As adults we don’t talk much about wishes, we use words like “vision” or “intention” or “goals.” Teachings about the Power of Intention are big part of American spirituality right now, so when a friend recently gave me a novel Magic Mala about the power of intention, I decided I needed to figure out what I believed. Because it is so prevalent in our culture right now that I’d like to take some time to consider together “What do Unitarian Universalists believe about the power of intention?”
One of the big theological questions that seems to be part of every religious tradition is something like “do I have any control over my life?” Working with intentions is one way to explore the answers to that question. If life is a big river, and our own lives a boat upon it, we are tossed by the wind and waves and current unless we have an oar or a rudder to steer. At its most basic level, that’s what an intention is, a rudder to help us steer in a particular direction.
Just being able to know and articulate your own preferences increase the odds that you will get what you want. Have you ever been trying to find a restaurant for a group of people, and no one knows what they want? You are stuck swirling around in indecision until some says “actually, I’m kind of in the mood for sushi.”? Something as simple as writing up a grocery list or creating an agenda for a meeting seems to help me do what I intend. A goal like going to college, or buying a house requires many coordinated actions over a long period of time, it’s very unlikely that your boat will just drift you into home-ownership, so keeping that goal in mind whether it’s a wish, a goal in your journal, or a vision board you look at each day helps navigate in the direction you choose to go.
In my own experience, I notice that setting intentions can help people feeling empowered, feeling some sense of control over your life, realizing you can make choices that impact outcomes. When we create an intention to manifest something in the world, it can be empowering; it helps us learn something about our agency can allow us to participate in the game of life. Sometimes just identifying and making a choice can be helpful- if you can name it it’s easier to ask for, and to identify opportunities when they come your way. I have seen folks set their minds to going back to school or going back to rehab and through persistence and dedication of purpose, change the direction of their lives. This is an important part of the Wiccan tradition – using ritual to set intention, to ask for what we want. Why does it work? I personally am agnostic about the mechanics of that. Maybe there are forces outside our own self, outside the web of human community that help us, and I’m sure there is a great range of what UUs believe about that.
Another phrase that is popular today is the “law of attraction” which encourages us to think positively- to believe that our wish or intention will come true. The idea is that positive thoughts attract positive outcomes, and negative thoughts attract negative outcomes. The characters in the Magic Mala practiced positive affirmations many times each day. There’s been some scientific research showing that positive thinking can make a real difference in outcomes[ii] and that negative thinking can create more negative outcomes. Positive thinking seems to harmonize with our UU beliefs and values.
But you don’t have to get to far down the river with the power of intentions to find a place where it is hard for UUs to follow. An important part of any theology is how it addresses suffering. Can it hold a tragedy like the fires still burning in Australia? The folks in Australia who have lost not only homes but whole communities to fire- did they somehow bring that into their lives through negative thinking?
How does this theology of intention address issues like poverty or racism? The Magic Mala approaches suffering from an individual perspective- people in poverty have limiting beliefs that keep them from getting out of poverty. Folks who experience hardship are just manifesting their negative thoughts. This simply isn’t compatible with UU theology. About 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.[iii]. Are we saying that all that’s keeping %80 of the world in poverty is lack of imagination? That if the 750 million people who live in extreme poverty (Less than $1.90 a day)[iv] began to really devotedly practicing their intentions and affirmations we could eliminate poverty? Maybe. I’m sure it’s hard to stay positive when you have always been poor. But living in a material world has material limits. I’m sure you’ve heard the statistic that for everyone on earth to live as Americans do it would take 4 earths?[v] No matter how much we all want to live like Americans, the laws of our physical reality make that impossible.
We UUs remember that we are part of an interconnected web of life. We know that everything we do impacts and is impacted by others. We are co-creating this world with billions of other living beings. Yes, we do create our reality, but we do not do it alone.
I want to introduce now an idea called the “pragmatic theory of belief” that was important to James Luther Adams, a Unitarian back in the early 20th century[vi] The idea is that we can know something about a belief from how we act on that belief and how we feel. “Adams urges us to think about human behavior as both a personal and an institutional activity that reveals the actual meaning of a religious belief.” How might this believe system effect my actions? If I believe that poor people are poor because of their limiting beliefs, and all they have to do is start clarifying their intentions and repeating positive affirmations to get out of poverty, then I have no obligation to help people in poverty, and I have no obligation to overturn the kinds of oppressive structures that create and sustain poverty and racism. How might this belief system effect the feelings of one who holds it? It might lead to feelings of superiority, if I am successful in achieving my goals. It might lead to feelings of shame and guilt, if I do not achieve my goals. [vii] I certainly would not want folks who lost everything in the Australian fires, folks living in poverty, folks in the hospital right now to feel shame and guilt, to worry that a negative thought created their tragic reality. These pragmatics make me skeptical.
