Purity Of Intention

Purity of intention is the most important aspect of practice, of being human, and of all that we do. The intention is even more important than the action or the outcome of any given action or words. Purity of intention is that which arises from love and is without agenda; impure intentions arise from fear and are an expression of the ego. As we learn to settle into the stillness within, into our true nature, right action naturally manifests. This is a 22 minute talk and an 18 minute meditation.

Transcript

Last week,

We talked about finding the pivot as a means to transcend polarities and polarizing tendencies.

There's many different pivots.

We can find them within the physical body.

We can find them within the emotions,

Within our thoughts,

Within our relationships.

And this place of the pivot is extraordinary.

It's powerful.

It brings us to our center.

It grounds us within the unity of the divine that we are all a part of.

It's the place that is beyond attachment and aversion,

Where we are no longer buffeted about by those magnetizing poles.

And this place of the pivot is also the place of purity of intention.

Now,

I've mentioned and talked a little bit about purity of intention in many of these classes,

But I've never really gone into depth with that.

And so for today,

I would like to explore this concept more deeply.

In my estimation,

Purity of intention is the most important thing.

It is before all else,

Is to understand the place of motivation to speak or act.

Where are our thoughts going?

What is the underlying reason that we wish to say something or do something or bring something about for our own life or in the world or for others?

The intention is so powerful,

And cultivating that purity of intention,

Where it's arising from a place that's beyond those magnetizing poles of attachment and aversion,

Is so critical to our growth and development.

Some teachers say that the intention is so much more important than the action itself.

And I'll start with one such teacher,

A quote from St.

Augustine.

God bestows more consideration on the purity of intention with which our actions are performed than on the actions themselves.

And what's amazing to me,

As I've researched and studied various spiritual and religious traditions from around the world,

This idea that the intention is even more important than the actions is present across the board.

So,

When we look at purity of intention,

The idea is to understand where this motivation is arising from,

What is underlying our words and actions.

And if we look closely,

If we learn to observe ourselves closely,

If we become more mindful of our inner world,

We can begin to see very clearly over time.

Are our actions motivated by the ego,

By fear,

By attachment or aversion?

Are they coming from past trauma or defense mechanisms or conditioned or habituated patterns of thought or ways of being?

Or are they coming from a place beyond all of that,

Where we are touching into the depth of ourselves,

Of our true nature,

Of our natural state,

Where we are grounded in that unity of the divine,

In that place of peace,

Compassion and wisdom that allows us to act with that purity of intention without thought of self.

It allows us to act with skillful means,

The balance of compassion and wisdom,

Of being able to perceive reality as it is and understand what actions and words are going to bring greater harmony,

Bring greater harmony within ourselves,

Within our relationships and environment.

And when we act from that place of purity of intention,

That's exactly what occurs,

Even without us desiring for there to be greater peace in the world.

Because we have to be careful,

It can be easy to want to desire greater peace,

Greater harmony and greater balance,

But if we get attached to that as a conception,

All too often we think that we have to change this,

That and the other to bring about that peace in the world,

Which then that's coming from a place of ego,

Whereas when we come from that place of purity of intention,

It naturally brings about that peace within ourselves and it brings about greater peace in our immediate environment through the atmosphere that we create.

And then we know in each moment what is going to be more harmonious.

Now,

I should say at the start that as with all things,

This is not black and white.

It's not that either we are acting with purity of intention or we are acting completely from ego and impure intentions.

Usually there's a little bit of a mix,

But as we examine ourselves deeply,

We can begin to tease out how much of our underlying motivation is coming from that pure place within and how much of it is coming from all of the other aspects.

And as we sit with that,

We can allow those other aspects to go and we can focus on that purity.

And as we focus on it,

That will grow and become more and more of the underlying motivation in all that we do.

The purity of intention is an expression of the soul,

Of the divine,

Of that underlying unity.

As I said,

It's when we are beyond the pole of attachment and aversion,

Because attachment and aversion create tension within the physical body and within the mind.

That we're always trying to do something,

To change something about ourselves or about others,

About the world.

And when we move towards that place of purity of intention,

There's no longer any tension.

There's no longer resistance.

We let go of that resistance and we move towards the state of presence.

We move towards perceiving ourselves and reality as we are,

As complex,

Multidimensional,

Impermanent manifestations of the One,

Of the Divine,

Of God,

Of reality.

There are many words that try to gesture towards this,

And often we get caught by the words instead of understanding what they're trying to convey.

So,

Purity of intention comes about as we focus more and more on that inner world,

As we guide our intention into the inner world and let go of being caught by all of the drama of the outer world of continually changing form and dynamics.

