What does it mean to have an intention? It’s a thought about doing something in the future. It has very little reality, doesn’t it? Perhaps our intention will translate into action, perhaps not. Every intention brings opposition, resistance. It’s a measure of my maturity that I have many fewer intentions as I get older and I tend to keep more of them as I become aware of my tendencies and the consequences of not doing what I intended.
There is another path less travelled, the path of intending. What is intending? Intending is an unpremeditated action of the will in the present. Intending does not need an object to accomplish. It connects inside to outside in a wide open gesture of submission to the moment, an action in and of itself. Things happen whether or not you have thought them.
I watch the small birds while having coffee at an outside café. They unfailingly land precisely on the arm of the chair next to mine. Never a miss. No food here. And off they fly, seeming randomness. Do they think where they are going? No time for that. Do they have an intention? Or are they imbedded in intending, their instantaneous maneuvers guided by an invisible matrix of energy and shared attention.
Can I bathe in this medium so excruciatingly exact and perfect in which plans do not exist, just responsiveness? This mind is quiet, open. Not the closed mind of one who has things to do and thinks the steps, who faces a world of cares and sets a course into an uncertain future. Animals have this other way. Their only fear a present danger, otherwise on the wings of the invisible they are moved, the wind beneath their wings the force of universal intending.
Can I invoke intending and see what happens? Sorcerers say intending can be beckoned with the eyes. Is this true? Strangely, it may be so. Looking into open space seems to connect me to intending.
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August 18, 2022
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April 4, 2018
I know that I must have walked home from the supermarket because I find myself at home with the groceries but I can’t remember how I got there…I was obviously lost in my thinking.
Is it possible for you to notice the process of falling out of observing self and falling into identification with the thinker? As it happens? Can we do this now, as we are listening, thinking and speaking to each other?
Yes. This seems to be possible. Observing self, there is a sense of experiencing what is happening inside me but then I become the thinker and I do not have this experience. Everything is on the surface. Also, as the thinker or the one who is speaking, I am contracted. Attention narrows down to my thinking and I have very little sense of what is happening around me.
It is very important for you to notice this narrowing of your experience as it occurs. It is a real experience, fully sensible, not just a concept. If you know it in this way, you can do something about it.
When you have become the thinker, does it seem that thinking is taking up all the attention? Can this narrowing be prevented or reversed? Is it possible to have thinking without becoming the thinker? What is required?
I guess it would be helpful to remain aware of sensations.
Yes. As you sense yourself falling into being the thinker or the speaker, you could grab onto other sensations. Perhaps you could continue to look at the person you are speaking to. Perhaps, while you are thinking, you could continue to ‘see’ the line of your thought, the logic of it and its resonance in your body, perhaps even the feeling of it; these experiences anchor attention outside the thinking process. Perception is an antidote for identification.
What is needed is voluntary attention. Falling into identifying as the thinker is involuntary attention, which we call sleep. That’s how people in our culture fall into ambulant sleep…they identify with their thinking. They think they are the little voice in their head.
How does this relate to pondering?
This is an interesting question. Did you just come across this term accidentally? Pondering is a technical term in this work. It means a three–centered questioning or consideration of an issue. The issue is simultaneously penetrated by sensing, thinking and feeling. This is quite different from our usual thinking which moves mechanically from one thought to another by association rather than staying on one point. Pondering is not possible if I am identified with the thinker. There is not enough attention and not enough space.
Pondering in this sense is real thinking. It requires voluntary split attention and a different level of energy from the lazy, associative, reactive mental process we refer to as thinking.
Not falling into thinking requires intention, does it not?
It can arise from intention but if I have to depend upon my intention to access voluntary attention it will not happen very often. Many things around me can call me to be voluntary…my conversation with you, my wish to eat, my need to get to work on time. These demands could engage a conscious response…they are rich in sensations… if I do not continually fall asleep. What is critical is to notice that I am continually falling asleep. I need to know this process intimately. When I do, perhaps I can use the events of the world around me to be awake.
Tags: asleep, attention, identification, intention, observation, pondering, sensations, thinking, voluntary split attention
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September 24, 2017
After observation of self comes stalking. Who do you stalk? Only yourself. What differentiates observation of self from stalking? In stalking, you set up the situation in order to engage without identification.
Stalking is done with intention. In order to be intentional, it is necessary to be unidentified. Ordinary human behaviour, from the shamanic point of view, is folly. It consists of unintended, automatic reactions to stimulus in the environment. The reactions are shaped by identification. Stalking is controlled folly…it explores the possibility of reacting differently or not reacting at all.
In ordinary life, we continually avoid real engagement. Our ordinary engagements are highly structured. We are careful not to offend, not to reveal ourselves, not to be uncomfortable, unless someone steps on our ‘corns’ as Gurdjieff would say, in which case we may feel justified when other less delightful automatic reactions take over. Our habitual conditioning is designed to make us comfortable.
