Living from Intention and Intuition

I've been listening to Oprah and Deepak Chopra's 21 day meditation challenge.  One of the recent ones reminded me of some old, old lessons I've learned.

By old I mean that one of them was first taught to me over 30 years ago before I even got into recovery and the other one I learned very early in recovery.

The concept of "intention" was something I learned in some pretty off-the-wall seminars I took in the 70s.  Off-the-wall or not, I got some information that really helped me navigate some very difficult times. 

The concept is that we can either have unconscious or conscious intentions.  Either way our intentions guide our behavior and therefore create our lives.  It's a whole lot better to have intentions that we choose because otherwise we are kind of driven by whatever our brains come up with at the spur of the moment - which may or may not be what we actually want.  Impulses are not always healthy or positive!

I learned early in recovery from my spiritual mother that rational thinking has it's place but intuition often trumps it for inspiration, God connection, and living from a spirit of love. 

Intention was relatively easy for me to grasp how to use it.  I understood that I could have a vision and intention for my life, for each day of my life and for each moment of my life.  By consciously choosing my purpose/intention, my life grew more and more satisfying.

Intuition was much, much harder.  All the explanations and definitions just seemed kind of lofty and full of air - nothing to get hold of; nothing real.  My spiritual mother suggested I just look back through my life for situations when I had had understanding or knowledge that didn't come from my rational mind. 

Sure enough I could remember many of them and how when I ignored the knowledge, I paid a price.  She said she thought that God and our hearts spoke to us through our intuition, and that by following that guidance we would be able to steer through difficulties that used to have us stumped. 

I'm still practicing choosing intention and daily practicing connection with my intuition.  It's easier but still pretty mysterious.  It has paid off in so many ways.