Mindful Intention
I’m sure you’ve all heard people say things like “It was a sign from the Universe” or “I’m looking for a sign to help decide what to do.” Well the other day I heard a man while walking on the beach at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park, clearly a visitor to our beautiful little island, say “I feel like there should be a sign saying keep your shoes on.”
For those of you who have never been to Key West, known by the locals as “the rock”, our beach is a rocky shoreline. It is naturally a beach littered with coral rock, and sometimes manufactured by man to disguise itself as a sandy beach, but currently it is almost completely covered with coral rock mixed with shells and beach glass. Close your eyes and just picture 15-20 feet of shoreline spewed with all different shapes and sizes of jagged coral rock. And yet this man thought that he needed a painted or printed sign to say keep your shoes on.
I smiled at the irony of the moment, and at the same time I saw the deeper issue. Some people have lost the ability to move through the world with awareness while valuing self-responsibility. They have lost the gift of intuition. Surrounded by coral rock on a beach, a clear message that it might be more comfortable to walk with his shoes on, he felt that it was someone else’s responsibility to inform him that there were rocks on the beach. He has lost the ability to assess and take charge of his own choices and wanted the information to come from a “sign.”
Have we become that reliant on outside management? It appears so. Has our litigious culture created a numbing of our awareness? Sadly, I think so. We have become disengaged from self-responsibility leading us to have amnesia from our intuitive guidance. It is one of the gifts of a practice in yoga or meditation, that ability to become aware, conscious and connected, that gift called mindfulness.
It is a valuable gift to be able to slow down, take a moment, observe and recognize what is actually occurring around us. It allows us to engage with not only our own world but the world we are surrounded by, and take note. There is an amazing flow to life, a rhythm, a pulse that IS happening. If you are attentive and can slow down enough you begin to feel it and let it lead you or guide you through your choices and intentions. You unite your intentions with the grace and flow of all that is happening around you.
The faster your pace in life, especially when mixed with anxiety and fears, the ability to feel that rhythm, hear that guidance, acknowledge what is already occurring and surrounds you is lost. Our cultural angst, wanting more and feeling lack, has left us incoherent (vibrating out of tune with the natural order of things.) When we slow down, take a breath and connect to our intuitive heart an alliance occurs. That alliance is called coherence. We become aligned. Clarity becomes prevalent. Simply put, one’s ability to function in life becomes easier when we are in this state of coherence.
Set your intentions by becoming aware. Find your coherence by practicing appreciation, ease and being present. Develop comfort in being still. Soothe your neurological system by bathing it in the presence of mindful relaxation. Recognize when you begin to slip into “disease” or spend too much time worrying, anxious, unsettled or feeling disconnected. Look for ways to make connections with all that is around you. Make a commitment to make comfort and ease be your daily practice, and diminish your well-oiled habits of angst, worry, agitation, distraction and disconnection. It is about intention not improvement. We all need this personally, culturally, politically, spiritually, globally and universally. We can! Start today by being aware, breathing slowly to elicit or feel ease and be willing to repeat often. Listen to your heart and soul’s deepest desires and set your course; mindfully.