Are You Asleep?

“Just think about how many willful choices you've made in the last week.

It's probably, maybe, one or two.”

Morgan Freeman – Through the Wormhole. Season 5, Episode 7

How many willful choices did YOU make this week?

We see people struggle with all sorts of problems that seem to have simple solutions.

Let’s capture the essence of what blocks us from making positive change in our lives, and why “intention” is so crucial.

Scott Grafton, a neuroscientist of UC Santa Barbara, got my attention when he said,

“On a good day, I think we're about, uh, 97% zombie, and on a bad day, 98% zombie, and the rest of the 2 or 3% is us having actually willful control over our daily activities.”

What does this mean in every day terms?

You are reading this because you want to change. But you are also reading this instead of actually doing it. It’s a substitute.

Intention is slippery.

You have an ego that thinks it knows itself. As you read this you can continue to gorge yourself on Oreos, smoke another cigarette or pop another beer.

You can continue to be comfortable while you research how to be different. Knowledge is valuable… but it doesn’t touch your heart. The part of you that wants to change yourself is being held back by all the distraction.

Just do it.

Find that place in yourself that truly wants to change and KNOW that you already have the wisdom.

You can self-help yourself to death because it never changes anything.

You are distracting yourself from making simple decisions. Because the part of you that effects change doesn’t need all this.

The only point in my writing this is to shut your brain up!

Listen to what you say you want… and destroy whatever gets in its way.

Get the picture?

That 97 to 98% is the part of your brain and mind that really runs the show. By the time you are an adult, you have already been pre-programmed with all kinds of things, good and bad. And the subconscious never looks back. It’s always in the present. That deep part of your mind runs everything from your heart beat to your breathing, and it remembers every decision you ever made. That’s the way it works. Your wish is its command and your “habits” are simply forgotten choices.

Problem is, the decisions you made when you were a kid, the deep ones about who you are and how you would be, were filled with emotions and imagination and the authority of vivid memories, your parents and other authority figures.

Your New Year’s resolution to “lose weight” is just a superficial thought. Who cares?

See?

Your life–forming decisions were made before the zombie apocalypse, when you were still fully alive. Nobody ever says, “Gee, I think I will start smoking next week,” when they are thirteen. They are exposed to one or more people who they look up to. They are compelled by a vision to change.

You don’t need self-help manuals to change; you need to feel as strongly as you did back then. You need to create a compelling future.

The good news is that you have a brain. Notice that I said you have a brain. You are not your brain. Let me be clear:

• You are a soul (consciousness)

• You have free will

• You have a deeply felt purpose

• Your body, brain and mind are tools of your consciousness

• You are the orchestrator of those tools

• You can do and be anything you can imagine

Of course some say these ideas are just fuzzy thinking; persistent superstitions carried on by philosophy, and religion. They are just the deeply felt delusions of huge numbers of people. They only seem to be backed up by the latest quantum physics.

I disagree.

The subconscious isn’t your enemy. It simply speaks a language that you have forgotten.

The new picture of reality emerging from the quantum world is that everything is consciousness, energy and information. The new paradigm is one of unity. And I mean that literally, as a scientific fact.

Consciousness has two functions: being and doing. And on this planet, we are all about the doing. How do we decide what to do?

We have Intention.

Why do we not accomplish our heart’s desires?

Because there are two parts to our consciousness. The eternal, God-seeded Spirit that represents who we truly are, and the ego-minded, brain-based part that thinks about dinner and is still pissed at our bosses; the part that wants to alleviate the discomfort of being here; the part that feels alone and afraid and powerless. That’s how intention gets fragmented. We are almost always of two minds. Pure intent and ego-intent.

You don’t want a box of twinkies; you want to be loved. You don’t need a martini; you want peace. You don’t need to watch the news 24/7; you need to take action.

Life is not a spectator sport, and yet so many of us have given up on participation. We have become robots, barely ever choosing to change ourselves or our circumstances. We just go through the motions. Day after day.

Our intentions have become so conflicted: save the world; save ourselves. Save the homeless guy; save for retirement. Reach out to a Spouse; stay mad and drive away.

But there is such a thing as pure intention.

Beyond all the screaming in your head and beyond the constant chatter of voices from the past, you have True-Will. It is your pure intention that is the core of you, the blueprint for the finest being that you can become; the part of you that is a part of the Divine.

Take time each day, through meditation or just sitting still, to remember yourself. What do you really want? If the answer serves yourself, dig deeper. If the answer is to help in whatever way you can, you can be assured that it is coming from your true Heart.

You have accessed your Pure Intention.