INTENTION

For every intention, we might well ask, “How would this serve me and how would it serve everybody I come into contact with?” And if the answer is that it will create true joy and fulfillment in me and all those affected by my actions, then my intention, together with surrender to the nonlocal mind, orchestrates its own fulfillment.

There are techniques for discovering the pure and proper intention that is your life’s destiny. The core technique is to start from a place of quiet and settled awareness, to create a proper intention in your heart, and then to let your local “I” merge back into the nonlocal “I,” allowing the will of God to be completed through you. I have taught this technique to many thousands of people and they tell me that it works for them, as it works for me.

Part of the difficulty is forming an intention that doesn’t interfere with the intention of the universal. In developing countries with a food shortage, scientists recently attempted to introduce “golden rice,” a genetically engineered variant that contains natural insecticides so that the rice grows abundantly. But there were problems. The genetically engineered rice doesn’t have natural odors that attract various insects important for maintaining and propagating the food chain. Ecologists fear that this rice might upset the local ecosystem, eventually disrupting the weather, which could have dire consequences for the entire planet.

Constricted or local awareness, looking only at a particular situation, tries to solve it locally. Expanded awareness, the nonlocal “I,” looks at the relationships, the birds, the bees, the squirrels, the groundhogs, and the weather.

A good intention can backfire if the intent of the nonlocal “I” is ignored. The intricate bonds of interconnection require not only selflessness but coordination with all other individual “I”s that stem from the universal “I.”

Adapted from The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire, by Deepak Chopra (Three Rivers Press).