The Weight Of Intention

Ever wanted something so hard that you could feel the universe give under the weight of your intention?

What does it mean to “want something hard”? What is it to “burn with desire“?

We’re driven by desire, but unequally. Why is one desire a passing fancy and the next a live-or-die necessity? And how do we situate ourselves, and the importance of our own lives, in the torrent of desire that is the world coming into being?

These are the thoughts percolating through my mind after the holiday edition of the Rune Soup weekly EST intention group. Not because the evening’s intention was focused on any extraordinary matter. It was just a simple family affair. Nevertheless, I’m fixated on a few lingering ideas.

We want what we want. What’s interesting to me is what we do when we want something and how there’s a difference between wanting something and needing it -and how needing an outcome affects our ability to manifest it.

I obviously believe that magic can be used to achieve your goals and improve the world -that’s partially what this site is about. But it’s also been my experience that magic only affects the probabilities of outcomes; it doesn’t guarantee them. Learning how to produce a desired effect is as much about understanding when a ritual probably won’t work (and why) as it is a process of experimentation.

Magically-operant people rely on a mix of techniques depending on the outcomes they’re trying to affect and the options at their disposal. We call this “tech”. Magical communities often pass tech around as a way to share inspiration between friends and peers.

While the larger magical community around Rune Soup had been unofficially practicing group intentions (like a group prayer, but not) through Discord and other means for some time, the membership was officially organized into timezone based intention groups earlier this year while adjusting to the new demands of flourishing during a pandemic.

“Power Of Eight” Tech

Intention groups, a simple -but very effective- magical technology that uses group awareness as a manifestation tool, have bound the Rune Soup community (to which I belong) together in mutual fulfillment through the good, the bad, and the aspirational.

To his credit, Gordon White has built a remarkable community of extremely supportive weirdos. These fine folk connect once a week, in 3 timezones, for group support and healing using Lynne McTaggert’s “Power of Eight” method.

It’s simple enough tech.

Connect to the divine, however that works for you. Play meditation music. Repeat a carefully crafted intention statement mentally for ten minutes. That’s it. That’s the magic.

It’s simplicity doesn’t reduce it’s efficacy. This is powerful stuff.

“If you find yourself weak in persistence surround yourself with a mastermind group…”

Napoleon Hill

Taggert recommends at least eight participants for the best results. The same number was employed by Napolean Hill when designing his “mastermind group”. Hill encouraged everyone to form a group of eight steadfast and capable friends to hold themselves mutually accountable to their word and keep them motivated when times were tough.

The implications behind the numeral eight are worth exploring here… 8 looks like infinity, eight is 2×4 which can be visualized as two cubes (balance + structure); sometimes it’s read as systems and regulation in tarot. It’s balanced and yet complex. Eight people isn’t a partnership or a team, it’s a community.

And communities commune right? They exist together in harmony, raising one another up when needed to preserve the balance in the community which ensures prosperity for all.

Good intentions are meaningful. “Thoughts and prayers” isn’t just a meme -not if someone means to genuinely offer prayers and positive intentions. And when you get a lot of people praying, or a group of people in a formal intention, “positive thoughts” become the stuff of miracles.

The power of mass intention may ultimately be the force that shifts the tide toward repair and renewal of the planet.

Lynne McTaggert – The Intention Experiment

Miracles? In This Economy?

Magic seems to be connected to emotion. We manifest the things we can’t stop thinking about. This can be very powerful in a pinch but the universe is a trickster and producing results when you need them most can be challenging.

The more we obsess the more the future we think about becomes tangible -but it’s all too easy to manifest ALMOST getting what you want (manifesting the “lust for result” itself).

The classic example is having an expensive emergency, intending for money, and being presented with job opportunities. It’s usually better to simply intend for what you actually want or need, without worrying about how the job gets done.

Confusing wizard-logic aside, the takeaway is simply that it’s important to get worked up about the outcomes you want and then to get out of the way and allow them to come into being.

This is the power of a well-designed statement of intent...

Clarity is essential. There’s more to magic than just wanting, and asking for, the outcomes you desire. Wanting something so bad you can taste it is good but fixating on lacking or earning something is prohibitive to your magical success.

How do you manage to avoid the lust for result when you need the result to pay rent, or live the life you wish to live? How do you sling life and death magic and not become exhausted by the emotional weight of it?

Bring in the posse. 8+ souls willing to circle up the wagons and pray. Bring your biggest needs and deepest desires to a group of people who’ve got your back spiritually and who know you’d do the same for them.

Have A Team In Place Before An Emergency Hits

As Rune Soup members, my wife and I are plugged into a community of wonderful, caring folks, who spend (at least) a few hours a week supporting and intending for group members, their loved ones, and friends.

