Intentional Living

Honestly, I didn’t know how to write this blog, I didn’t know where to begin, what to name it, etc. Because this is a topic that connects to many other major topics and it is easy for one to lose track of what’s writing.

I’m talking about INTENT today. And that connects to a lot of other concepts like the power of choice, purpose, essentialism, etc. I’ll try my best to convey all that’s connecting to INTENT, without getting overwhelmed by this inter-connectivity.

First, even though not in chronological order, we’ll see what’s INTENT. INTENT is a “FIRE”, I mention in my book. Of course, if you have already read my book, you know how a dream, wish, intent, desire, and craving are related. And you also know the candlestick analogy. I’ll paste an excerpt from my book itself to know what is INTENT.

“The intent is the controlled desire! And in my early days, I was confused with intent as desire, desire made me very miserable, and then I realized that it is the intent that you need to accomplish anything, something that has the intensity to push you to your maximum abilities and doesn’t burn you at the same time. You call it intent, purpose, the ‘why’ power, fire, determination, You can call it passion, whatever, but it is something that is of high intensity like a desire but at the same time in control. To make it simple, we’ll just call it ‘THE FIRE’. The intent is Productive restlessness, productive entropy or if you don’t like the word productive, let’s say controlled entropy.”

The power of intent can be understood by understanding the relationship between intent, purpose [life purpose, here], and choice. Essentially, PURPOSE is an INTENT for life. When you have INTENT in your life, there’s a certain energy or enthusiasm, or you can say DRIVE in your life. As mentioned earlier, it is a productive kind of entropy, it makes it easy to overcome inertia/resistance.

When we dissect what is actually working in your life when you’ve set an intent, in the now, we’ll notice it is the power of CHOICE. INTENT and CHOICE are inseparable. Your intent is influencing your choice, in the now. And the choice you make now is influencing your intent too. And again, as mentioned in the book, the choices you make every day will form HABITS. And habits can break or make a life, you know that.

And if you look at the core, you’ll see that the power of INTENT, is mainly, the power of FOCUS. Concepts such as the Dopamine detox (which has nothing to do with the neurotransmitter, it’s a pseudo-concept trying to imply intentional living), essentialism, or even minimalism, “The One Thing”, intentional or conscious living, etc are all just offshoots of this same core. But FOCUS is just one face of the core of an intent.

The other wing of the core is intensity. The intensity helps in two ways actually, one, you can do a lot in less time. But of course, the focus is also helping you do that. If you can recall the candlestick analogy, a blazing fire on a candle can burn up the wick faster. And spiritually that means, you burn up your pile of Karma at a faster pace, that’s super good obviously. And two, again coming to the candlestick analogy, if you can remember that magic candle we used to get as “FREE” for buying two chocolates, it wouldn’t go out if you blew it, it would relight itself. Similarly, intensity, keeps you upright, no matter how much your circumstance is pulling you down. This again connects to the previous fact that, with this intensity, you can handle much more in this life. Concepts like willpower, “so good they can’t ignore you”, etc are all offshoots of this core.

So, you can imagine intent as point-focused sunlight under a magnifying glass on a sunny day. It is point-focused, as you can see. And super intense if you happened to place your finger under that magnifying glass. Ok, so I hope you’ve got to know the power of intent by reading all the way through. But there’s still a key piece missing from this whole puzzle. And that is awareness. An individual sets an intent based on his awareness, right? And the questions like what intent to set? etc falls into the lap of awareness.

What I’ve mentioned in this blog is just the second chapter: THE FIRE in my book, THE FLOWER OF FULFILLMENT. It’s in the further chapters, that I help the readers answer the questions concerning the intent, as mentioned above. I would apologize to you for mentioning my book multiple times in this blog, but I plead not guilty because for one, this blog originates from my book and hence it demands giving credit to my book. And two, because, no matter how many times or how much I yell about my book, it’ll still be under-promoted, and hence remain an underrated book, in my opinion. Because if the insights in it could change my life, then it can do that to every reader.

Thank You
Sanath Kumar Naibhi