This is the third or fourth time I have read this book The Power of Intention by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. I find myself being drawn back to it from time to time because of his insights into life and what should be paramount in our lives.
There are some great quotes in this book… far more than the ten I have limited myself to in these so-called book reviews of mine.
My ten favorite quotes from The Power of Intention by Dr. Wayne Dyer (2006) are as follows:
Quotes cited from “The Power of Intention” follow this format: (Chapter.Page Number.Paragraph)
Disconnected from Intention
1. Ego is made of six primary ingredients that account for how we experience ourselves as disconnected. By allowing ego to determine your life path, you deactivate the power of intention. Briefly, here are the six ego beliefs:
- I am what I have. My possessions define me.
- I am what I do. My achievements define me.
- I am what others think of me. My reputation defines me.
- I am separate from everyone. My body defines me as alone.
- I am separate from all that is missing in my life. My life space is disconnected from my desires.
- I am separate from God. My life depends on God’s assessment of my worthiness. (1.10.1)
Comment: When we think of the word intention, we commonly think of it as a strong desire to seek a goal or aim of some sort. However, Dr. Dyer proposes that it is “something greater than a determined ego or individual will.” He surmises that it is something opposite of ego or a determination to achieve a set goal or purpose. In fact, he suggests that ego gets in the way of true intention, that intention defined by Carlos Castaneda in his final book, The Active Side of Infinity. I have often experienced that my egos do separate me from my “source” and that they actually make it more difficult for me to achieve my stated goals and objectives.
Free Will
2. Your free will can either move you with Universal Spirit and its unfolding or away from it toward ego dominance. As it moves away from Spirit, life appears to be a struggle. Slower energies flow through you, and you may feel hopeless, helpless, and lost. You can use your free will to rejoin higher, faster energies. The truth is that we do not create anything alone; we are all creatures with God. Our free will combines and redistributes what’s already created. You choose! Free will means that you have the choice to connect to Spirit or not! (1.14.1)
Comment: “Free will” is one of the most highly debated ideas or concepts throughout history by philosophers, religious leaders, and the rest of us. Therefore, I will not attempt to comment on this issue here or voicing my point of view… not my objective here!
Kindness
3. Research has shown that a simple act of kindness directed toward another improves the functioning of the immune system and stimulates the production of serotonin in both the recipient of the kindness and the person extending the kindness. (2.25.2)
Comment: Kindness is an attribute that I continually have to work on. It is not that I am intentionally unkind or seek to be unkind; I am usually not living in the present moment and therefore am unaware of the opportunities I have to practice kindness.
Love
4. Love… It’s the prime moving power of the Universal Spirit of intent. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Love is our highest word and the synonym for God.” The energy field of intention is pure love resulting in a nurturing and totally cooperative environment. Judgment, anger, hate, fear, or prejudice won’t thrive here. So, were we able to actually see this field, we’d see creativity and kindness in an endless field of love. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it this way: “The conclusion is always the same: Love is the most powerful and still the most unknown energy of the world.” (2.26,27.1-2,1)
Comment: I have spent the better part of five years studying, practicing, and trying to understand love better… it is hard, at least for me. I have come to understand that true love is defined as wanting the health, happiness, and well-being of another person more than you want it for yourself, making sacrifices to make that happen, and not expecting anything in return. I believe it is the most difficult of attributes to master, but it truly is the most powerful force in the universe and well worth the effort.
Take Responsibility for Your Life
5. You must learn to assume responsibility for the circumstances of your life without any accompanying guilt. The circumstances of your life aren’t the way they are because of karmic debt or because you’re being punished. The circumstances of your life, including your health, are yours. Somehow they showed up in your life, so just assume that you participated in all of it. (4.65.1)
Comment: In other words, you are where you are in life because of the decisions you made and no one else… Take responsibility for your life!
Self-Importance
6. Self-importance is man’s greatest enemy. What weakens him is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow man. Self-importance requires that one spend most of one’s life offended by something or someone.” Ego is simply an idea of who you are that you carry around with you. This idea of who you think you are will persistently erode any possibility you have of connecting to intention. (4.82.1,3)
Comment: A major wake-up call for me… I forgot about this one! I often find myself judging others based on “self-importance,” and judgment is a love killer!
Alone We Can Do Nothing
7. If you’re seeing yourself as either inferior or superior, you’ve disconnected from the power of intention. Your desires will be frustrated unless you connect with and support other people. How you view others is how you view yourself. (5.94.2,3)
Comment: As I get older and hopefully wiser, I am beginning to understand that we really are “all in this” together.
Humility
8. Wilhelm Stekel made a remarkable comment on the importance of humility (which was quoted by J. D. Salinger in Catcher in the Rye). Stekel wrote: “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” (6.123.4)
Comment: How many times have I told myself or someone else I would die for this or for that? I can see the truth of this statement and the wisdom in it.
Stay on Purpose
9. Outside of my chosen occupation, I feel purposeful in a myriad of ways virtually every single day. When I extend assistance to someone in need, when I take a moment to cheer up a disgruntled employee in a restaurant or a store, when I make a child laugh who sits otherwise ignored in a stroller, or even when I pick up a piece of litter and place it in a trash can, I feel that I’m giving myself away and, as such, feel purposeful. Essentially what I’m saying is; Stay on purpose by expressing the seven faces of intention, and the details will find you. You’ll never have to ask what your purpose is or how to find it. (8.150.1,2)
Comment: It is the little things that matter, and opportunities to serve purposefully are everywhere if we will just open our eyes.
Joy and Bliss and Living in the Present Moment
10. I conclude… on your intention to lead a tranquil life with a poem by the famous Bengali poet of Calcutta, Rabindranath Tagore, one of my favorite spiritual teachers:
I slept and dreamed that life was joy
I awoke and saw that life was service
I acted and behold service was joy
Comment: I have experienced this joy at various times in my life. In fact, I have even experienced brief moments of bliss that exceed joy and happiness. I have found that bliss really cannot be defined with words because I have spent the better part of a month trying to do so. The closest I have come to describing bliss is the following quote:
Works Cited
Images – Post image: “#Repost @mindvalley ・・・ If there’s” by caramoulds is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Quotes – Dyer, W. (2006). The Power of Intention. , California: Hay House, Inc.
