Many people try to change their lives yet fail to do so for one single reason: they base their actions on a misguided intention. Intention lies at the very core of human action and permeates everything we do. The paradox is that, although intention is the true instrument through which we create our reality, most people are either unaware of their real motives or are guided by motives that only appear, on the surface, to be the right ones.
Intention as a quality of consciousness
It is hard to say what Gary Zukav’s fame in America is attributed to: the fact that he is the author of four consecutive bestsellers, including The Seat of the Soul, or that he holds the record for the most appearances – thirty-five in total – on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The Seat of the Soul is Oprah’s second most recommended book after the Bible, and her favourite quote from it is:
“Every action, thought, and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect.”
Zukav defines intention as a “quality of consciousness that you bring to your action or your thought,” while choice is “the creative dynamic” that each individual performs continuously, both consciously and unconsciously. Accordingly, of the three main aspects of the human psyche – thoughts, feelings, and motives – it is the motives that are the most important and decisive factor in determining the final outcome.
A similar view is expressed by Helena Blavatsky in her writings on karma. According to her, the three primary categories of forces that create a person’s karma are thoughts, feelings, and actions. From the perspective of karmic creation, thoughts are the most significant, followed by emotions (associated with the astral body), while actions – the things we do – carry the least karmic weight.
“The third category of forces that create Karma is our actions. They influence the human soul relatively little. What shapes actions are their motives, not the actions themselves.”
Helena Blavatsky
Once again, we encounter the same message: it is not so much what you do that matters, but the intention with which you do it. What truly counts is the motive behind the action, and this becomes the most important compass in moments of inner conflict:
“When a person who knows the laws of Karma faces a clash between different duties he must fulfil and is uncertain how to act, he calmly strives to examine all his motives, cleansing his heart of everything selfish. Having recognized the selfless motive and made a decision, he acts without hesitation and without fear, knowing that even if his action proves mistaken, what matters is the impulse itself.”
Helena Blavatsky
I have seen many marriages and relationships fall apart simply because they began with the wrong intention. Intentions such as: “He loves me and gives me a sense of security,” or “She completes me, and together we feel whole.” Later, that very intention reveals itself as the source of disappointment, dependency, and conflict. Then it begins to sound different: “He suffocates me,” or “Our relationship is completely devoid of passion.” Yet this is the natural logic of things. The desire for security has little to do with passion. And dependence on another person in order to feel whole is incompatible with mature forms of love, which are rooted in freedom.
For One’s Own Sake
The harder part, however, lies elsewhere. Even if we recognize the importance of intention, how do we know which intention is the “right” one? If we have already understood that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” how can we tell whether the intention we believe to be good is not, in fact, laying those very stones?
To my mind, the answer comes down to a simple but unsettling realization: whatever we do, we do for our own sake. I know this may sound as though it contradicts what was said above, but it only appears so at first glance. On closer inspection, we see that the only way not to be selfish is to be conscious of the fact that whatever we do, we do it for ourselves.
A dispassionate examination of even the most altruistic motives will lead us to the understanding that behind them stands a choice, arising from our image of ourselves and from who we wish to be. If this self-image contains the idea of self-sacrifice, we will make that sacrifice. If it does not, we will not make it, even under the most favourable conditions.
If we honestly examine our choices, we will discover that everything we have done, are doing, or wish to do, we do for our own sake. That within our ideas of serving others “for their own good,” there is a disguised ego. That when we sacrifice ourselves for others, it is because this is how we have chosen to express our love. No one forces us into self-sacrifice. The reason lies solely in us and in our own ideas of how we choose to express ourselves.
For me, this is the compass by which I know whether the path we pave with our intentions leads to heaven or to hell: when we know that whatever we do, we do it for ourselves. It is one thing to give birth to a child and make a series of sacrifices with the attitude that we are doing them for the child; it is quite another to make the very same sacrifices with the intention of expressing a part of ourselves through the role of mother.
In the first case, self-sacrifice becomes a form of manipulation and emotional blackmail, hidden behind the mask of love. In the second, it is an example of the purest and most selfless forms of unconditional love. The difference is immense, and behind it lies nothing more than the difference in motives. Even if, on the surface, the actions look identical – both mothers losing sleep and peace to raise a child – different intentions will give rise to entirely different kinds of relationships. Anyone who has ever heard the words “I’m doing this for you” knows how dreadful it makes them feel.