The Power if Intention and law of attraction are often invoked by proponents of the Prosperity gospel, which tells us that the Rich are God’s chosen. One of the important founders of this school of thought was Norman Vincent Peale, minister of Trump’s childhood church. If we look at the prosperity gospel through the lens of the pragmatic theory, we find that folks who follow this theory don’t tend act with compassion to those less fortunate, and tend to believe their wealth shows that whatever actions they took, these were favored by God. I believe that if we apply the pragmatic theory of belief to the prosperity gospel, we have to agree that it is not creating a better world for all.[viii]
As part of the UU tradition, which believes in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, I cannot believe that the wealthy are God’s chosen, and the poor are God’s cast offs. As a UU I notice that Power of Intention does not account for privilege or for systematic oppression. UUs tend to believe that whenever we have privilege our faith calls us to work toward justice for all. We question any belief that reinforces the status quo in a world where oppression and injustice still exist.
Let’s think about intention from a totally different perspective. Buddhism is built on 4 noble truths, and the Second Noble Truth is “The origin of suffering is attachment”- Buddha tells us that "the attachment to the desire to have (craving) and the desire not to have (aversion)". There’s nothing wrong with making a plan and taking steps to carry it out, but when we get too attached to our objectives, when get attached to having things turn out a certain way, that is what causes suffering. (A study at Cornell proved something very similar- I’ll put the link on the website)[ix] Even if we get exactly what we want, we become attached to what we have, an d because all things are temporary, we feel suffering when we lose what we have achieved.
Teacher Ram Dass tells us: “The first thing my Hindu teacher wrote on his slate in teaching me was the statement, “Desire is a trap; desirelessness is moksha, or liberation;” [x] But Ram Dass also notes that as many years as he spent in spiritual practices trying to burn away the seeds of desire, the desires continued to arise, and whenever desires arise these “uncooked seeds” are something we need to work through to grow spiritually. So if we desire wealth, or if we desire power, or enlightenment, there are important spiritual lessons available through living out the fruition of desire so that ultimately we can let them go.
So desires happen. We can choose to let them go and cultivate desirelessness, or we can choose to follow them and see where they lead us. Once upon a time I decided to become an opera singer, I worked for it for years, and even though I didn’t achieve that goal, I never have to wonder “what if?” That seed is cooked. And I learned many unexpected lessons in the process.
I do believe that Intentions have power, and this is precisely why it is something we should consider as a faith community. How are we going to use that power? If you are going to choose an intention to guide your week, your year, your life, what is your best intention? Yes, you could use the power of intention to accrue wealth. And that might be just what you need right now. But there are lots of other ways to use the power of intention. Our church’s mission is to live ethically, to serve lovingly, to grow spiritually. An intention to live ethically would take us on a very different journey than an intention to become rich. An intention to grow spiritually could take us just about anywhere on that river.
As you consider setting intentions for the New Year, ask yourself, as the angel in our story did “what is your best wish?” What do you want and need? Is there a spot on the river you have always wanted to see? It’s okay if you don’t know how to get there; if it’s something you really want, just articulating that desire increases the odds that one day you will get there. But be sure to choose your best wish. We can choose intentions to feed the hungry, to fight racial oppression, to slow global warming. We can intend to spend more time with family, or learning about the birds at our birdfeeder. Or we could set the intention to just see where the river takes us, and be open to whatever arises. And if we hold our intention loosely, and understand this all to be part of our spiritual journey, we can’t fail. Because whether or not we learn to paint, increase our retirement savings, finally start exercising, or end poverty in our time, we will learn something about the nature of reality, and about ourselves. We will learn something about when to steer and when to let go and just follow the river.
End Notes
[i] https://www.dominican.edu/academics/lae/undergraduate-programs/psych/faculty/assets-gail-matthews/researchsummary2.pdf
[ii] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/04/how-the-power-of-positive-thinking-won-scientific-credibility/256223/
[iii]http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats#src1 for US poverty- https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-266.html
[iv] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
[v] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712
[vi] https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adults/movesus/workshop7/282715.shtml
[vii] https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/the-science-of-setting-goals.html
[viii] In fact, many Christians, both liberal and conservative feel this is in direct conflict with biblical teachings, and call the prosperity gospel a heresy https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/5-errors-of-the-prosperity-gospel/
[ix] https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/the-science-of-setting-goals.html
[x] https://www.ramdass.org/what-is-your-reality/
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