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As the parents of a teenager, we often find ourselves in a series of conversations called, “When am I Going to Use This in Real Life?” Popular episodes include, “When Am I Going to Use Calculus in Real Life?” and “When am I Going to Use Shakespeare in Real Life?”
Between trying to find ways to motivate our kid to stick with the subjects they don’t care about, we’ve given a lot of thought to what really IS important to learn for “real life,” and we believe that near the top of the list are the skills of goal-setting, planning, and follow-through. Sadly, these subjects won’t be covered (directly) in our kid’s high school and they probably weren’t at yours either.
As a result, many of us just stumble upon methods that work reasonably well, and we may start to relate to life as something to be maintained rather than our ongoing creation with infinite opportunities for improvement. The second perspective is not only more gratifying, it’s also a lot more fun.
We want to help you get the training you never received.
If your goals always get pushed to the bottom of your to-do list…
If you doubt your ability to follow through…
If you feel more daunted than excited by your big dreams…
If you procrastinate the changes that will make your life better…
If you know you have more potential than this, but don’t know how to start actualizing it…
Don't give up! You just need to be shown HOW.
That’s what we’ll do for you in our 9 week course, Dreaming and Planning.
We’ll guide you through all the steps for making goals, breaking them down into manageable pieces, and achieving them, step-by-step.
In this course you will actually set and attain a goal that you choose, so you’ll have the experiential instruction of moving through this process to completion (with plenty of hand-holding).
Your confidence will grow.
You’ll build personal integrity.
You’ll start to trust yourself.
Your nervous system will calm down.
You’ll feel less overwhelmed.
The potential everyone always saw in you will finally have a powerful outlet.
It’s life changing!
We can do this together.
Check it out below.
Be well,
Peter and Briana
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As a young adult I often stayed at the beautiful Marin Headlands hostel just north of San Francisco. I was there one weekend while a large group of missionaries was passing through. We were all sharing the same kitchen space and I was chopping some broccoli when a cute young woman around my age approached me. We started talking and I thought it was going well. I have always enjoyed conversing about spirituality and religion, even with people of different beliefs than my own.
At the time I was immersed in learning about Advaita – nondualism – which was blowing my mind. Nondual philosophy asserts that, although we perceive many things that may feel separate, in reality everything is an expression of a single Oneness experiencing itself in infinite ways.
Some people call this Oneness God or Goddess or Source or Divine or Dao. What’s important isn’t the name but the experience of this connection, and how it redefines how we see reality.
I had in my suitcase a book called Aghora in which an eccentric spiritual teacher explains that since everything is God, both sex and eating are simply acts of “putting God into God.” So, when this missionary woman asked me what I was doing, I guess I thought I was being clever by replying, “Oh, just chopping up some God.”
She was clearly taken aback, so I explained that if the whole universe is an expression of one God, then broccoli was of course included, and therefore I was chopping up some God to put into God (myself). She was speechless for a moment, then said – a bit louder than was called for, I thought – “God is not broccoli!” and walked away.
There were several lessons for me in this story, starting with (1) nobody likes a smug person pushing their buttons, and (2) if you truly want to make a difference in the world you need to meet people where they are. But aside from my social failure, maybe the most important lesson was that there’s often a huge difference between the description of an experience and the experience itself. In other words, to understand something intellectually tells us nothing of how we’d be affected by experiencing it.
In lectures, I used to explain how physics seems to “prove” nondualism, hoping that even the nonspiritual types in the class would be won over. I’d point out that while each of us feels we’re separate from everyone else in the classroom, we and the world around us are all just different configurations of the same fundamental stuff – subatomic particles or even more fundamental fluctuations of energy. It’s a powerful idea, but I doubt it’s caused many people to conduct themselves differently towards their neighbors.
For me and most people I know, life changes have come through direct experiences of this Oneness in non-ordinary states of consciousness facilitated mainly by meditation, yoga, ritual, self-inquiry, immersion in nature, music, acupuncture, art, pain, dance, conscious breathing, interpersonal connection, and entheogenic substances. Ordinary reality (even with impressive-yet-unactualized spiritual concepts) appears random and soulless by comparison.
