Living With Intention
Author: M. Tamar

There's an interesting thing that happens in our lives when we decide on goals. We feel crisper and sharper. Our sense are honed. We begin to measure the world by a different barometer.

Most of us are accustomed to mundane goals and how to measure them: Lose weight; get on a scale. Save for a big ticket item; forgo the smaller indulgences and watch your bank account rise. Start a new business and grow a clientele. And we are also familiar with the flip side of intention: forget this whole idea; it’s too much work and I want that chocolate velvet cheesecake NOW! Or that new CD, great shirt, tickets to a concert, or any number of smaller distractions and satisfactions.

The fact is, living with intention is hard to do. Too often we interpret it as unreasonable quantities of patience and denial. And it seems especially hard if our goals are more intangible: clarity, poise, goodness, enlightenment. Grace is hard to find, and even harder to extend to ourselves.

We tend to think of intention as focused will. As having the right stuff, the sternness and self-control to consistently mold our actions to some larger, and usually delayed, goal. The truth is that sometimes focused will is simply not enough. Not merely because we are human and filled with desires, though that’s certainly part of it, but because we tend to operate using only a small part of our energies.

We get so used to acting on the surface of our lives, so used to coping with the myriad demands of work, family, friends, and the time it takes to walk the dog, pay the bills, and take out the trash, that we too often forget to knock on the doors of our stronger powers and say: hey, wake up, I need some help.

The whole point of having some guide system, be it meditation, therapy, spiritual practice, a tarot reading, or even your internalized parent, is that you have support, so that you don’t have to rely on sheer will-power to keep you on track, to help you remember. If you boost your emotional, spiritual, and psychic helpers, you can take the load off self-discipline as an organizing principle.

Truly living with intention involves engaging all of your energies and strengths, not merely your mental ones. It means activating your inner helpers, however you get them out of bed. It means both affirming what you want and being satisfied with being on the journey. It means honoring your intention, even if you have not yet reached your goal.

Living with intention means pushing your comfort zone, but it also means appreciating every nuance of your life, and appreciating yourself for being conscious as you live it. It means recognizing that the act of envisioning itself, that moment of connecting with your intention, counts as much as the more visible actions that you take. The first step to making your world different is imagining it so, and envisioning yourself in the new paradigm.

Living with intention means persistently and actively affirming your goals. Not merely so that you don’t forget or diminish their value when you face a challenge, but so that you are sending out into the universe your connection with both process and outcome.

Stop muttering to yourself, or chastising yourself for lapses. Close your eyes, envision yourself at your goal, and take a few deep breaths of success. Put your energy into reinforcing your trust that you truly want to grow, to evolve, and to change. Energetically, a part of you is already where you want to be.

Commit regular time with yourself evaluating the more subtle contexts of your life. This does not mean fretting over why you ate that ?lair a week ago last Thursday, or how impossible it seems to save money when the roof is leaking. Instead, it means looking through the window of your spirit and giving yourself a regular psychic report card, and, as hard as it is for some of us to do, giving yourself a pat on the back when you honor your intention, even if you haven’t yet reached your final destination.

Stop muttering to yourself, or chastising yourself for lapses. Close your eyes, envision yourself at your goal, and take a few deep breaths of success. Energetically, a part of you is already where you want to be. Put your energy into reinforcing your trust that you truly want to grow, to evolve, and to change.

Keep reminding yourself that each time your affirm your intention, each time you commit to the process, you are actually doing something positive. The process itself clears your soul of fears. It shakes the cobwebs from those psychic muscles that affirm your unique and powerful sprit.

Don't just wish you would live with intention. Take the first step and trust where you will lead yourself.








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About the author: M. Tamar is the spiritual voice of TarotCycles, an internet service that helps individuals tap into their own inner strength. TarotCycles help subscribers with emotional relationships, career decisions, personal empowerment, expressing creativity, and healing. TarotCycles help create motivation, understanding, and resolve. Please visit http://www.tarotcycles.com

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