Intention is critical on the path of awakening since without it we struggle to focus and find our flow. Without intention, it’s all too easy to slip into ambivalence and procrastination, which costs us momentum and power. Discipline isn’t a dirty word when it’s fueled by desire rather than self-punishment. Desire is a source of energy, provided we know how to use it. By looking at the landscape of your desires, you can learn to harness them so they provide strength, passion, and wisdom.
Many of life’s most valuable pursuits proceed in tiny, invisible steps that bring no accolades. In love, work, self-inquiry, service, and spiritual growth, progress happens quietly, slowly, and in private. What keeps us going is our own desire, which creates intention to move in certain directions because they fulfill true things in you.
Writing practice is a perfect example of something important that compels us toward an uncertain end. To establish a practice, it’s necessary to set the intention and to keep showing up. There are some days when we feel uninspired and other days when we’re overflowing with ideas—but intention depends on neither condition. How we feel when we sit down to write does not matter. Writing itself is all that counts. What happens after we show up is, in fact, none of our business. We can’t predict how the writing will go; we can only intend to do our best. No single session matters much and the most unpleasant sessions can be the most fruitful. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve sat down feeling blank and empty, only to write something valuable. Or, I’ve felt like a genius and produced only drivel. We cannot trust our moods to determine the quality of our practice. We can only trust our intention.
Intention is different from having a goal. Goals are things that await you in the future. It’s important to have goals, but when we’re waiting for future satisfaction, the present will appear to be lacking and we remain in a state of anticipation, of not having gotten there yet. Goals never satisfy us for long because we achieve one and another pops up right behind it. Intention exists in the present moment and is based on being, not on planning. It is a connection with our essential purpose and leads to well-being rather than conflict. Intention keeps us aligned with our core values. However things turn out, we know that we’re just fine.
Of course we want to achieve our goals and succeed, but our well-being doesn’t depend on achievement. Our intention sustains us. This is true in all areas of life. Still, it is easy for intentions and goals to be at cross-purposes. If our intention is to spend our life with a soulmate, for example, but our goal is to get married ASAP, we’re likely to feel frustrated and unbalanced. If our intention is to do good in the world, but our goal is to make a truckload of money, we may find ourselves in an ethical pickle. If our intention is to let go of spiritual ego, but our goal is to be the best meditator in the room, we’re going to be at cross-purposes.
The great irony is that when we cultivate creative intention, we actually reach goals more easily because we have access to the state of flow. Flow results from being aligned with our own true purpose. When you sit down to write, remember the intention to use this practice as a path toward truth and freedom. Every time you practice, you’re affirming the fact that your life matters. This effort will pay you back manyfold, strengthening your intention to continue self-inquiry through writing as it guides you to surprising new insights.
Intention is not the same as having goals. Intention exists in the present moment and is based on being, not on planning.
Intention links us to our essential purpose and brings no conflict into our life.
Being grounded in intention is what provides integrity and unity in life.
When we cultivate creative intention, we reach goals more easily because we have access to the state of flow that results from being aligned with our own true purpose.
Here are some questions to help you clarify your relationship with goals and intentions. This clarity will help you address conflicts in your life that come from pursuing future gains at the cost of present-moment intentions.
Grounded in present-moment awareness, and living from your core intention, you’re able to focus on goals more effectively because you know why you’re doing what you do. You’re not acting just to check another goal off your to-do list; you’re living with the satisfaction of self-trust and commitment.
We need focus to support our intentions. Every human being is born with a particular gift, a unique aptitude. But this gift is likely to go unrealized until we learn to focus our desires. There are many highly creative people in the world, filled to the brim with ideas and potential, who fail to bring their genius to fruition because they cannot apply one-pointed attention. Unable to choose where to place their focus, they wander from goal to goal, wondering why their inherent genius never quite manifests.
There’s a story about a spiritual seeker who was in despair over his lack of progress on the path of wisdom. “I’ve tried everything,” he told his teacher. “I traveled to distant lands, listened to a half-dozen gurus, explored all kinds of traditions—waiting for a breakthrough. Yet after all these years, I’m as confused as I was before.” The teacher listened patiently and then she gazed into his eyes. “Dig in one place,” she said.
Nothing can grow until we choose. Just as nothing blossoms in nature till a seed is buried firmly in the ground, we cannot bring forth what’s within us until attention is planted in a single place. Having chosen where to focus, we learn to train our intention on that patch of ground, trusting that the seedling will grow if we nourish the spot with one-pointed care. Knowing that time and energy are limited, we come to view creative focus as a pragmatic, spiritual practice. Surrendering to a single choice, we learn to enter states of flow and immersion, and harvest the natural fruits of our labor.