And I would suggest that this is one of the main purposes of mindfulness and meditation.

It is to give us that time and space to focus,

To bring awareness to the state of the body and the mind and the emotions,

Moment to moment.

And as we do so,

Just that guiding our awareness towards that inner world,

Towards the state of our individuated being in all of its multidimensional facets,

Just that allows a lot of those accretions of the ego to start to soften,

To start to dissolve.

We begin to heal and become more whole as we let go of some of those defense mechanisms,

As we let go of the imprints from previous traumas and difficulties and challenges.

As we move towards the inner world with mindfulness,

It's like letting the silt settle.

And when the silt settles,

The water becomes clear and then that pure light within us can shine forth.

Previously in a class,

I don't know,

Maybe last year sometime,

We talked a bit about mindfulness of speech and how when we take periods of silence and not speaking,

It allows us to become even more aware of the thoughts and then more aware of the motivations and the intentions that are giving rise to those thoughts or that desire to speak or act.

This is guiding us towards that place of purity of intention.

Now,

When we talk about purity of intention,

It's important to touch on some other concepts.

You know,

In today's world,

A lot of times we'll hear talk about being true to oneself,

About being authentic,

About following the heart,

All of which I believe are pointing towards this place of purity of intention,

Of resting in our innate divine natural state.

And yet,

If we are not careful,

If we do not take the time to actually sit with ourselves and know ourselves deeply,

Sometimes we can think that we are being true to ourselves or following our heart when in fact we are still following the ego and conditioned patterns.

And so to be true to ourselves and follow our hearts,

We have to create the space to understand all of those multidimensional facets of ourselves and see what part is giving rise to the underlying motivation.

It's also important to understand that when we talk about purity of intention,

It is about the intention and that we cannot judge actions by their outer appearances or outcomes,

Nor can we judge them by rigid moral standards,

Because ultimately,

As I said at the beginning,

It's not the action that matters,

But the underlying intention.

This relates to concepts of good and bad and how what we might judge as good or bad in a moment frozen in time,

If we look at that in the bigger picture and see how that relates to everything else,

We realize that things that might seem bad or negative in one moment can actually give rise to some of the greatest good and vice versa.

And I bring this up because it is very complex and complicated,

And that's the nature of being human.

And what makes it so challenging at times in life is there are so many different facets to our lived experiences,

And the mind wants it to be simple,

Black and white,

Good and bad,

Right and wrong,

Because we believe that if we can put things into these dualistic categories,

Then we know what we need to do,

What we need to do to be good people,

What we need to do to bring about peace in the world.

But it is often so much more complex than that,

And it all starts with examining our inner world,

Getting to know ourselves deeply and understanding our intentions and where that motivation to act is arising from.

As we've talked a lot over the last couple of months about peace,

This has often been the focus,

That the way to bring greater peace into the world is to find and cultivate that peacefulness within ourselves,

Because that peacefulness gives rise to that purity of intention that brings forth all virtue.

The concept of purity of intention also relates to the ideas of being and doing.

When we act because we want to bring about a certain end,

It lacks purity of intention.

It means we're acting with an agenda,

And it means that we have these conditioned ideas of how things should be,

And that's when we're caught in the state of doing.

But with purity of intention,

It means letting go of the fruits of our actions,

Of not being concerned with the outcomes,

But resting in that place of being and allowing our words and actions to arise from that place.

When we reach that place,

Then we do what we know is right in our heart,

In our purified heart,

Our purified state of consciousness,

And we do not need it to have any certain impact because we have the trust and faith that simply acting from that place will bring forth the highest benefit.

The concept of purity of intention also has a very close relationship to karma.

Every thought we have creates impressions,

And thoughts that we actually speak out or act on create even deeper impressions.

This is related to the neuroplasticity of the brain and how those connections are carved.

And so it's the intention behind each thought that then creates the thoughts and the actions and the words that create those connections in the brain.

And so if our intentions stem from a place of love,

Of purity,

Of compassion and wisdom,

From a desire to truly do what is best without preconditioned notions of what is best and without attachment to outcomes,

That generates that state of peace and groundedness and being within the actual physiology of the brain and the neural connections.

And so as we do that,

It creates more and more of that energy within us,

And we reap the fruit of that karmic impact.

And it works the other way as well.

If we're acting from a place of greater impurity of intention,

Of ego,

That creates those neural connections in the brain,

And we generate more and more of that,

Which actually leads to greater suffering for ourselves and others.

