SET YOUR NAVIGATION AND ENJOY THE RIDE.
It’s all about setting your intention.
Intention is your request for direction and learning. It lets your Plant Ally know which gifts you need from the field of infinite possibility – gifts that will serve your unique circumstances and evolutionary wishes.
Remember the old-timey movies where a bandit would scale the castle walls? He’d tie a four-hooked anchor to the end of a rope, swing it round and round overhead to build momentum, then fling it up and over the wall. The grappling hook would set on the stones above and he’d climb the rope to the top. That’s intention; it’s a grappling hook of purpose, an energetic thread that you toss over the ego wall and into the vast field of wisdom and love, and when it catches, you pull yourself forward.
When your Plant Ally takes you into the field of infinite possibility it can be entertaining and mind opening, but it can also become overwhelming and confusing, even frightening. Intention is how you narrow this field to get what you need. Setting your intention is like going to Costco, if you don’t have a list of what you want, you’ll get blown away by the variety, and spend waaaaay more than you had to. And the next day you’ll wonder why the hell did you buy that twelve-pack of salted dried rhubarb. Your intention sets direction and focuses your journey.
Another way to think about it is allowing the intention to be your navigation or your GPS coordinates for a destination. Without the navigation when entering uncharted waters, you can get thrown off coarse. Set the navigation and enjoy the ride.
With your intention, you are making a request of your Plant Ally. Your Ally has access to everything and anything, if you just ask. If you don’t ask, it’ll just take you round and round and show you a whole bunch of stuff, some random, some relevant, and some bizarre. We refer to this kind of experience as a “bad trip.” Of course, a good trip can be scary and challenging, but it’s directionally useful, it brings you to deeper wisdom and easier love.
Consider this three step “formula” as you think/feel through your intention:
- Ask a question. Imagine that you’re about to sit at the feet of a Master, what would you like to learn? You begin with a question, right? Something like:
- Show me how…
- How do I…
- Guide me to…
- What’s the best/fastest/easiest way to…
- Help me to…
- What will be the outcome of…
- Teach me how…
- Be specific. Broadly speaking, our intentions fall into two buckets – healing (recovering ourselves), and growing (expanding ourselves). But we want to make a specific request of our Ally. Avoid layered requests, stick with one topic, one focus. It’s tempting to add layers because we have more than one area we’re working on – health, relationship, money, power, sex, career, children, etc. Don’t confuse your Ally!
- Confusing intention: Show me how to grow my business and heal my stomach problems.
- Clear intention: Teach me how to take great care of my gut.
- Confusing intention: How do I heal my relationship with my brother and find a way to get promoted.
- Clear intention: Guide me to open my heart.
- Be brief. You’ll want your intention to be short and memorable. Why? Because in the throes of the ceremony, when the energy is getting wild and you’re feeling lost or distracted, you’ll use your intention to re-set the course and orient back to what you need. If your intention is long-winded, it’s damn near impossible to recall it on demand when your system is flooded with medicine.
Now, coming back to surrender, the counterbalance of intention. Surrender is trust, trusting your Ally to bring you what you need, especially what you need that you haven’t consciously named. When you sit at the feet of the Master and ask to learn, you may be surprised by the lesson. You have to blend your intention and agency with surrender and trust. Be vigilant and be open. Be determined and be curious. Be specific and be sweeping. Since you don’t know the answer at your current level of consciousness, you must be willing to enter the ceremony and let your Ally bring what you didn’t expect.
Information brought to you by E. Kaufmann from Sapatica.com
Contributing writer: Lane Carlson WhatsYourMedicine.org