My family recently had an episode with our good boy Fritz which left him temporarily unable to use his back legs due to (what we later found was) immune-mediated poly-arthritis. He was rushed to the emergency vet hospital in a non-ambulatory state (unable to walk), was tested on for 5 days, before finally coming home.

His care was exceedingly expensive and we were very fortunate to be able to afford it, however the regimen of steroids and immune therapy lasts several months and leaves his system deliberately weakened. For his health and our financial solvency, it’s important that he heals fully and quickly.

So we got on the calendar for our weekly intention group, which often has 25+ attendees via Zoom, and when our turn came, we had the group intend for “Joyous health for Fritz”. We’re beyond grateful to the group and Fritz has already shown excellent signs of recovery. If anything, he’s too playful for his own good.

I was an absolute wreck while my lil buddy was in the hospital. It would have been very difficult for me to separate myself from the “lust for result” and might have robbed my intent of its power.

Relying on these good people to assist our enchantments with their prayers and the group intention was able to bring about a positive result when I was emotionally weak and might have done more harm than good.

This story has a happy ending because Gordon White and a few of our most dedicated members prioritized building intention groups for all of our benefit. It’s only possible to ask for miracles when you need them if you’ve already built your mastermind / intention group.

Fortunately for us, we had the opportunity to invest time into the group via other members’ intentions for months prior to having an emergency of our own. We’ve gotten to know the crew, and they us, as friends and cohorts both on-and-offline and built real relationships that I believe strengthen our group bonds and boosted the efficacy of Fritz’s intention when our need presented itself.

What Kind Of Miracles Do You Offer?

Our weekly intention group handles the big ugly stuff in life. We manage to keep it pretty light-hearted despite the heavy topics that surface in energy healing sessions but it’s real, life and death stuff.

Cancer, eviction, C*VID obviously, abuse, missing persons, you name it… it’s not subject matter for the faint-of-heart. When fires raged across the western United States earlier in 2020, we held regular fire brigade intentions; influencing winds, rain, fire intensity, and so on. The stakes are often quite high.

And, suffice it to say, we continue to spend a night a week in this fashion (plus emergency intentions at all hours of the day), because the results are remarkable. A typical week will include a few positive reports shared by prior intention-targets; to update everyone who invested into the intention.

Best of all, there’s something in the way that the universe works that amplifies the positive effects of the intention through all of the participants; so they enjoy a benefit personally as well as the good feels of helping out their fellow Rune Soup-ers.

Plus, while many nights are spent intending on the target’s health, other nights might be focused on their financial well-being. Need to get your new business off the ground? Desperate for that big promotion at work? Want to quit your life and move to the Cari -oh wait.

Intentions are great magical technology because they’re simple and straightforward. Literally anyone can participate and they’re mutually beneficial. Helping people never felt so good. And there’s no situation where an intention can’t do something to help the target. When people are sick we intend for their wellness. When they’re dying we intend for their safe passage and comfort.

It’s always beneficial. It’s always meaningful. You just may not know how or why…

Get Yourself The Kind Of Friends Who Pray Like Their Lives Depend On It

The times they are a changing. We left normal behind and won’t be coming back again. Sometimes it feels like not everyone has fully grasped just how far we’ve left that life behind. Or, at least, the writing on the wall is a little different for everyone.

If you practice magic, then you already recognize the power of belief to shape reality. Sometimes I forget just how different it feels to live in a worldview without magic.

Fear is a far more natural state of being in a world described by dominance and chaos, than one of infinite relationality. And it’s not like the big scary things won’t eat you in a magical universe, but that when they do, there’s an underlying web of relationality bound together through animate intelligence.

Recognizing the intelligence of universe gives you the opportunity to enter into dialogue with it and to negotiate a different and, we hope, better fate.

When the pursuit of this better fate eludes us because of our emotions, or focus, or just the immensity of the demand, we can tap into each other as a resource. Through intentional communities, pockets of helpful healers can lend their prayers to aid the lives of many others, in a way that takes nothing from them and leaves them better than they arrived.

We don’t need false offers of thoughts and prayers. When you need those prayers, it’s very real and very scary. A commitment to an intention community is its own kind of insurance…ensuring that when you need those thoughts and prayers, it’s real, it’s in volume, and it’s got a staggeringly positive track record.

My posse knows how to pray like it matters.

Finding your own community, or building one using McTaggert’s gloriously simple method is an investment of time and energy that you’ll never regret and, one day, you may be very, very glad it’s ready when you need it.

Featured image: “Flightless” by SillyJellie