Saturday, December 16, 2006

A new intention for the turn of the year

More than two weeks after a Heartland Institute leader asked members of a group to answer: what is your intention? I have come up with one, and it isn't what I thought it would be. My intention is to bring a beginner's mind, body and enthusiasm to my art, writing, tennis and community work.

For years I've been walking around thinking that there was some One Special Thing I was meant to do, and once I identified what that thing was, I would be filled with the energy of clarity on up to glory and fame. The problem with this notion is that I am a curious and idealistic person. If you look at the decisions I have made in the course of my life, I have always twisted and turned away whenever One Special Thing threatened to dominate my time. I began to think there was something seriously wrong with me because I couldn't settle in to that One Special Thing.

Several ideas got me to think differently about this. First, I started reading The Life We are Given, by George Leonard and Michael Murphy, two pioneers in the human potential movement. Leonard and Murphy developed an Integral Transformative Practice (ITP), a disciplined system of meditation, exercise and affirmations for helping people realize their potential. The power of affirmations--short, positive statements that describe a positive change as a present condition--has been demonstrated to me many times in my life. I knew I needed some new affirmations.

Then I attend the Heartland Institute event and was challenged to state my intention. My response to this question took me backward to the myth of One Special Thing, and I felt all the pain and disappointment with myself for not having One. I tried to reconcile the tension I felt between creating an intention and Meister Eckhart's statement that we should "work without a why." Theologian Matthew Fox wonderfully interprets this Eckhart statement in his book, The Reinvention of Work. He suggests we look at the various roles we play in life in a freer way, and consider, from within those roles, what feels like love, freedom, compassion and spontaneity from the inside.

The next step in my learning cycle was to attend a talk by the Catholic motivational speaker Matthew Kelly. Kelly said that we are called by the divine to be the best version of ourselves possible. This seemed clear and inspiring, yet had nothing to do with the straight-jacket of thinking I had to do One Special Thing. I followed up Kelly's talk with yet another dose of affirmative thinking from Louise Hay, whose book You Can Heal Your Life, I have read several times. Hay says we create our reality by the mental messages we program into our thoughts.

What finally pushed me to the clarity of my intention, which inspires me without being One Special Thing, was viewing the DVD The Secret. I share the criticism some have made of this movie that it focuses too much on helping people achieve blatantly materialistic goals. However, there are still some good ideas to be considered. The essence of "the secret" is that the universe is organized through the power of attraction, and we create our reality by asking for, and visualizing what we want to feel. This emphasis on the power of feeling tied everything together for me. I realized that a coherent intention could be framed around feeling, rather than a rationally discerned One Special Thing.

I realized that what I want to feel is the beginner's mind of excitement I first felt when I started volunteering for a community group at the beginning of my career, that urged citizens to save water, recycle, and conserve energy. I want to feel the beginner's mind of enthusiasm I first felt when I started silk painting, and was amazed by the creatures that started to flow out of my brush. I want physically to feel the rush of enthusiasm I experienced in all four corners of my body when my tennis skills were just starting to develop. It seems to me that the intention to cultivate a beginner's way of feeling, with all the zest, enthusiasm, hope and idealism that implies, could be a very good thing.

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