Naive Benevolence
“I’m doing it for myself” is closer to the truth. And in this case, truth is of particular importance. We may think we know what is good for another, but do we really know whether this good is truly for their good? We may believe that sacrificing our happiness by staying with a weak and dependent spouse is good for him, and it may indeed be what he wants from us. But is it truly good for him to sustain his false sense of security through an unhealthy dependence on us? Perhaps the truth is precisely the opposite, and it is far more loving to leave, so that he can grow through the pain and develop his own source of strength. Or perhaps the reason we do not leave is not the sacrifice we make for him, but our own fears.
Let us take another example: guilt, another widespread motive behind human action. When we act out of guilt, sooner or later it turns against us, because behind such an intention lies the wish to avoid confronting our shadow, to continue living in the illusion of our innocence, and to avoid the pain of growing up. Because this is not the right motive, it later leads to accusations and to the feeling of being a victim.
The attitude that we may know what is good, but do not know what is truly for the good, helps free us from the illusion of false love. We are responsible only for our part in a relationship, and our responsibility is only toward ourselves and our own path of growth.
The Sevenfold Structure of the Self
An exploration of the different levels at which we create our reality (actions, feelings, thoughts/intentions) would be incomplete without including the esoteric theory of the human bodies. According to it, the structure of the human Self is sevenfold. This means that we have seven bodies, or seven different levels of consciousness: the physical, etheric, astral, mental, causal, buddhic, and atmic bodies. In different traditions you may encounter different names, but the sevenfold structure remains. So does the principle that the higher we ascend, the closer we come to the spiritual source of our lives.
The densest body is the physical one, our tangible body, together with its energetic double, the etheric body. With each successive body, the density of matter decreases and consciousness becomes more abstract. It resembles climbing the floors of power in an organization. The higher we go, the closer we come to the office of the CEO. On the lowest floors are the clerks. They do what they are told. In Blavatsky’s model, they correspond to human actions. Even when good deeds are performed, the decisive factor for karma lies in the choices made on the “upper floors.”
Next comes the astral body, corresponding to desires and emotions, and the lower mental body, corresponding to concrete thinking. In the middle stands the causal body, which some associate with the soul, since it contains the causes of what happens, carried over from past lives as patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaviour. It is the reincarnating individuality. After it comes the buddhic body, whose main function is to monitor whether a person lives in harmony with spiritual values. Next is the atmic body, the higher octave to the mental body, the mind of the Whole, symbolized by light. Finally comes the monadic body, the archetype from which individuality originates, the monad, and in this sense the centre, the hidden organizing principle of our life. This is where the CEO’s office is, the seat of the greatest authority.
This entire introduction to the theory of the seven bodies serves one purpose: to explain why, from a spiritual perspective, intention is so important as that quality of consciousness which permeates every one of our actions – that fundamental creative act of human life, the most significant level at which karma is created or purified. This is because intention belongs to the highest floors of authority in the organization of our psychic processes, beyond the four transitional bodies of the ego and the reincarnating individuality.
If a person has come into this life to develop the value of love but suffers from emotional dependency and a lack of maturity, the CEO will make sure that this value is developed. No matter how many opportunities for relationships such a person seeks, they will either meet unsuitable partners or remain alone. The CEO does not care whether their earthly representative marries, has children, or enjoys a good job, a house, and a car. For them, life on Earth is only a brief moment in eternity, and what matters is the evolution of consciousness. Spiritual values such as love, truth, and freedom are merely the guarantees that this evolution will take place.
Most people concentrate their efforts to change their lives on the lowest level of the organization, where behaviour and actions reside. They try to improve their quality of life by doing the “right” things: exercising, dieting, meditating, networking. The problem is that after an initial surge of enthusiasm, the effect gradually diminishes. Sometimes things even become worse. It is as if life itself wishes to correct this kind of “spiritual materialism” (as Chögyam Trungpa calls it) and to remind us that change must be directed elsewhere, toward the higher floors of authority.
