The Power of the Heart: Finding Your True Purpose in Life (16 page)

Your primary intention needs to be your state of consciousness at this moment. Your intention needs to be connectedness with the heart at this moment.

What you mean is what you get. Once you decide to live in connectedness with your heart, you experience a different, more positive reality. Because your intention originates in your heart, it enables you to attract the energy of harmony and love. Your intention is the quality of consciousness that infuses your actions.

The intention at the root of your actions matters. The energy of your intention influences the consequences of your actions. Every word you speak and everything you do is infused with consciousness. If you think in terms of giving, you will attract like-minded souls with whom you create a reality of generosity, a reality that reflects that intention.
This may well be one of the greatest truths of the universe, which is sometimes called karma.

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.

—MARC CHAGALL

Of course, there will always be unpleasant things in life that you cannot influence, which are out of your control. However, there are also plenty of things that slip out of your control because you are not fully aware of the intention underlying your actions. That is why it is important to be mindful of the energy you create.

Every significant vital sign—body temperature, heart rate, oxygen consumption, hormone level, brain activity, and so on—alters the moment you decide to do anything . . . Decisions are signals telling your body, mind, and environment to move in a certain direction.

—DEEPAK CHOPRA,
THE BOOK OF SECRETS

Whenever you feel that your life is slipping out of control, that you are being manipulated by those around you, that things are not going your way, choose to think and act with a positive intention and positive mind-set. Think of good ways in which to look at your situation. You’re more likely to find opportunities that you would otherwise have missed.

The time is always right to do what is right.

—MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Choosing to create an intention that has loving consequences calls for more than just saying that you are choosing that intention. You have to feel that energy in your heart. The universe looks straight through a false intention to see what is in your heart. Listen to your heart to discover what you really intend to achieve with your actions. Connect with your heart to create the energy of positive, right intention.

 GARY ZUKAV

This is at the heart of creating Authentic Power, learning to distinguish your intentions. The intentions that come from fear are attached to an outcome. In order to be satisfied, they must have that outcome. Those parts of your personality must manipulate and control circumstances and people to their satisfaction. The parts of your personality that originate in love, care about people. They care about others.

Love without action is meaningless and action without love is irrelevant.

—DEEPAK CHOPRA

When you do something for personal gain, your intention is coming from fear, from your personality. When you act to create harmony and cooperation, your intention is from your heart. Your heart and soul have only loving properties. Only the intentions that originate in your heart can lend your life true fulfillment and meaning.

 MAYA ANGELOU

If you speak from the heart, your intention will be heartful, will be wise.

Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that we practice asking several questions to make sure we are creating right or good intentions. You might even want to write these questions on a piece of paper and put it where you will encounter it as you go through your day. Before you pose these questions, take three slow breaths in and out so that you come into the present moment.

The first question to ask yourself before you act is “Am I sure?” or “What am I doing?” This can help you head off wrong perceptions so that you make sure you know what you are doing and where you are going before you act. Then ask, “Is my intention right for now?” Next, ask yourself, “Am I acting automatically or out of habit?” The energy of habit can sometimes be unconscious rather than intentional, so you want to be mindful of both your intention and your action. Finally, ask yourself, “Is my intention based in loving-kindness, in compassion and well-wishes for others?”

These questions can help you become aware of your intentions and actions.

Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.

—PAULO COELHO,
THE ALCHEMIST

There is no denying intuition. Even extremely rational, commonsensical people can think of moments when they were helped by intuition. In fact, Aristotle defined wisdom as “intuitive reason combined with scientific knowledge.”

Our five senses enable us to perceive a part of physical reality—we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch the world around us. But inevitably we come up against the limits of our five senses and rational thought. That is when we must connect with the heart and its intuitive power in order to know what to do.

You cannot hear the voice of your heart with your ears or indeed with any of your other senses. For that you need intuition, a form of perception that transcends sensory perception.

 LINDA FRANCIS

Five-sensory perception is everything you can experience with your five senses. Everything you can see, like the ocean, everything you can hear, everything you can touch, everything you can smell, like a chocolate cake baking in the oven, everything you can taste, like a strawberry or a mango. Now we have access to more than the five senses, to another bigger sensory system that can give us information that our eyes and ears and nose and taste and touch cannot usually give us.

Your heart gives you access to multisensory perceptions—your intuition—just as it connects you with the universe and the higher level of your consciousness. Intuition is intangible but also very personal. No two people on earth have the same fingerprints, and the
same holds true for intuition: no two people’s intuition works in the same way. Every human being has his or her own distinct intuition, which is fed by the emotions.

Intuition is the heart’s language. You can find out how your intuition works by directing your attention inward, just as you look inward to connect with your heart.

 GARY ZUKAV

Imagine you have spent the day hiking in a mountainous country. And now you realize you don’t know where you are. And it’s getting dark, and it’s getting cold, and you are shivering. Now it’s getting darker, so dark that you can’t see anything at all. But you hear strange sounds: “Ooooh. Is that an owl?” You see a dark shape: “Ooooh, was that an animal? Was that a bear?” But something inside you says, “It’s okay, you are okay. This is a good place to be.” But you’re hungry, and your stomach is growling. You need to get home. And something inside you says, “That’s okay, you’re all right.” But people are worried about you and you need to find your car immediately. And again something inside you says, “It’s all right, you’re okay, you’re okay.” You lie down and you try to sleep. At last, the sun rises and you see almost in front of you a steep cliff and you are at the top of it. If you had gone just a few feet more, you would have fallen over the cliff. The rising dawn shows you what could have taken your life. The voice inside you, the one that said, “It’s okay, this is a good place to be,” saw everything. It saw the cliff. It knows exactly where you need to go and why. That is multisensory perception.

By opening your heart, you tap into your intuition, which lets you perceive a nonvisible reality that you cannot discern with your five senses. Whereas your senses can be misled, your intuition will never let you down.

 LINDA FRANCIS

This is the voice of the soul speaking to you. It tells you many more things than how to stay alive. It tells you where friends and colleagues are waiting, what paths to avoid, and what paths to explore. It always guides you, and supports you, and takes you toward meaning. Multisensory perception is the experience and the knowing that goes beyond the five senses.

 PAULO COELHO