Intention

Evanson: You understand the importance of motive and how the outcome of action is not weighed for or against you unless you take into account the motive that initiates the action, for good motive, even while resulting in action that brought error, does ultimately reveal lessons learned that purify the application, the method you use to express your motive, and thereby you have grown and become more skillful in promoting the intention of your expression.

Let us for a moment twist the word "intend", reverse it and call it "tend in". It probably would become apparent to you that the practice of stillness is a valuable undertaking to clarify intention. This intending is a mode of preparation for any individual who desires to minister to fellows, not to discount the extremely high value of communion with the Father. The benefit of this stillness is this time to become prepared, and this helps to enlarge the arena of activity that is stillness. It allows you to use study, intellectually oriented lines of thinking, as well as the more obvious forms of prayer and worship and quieting of the mind.

Every football team huddles before the play is enacted. Every orator organizes prepared notes before the first phrase is spoken. A repairman gathers tools before heading out on a job. A musician organizes the sheet music before beginning the song. These preparatory actions are not displayed before those who
receive the service or any given action, but they are vital in the outworking. They are the composition of intention.

In spite of all this preparation, and you are familiar with this through experience, what plays out does not always conform with your prior organizational efforts, just as when the ball is hiked in a particular skirmish, and the play pattern is attempted by the offensive team, the unpredictable responses and actions of the defensive team create variations in the intended pattern, and adjustments are made in an effort to make progress.

An orator, a musician, an actor all have encountered this same variable unpredictablility that departs from the intended form of delivery. To one who seeks to be of service to the Father and encounters apparent failure in reaching to another individual must allow this breadth of unpredictability that will contribute rather than detract from your intention.

One of the meanings, the underlining truth, of the phrase, that you give and thereby receive, is woven into this dynamic of intention, the unpredictability of receptivity in your surroundings. The lesson you sought to
reveal, the ministry you have sought to foster, is adjusted. The lesson is received; the ministry received short of, perhaps, the intention, but superimposed upon your targeted action is a reciprocal lesson or ministry to
yourself. A good quarterback knows that, while the opening of the offensive moves may contain several plays in sequence to obtain the goal, that after each pattern has been outworked and adjustment is made, a new play pattern is called based on the reactions of the defensive team. This adjustment is the act of wisdom that is capable of quickly discerning the current configuration and applying prior knowledge, prior skills, to the immediate situation. This wisdom is not stubborn. It does not bullheadedly go forward with three or four sequential plays that were previously desired in spite of alterations in the environment as the plays have been run through. Wisdom, though always adhering to the principles of truth and goodness, must always adjust and accommodate to the variables of environment.

Often we speak of the dual qualities of worship and service, and that this is in reality one activity that
oscillates between an expressive service and an inward experience of worship. But as I have sought to illustrate today, that one's intention in service is derived from the preparation found in worship, of inward study, as refreshing and invigorating to the soul that it is, worship is also a form of service, for you are becoming strengthened, clearer in mind, and deepened in purpose. The very act of drawing closer to your Creator fosters this development and makes you better capable of addressing the needs of your fellows. True, you could, and throughout the mansion worlds you will, attend courses wherein you will gain skills at external forms of ministry. But the best preparation and the best preparer dwell within you and occur within you.

Now I wish to provide some caution, and that is regarding motivation. If you do spend a good amount of time — which I do not mean a lengthy duration at one occurrence but repeated applications of time — in stillness, in tending, you can apply yourself and do no harm. But to neglect this inward assessment, confusion can enter and motive can be clouded by lesser goals, lesser purposes, and harm can result.  Though no damage is insurmountable, given that you will take the time to undergo this inward visitation with the divine, correction will follow, adjustments are made, and better results ensue.

I have placed emphasis upon stillness as a means of developing pure intention because it is part of the same coin when it comes to alleviating the distresses of your fellows, but let me take a moment also to divide yourself into an internal and, in a sense, an external duality. This period of intending also works to great service of yourself. The health and well-being of mind and body is enhanced through this time, this inner visitation. The Master spoke of the truth, that it is not what goes in that defiles but what comes out of a man that defiles. Even if you stop short of exiting your own personal arena with what is expressed and consider only within your arena, your body and mind, what comes out of you, has great benefit or detriment to your own personal well-being.

I will close with one final note and that is on the importance of this time of inward communion as a method for, in a sense, selecting "reset". In the activities of your life many things are pulled out, scattered around, and left in upheaval. Stillness becomes the means whereby you may reset, regroup, and reorganize, and refresh to begin anew being about the Father's business.