I didn’t have the chance to ask, “If God is not broccoli, what is broccoli?” We tend to draw vague, subjective lines around life and then deem one side worthy of our reverence and the other unworthy, but the abolition of such lines isn’t automatically liberating. I’ve seen people, myself included, latch onto the idea that everything is Divine and then fall into nihilism. Because, if it’s all God, why try? Why care? Why choose one path over any other?
This kind of thinking is a sure sign that we’re operating from a mental concept and not actually experiencing what it represents. It would be similar to take a psychedelic mushroom and hold it between your teeth, telling yourself, “So this is what psychedelic mushrooms are all about. Meh.”
Your homework is to determine whether or not broccoli is God. Since “God” is a spiritual concept, it can’t really be assessed in ordinary reality. Everyday thinking needs to fall away. You can get there using any of the approaches I mentioned above.
Be well,
Peter
P.S. I’d like to share one of my favorite quotes on nondualism from Tantra scholar Christopher Wallis in Tantra Illuminated (slightly abridged for space):
“Since reality is One, and everything is equally an expression of the one divine Light of Consciousness, every experience by definition is an experience of God… If we propose that some things are more God than others, like concentrated orange juice versus watered-down orange juice, then we must propose the existence of something that is not God that waters down divinity. But no such thing can be found, at least in this philosophy, because 1) the definition of God here is the unbounded Light of Consciousness, 2) everything that is known to exist is an object of experience, and 3) every experience is by definition pervaded by consciousness. Therefore, this – whatever is happening right now – is as God as it gets. Now, if you are in a miserable or banal life situation, you may be disappointed by this announcement. But notice I said, ‘This is as God as it gets,’ not, ‘This is as free as it gets.’ Freedom means actually experiencing the divinity in each moment.”
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When building with wood, I spent years trying to figure everything out by myself before it finally occurred to me that a book might be helpful. I found one with lots of pretty pictures and I turned to the section on saws. I was curious to see what kind of advice a book might offer beyond pushing and pulling the saw back and forth. There I came across an unexpected piece of advice: Think the saw down the line.
Sure, the book discussed examining the teeth of the saw, holding it at the right angle, keeping your elbow in close to your side, and other practical stuff. But here was this oddly magical recommendation in a book on wood. The writer went on to explain that generations of woodworkers have done this, and that he was passing it on because it just plain works. The idea is, rather than focusing on manipulating the saw, you focus on the line and use your intention to will the saw to follow it.
It might have sounded crazier if I hadn’t heard of a similar approach to golf. While not exactly known as a sport dominated by new agey thinkers, many golfers do step into woo-woo territory if they think it will help their game. The most common of such practices is visualizing the event as one would like it to go – for instance, a smooth swing, hitting the ball just right, the ball soaring through the air, landing on the green, and rolling into the hole.
Athletes now utilize this technique in virtually every sport, from gymnastics to skeeball. There are even studies showing that “practicing” musical instruments through intention alone (imagining oneself playing piano, for example) leads to measurable improvements in skill. And yet, I would guess that the deliberate application of intention as a success strategy (outside of sports) isn’t a practice that has made it into most people’s daily lives.
If it works on balls and saws, why not use it to make a million dollars or to find a fulfilling relationship? Here are some recommendations for translating this practice to life-creation:
- Clarify. The arc of a ball from golf club to hole is simple to visualize. The arc from, say, a new business idea to a flourishing company is less simple. This makes it harder to visualize and therefore more difficult to grease the rails with intention. You can improve your chances by developing a very clear intention statement using positive language, such as “My business will be earning $100k per month by April 2024.” You can also consider the greater arc as a dot-to-dot with numerous smaller achievements along the way, and create a “sub-intention” for each. Visualizing these shorter distances may be more manageable.
- Potentiate. You can check your intention statement for potency by saying it out loud (to yourself or a friend). How does it feel? Is there a word that needs tweaking? Is it too vague? Or does it fill you with a charge of inspiration? Keep modifying until it feels really good.