The more deeply we connect with the power of intention, the more we let go of concrete ideas about how things should happen. Instead of imposing our limited perspective on life, we begin to interact with what it offers us. We explore what is happening, ask ourselves whether our reactions are in harmony with our values, and seek other perspectives and solutions. The higher we climb and the more we see the larger picture of life, the closer we come to the true power of intention – the place where we can most profoundly influence the quality of our lives.
Meeting with the Chief Executive Officer
At last, we enter the office of the CEO and discover that seated in the chair is not some faceless, omnipotent god, but simply another part of ourselves – the most expansive and least dense version of who we are, often called the Higher Self. He greets us with a smile and says:
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I am the one you used to address with ‘Oh God!’ when you prayed for this or that, without knowing that I was you. Well, now you know the truth about us both. Thank you so much for working so diligently on the lower levels of the administration for so long. Without someone to communicate with the clerks and exchange information and experience, our organization would collapse. I truly owe you a great deal. Forgive me for leaving you for so many years in work you did not love, but I wanted you to learn to distinguish the important from the trivial, the true from the false, the transient from the enduring. And most importantly, I rely on you alone to discover new opportunities for the development of our organization. Ideas for innovation come from practice, so I thank you deeply for that. I want you to know that I created all these difficulties in your life for your sake, for my sake, and for the future of our organization.”
“For my sake? For both of us and for the future of our organization?” you reply, filled with a mixture of anger and relief.
Wholeness
Gary Zukav writes about the immense importance of authentic power, and in this I agree with him, for it is the result of synchronizing the desires of the two parts of the self – the earthly personality and the soul. There is, however, one point on which I disagree. According to him, this synchronization happens through the soul’s intention for harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for life. In theory this sounds wonderful, but in practice it can be neuroticizing, because it is not aligned with the fundamental criterion of psychological health, which is wholeness. And within wholeness there is room not only for harmony, but also for disharmony; not only for cooperation and sharing, but also for their opposites.
There are theories that sound compelling and therefore manage to capture the minds of their audience. Yet within them there is a small “bug” that prevents things from truly working. I believe that what Zukav writes about this intention is such a bug in the program, because it does not correspond to human reality. If we look closely at our own lives, we see how many times we have sought harmony and instead encountered its opposite, disharmony. Before becoming a successful bestselling author, Zukav was addicted to sex and motorcycles; he was explosive and emotionally unstable. This was his encounter with the archetype of the Destroyer and his passage through processes of spiritual transformation. Without this experience, he could not have written his books.
And what does this have to do with intention? Everything. It is easy to choose love as one’s core value; it is another thing entirely to embody it in real life. Even if you strive to be only good, the rejected half accumulates in the unconscious until the moment comes when it manifests itself in our lives. The moral conflict that arises is of such an order that it can be resolved only at the level of intention. Only when we connect with the right intention – the intention to be whole and true – do things that appear wrong turn out to be right, and the seemingly impossible situation we find ourselves in begins to resolve.
Following Your Own Path
There was a time in my life when I would offer prayers for help and guidance, until one day I found that I could no longer pray. I knew what was good, but I did not know what was for the good. How do you pray in such a case? It did not feel right to pray to heaven for rain if what I needed to live through was a drought. Hence, I stopped sending faxes to the CEO.
I was left only with the knowledge that the mission of our shared organization is love, that he relies greatly on me to send him data so we can improve things, and that we do all this for both our sakes. He knew far more than I did, but I, in turn, could see things he could not.
When I encountered obstacles along my path, I would stop and try to understand what they meant, because I did not know. Directives from above do not arrive in letters with clear instructions on what to do. Was this a sign that I should stop because it was not the right time for action? Or was it a test of perseverance and endurance, meaning I should not give up?
In such moments I strongly suspected that he, too, was not entirely sure what he wanted. So, I continued searching for the answer. Through trial and error, I eventually found it, though I had lost my innocence along the way.
I documented the case, sent the data, and reported that the mission of love is a very difficult thing on Earth. What remained was the consolation that if one has acted with the right intention, then whatever one has done has been for the good.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
Note: The quotations are translated from Bulgarian and are not presented as verbatim citations.