We are unconsciously vain…always manoeuvring to avoid appearing to be stupid or ‘not in the know’. If we are caught out, we may slip into self-deprecating humour or anger as the case may be. This automatic behavior can be observed. It can also be stalked. Stalking involves taking the risk of entering into the unpredictable, which is inherently uncomfortable.
This is difficult to understand. Can you provide an example?
Let us say that I am drawn to having political exchanges with others, in person and through social media. I explain this by saying that my intent is to change the attitudes of others which I think are too emotional and biased. My exchanges are shaped by this agenda.
In fact, my desire to engage has many other unconscious benefits…it is energizing, requires attention, overcomes boredom and loneliness, challenges me to think independently and express myself clearly. These benefits are covered over by my agenda. Could the potential of this engagement be enhanced if the rationalization of changing the opinions of others were to be relinquished?
Removing the programming opens up the possibility of play…controlled folly…in which I do not have the protection of ‘doing the expected thing’. These engagements can take new and different directions without my habituated agenda. Now, having no goal, I can be more aware of the subtlety of the engagement. Do I have any tendency towards cruelty or rejection? What are my sensations during the engagement when I am no longer protected by my identification with a high-minded, superior aim? Do I have a clearer view of the other person?
Having disarmed myself of my secret mission, might the other participants also disarm? Perhaps, but that is not the aim. In this work, there is only the stalking of self.
This is one example. The principle is to observe how you compress the range of your experience to make yourself comfortable and then to act contrary to your habit.
Engagement has value in itself. Can you give up your roles and assumptions in order to see what is actually happening? The stalker knows the value of engagement and wishes to act outside his conditioning, for the sake of discovery.
Tags: engagement, habits, identification, intention, observation, stalking
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July 27, 2017
Our intentions rarely have the force to proceed. Why is that? If they do have force, it’s because they serve our vanity.
Intentions are just thoughts, are they not? To have effect, they need to be connected to the unconscious forces that actually motivate me.
My doctor shocked me yesterday, telling me I should lose some weight or my health will suffer. He seemed very stern with me so I was worried when I left his office. Of course, I could not have known that he was in a bad mood after his wife had run up the credit cards. His demands seemed rational at the time. I formed a vague intention to exercise more and eat less, but not much changed until that hot new girl joined accounting.
I see my reflection in the window, how unpleasingly rotund I have become. She will never pay any attention to me. So now I resolve to take the doctor’s orders seriously. My intentions are reinforced every time I see myself in a mirror. I have a motive, although I tell everyone “I’m just following doctor’s orders” when I grandly turn down a second piece of cake at dinner. And I believe it too.
Since I am a member of a work group, I recognize that my infatuation and resulting motive have given me an opportunity to observe self. I observe that I am quite ridiculous. I have a self-image that is 29 years out of date. I pull in my stomach when I go to accounting. I remember how I did not like to be seen in public with my aunt who was very fat. I see that I have many little programs that revolve around my judgments of fat people…pulling back from physical contact…my aunt used to sweat a lot and I recoiled when she hugged me.
Ok, this prejudice is something I was not conscious of before. I can work with that, first by simply noticing the physical sensations when they arise. But why am I overweight?
I observe that I have an addiction to certain types of food at certain times. I have rationalized these addictions as habits designed to maintain blood sugar and energy levels. Perhaps, but let’s see. Over time, I observe that these presumed motives do not explain anything. It seems that at certain times of the day, I am uncomfortable if I do not have a particular sensation of fullness, even if I have eaten a good meal. Why is this? I don’t know and don’t need to know. I observe the craving for that sensation when it arises and I let it go.
Meanwhile, the girl in accounting has been fired. My doctor is surprisingly friendly and supportive at my next check-up as he unconsciously tries to undo the effects of our last visit together. I have begun to lose a little weight.
But more usefully, I have also begun to notice how suspect my motives are. They are a soup of unexamined impressions and unconscious desires. I dress them up as rational intentions but the motive power is almost always elsewhere, in habitualized sensations and self-images that are often completely irrational. My intentions are mostly a confusing thicket of vain ideas about myself. This realization, as it grows, has unintended consequences. I am not moved to do what I used to do; my once-avid participation in certain activities is now uninteresting and my friends don’t seem to know what to do or say around me anymore.
Perhaps at this point I will begin to encounter intent. This is a verb, not a noun. Intending is not a word-formula holding onto some desire or benefit of personal interest to me. To tend is to care for something. One of the early meanings of tending is to move in a particular direction. Perhaps intending is to choose to face in a particular direction. To have intent is to hold and care for a point on the compass without wavering. Why? Because it is fulfilling in itself.
Intentions are in the realm of the mind, under the influence of our vanity and our habits. Intent is in the field of the will, under the magnetic influence of something larger than me. I wish for intent.
Tags: habits, intending, intent, intention, motive, observation, sensation, will
