Uncover Joy- Blog of the book

When I was learning psychic skills, I met with a group once a month for a day or a weekend. This was before there were any acupuncture schools in the United States, let alone any recognition for consciousness work. There was a surge of interest in alternative medicine, eastern religions, and spiritual topics but no structure for them and no acceptance by the culture at large. Back then, we didn’t talk in terms of laws of intention or attraction. In the group, we explored expanding our perceptual abilities, experiencing different states, transmitting them to each other, and checking veracity and accuracy.

One early exercise to learn to affect energy and reality was to create parking spaces. For the month, our homework was to open up parking spaces before we’d arrive at a destination and would need one. Mind you, we were from the greater New York City environs, where many folks don’t own cars, if only so they won’t have to find and pay for parking spaces!

I learned as much from hearing the different ways that people approached it as from the assignment itself. One friend was Sammi, a high-powered and assertive executive in international marketing who was very clear about who she was and comfortable wielding power.

Another group member was Bridget, mother of six children who had just gone through a very nasty divorce. She hated her job because it demanded that she be high-profile and persuasive. She was much more comfortable in roles in which she provided support and advice, and she made amazing things happen from the background.

Then there was me. I was in New York dancing and trying to figure out a structure for using my clairvoyant and healing gifts. I was aware of all this energy and perception that wanted to flow through my system, pressing to be used. Yet at the same time, I was struggling with old abuse issues, so I tended to be harshly self-critical.

When we come back after the month, the leader asked us to describe what we actually did to create the parking places. Sammi said that at first she was sure she could assertively open a space by putting the force of her energy into it, carving out space for her car with her will. It didn’t work. When she asked, ‘If it is in my best interest and in the best interest of world around me, could I please have a parking place?’ – then she’d find one.

I looked at her in amusement and said, “That’s so funny, because I thought I should do the polite thing – ask carefully, be respectful, but it never worked. I drove around for hours and never found one. It wasn’t until I went into my center and toughened up and fiercely demanded it, saying, “I want it, I deserve it, and so show up NOW!” – that I’d find a space. I could even swear. All that mattered was that I be forceful and bingo, there it was. I was so confused by that, because I thought it wasn’t spiritual enough, not the way one should interact with “higher powers.”

Sammi was so assertive that her energy was limited in the ways it could interact, due to the force with which she was planted in herself. She could not take the energy of situations or other people into account until she softened and stepped back. Creating the parking space pushed her to be more aware of her relation to others.

At that time, I, on the other hand, walked through life not taking up enough room. So I had to move into the experience of deserving a parking place in order to open one for myself, rather than unconsciously emitting the intention that there was no room for me.

Bridget’s method still makes me chuckle because it was such an illustration of the nature of her gifts and energy. She psychically sent out a note to whoever was near where she wanted to park. “I’d call to all those people who were hemming and hawing, standing on one foot and then the other, not able to say good-bye, and I’d help them make the decision to leave. I just reassured them that it was okay to go now, told them to get in their cars and stop messing about. Then I could have their parking place.”

This story is a good illustration because intention – clarifying a goal, your desire to achieve it, and marshalling your energy to go for it – is a function that requires that you align yourself, be willing to be precise about what you want, to ask for it clearly, and to open space for the thing to appear. You can learn a lot about yourself by working on your technique. There is a specific area to identify in your body in which your intention consolidates. To become adept at using it successfully, it is helpful to know the energetic steps needed to create through intention.

The reason why I am including a chapter on intention is that, in the skills you will learn in the following chapters, it will be necessary to focus yourself with intention in order to create a certain energy, or to become aware of some aspect of the skill, or to move into a new area. Intention is not just about creating Maseratis. It is also used in Energy Work to move your awareness to new levels of complexity, to increase your perception, to develop new internal abilities and states. Energy practitioners and intuitives use their intention all the time to ask for information and see the ‘unseeable.’

What is Intention? Intention is the organizing force that focuses and directs energy to transform a desire into accomplishment. Intending is action, oriented. It aligns, clarifies, and hones your asking and your focus. To be an intention, rather than a vague wish, there must be a decision, a commitment, and a clear statement to yourself and to the powers that be of what you want. Some people look at it as a prayer, as it also requires opening to the levels of Being that assist with creation.  Intention combines clarity, concentration, determination and perseverance with an allowing and being open to receiving.

