The ancient Vedic texts known as the Upanishads declare:
You are what your deepest desire is.
As is your desire, so is your intention.
As is your intention, so is your will.
As is your will, so are your deeds.
As are your deeds, so is your destiny.
So if you want to know who you are, look to your deepest desires. Your desires become your destiny. But here’s the interesting question – where do your desires come from? It would seem it’s not ‘you’ who gives them to you – they apparently exist before you. Perhaps they come from your experience, from conditioning, from karma. Or perhaps they are simply given by the nonlocal mind, the quantum field of intelligence, what some people might call God. Wherever they come from, they are beyond the you who thinks they have any control over them.
From the desires comes our intent. We like to think we are the ones who set intent, but if our desires precede us, who is doing any setting of intent? Well, one might answer, one could choose to feel that desire and not do anything about it, not set any intent. That is a choice that one is making. And if one can choose not to set intent, one can also choose to set intent. Therefore one is doing something. But to this I might say, where does the thought come from to set intent or not set it? How does it emerge from nothing before it is thought? Perhaps it comes from the same place that desire comes from – from God, from nowhere.
It would seem there is nobody here to do anything, and yet we are here. Still we are here in the world, doing whatever it is we do, apparently setting intent and making things happen. It’s a paradox – but one with some positive implications. If you are only apparently setting intent and running your life, perhaps you can take some of the pressure off trying to get it right. You are doing things, organizing things, but at the same time you are not. It’s just happening. Does this mean we can simply stop doing anything at all, just sit on the couch? If couch-sitting is to happen it will happen, but it’s unlikely it will happen for very long for our desires will begin calling to us, shouting louder than our doing of doing nothing. The energy will begin to move. Something will happen. It’s all just happening again.
So where am I going with these thoughts? The point is this – if you want to discover the right use of intent, allow the self, the ego, to fall out of the equation. Nobody is doing anything, doing is arising from the desires, which arise from nowhere. So discover what your desires are and be present with them. Allow the inner ‘yes’ to arise and let that do the work, let it bring the opportunities and synchronicities. This is what one might call enlightened doing, a manner of doing that brings no harm to oneself or others, that allows inner peace. In the end, there is nothing we have to do except what we are doing right now. In this moment, in the Now, there is no story, no doing, and yet something is happening. This is enough, and everything.
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