Intention versus will – how to best harness our strength and energy towards achieving tasks and with heart and intention.

I love my garden.  I love growing everything I can.  I especially love the deep satisfaction that can come from cooking fresh garden produce to make a delicious meal.  But, I have to be honest, sometimes my garden rules me and it is more about being busy to flat out, or even overwhelmed, than simply enjoying home grown food.  How can this pattern move from stress to more balance?

This year I also wanted to plant root vegetables in my garden at mid-summer.  In our climate, this is often a good time to plant if you want big, full root vegetables for mid-winter meals.  However, I just did not have time, so I let the idea pass.  Then, in autumn as I walked around the garden I noticed that all the self-seeded plants were the root vegetables I would have planted.  We had daikon radishes, turnips and many, many self-seeded parsnips – as many as I might have had from actual planting.  It is as if my intention had self-seeded without me actually doing anything!

Reflecting on this issue while I was working the other day, I had the insight what I am struggling with is intention.  Sometimes, my early intention to enjoy eating from the garden turns into lists of projects and tasks.  At this point, the original intention is actually lost, buried deep under lists, tasks, achievements and doing. I am not sure if my ego is stuck on achievement and outcomes but it is as if I lost the original intention under all those lists.  When I reflected on this, I tried to go back to my original intention – which was actually to enjoy the beauty of a garden and sometimes eat food from it.  What I am doing is far from that. I am busy, stressed and pressured. So, I dropped my task list and cleaned up my garden space, to bring out the shining beauty of all the plants and beds full of colour and productivity.  I felt better about my garden and all of my life working in it.  I sat back more, reflecting on its beauty – instead of working harder and more! Clearly, the focus of intention was something worth reflecting on.

Each week I use intention and a ceremony to set up my intention for my shiatsu and healing work.  The intention centres my mind and gives me focus on work for the greater good. The first stage of the ceremony is taking time to reflect, meditate and gather the content of an intention. Then the ceremony is easy and follows the theme that arose.

The intention is important and it is something that has become hidden in our goal-oriented, ego achieving world.  Part of my intention is be living well with my partner and children on the land.  This lies below goals and achievement.  It is like the heart of living well.  With our focus on goals and achievement, the heart is too often lost completely. The intention must lie at the heart of what we do and guide us to do it well.

Intention comes from the heart and active doing comes from the will.  The heart is the centre of the body and of our spirit in our body. The will is the kidneys. This pair, the heart and kidneys form the main axis for the functioning of all other systems in our bodies. If we wear out with too much activity our kidneys might collapse, or, worse still, fail to inform our hearts how to be in the world. So, try to get beneath your to-do lists and look at your intention, for your health and wellbeing in the world.