Every object and action is first created on the energetic level before manifesting as an occurrence of some nature. Whether you want a physical object, an event, or a new way of responding, bringing something into existence requires creating the energy of it first. The concept and the energy inherent in it make up the seed out of which that manifestation blossoms. Intention is the focusing agent that increases the likelihood that the energy of the idea will coalesce into a reality.  Intention organizes your energy, feelings, and thoughts into a clear goal. Intention opens the opportunity for help and opportunities that you can’t anticipate.

            Intention is the insistence that something occur.  The question is what something is going to show up? The intention has to be well-defined and detailed as well as being aligned with your goals and values, or else your subconscious worries, old beliefs, doubts and counter-arguments will undermine the message and you might be surprised at what arrives.

Intention is a combination of a) the functioning of conscious awareness, b) directing it as a laser – focused and aligned energy, moving in concert, and c) the effects of asking, creating a reality, inviting, and receiving.

This is what it means to be creative. As humans, we have the ability to move things from glimmers to ideas, to possibilities, to fleshed-out plans, to events. Everyone who has worked to create something knows that, at first, it seems unlikely that any new notion will ever become solid fact. Others often scoff and have “rational” reasons why it won’t work. The reality in which you start to build is, by definition, one in which the item does not yet exist. This present reality is filled to the brim with what is already here. You must make room for it. You must also create the energy of the thing itself and then bring it into physical being. It takes a lot of attention to get momentum going behind some ideas, to build up the force necessary to change inertia from static to active. (Others may have the energy already aligned for them, so that they manifest quite easily. An example is when I intend to receive information about a client’s health. I already have the avenues established, so that once I’m ready to ask, I usually receive the information quickly. Another example is a situation in which you have been contemplating something for a long time, so that when you do ask, some of the energy is already in place.)

You may remember encountering scorn and nay-sayers. They don’t have your vision. They are in their own reality, in which your idea is not yet real, and they didn’t come up with your idea, so their reality does not even include having the notion of your vision. For this reason, their negative reactions do not prove that your idea is idiotic or unworkable. They only prove that there is no consensus on your vision yet. So, can you see why it is a really bad idea to let others’ attitudes and negativity stop you from your dream?

Even though it sometimes takes a lot of work to talk people into your intended idea, it is your job to help them see your vision in their minds’ eye. When they start to envisage it, they build up some energy around it themselves, which creates more energy in the world for it. They then may spark ideas and options that you hadn’t thought of, which you can then incorporate in the process of creation, and the thing grows bigger. Eventually, honing your message, getting clearer in order to sell others on it, helps you to flesh out details so that your intention becomes sharper. The former skeptics gradually become engines driving your vision. The image becomes stronger than your doubt or than the nay-sayers’ dismissiveness, and it moves through steps to begin construction and eventually takes on a life of its own and manifests in the world.

The same steps apply when idea only involves you. The scorn and nay-saying simply comes from your own head, from the voices that you have introjected over the years, and from your old, self-defeating beliefs. As Marisol said: “ ‘I don’t deserve it’  - that’s big work. That will stop you from intending.”

What gets in the way of successful intention? What happens when we think that we are intending to attract something we want, and we either don’t get it or we get something glaringly different?

The Law of Attraction works on the premise that you must be crystal clear about what you want, for what comes to you is greatly determined by what you actually put out energetically. So it is necessary to be congruent with yourself on as many internal levels as possible and not gloss over hidden pessimistic notions.  If the intention is unclarified or is muddied by sneaky backchat – that critical voice casting aspersions in your ear – then what you receive may be the opposite of what you want. However, if you don’t get into medical school, or marry your high school sweetheart, or win a MacArthur genius award, it does not mean that you wanted your dream to fail. People often do receive what is aligned with their subconscious beliefs rather than what they think they intend. When less-than-desirable things arrive instead of that parking place, it may illustrate that you have some assumptions and self-criticisms that need to be brought into the light of day and questioned before you can become truly in sync with your spoken desire. What does arrive may give you valuable information about the nature of your self-doubt. Many a person who has survived awful things carries unconscious beliefs that counter their spoken intentions. Those beliefs are imbued with a semi-tractor-trailer’s worth of power, and no half-clarified, un-researched intention has a chance against them.

When you identify self-doubts, either because you are paying attention or because an intention that backfired led you to investigate, see them as steps on the way to a clearer intention. Use them as an opportunity to view those beliefs more accurately, so that you can release them and replace them with ones that support a joy-filled life. Take the opportunity to become clearer about them now so that you can work through them and then improve your success rate when making intentions. (We will discuss how to clear self-defeating beliefs using your energy systems in chapter twelve.)