Attention & Focus · “You Become What You Hold”
Setting Your Intention
To pause before speaking or acting and consciously choose the intention behind it — checking ‘what is my intention here?’ and aligning it with love rather than fear, since (in Zukav’s model) intention shapes consequence.
Set your intention: Before you speak or act, pause one breath and ask what is my intention here? Is it from love or from a frightened part (to control, punish, please, defend)? Remember intention ≠ goal — keep the goal, choose the spirit. Reset toward love if needed, then act from the chosen intention, willing to own the result.
What it is
This is Gary Zukav’s intention practice from The Seat of the Soul. Before you speak or act, you pause and consciously choose the intention behind the act — asking, in effect, what is my intention here? — and align it with love rather than fear.
Crucially, Zukav distinguishes intention from goal: an “intention is not a goal,” it is a “quality of consciousness that infuses your words and your actions.” The same outward action (offering help, giving feedback, saying yes) can carry very different intentions — generosity or control, honesty or punishment — and in Zukav’s model it is the intention, not the action’s surface, that “creates your reality and your karma.” So the work is to catch the intention before it ships, see whether it springs from a frightened part or a loving part, and, if needed, reset it.
It is a use of free choice (Creation Is Finished) applied through directed attention at the decisive moment (The Inner Creates the Outer), reading the felt quality behind the impulse (The Inner Creates the Outer).
The Method
From the Intention chapter of The Seat of the Soul and the Seat of the Soul Institute:
- Pause at the threshold of action. Before you send the message, make the remark, or make the move, stop for a breath. The leverage point is before, not after.
- Ask: what is my real intention here? Look underneath the action to the quality of consciousness driving it. Be honest — is this coming from love (care, generosity, truth) or from a frightened part (to control, punish, defend, impress, please)?
- Notice the distinction between intention and goal. You may keep the goal (have the conversation, set the boundary) while changing the intention behind it. The goal is what; the intention is the spirit it carries.
- Choose your intention consciously. If the felt quality is fear-based, deliberately reset it toward love before you act. Zukav: when faced with old, fearful energy, you can shift your intention — and that shift changes the consequence.
- Then act, from the chosen intention. Carry out the action infused with the intention you selected. The action may look identical from outside; its quality — and, in Zukav’s model, its karmic consequence — is different.
- Be willing to own the result. Setting intention pairs with responsibility: choose intentions whose consequences you’d be willing to live with. (Sourcing note: “an intention is not a goal,” “a quality of consciousness that infuses your words and your actions,” and “creates your reality and your karma” are short quotations of Zukav’s published phrasing; the steps are faithfully paraphrased.)
Source & Lineage
From Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul (1989), where the chapter on Intention argues that intention is the lever by which we shape experience and karma.
The practice is developed further in Seat of the Soul Institute teaching and in The Mind of the Soul: Responsible Choice (2003, with Linda Francis). The intention-shapes-result idea echoes Buddhist cetanā (volition as the root of karma) recast in Zukav’s authentic-power vocabulary.
Common refinements
Confusing intention with goal. People drop the goal (“I won’t bring it up”) when the fix is to keep the goal and change the intention (raise it to clear the air, not to win).
- Rationalizing the fear-intention. “I’m only being honest” can mask an intention to punish. The check only works if it’s honest.
- Over-monitoring into paralysis. This is a quick pre-action check, not a courtroom for every sentence. Use it where stakes or charge are high.
- Setting it and not feeling it. Declaring “my intention is love” while still seething changes little — combine with feeling the frightened part first (see the emotional-awareness technique).
- Refinement: at day’s start, set a single guiding intention for the day; use the in-the-moment check at friction points.