We are swimming in an ocean of intent.  People often have the mistaken idea that intent is a purely human attribute.

Yes, and often equate it purely with WILL.

Very true - will and intent are two separate things.  Each of us already operates on many levels of intent naturally.  Your breath and your heart beats without you thinking about it, but the intent to do that is natural.  Will is like the fuse, intent is the bomb.  You have to gather up your materials and make your bomb before the fuse is worth anything.

I know both intent and will are central in the practice and study of a magician.  And they have many types of exercise designed to focus and clear each of those out.  So do shamans.  Will is applied to intent, not the other way around.  You can have the will to be successful, but if you don't create the intent on what and how to get there the will won't help.

The will is ineffective when there is no intent?

That's the way I see it.

Is that like a person who wants a million dollars, and therefore just increases their *wanting* by focusing on that?

Exactly.  Wanting has nothing to do with it, it's what you intend to do that starts everything.  But look at the different types of intent - there is natural intent, personal intent, and the issue of competing intents.

What is intent?

Intent is the unyielding intention of doing X.  It has to be built up, and energy applied to it.

Seems every intent would need to have a priority.

In a way, it does in people.

How does the universe know how much to devote to each intent?

That is truly a mystery, the universe.  How many times have you heard people say, I'd like this or that, but it's not a big priority with me?

Lots of times.

Well, they are still spending energy on all those intentions.  Wouldn't it make sense to clear yourself out of all those little things and focus on the ones that really matter to you?

How is that done?

You learn to clear yourself out, in reality, by recapitulating and learning to become a non-person.

A non-person?

Think of will as physical action being applied according to a plan you have already laid down which is the intent.  Shamans hollow themselves out so that when they focus their intent, it is as powerful as possible.

Seth said that, "Once an intent exists in the minds it lives out its destiny, somewhere, somehow, maybe in another dimension or plane of existence, ultimately the intent can be accomplished even if its not readily apparent."

That's very true.  One must be careful about what they intend.

It is hard to deal with sometimes.  Like they say, be careful what you wish for.

True.

I'm wondering if it is possible to intend without realizing it.

There is.  Ultimately, intent can be gathered, and you can use other people's intent, or the planet's itself to accomplish things.  But you already function on a deep level with intent.  It essentially keeps you alive.  To understand the true nature of intent and, as they say, travel to the heart of it, you must come to know how it functions in you on that nonverbal level.  People always want to start out focusing their intent on things outside themselves, like I want this or I need that to happen, when the first thing they should be looking into is internal.

In your recount of your experience moving that rock, would you say that you 'realized' intent in that moment, or did you just become it and focus it, without really understanding what you were doing? Realizing, of course, that for a 15-year-old boy, this was a monumental accomplishment, I did not get the feeling that you were consciously focusing intent at that point.

I had been creating the intent as I moved back and forth, and suddenly I reached a position where I couldn't hold the intent any longer and will set it off.

This may be a bit of a regression.  Was that a true story or a parable to make a point? :)

It was a true story.  I'll show you my scars sometime.

Oh, I believe you.  Just didn't know.

I can tell weirder ones than that.

Am I understanding correctly something I may have intended to do years ago and never completed is still getting energy even though I probably forgot what the original intention was?

Yes, absolutely.  This is why I tell people over and over to recapitulate, to empty out those things.

Ok, how do you recapture if you don't remember?

Set up an unyielding intent to recover it.  You will then.

In other words, a "blanket" statement recover?

Only the intent, and then you will be able to recover them.  Unyielding intent.  Proving that the choice to put will into intent, truly doing it, one can do just about anything.  They say the old shamans could send mountains flying into each other, but something may have been lost in translation.

I guess I'm having a dense moment.  I put out the intent to recapture past intents?

Yes, where you can't seem to get at them form an intent to recover them and apply energy to it.

But it goes beyond just "wishing" you have then behave as if it's being done.

Right, it has to become a part of your worldview, intent to the point it is your reality.

Would another case of focusing intent and will together be of stories of people lifting up cars to rescue a baby, etc.

Yes, the intent is formed, and then they grab it and do it.

In the story, if you had dropped the rock, what would have happened to your attempts to focus your intent in the future?   Would they be weakened?  Do you think that failing in your attempt to focus, with a VERY obvious result would affect your ability to be "unyielding" in the future?  I would think you would be weakened by your knowledge that you had failed.

Failure and success are both the same.  Picking up cars and such aren't the only application of intents and will working together.  Usually, only a matter of timing and perspective.

No, I was just using that as an example of it.

But as I said, the best place to start learning to handle intent is internally.

Like in healing yourself?

Yes, or in wanting to recall all your dreams, lets say.

So just as in the case of those who had to lift a car to save the baby, THAT is the only thing in your mind to lift that car and safe that baby.  No other thoughts .

Right.  Don't those people usually say, "I didn't think about it I just did it"?  The key to forming intent is to be simple and clear.  Usually, the hero's say they must have been insane to do what they did, and think they were lucky not to have been killed. :)

How are failure and success the same thing if the rock is still in the field?

