Intention Not Action
Dear friends,
I wanted to address a somewhat subtle point this week: intention vs. action. It is easy to see someone's actions, and of course much harder to see intention.
Suppose you saw someone kick a little dog. You'd likely think, "What a monster!" Then you found out the dog had a bone stuck in his throat. Your thought might then be, "What a hero. He was quickly dislodging that bone!" You soon learned, however, that he didn't know it had a bone stuck when he kicked it. Back to being a monster, I guess. But then... You get the idea. We can do this all day long. Let's quiet our snap judgments as we never have the whole picture of either the circumstance or the person's background and current emotional condition.
Fortunately, Spirit is smarter than we are. It is our intention that matters. If you are truly trying your best and fail, that is far superior to doing a better job without even caring. It is correctly said that God reads the heart.
Suppose you make a mistake, even with truly the best of intentions. There is no karma there, as karma depends upon volition. But if you made that mistake because you closed your eyes, working to avoid seeing the truth, well... that's quite a different story.
If you are reading this letter, it is quite likely that you want to be a better person, bring Spirit more into your life, and hold those uplifted qualities we all recognize: compassion; service, love, and others.
At the same time we all have blocks that prevent us from feeling and acting on those high qualities. We need to accept that we each have work to do, and then do our best to actually do that work, rather than merely acknowledging their existence. Once we have done that we are consciously on the Path. This is a long process but one foot in front of the other, and we are guaranteed to win. Yogananda said, "A saint is a sinner that never gave up." By "sinner" he simply means someone less then they could be. Let us each make the heartfelt commitment to have the courage to both face our weaknesses and then do something about them. Fortunately, God does read the heart, so just do your best.
Blessings,
David G., manager
For the staff at East West