Reading: from The Power of Intention, by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, pp. 38-41

“There’s no disputing the existence of your free will…..Indeed, you’re in a continuous state of deliberate choice-making….Intention …isn’t about having a strong desire and backing it up with a pit-bull kind of determination ….[But] your willpower is so much less effective than your imagination, which is your link to the power of intention. Imagination is the movement of the universal mind within you. Your imagination creates the inner picture that allows you to participate in the act of creation….your imagination is the concept of Spirit within you. It’s the God within you….

Willing yourself to be happy, successful, wealthy, number one, famous, the top salesperson, or the richest person in your community are ideas born of the ego and its obsessive self-absorption. In the name of this willpower, people run roughshod over anyone who gets in their way….

Your imagination allows you the fabulous luxury of thinking from the end. There is no stopping anyone who can think from the end ….In imagination , dwell on the end, fully confident that it’s there in the material world and that you can use the ingredients of the all-creative Source to make it tangible ….

Become indifferent to doubt and to the call of your will. Remain confident that through continued reliance on your imagination your assumptions are materializing into reality.”

Sermon

There is a bumper sticker that says, “Imagine world peace.” Can you? Can you imagine world peace? Let’s try it. Will you take a moment to close your eyes and have a sense of our world and where there is strife, which is just about everywhere, can you imagine peace descending over it? What does it look like? What does it feel like? Create it and stay with it a moment. (When I looked at you in your imagining, you were smiling or you looked so peaceful yourself.)

If the leaders in all the world’s countries asked their people to imagine world peace and then do everything in their power every day to think peace, speak peace, and take action to do everything that will bring about peace, will it happen? It might if we had a collective plan and training to hold the image of peace and perhaps have chants and advertisements to remind us. It would take a lot of work to collectively change our habits of thought, speech, and action.

Perhaps we have to be at a certain stage in our development to even feel confident enough that we can actually bring something about that we imagine. I wonder how many of you now have a home of your own because you dreamed it, planned and saved for it and brought it into being.

I wonder how many of you now have children that you dreamed, planned, and saved for….Then there are the unplanned…! Or at least earlier than planned! I wonder how many of you have a career that you dreamed and planned for and brought into being.

Deep down, we know that we create our world and our lives. We have done it for those things we wanted the most. We have just not owned the extent to which we are co-creators in this life. Our world is the way it is—that is, a bit messy or tacky—because not enough of us understand yet that we can have a better world; we can have the world and the life that we can imagine. But we can’t have it without working on it with the natural force within us—the force that Wayne Dyer calls the “power of intention.” This power of intention is our own creative force aligned with the creative force of the universe, or God, if you like.

In his 2004 book, The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-Create Your World Your Way, Wayne Dyer said that for many years he believed in will power as the path to personal growth. More recently, he has shifted his thinking away from the purely psychological to the view that real growth takes place in the far easier and happier flow of the Spirit; this is the kind of growth that has at its center the benefit of yourself and others. (Dyer, p. 4)

It is one thing to have an image of what we want to create; it is another to gather sufficient power or energy around it to bring it into reality. The image must have a spiritual foundation that is far greater than mere will. What we want to create is far easier to do when we come from the center of our being, or Spirit, for it is pure connection, pure creativity. We connect with it in our meditation, or in our place of quietness, where there is no thought, just pure awareness. And just where is this place? It is the place where you are when the bell rings after our prayer and in your own deep private times of silence.

The power of intention, then, is the creative energy that flows from the part of us that is connected to All. It is Spirit. We can call it Creativity, Spirit, or God—whatever fits our perspective. But it is not will; it is much deeper. Wayne Dyer says, “It’s an inner awareness that we explicitly feel, and yet at the same time cannot truly describe with words. I use this concept to help guide me toward the power of intention that’s the source of creation, and activate it in my daily life.”

Being connected with the power of intention is the first thing and we do this by meditation and we can begin this simply by putting a hand on the heart and chanting I AM…I AM…I AM. The second thing is using the imagination to create the end goal and we hold the image or notion in our minds, which Dyer calls “thinking from the end.” He gives the example of finishing his book; before he began, he held the end product in his mind. The book was not forced, it flowed from his intention, his deep creative river that flows through all.

But there is something else that keeps us grounded in the spiritual center and it is seven-fold. Dyer calls these the seven faces of intention. These are:

creativity, kindness, love, beauty (or truth),
expansiveness, abundance, and receptivity.

He advises us to write these on index cards and learn them by heart, stick them around the house and ponder them. All that we do should fall into these categories and all should be embraced.

This is the beginning of a New Year. In our culture, it is a natural time to evaluate our lives and make decisions for the future. Let us take an example of what we might use our imagination for thinking from the end. Let us assume that I am in a job that I dislike. I want to be more engaged with people. I imagine myself in a place, surrounded by people who are smiling at me. We are interacting, working together, and helping one another. The place is pleasing to me. I have a sense of physical, mental, and financial well being. I have a notion of the location, which I also like. I will work with the image to include acts of kindness, love, abundance, and receptiveness. In the days and weeks that follow, I come back to my image often, perhaps adding to it, and I begin to take steps towards creating it, perhaps by looking in the newspaper for new opportunities or calling up friends to ask them for ideas or leads for jobs I might like. Each day, I may examine my progress and say, “Where is the love or beauty in my efforts so far?” By this I keep myself connected with Spirit.

Let us say that I want to draw to myself a wonderful partner. I create an image of that person with qualities I admire and I make plans to meet such a person keeping the qualities of creativity, kindness, love, etc. in my mind.

Or let us say I have health problems and want to restore myself to good health. I would create clear and strong images of myself as a healthy person. I plan to give myself every opportunity to find medical professionals who will help me with my health issues. I may seek out alternative health practitioners and include diet and exercise as much as possible. All the time, I will ponder my inclusion of kindness, love, receptivity and so on in my regime.

Your power of intention imaginings can also be for group goals, such as beginning a successful business or a happy family life. If you are oriented to meditation, you could include “I AM Meditation prayers,” using spoken prayers to help bring about what you want to create. By the way, I am offering I AM Meditation for the next two months beginning on Tuesday, January 24th 6 to 7 PM. Notice that it is only one hour, 6 to 7 PM. After two months, we’ll shift to Thursday evenings, and then Wednesdays. You can sign up for it today, if you wish. It is just one of many offerings. You might think that this is like creative visualization. It is, but it differs in that it is grounded in Spirit, not will.

Religion is about connecting meaningfully with life and Spirit. Your imagination allows you the fabulous luxury of thinking from the end. If you want some group help with doing it, let me know and we’ll work on the power of intention together; now that’s powerful!