How Many Intentions at A Time?

[m18pak]

For those who have experience with Intention-manifestation, how many intentions at a time do you think it's possible/prudent to hold before they start cluttering up your energy?

[cylon]

I was thinking of starting a thread like this.

I recently finished the Abraham book "Law of Attraction". The book reminded me that it's ok to have several intentions, but it may help to put your energy into the intentions that are most meaningful to you RIGHT NOW. There's got to be maybe one or two that come to your mind more than most.

[Acting Like Godot]

I think it depends on how easily you detach from your intentions. If you can set the intention and then detach, it wouldn't clutter up your energy.

Personally I set many intentions on all sorts of different things all the time. Some are "big" intentions and some are "small" intentions. The small ones don't clutter up anything, because after I set them, I just let them go.

[jeff3]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

I think it depends on how easily you detach from your intentions. If you can set the intention and then detach, it wouldn't clutter up your energy.

Personally I set many intentions on all sorts of different things all the time. Some are "big" intentions and some are "small" intentions. The small ones don't clutter up anything, because after I set them, I just let them go.

I think it is easier to detach when you have a lot of little things going on at the same time, I suppose that if you consider every act the result of an intention we do it constantly. I think maybe the key here is how many intentions that require us to change we can stand at one time. I've noticed that when I want something that causes a big change in my life it creates a dissonance that has to be reconciled by me conforming to my "picture" or by me changing the picture. In my experience a lot of this at one time is stressful and can cause mental disturbances. If your intention is strong and set in motion properly you may as well buckle your seat belt and hang on. I have noticed that sometimes my first response , or as Steve says alpha reflection, is a message or several messages showing me what I'm in for, kinda like asking "are you sure".

[Lola]

Just thinking/wondering out loud here...

I'm re-reading Law of Attraction right now, too. Just finished re-reading Ask and It Is Given. I've asked myself this same thing about multiple intentions, m18pak, and while reading last night this paragraph jumped out at me.

By staying focused on a subject of your choosing, your point of attraction on that topic will become much more powerful than if your mind moves from subject to subject. There is tremendous power in focusing. ~Abraham/Hicks

Perhaps, especially in the early stages of honing LOA skills, having several intentions at once can be self-defeating. Let's say I have four intentions, three of which are in alignment with my core beliefs and emotions. The fourth, however, elicits contrary beliefs and negative emotions. Wouldn't that dose of negativity in the mix poison the whole batch, so to speak? Does that make sense or am I off base somewhere?

I am concentrating my attention and focus on only one (rather all-encompassing) intention at this time until I get more adept at this process and root out my remaining self-sabotaging beliefs. That intention is to manifest a joyful life in every moment. So all I have to do is be aligned with joy - feel joy, believe joy (easy things for me to do) - and allow joy.

[Lola]

I made this statement this morning

Originally Posted by Lola

I am concentrating my attention and focus on only one (rather all-encompassing) intention at this time until I get more adept at this process and root out my remaining self-sabotaging beliefs. That intention is to manifest a joyful life in every moment. So all I have to do is be aligned with joy - feel joy, believe joy (easy things for me to do) - and allow joy.

I read this (in Law of Attraction) this evening

[We] compliment the person on discovering the most important desire of all: the seeking of joy. For in seeking and finding joy, you not only find perfect alignment with your Inner Being and with who-you-really-are, but you also find vibrational alignment with all things that you desire.

When joy is really important to you, you do not allow yourself to focus upon things that do not feel good - and the result of thinking only thoughts that feel good would cause you to create a wonderful life filled with all things that you desire.

When you hold the desire to be joyful and you are sensitive to the way you feel, and therefore guide your thoughts in the direction of things that feel better and better, you improve your vibration, and your point of attraction becomes one that will only attract - through Law of Attraction - things that you desire.

Deliberately guiding your thoughts is the key to a joyful life, but a desire to feel joy is the best plan of all...because in the reaching for joy, you find the thoughts that attract the wonderful life you desire.
~Abraham/Hicks

I'm freaking myself out.

[Savage]

The number of specific intentions you can specifically handle isn't the main issue. It doesn't really matter if you have just one intention or 50.

The real issue is how clear you are about the kind of person you must be to come into harmony with those intentions and how quickly you can work through the resistance you have towards the state of being where your intentions become reality.

I often find that setting more intentions works better for me because it helps me paint a clearer picture of the new reality I wish to manifest. That's easier for me than considering one or two intentions in isolation.

The tricky part about setting lots of intentions, however, is that you'll need to carefully consider their interactions and make sure they aren't in conflict. They have to work together congruently. For example, if you have an intention to get a promotion at work and you also intend to double your income, but the promotion will only yield a 10% salary raise, you might want to drop the promotion intention, since it's not necessarily congruent with the other intention.

[Lola]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

The real issue is how clear you are about the kind of person you must be to come into harmony with those intentions and how quickly you can work through the resistance you have towards the state of being where your intentions become reality.

So if you set several intentions at once and perhaps aren't as *convinced* of one or two of them as you are of the others, would that bit of disbelief, negative emotion, etc, contaminate the whole pot of intentions? Or just the specific ones about which you still have limitations?

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Lola

So if you set several intentions at once and perhaps aren't as *convinced* of one or two of them as you are of the others, would that bit of disbelief, negative emotion, etc, contaminate the whole pot of intentions? Or just the specific ones about which you still have limitations?

It depends on how you react to that situation. It could go either way.

Here's a closing phrase I include at the end of my list of intentions to help account for this situation (I use the words intention and prayer interchangeably):

"I intend that all parts of this prayer are fully aligned with unconditional love, truth, and divine light. I intend that any parts of my thoughts, beliefs, energy, and actions that are misaligned be replaced by compatible constructs that are fully aligned. I pray that these intentions--or something better--now manifest in their own perfect time, for the highest good of all."

I actually got this idea from legal contracts. Commonly you'll see a clause in contracts called Severability. Severability means that if a certain section of a contract is found to be illegal or unenforceable or otherwise problematic, the rest of the contract will still be totally valid, and it will be assumed that an equivalent legal substitute that approximates the intent of the severed clause will be substituted automatically. So this is a clause that helps fix unforeseen congruency problems. This can be especially helpful in highly complex agreements where it's hard to foresee all the possible applications. I always included a Severability clause in my game publishing contracts when I licensed games from other developers.

Interestingly, when I create a fresh list of intentions, I often find myself tweaking them within the first 10 days after noticing some congruency issues.

[Lola]

Excellent idea. I can do this - I'm WELL versed in contracts!

[Acting Like Godot]

Constantly setting a large number of intentions is also a way of cultivating the habit of positive thinking.

[Enoch Tan]

The secret of manifesting multiple intentions successfully is by managing the energy and momentum of each one as you go along. You first focus your energy on certain intentions and once you have generated enough momentum for them, you move on to focusing energy on other intentions. When you take your focus away from previous intentions, their momentum may degenerate over time. But they have enough energy to keep going on for awhile as you focus on other intentions, and then return to them.

[Acting Like Godot]

That is a wise answer, Enoch. Thank you.