Late in life, Lao Tzu rode on a water buffalo to retire in the mountains to a province in the western frontiers. A border official, named Guan Yin Zi, urged the master to write his teachings so that they might be passed on.

In mountain solitude, Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching, went westward and was never seen again.

Lao Tzu's messages concern the discovery of the self. He advises to sense the world directly and contemplate impressions of the laws of nature. He says the ways matter and energy function in the universe is the Tao.

Intuition requires cultivating to predict change. Personal power (Te) needs awareness and knowledge of physical laws in the universe and minds of other. That power can direct events without resorting to force.

The practice of simplicity stimulates growth. The balance of contradictory forces (light and dark, positive and negative, male and female, mountains and rivers) creates harmony.

Lao Tzu appreciated the importance of humor. "Without the laugh, there is no Tao," he said.

Stay in the moment. Absorb nature's wonders. 

When you need a change, work on a small area of concern.

Percolate with Smiles

Autumnal awareness increases connections to elevate the spirit.

Discover expanded freedom of creativity and choices.

Find a true reverence for life.

Explode in self-expression.

             Explore passions.

Follow nature's examples. Nourish your roots and strengthen your foundation.

Upgrade your self-care.

Add a tingle and hint of humor to situations.

Notice a rose's smile.

Invigorate the influences that nurture and support you.

Percolate with smiles.

Investigate Insight

Anthropologist, Margaret Mead, shared ideas about "the ways to get insight." She named them: "to study infants, to study animals, to study indigenous people, to be psychoanalyzed, to have a religious conversation and get over it, to have a psychotic episode and get over it."



What would you list for ways to obtain insight and inspiration?

In what ways would you investigate and travel the roads to insight?

Discover a path you have never considered.

Cross-Training with the Senses

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual — become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest vision. 
                                                      - Robert Henri

Robert Henri called these levels the “song from within.”  We have a tune inside that catches our attention and fluffs us with wonder. Learning to listen takes moving into a space of marvel. Our rational mind often steps in and grabs us to return to the ordinary.  

To adventure in search of peak experiences requires a flow moment. Movement of pen or fingers on the keyboard settles into words without judgment or concern. Adding scents, tastes, sounds and color expands the possibilities.

Try cross-training with your senses. Select three types of your favorite music. 

Choose one for its lyrics, another for melody, and the third for varieties of rhythm and changes.

Write from the beginning to the end of the piece by combining the music with a sensory image. 

Begin writing to the first selection by adding color: magenta, lavender, azure. Let words arrive where colors and sounds blend. 

For the second choice, write into flavors or scents: cinnamon and vanilla yogurt, apples, toast, leaves in autumn, grass, gardenias.

Shift again to writing out sounds to the music: bump, rattle, sizzle, clack.

Discover where listening to music and combining imagery leads. Let the words flow with the notes in a cross-training experience.

Find the Essence

"Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful."- John Maeda

Simplicity strips away the superfluous to revival the essence.

              Take the opportunity to cultivate a version of simplicity.

Unmoored
in midnight water
no waves, no wind
the empty boat
is flooded with moonlight
               -  Eihei Dogen

"The meaning of simplicity is to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak up," says Hans Hoffman.

To what shall

I liken the world?

Moonlight, reflected

In dewdrops,

Shaken from a heron's bill.

- Dogen Zenji

On ease of wings

to flirt with breeze.

Destiny

not necessary.

Sky ninja

branch to branch

catches

an innocence of insects.

Find the essence.

Autumn's Opportunities

I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

    - Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903 in Letters to a Young Poet

Autumn brings a time of vibrance and change. Glimmers of orange, crimson, magenta, and flashes of gold permeate the days. As shades of blue search for a turn, gray flannel consumes the clouds. 

Landscapes arouse with lightning, thunder and showers. Scents of cinnamon and cider fill the air along with aromas of wood smoke from chimneys. The breeze tastes of promise. Nature's multiple personality during autumn reminds us to consider possible changes and pursue, rather than judge, our writing.

The time arrives to explore and pile questions upon questions instead of a search for answers. A pondering of  ". . . and then what” provides possibilities. 

We mine for more understanding if we permit the questions to climb upon one another. They will wrestle for opportunities we have not considered.

These ten questions will spark others as you write to them. Respond only with more questions. See what happens.

l.  How would you answer Rilke’s question:

Ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write?" 

2.  How are you with your writing? 

3.   What biases affect your writing. Recognize their existence, list and write to them.

4.  What amuses you about your writing?

5.  How do you write about what feels wrong?

6.  Do you celebrate your strengths in writing?  In what ways?

7.  How do you provide constructive feedback for your writing? If not, who does?

8.  If you considered your heart’s desire about your writing, what would it involve?

9.  What do you write away from? How can you bring it closer to you?

10. What’s the greatest question your writing nudges in you?

Take time to involve yourself with the questioning process as autumn displays its wonders.