Because pretty much all unnecessary suffering,

All suffering that is not simply physical pain or challenge that we have that is inevitable as part of being a living being,

All of that unnecessary suffering comes from the ego and being separated from that place of our true nature.

Ultimately,

Every intention that we allow to become more solidified through speaking or acting it,

Frames our mind and our consciousness in a certain manner.

And this is powerful in both directions.

And so as we begin to shift our intention and take that time to be mindful of where it's arising from,

We can purify our intention and we can bring that into greater solidity and groundedness within our consciousness and state of being.

To cultivate purity of intention,

We must have patience and compassion.

Patience is necessary to create the space to observe our minds,

Our thoughts,

So we can begin to see where the motivation is arising from without being reactive.

It takes a great deal of patience to sit with things as they are.

Sometimes it can be one of the most seemingly impossible tasks.

When everything is stirred up and we have angst or anger or fear,

It can feel almost impossible to create the space to simply be with that as it is.

And that's why patience,

Etymologically,

Is the calm enduring of suffering.

Because we have to be able to sit calmly in our suffering,

In our desire to react,

Without giving into that desire.

And it takes compassion to cultivate purity of intention because we have to make space to be present and compassionate with all of that that we're experiencing and all of that that we're observing in others and the world around us.

And to allow it to be as it is.

And yet it is through having that compassion that all of that inner suffering and difficulty begins to transform.

It begins to burn off all of that which is unnecessary.

And what we're left with is that purity of intention.

When we can withstand anything and rest grounded in that place of the divine within us.

This is also how we find our true freedom and happiness.

When we realize that our primary responsibility is to gravitate towards this place of purity of intention,

Of presence,

Of experiential awareness and being with things as they are,

There is no longer any feelings of guilt or a need to try to control circumstances or others.

This is where we find true freedom,

Where we are no longer held in bondage by conditioned ideas of how we or others or the world are supposed to be.

And we get to rest in the pure bliss of presence,

Experiencing each moment in all of its complexity,

In all of its beauty.

And we find that stillness within.

And from that stillness,

We find the place of right action.

Only with purity of intention and clarity of thought and peacefulness in our hearts will we be able to alleviate the suffering of the world.

To achieve such a state requires discipline,

Courage,

And a deep self-awareness.

And this is why we practice.

We practice so that we can use our free will to surrender to the will of the soul,

To find ourselves in the presence of the divine,

To realize that we are already in heaven when we attain that natural state.

And when we reach that place,

We bring forth and manifest virtue and are of true benefit to others and the world.

Before we go into the meditative practice,

I'll leave you with one more quote from the Buddhist tradition.

This is from Words of My Perfect Teacher by Patra Rinpoche.

First of all,

It is most important to turn inwards and change your motivation.

If you cannot,

You might think that you are studying and practicing the Dharma,

But it will be no more than a semblance of the real thing.

Purifying our intention is the most important thing before all else.

All right,

Let us practice.

If you will,

Please find a comfortable and stable posture for meditation.

You can be seated or lying down.

The most important thing is that you have a stable base beneath you,

Supporting you and holding you up.

Once you arrive in your posture,

Release all unnecessary tension from the body and bring awareness to the natural movement of the breath.

Begin abdominal breathing.

Allowing the inhale,

Allowing the abdomen to gently expand,

And with each exhalation,

Allowing it to gently contract,

Allowing the chest and shoulders to remain relaxed and still.

As you exhale,

Allowing the chest to remain relaxed and still.

As you continue abdominal breathing,

Use each exhalation to soften any tension in the physical body,

To soften any tension in the mind,

And to soften and relax your awareness into the inner world.

Exhale,

Allowing the chest to remain relaxed and still.

As you continue to soften into the inner world,

Make space to simply observe all of the complex multidimensionality of this inner world,

The various sensations that arise,

The emotions,

The thoughts.

Realize that you have an entire universe within.

As you observe this inner world,

This inner universe,

Begin to observe the underlying energy of each sensation and emotion and thought.

Exhale,

Allowing the chest to remain relaxed and still.

Exhale,

Allowing the chest to remain relaxed and still.

Notice when there is the energy of fear,

Of wanting to change something,

Of wanting to be some certain way,

And allow there to be space for each experience and sensation to be as it is,

Recognizing each experience as part of your complexity.

Exhale,

Allowing the chest to remain relaxed and still.

Exhale,

Allowing the chest to remain relaxed and still.

Notice how in simply making space for each sensation and thought to be as it is,

There begins to be a greater stillness and presence within.

Focus on that stillness.

Exhale,

Allowing the chest to remain relaxed and still.