- Scribe. Write down your intention statement to make it more real. Use a nice pen and a nice piece of paper. Take your time to get it right.
- Activate. Especially for big goals, you can add potency by enacting your intention in a special way. Consider this process as a starting point: Get into a calm clear mind space, light a candle, state that this ritual is to activate and amplify this intention, and ask for the guidance and support of the universe. As you focus on your intention statement, try to get as much of your whole self on board with it. Imagine that you are making this intention not just with your voice and your mind, but with your heart, with your gut, with every cell and every atom of your being. Imagine all parts of you are aligned in proclaiming this. Let go of any resistance. Thank the universe for hearing and responding. One of my favorite additions to this process is to use a piece of our Intention Paper, writing the intention on it and burning it to transform it from matter to energy and send it out into the world.
- Sustain. In the case of throwing a dart toward a bullseye, you’re ideally holding an intention from the moment you start thinking about it until the dart hits something. That’s not a very long time. Making a million dollars will probably take a bit longer. It’s not always possible to continually hold an intention from conception to fruition, but do whatever you can to keep yourself conscious of what you’re creating. At the least, re-read your intention statement daily. Even better, visualize its actualization for five minutes a day. Even better, feel how you’re going to feel when you’re at the destination.
- Act. When you intend a golf ball to go into a hole, it’s helped along tremendously by your hitting the ball in the direction of the hole. With intention alone, it still might get there eventually, but it’s probably not a common occurrence – especially for someone who isn’t especially practiced in the art of conscious intentioning. The same goes for using intention toward life goals. Don’t put all your eggs in the intention basket, but do maximize the potential of this avenue while also taking physical steps to put yourself out there where opportunities happen.
- Notice and Receive. A vital part of effective intentioning is noticing the good things that come to you and receiving them wholeheartedly. This single step can make more difference in your life than all the others.
Whereas we often use only step six (taking physical action), practicing the other six can greatly enhance our ability to shape life as we desire. Beyond whatever tangible gains this approach might produce, I feel there are wonderful intangible benefits as well. Ultimately it builds self-trust, promotes gratitude, helps us recognize of the potent role our perception plays in our quality of life, and reminds us that choice is always available.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Seven Steps for Harnessing the Power of Your Intention
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As the parents of a teenager, we often find ourselves in a series of conversations called, “When am I Going to Use This in Real Life?” Popular episodes include, “When Am I Going to Use Calculus in Real Life?” and “When am I Going to Use Shakespeare in Real Life?”
Between trying to find ways to motivate our kid to stick with the subjects they don’t care about, we’ve given a lot of thought to what really IS important to learn for “real life,” and we believe that near the top of the list are the skills of goal-setting, planning, and follow-through. Sadly, these subjects won’t be covered (directly) in our kid’s high school and they probably weren’t at yours either.
As a result, many of us just stumble upon methods that work reasonably well, and we may start to relate to life as something to be maintained rather than our ongoing creation with infinite opportunities for improvement. The second perspective is not only more gratifying, it’s also a lot more fun.
We want to help you get the training you never received.
If your goals always get pushed to the bottom of your to-do list…
If you doubt your ability to follow through…
If you feel more daunted than excited by your big dreams…
If you procrastinate the changes that will make your life better…
If you know you have more potential than this, but don’t know how to start actualizing it…
Don't give up! You just need to be shown HOW.
That’s what we’ll do for you in our 9 week course, Dreaming and Planning.
We’ll guide you through all the steps for making goals, breaking them down into manageable pieces, and achieving them, step-by-step.
In this course you will actually set and attain a goal that you choose, so you’ll have the experiential instruction of moving through this process to completion (with plenty of hand-holding).
Your confidence will grow.
You’ll build personal integrity.
You’ll start to trust yourself.
Your nervous system will calm down.
You’ll feel less overwhelmed.
The potential everyone always saw in you will finally have a powerful outlet.
It’s life changing!
We can do this together.
Check it out below.
Be well,
Peter and Briana
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