The most important thing is remembering the most important thing

Tell me, what else should I have done?  Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?  Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life? 

From ‘The Summer Day’ By Mary Oliver

We go into a trance of habitual doing and distraction all of the time, and there is a part of us that knows this, that every day we forget why we are here.  

The most important thing. 

In some way, we are all trying to control our way through the day.  Whichever way you look at it. To get what we want. To get a sense of being valued. To be approved of. To avoid shame. To survive. It’s manipulation on all levels.  

All the time forgetting the most important thing. 

Deep down, there is a knowing presence and awareness of it. Awareness that we are here to experience this presence in its full manifestation.  

The most important thing. 

And in the forgetting, there is suffering. 

This whole world lives on the tip of intention. Your intention in any given moment, creates your experience, so how aware are you of your intention? 

The more we pay attention to our intention the more that intention comes into our awareness. And increasingly so the more we practice. By becoming more conscious of our intention we can inhabit it more. Bring intention into our living and constant conscious awareness. By doing that we have more choice.  

If we can see what’s running our intention, we can drop into a more authentic expression of who we are and what’s most important to us. It will make it less likely that we will forget and fall back into that habitual trance of doing everything other than the most important thing, believing that this trance is a way to keep us safe when it’s just adding to the suffering. 

The challenge is to be intentional about looking at intention. Because we are only truly free when we are doing what the deepest self likes – and this takes some deliberate diving. Are you interested in diving in? 

So how do we dive? 

Watch your thoughts and intentions and where they spring from as they ultimately inform your destiny. Ask continually “what is my intention right now?” There is a tendency in our culture for, and towards, more speed, and this is what convinces us not to drop down, to access the deeper knowing. Racing around really doesn’t help us achieve more, especially not intimacy with this deeper, more present, and liberating intention.  

Trust me when I say that if you move half as fast, you can take in twice as much.  

Slow down, to understand more. That’s step 1. 

And intention without attention doesn’t manifest what you intend. 

Living with true intention allows people to touch freedom. Transformation awakening relies on just two things, intention, and attention, and they go together. The more you become aware of your intention, the more that brings up attention, that brings up more of what you intended so it feeds the intention and so on…a virtuous circle, bringing the most important thing into view.  

Where attention goes energy flows. 

And know that your true intention is not your egos’ will, but your hearts’.  

You won’t like yourself when you are in an egoic intention (trying to control, protect, change others, be adored etc), and so there is an aversion that arises within you, which is an unhealthy and insidious practice. Don’t be fooled by this, it is an illusion that makes you feel worse. 

Because even if you win a rat race – you’re still a rat. 

Yes, we need to be compassionate to this egoic intention, what is arising, before diving down to our deeper presence intention, but move past it. That’s step 2. 

And so how will you know when you have dived deep enough?  

Well, there are at least three signs of a deeper liberating presence intention. 

1 – A liberating intention always has to do with manifesting your innate potential. That is, what’s inherent in your being, to live fully, to realise truth, manifesting your deepest essence. It is not a doing realisation. It is who you are, your nature, your capacity for love and to serve. 

2 – It has to be embodied. Really sincerely and in your body. So, give yourself time to keep diving down. Your entire body will feel it when it is right. 

Your experience of your true aspiration will have different flavours and expressions over time. It expresses your true nature, who you are becoming, and that you are inhabiting it and embodying it in a real way 

3 – Your true aspiration always relates to this moment, right now. Nothing down the road or elsewhere.  

And we want to repeatedly contact our aspiration because then we will be able to pay attention to it in a way that will deepen it. Secure it. Break the habit of the fearful trance.  

Touching it in the moment it deepens the intention and so on. Liberation. 

It must be practised. That’s step 3. 

But we get lost each day in the trance, we practice completely the opposite. 

So, what matters today, right now? We must always be asking. Before everything. 

And know that this is the kindest thing for you and for others, as our impact on others changes over and over as they benefit from our practice. So, keep reminding yourself that the most important thing is remembering the most important thing.  

Time to dive in….. 

—
Andrew.