Exhale,

Allowing the chest to remain relaxed and still.

Exhale,

Allowing the chest to remain relaxed and still.

Bring the awareness to the heart center and soften into this space within your physical body,

Letting go of any resistance,

Tension,

Or guarding,

And softening into the stillness within.

Exhale,

Allowing the chest to remain relaxed and still.

Bring awareness to the lower dantian,

The energetic center in the center of the lower abdomen.

Focus on the stillness within this area of your physical body.

Exhale,

Allowing the chest to remain relaxed and still.

Feel the solidity beneath you,

Supporting you and holding you up.

Notice the stillness at the point of contact between your body and the stability.

Become aware of the air around you in which you are immersed,

Like a fish in water.

And observe the stillness at the point of contact,

The pivot between the outermost layer of your physical body and the air.

When you are ready,

Intend to keep your awareness grounded in this stillness.

As you gently and slowly begin to open your eyes,

And with a soft gaze,

Take in the world around you,

Knowing that this stillness underlies all of manifest reality.

It is from this place of stillness,

Of peace,

Of the pivot,

That we are able to see ourselves clearly,

That we are able to know our intentions and where they're arising from.

It takes practice and dedication to continually observe our thoughts,

Emotions,

Our state of consciousness.

But as we do so,

That silt begins to settle.

We let go of the fears and the defense mechanisms and the patterns,

And we drop more and more into our true nature.

As we rest in our true nature,

We can be true to ourselves,

We can follow our hearts,

We can act spontaneously as we need to in each moment because it is always arising from a place of purity of intention,

Of compassion,

Of seeing the underlying unity that is always present,

And understanding what will bring greater harmony into the world.

I will leave you with one last quote from Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

I want,

First of all,

In fact,

As an end to these other desires,

To be at peace with myself.

I want a singleness of I,

A purity of intention,

A central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can.

I want,

In fact,

To borrow from the language of the saints,

To live in grace as much of the time as possible.

I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense.

By grace,

I mean an inner harmony,

Essentially spiritual,

Which can be translated into outward harmony.

Thank you all for joining me today.

Reviews

Thank you Thomas for another wonderful, insightful talk and meditation. It really brought me to a deep place of self reflection. I found myself scanning though my actions in the past and of current ideas realizing when they came from a place of purity and when they were a reflection of my ego.
I have really enjoyed this series of talks and I would love a suggestion on which of your tracks would build on this series.
Blessings
Lucy

Wisdom and heart -❤️
2nd time around it was more like a volcano than a still place …..😊🙏

Thank you for helping me become a better person. Every time I listen to this one I learn something new.

Thank you so much for your wise talks and meditations. I am listening to them daily and they are having a profound impact on my life and, subsequently, on the lives of those around me.
Thank you 🙏

This beautiful session has become a frequent listen because each time, I allow the silt to settle more and more. I let go and open more fully, and I experience the vast space of presence. Thomas, you continue to be an incredible teacher to me as I grow and I am deeply grateful!! Namaste 🙏🏼

So wise. Really gets to the heart of our existence and reminds me to always be looking deeper at my motivations. And, he's so gentle in his delivery.

The idea, the hope to live from Purity of Intention changes everything. Thank you for your wise message and deep, still meditation.

You resonate so deeply with my desire to BE in Grace🙏🏻♥️

I relisten to these rich talks grateful for them ✨

Thank you Thomas. Food for the head, the heart and the soul. Much to chew on. Kind Regards, chea.

Wonderful!! As always!! That closing quote is everything. (Who was the author again?)
Thank you!! 🙏🏼💞💥

Wise words, imparted with so much knowledge in such a caring, understanding, gentle manner…followed by a guided soulful meditation.
Always good Thomas.
Namaste✨🙏

I love you so much. With total purity of intentions. Your teachings have the feeling of honey. The compassion in your voice is palpable. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, your seeking of stillness.

Thank you, Thomas, for another encouraging talk and meditation. When we are most challenged in our complex daily lives, your words and wisdom have a powerful effect on bringing us back to a place of underlying unity. I am deeply grateful and will keep practising! 🙏🌟

vdaka

Such a beautiful message, dear Thomas - the loving intention within our hearts… and trusting the unfolding. Thank you and love flowing to you and family.🙏

Really wonderful and essential. I will listen several times to this!!!! Thank you so much Thomas. This is right where I am right now.

Always so valuable, useful and interesting. All your talks - reflections can / should be listened several times, and this one is no exception. Will come back and listen and practice again soon, so grateful thank you 🙏🐎