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Monday, 8 January 07 :: intentions

Since starting to attend Heart of Now on a regular basis as both a student and assistant I have become a great believer in intention.

At the start of every course everyone states an intention. What do we want to get out of the weekend, or how do we want to be over the weekend, or what do we hope for for the weekend. Its a powerful thing to do, and at the end of the weekend we all revist our intentions. How did we move about with them, what did we accomoplish based on them, did they change, etc.

Last semester I did not state a clear intention for myself. I basically felt like a dear in the headlights, and really only wanted to get through. I had no idea what it is I wanted to get through, I had no idea what all would come by me. I thought I did, but, in reality I did not.

I had a quiet break. I was supposed to go east to see my folks and brother but I cancelled the trip. I was a bit too stressed out to do the trip. I was tired. It had been an emotionally exhausting semester and I wanted to sleep, watch TV, waste time, do some work. I ended up doing a lot of soul searching as well.

Last semester I had a couple of people that I viewed as difficult that I had to deal with on a regular basis. They were challenges in different ways, but I harbored a lot of resentment towards them. My resentment took a lot of energy, way too much energy. So, I spent a lot of my break thinking about them, and my relationship with them. When I say that I mean, my relationship towards them -- not the interactions between me and them, but how I thought of them when they were around or not. I thought about the things I'd said about them, and how I reacted to them, when they were around and when they weren't around. The conclusion I came up with was that I did not like how I dealt with the difficulty. I did not like how I was, what I felt, what I said. I don't believe I acted with very much honor or integrity.

So, my intention has to do with those two people, and my hope is that it will extend out beyond them. It is my intention this semester to act from love, rather than anger. I don't want to stand around being angry, rather I want to stand around acknowledging the positive in people. I truly want to hold people in their vision, rather than their damage. While doing this may not be easy (it proved to be a challenged I failed miserably with one of the two people today) in the end I will like myself much better.

posted by brooke at January 8, 2007 07:49 PM

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about
i'm brooke, born in '73. i am currently a phd student in instructional technology. this is the blog where i capture all the neurotic, and the few non-neurotic, moments that seem to come with being a phd student (if you want to read less neuroses and more professionalism go to: oer's, dl's, reuse and culture: it's about a phd student researching digital resources in a multicultural world). i have been from eugene, oregon for a long time.. 8 years specifically (its my home now, but i grew up in southwestern virginia), but now i'm here in logan, utah at utah state university. after finding my roots in eugene i never could have expected that i would leave that liberal oasis and head to utah. but i did and there are days when its a blessing and days when i'm tempted to go back to oregon and beg the folks at lost valley educational center to let me move in. but i won't leave because there are days when this process is better than any kind of high i could ever imagine. what else? i collect things, i have 2 cats, 2 kayaks, 2 laptops (i'm a geek - one mac, one pc). i can be emailed at brookesblog@rivervision.com.