Patrick was a bona fide Renaissance man: a brilliant designer, excellent painter, natural actor, and gifted storyteller. Though he was constantly setting new goals for himself, Patrick failed to make progress toward any of them. He came to a writing course hoping to understanding why, given his prodigious gifts, he was still serving drinks at a local bar and living in the same apartment he’d been renting since college. In a narcissistic style, Patrick blamed his lack of success on others because no one had discovered him. This is a common myth among creatives: they feel as undervalued and misunderstood as diamonds in the rough, waiting to be discovered by wealthy and adoring patrons. When I suggested to Patrick that this rescue fantasy was keeping him in a passive state of expectation, he agreed. I asked him to write about his rationale for staying in creative limbo.
Choices are like straitjackets to me. I refuse to limit myself to one dream. If I stop being open, I’ll die as an artist. I’m always changing! Even as a kid, I wanted to do everything at the same time. When you limit your choices, you crush your spirit.
Patrick had a faulty understanding of what artistic freedom means. Being open as a creative person doesn’t mean going anywhere the wind blows. It means being motivated by deep intention to bring what’s inside you out into the world. Patrick came to understand that his myth of freedom was a mask for avoidance and lack of focus. As long as he didn’t give his all to one endeavor, he could avoid rejection and the need to work harder. This myth was far less threatening to Patrick’s persona than tending bar and being a malcontent. As we continued to work together, Patrick began to deconstruct this persona and to understand its origins. He described a dramatic moment with his stepfather.
Mom was standing at the window while he chewed me out on the porch. He was drunk as usual, saying it was his job now to protect my mother from being embarrassed by such a pansy: why didn’t I just go to New York and get AIDS and die young? I walked away and never went back. Mom visited me a couple of times in the city but he hassled her so bad, she stopped coming to see me. It feels like nobody cares if I live or die, fail or succeed, but I keep trying the best I can—even though nothing pans out. I’ve got something to give the world, but I’m stuck. That’s why I want someone to discover me. Just tap me on the shoulder and say, “You’re a star kid. I want to help you.”
Patrick’s mask of entitlement had helped keep his creative dreams alive. As Patrick dropped the persona and explored his wounds, he came to have more compassion for himself, which softened his self-loathing. He came to see the connection between his lack of focus and his lifelong lack of self-esteem. Eventually, Patrick decided to focus on writing, pouring all his fierce creativity into a novel loosely based on his own life. Patrick wrote to let me know he’d finished the book and was looking for an agent. He had finally found his flow.
Dig in one place. By choosing where to place our focus, we can manifest our inherent genius.
By surrendering to a single choice, we can enter states of flow and immersion, and harvest the fruits of our labor.
Freedom depends on being motivated by deep intention to bring what is inside us out into the world.
You might resist bringing focus to your life and avoid making choices under the guise of remaining open. Focus can be connected with failure in ways you may not have acknowledged. To plant something in your life and cultivate it until it flowers, it’s first helpful to explore your relationship to focus and flow.
Focus and flow have their shadows. Ambivalence and procrastination are intention’s evil stepchildren, installed by fear to keep us running in place. These common adversaries can be overcome with writing practice.
Ever wonder why you sometimes resist the very things you most desire? In the face of our own intentions, we can grow ambivalent and procrastinate. These unwanted responses can sabotage our progress and block the path of creative growth. Ambivalence is marked by uncertainty, which leaves us unable to focus or make clear choices. Without focus, we habitually fluctuate between competing desires for opposing things. This leaves us prey to doubt and missed opportunities. Ambivalence can trip us up in any area of life—including our writing practice. If we are ambivalent about sitting down to write, we justify our waffling with excuses like “it’s better to wait for inspiration,” “I’m scared of discovering too much, too quickly,” or “the writing process makes me feel too isolated.” The self-sabotaging stories go on and on. This is how ambivalence leads to procrastination.
The amazing thing is that we actually buy into our own excuses. Rather than focusing on our commitments, we get derailed all too often by short-term mood repair: sure, we’d like to manifest our vision, but since we’re feeling a little out of sorts, well, maybe we’ll just go out for a drink instead of putting in time at the desk. Hoodwinked by short-term satisfaction, we betray our own best intentions and allow the cycle of procrastination to perpetuate itself. In turn, this pattern undermines confidence, since the more we succumb to ambivalence, the less we trust ourselves.
We convince ourselves that procrastination will make us feel better. Every time we deny this fiction, however, we build critical muscles of empowerment and commitment. That’s why being regular in your writing practice is so important, because for every day you avoid the page, it will likely take two days of struggle to get back into the flow. Remember, intention creates its own momentum, and when you surrender to that momentum, you find that writing begins to move you. The structure of intention that is formed by focus and persistence carries you past the urge to vacillate and put things off.
