How do you know that your intentions are right?

The quote at the end pretty much answers that one, or there’s this quote that’s always stuck with me, from someone named Cathy Cretsinger:

There is a right course and a wrong course, but it is more dangerous to you if you follow the right course on someone else’s authority than if you follow the wrong course on your own.

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How do you know that your intentions are right?

1. Immature –> where I’d wish for something concrete (ie, that girl X likes me), and be unhappy unless it happened. These types of wishes flooded my school years as a kid.

2. Progressive –> where I’d realize that the reason I wanted girl X to like me (for example) was that so I’d be “happy,” or some other relative state of mind. Why not wish for that state of mind, however it may be delivered to me? Why limit that state of mind only one way of occuring? (ie, girl X liking me).

3. Mature –> where I would return to stage 1, but carry with it the lesson from stage 2. Here, my goals/wishes are concrete and specific once again, but now 1) I realize that this course of action isn’t necessarily the only means to my ends, but rather one path I’m focusing on, and 2) I am now properly centered (so whatever direction things go, I’ll be able to adjust accordingly.)

For me, this is inspired by Joseph Campbell’s great quote from the power of myth. He says that people aren’t looking for a meaning of life, but rather an “experience of being alive” so that “our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality.” Whatever shape this experience may take, then so be it! But that doesn’t mean we cannot seek this experience through following specific intentions, at least at the outset.

tim, are you familiar with charles cosimano?

There is a decent quote by Marcus Aurelius which may be an apropos closing for this discussion:

This quote is a good way of opening a discussion. What a beautiful quote.