Because there are other rocks, and to not have been able to lift it would have still taught me about intent - the rock's intent to stay put, and the earth's intent to let it.  Now comes the hard part, how to block out the other thoughts.  It's easy to do in an emergency, but how to do it at will?  Mostly, strong intent is created by repetition in the beginning.  It's okay to think it into being.  Over time, you learn to apply and handle intent without so much of the thought process getting involved.

What about competing intents?

Good question.  Most people never really think about it.  It's like playing the lottery - you may intend to win, but so do other people.  Like life and death itself, if you intend to heal someone, and yet, they aren't healed, but get worse and die.  You were intending an outcome against nature itself - you won't win those generally speaking.

"Nature will win every time."  Yes, I remember that. It struck me boldly in your grandfather's words.  Is it always the strongest intent that succeeds, then?  And if so, must it be fed with the strongest will, or the strongest focus?  Or is there a wildcard in that mix somewhere?

The problem, like I said, is that people start out wanting to affect the outcome of things outside themselves.  You must start internally.  How can you apply intent effectively in a situation of competing intents if you can't even handle your own intent internally?  My Grandfather didn't tell me to go down to the local store and pick a fight with some big yahoo and intend to win.  He showed me that I need to form my intent internally and then use it with something that was easy to start out with.  Intent is formed, and you apply energy to it over and over again until it is unyielding, until it is, in fact, already a part of your reality.

How do you "apply energy"?  Thoughts?  Feelings?  Something indescribable?

Start out with words in your head.  Begin with something small and apply intent.  Say to yourself, "I want to X," and eventually you will begin to feel an energy which you can discern from other energy.  You learn to work directly with that.

In your recall of this event, so much seemed to be an extremely agile perception for a 15 year old boy.

I was a precocious child, I guess.  Keep in mind that this stuff all started when I was much younger.  In a way this was only a progression.

Many people practice intent through affirmations.

Yes, affirmations aren't a bad thing, in general, but people still need to do the basic work.

You knew then that when your grandfather seemed to think that you could move this rock if you properly intended it, it took up residence in your consciousness as a real possibility, lacking only your own intent?

Yes, he knew I would pick up the challenge.  Hey, I was fifteen - gotta be macho then, right? :)  This is what I see all the time.  People want the results, but they don't want to pick up those rocks .

Oh, that is definitely true.  They have to apply the will.

Sort of like, if you think you can, you probably can, but if you think you can't, you most probably won't.

But then, in essence you grandfather added energy to the intent already within you.

Think about it though, he used the very nature of what I was at the time to create a learning situation.

Because that energy aided in manifesting the intent.

Yes, he was a master, I think, at handling things like that.

Can you recover the energy from an intention once it has reached fruition?

Yes, you can.

Would you say that will/intent/focus are equal partners in this creation process?  Or are they slightly unequal in necessary skill/power/development?  In other words, is one more important than the others?

Once it has completed, anything left over or unused is simply reabsorbed.

If I correctly understand it, that is what recapitulation is.

Yes, but I don't know if everyone has that exercise.

I just wondered if it were different for things that were completed vs. ongoing.

Intent shouldn't be bothered by it at all.

That brings me to another thought.  You can't just have will, focus and intent - you must also have power.

You need personal energy.  Power in that sense is a misnomer.

Power as in personal energy, yes.  When you, as a teenager, lifted that boulder, had you had time to accumulate personal energy?  Is this something you had been working on?

Probably enough for that after all it wasn't a major feat in terms of energy itself.  But I think we've covered enough intent for tonight.

And energy is limited?  Or your capacity is limited?

Your capacity is limited.  Don't waste it. :)

When we realize that everything in our lives is direct result of our OWN intent, it certainly takes away the ability to blame others for anything we don't like.

Very true.

The trick that I can see is to identify your unconscious intents that may have manifested in your life.  For which you place blame or feel victimized.

Yes, so it's best not to get in to situations where you will have to expend great amounts of energy on useless competition.  But competing intents can affect you as well.

How do you discover your unconscious intents?

Everyday you form intentions, and everyday you apply energy to those and ones you've created previously, but not all are the same.

Do intentions ever go away?

Not without you clearing them out.

Can you look into someone and see their intentions?

Yes, you can.

How do intentions appear energetically?

Most appear as lines in the sort of yellow blue spectrum.  Others look more like a pale, yellowish violet to me.

In order to manifest our intent, what do we need to do shamanically?  I know the recapitulation is primary, but is there other exercises that will help us to do so?

Yes, pick up rocks, or you could, I guess, if you were really so inclined, polish some and wait for that natural intent to kick in which wants to see the totality of what you are.  :)

When did your beliefs first arise?  What do they stem from?

I began in childhood and went on from there.  My tradition was a family one passed down through the generations.

As with most religions, does shamanism have an "Evil" side?

There are what are called dark shamans, but I wouldn't worry too much about them.  These are people who use their skills to manipulate other people or outcomes.

Do you believe in God?  In any form?

That's a tough one.  No, not really, I guess would be the short answer.  Decisions aren't good or bad.  A decision by it's very nature is just a decision.