In moments when we’re tempted to procrastinate, it helps to remind ourselves that boldness carries creative power. As we learn to use time skillfully, we interrupt the cycle of hesitation, knowing that the future is uncertain and that progress requires diligence. In this same spirit of seizing the moment, we also stop avoiding our true desires, however challenging or out of character they might appear. When ambivalence strikes, we learn to identify how and why our conviction slackens. There may be areas where we have stopped caring or where we need to change direction. As you explore your self-sabotaging patterns in writing, see each point of ambivalence as an emotional fault line that separates you from your power. By telling the truth about where your commitment lags, you bust the fiction behind procrastination, recognize the temptation to flip-flop, and see how critical it is to make clear choices—understanding that no choice will yield perfect results. Perfectionism stands in the way of progress and feeds the temptation toward ambivalence.
Ambivalence leaves us prey to doubt and we can miss opportunities because we can’t focus our direction.
Ambivalence leads to procrastination.
The more we succumb to ambivalence, the less we trust ourselves.
Intention creates its own momentum, its own forward-moving energy. When we surrender to that momentum, we find that our practice begins to move us.
“He who hesitates is lost.” As you learn to focus with clear intent, knowing that the future is uncertain, you stop avoiding your true desires. These questions will help you stop wasting time by identifying your fault lines of ambivalence and becoming aware of your own excuses.
When you unmask self-sabotaging patterns, you come to recognize the stories that excuse procrastination and increase ambivalence. Like perfectionism, discipline—when used as self-punishment—can increase these tendencies. However, when discipline is fueled by desire, the nature of your commitment shifts and brings increased freedom and creativity. Surveying the landscape of desire, you come to see how it energizes you and deepens your awakening.
Desire is the lifeblood of creative life. Poet Dylan Thomas described this surging energy as “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Desire carries the seeds of invention, nourishes the roots of transformation, and enables us to bring our unique vision into the world. Unfortunately, many of us never acknowledge the full range of our desires. We ignore the life-changing wisdom they reveal about who we are and what our purpose may be. As children, few of us are taught to trust the wisdom of our unique longings and originality. We’re taught instead to conform and behave, to repress our desires and resist their pursuit. Like truth, love, and creativity, desire can be fierce—even anarchic—and can threaten our established order. Desire can lay waste to our best-laid plans, revealing incongruous parts of our nature that have quirks and unique contradictions that make no rational sense—but are true to who we are. Human beings are often torn between reason and emotion, logic and instinct, and we are therefore divided against ourselves. We crave freedom, yet remain in suffocating rooms even when the door is open. We long for individuality, yet crave the acceptance of the group. We enjoy discovery and exploration, yet cling to familiar circumstances even when they are unsatisfying.
That’s because we are multilayered beings with diverse, sometimes conflicting, desires. Our head wants what our heart rejects. Our heart desires what our loins can’t fathom. Our body longs for someone who also harms us. These contradictions are maddening but also inevitable since there is no monolithic, single-voiced “me.” By exploring our inner chorus in writing, we learn to accept these divergent desires, including those most at odds with each other.
There’s a common misconception among spiritual seekers that desire is antithetical to awakening. Some churches and theologies use desire to scare their members into obedience. Others teachings, including Buddhism, are misinterpreted as being against desire and used to curb their followers’ passions. Contrary to popular belief, the Buddha did not suggest that desire is the cause of our suffering. He taught that attachment to desire is the problem, as we become trapped by our own appetites. It’s wanting more that brings suffering, which brings us back to mindfulness and sufficiency. As long as your desire does not become a tyrannical master, or turn you into a Hungry Ghost, it can be a constructive ally.
Denying desire is dangerous. When we negate or overlook desires that scare us, we shut down the motivating, creative force that moves us toward our fruition. By acknowledging desire and channeling it creatively, it can be transmuted into beauty and power through the imagination. That’s why poetry is written and art is made. The medieval abbess Hildegarde of Bingen described this as the greening power of veriditas, a term she coined to describe the animating power of the cosmos. This ability to channel energy is fundamental to human genius, which is the innate knack for generating ideas and images and then manifesting them in the outside world. Your ability to do this relies on your relationship with desire, which these prompts will help you explore more deeply.
Desire is the lifeblood of creative life and it enables us to bring our unique vision into the world. Acknowledging a desire doesn’t mean we need to act on it.
Desire is not the cause of suffering. The attachment that comes with craving causes suffering.
When we deny desires that scare us, we shut down the greening power of veriditas, the animating force of the cosmos.
Channeling the energy of desire is fundamental to our human genius, as we have a knack for generating ideas and images in our mind and body, and then manifesting them in the outside world.
As you learn to trust your desire to lead you in the world, you will feel a kind of magic build inside you. Acknowledgment of accumulated desire opens the doorway to transformation. Here are some eye-opening questions that can help to guide you over that threshold.
You’ve written about your public self and the panorama of shifting desires that motivate your internal cast of characters. This has prepared you to embark on the alchemical work of transformation, taking these various lessons in hand and turning them into the gold of insight.