Negative Intention

What it is

Negative intention is the unconscious but deliberate decision to resist life, love, truth or change. It often hides beneath conscious good intentions and can often be recognized by a frantic yes.

Why it matters

As long as a hidden no exists within us, our conscious yes will always be undermined. Discovering this inner conflict marks one of the great turning points on the spiritual path.

From Bones

~1~

Negative intention is not quite the same thing as negativity…

With our negativity, we have the impression we can’t help being the way we are—angry, hateful or cruel. With our negative intention, however, a deliberate choice is being made to act in a certain way.

So our negative intention doesn’t happen to us—we choose it. (Chapter 17)

~2~

There are certain fundamental stages we will progress through as we work toward transforming our stubborn negative intention. We typically start out with no awareness that this is even a thing. Initially, in fact, we’re challenged to believe we could possibly be held accountable for how our lives are turning out. (Chapter 17)

~3~

Much of the resistance we encounter—in ourselves and our companions—is due precisely to our not wanting to see that a senseless, destructive streak of negative intention is in us. Oddly, in spite of our knowing just how destructive and senseless it is, it still holds us in its grip, making us unwilling to give it up…

Finding out that we’re the ones rooting ourselves in negative intention then, is an important step in our spiritual evolution. (Chapter 17)

~4~

With our negative intention, we will punish life for what it’s done to us. (Chapter 17)

~5~

We step across a major threshold on our spiritual journey when we make the discovery that some part of us wishes for a negative outcome. This awareness of our negative desires makes all the difference in the world.

But of course, there are degrees of awareness. And in the moment, our awareness might be minimal.

In general, the greater our awareness of our deliberate desire to go against life, the more control we’ll have over our life. Also, the less we’ll feel like a weak and helpless victim—a small forgotten cog in a vast machine of pain.

… But once the light of awareness turns on and we see that we have a part—even before we are able to give up our negative desires because we don’t yet know why they exist—we’ll feel more free. (Chapter 16)

~6~

We need to question if this is all of who we are. “Is it true that if I give up my negative intention, my reality will cease?” Just asking this question will open a door. And even before answers come—and come they must, following spiritual law—we can realize something important.

That the part of us asking the question is already beyond who we feared we were. (Chapter 17)

~7~

If our life is now narrow and confining, it is because we have continued to follow our negative intention. And it will stay this way until we choose to change our course. (Chapter 17)

Continue with: Lower Self • No-current • Pleasure Principle