On Plans and intentions

1. How often have “I” stated that I shall do a certain thing or be in a particular state? How often have I been able to keep my word? May be 50 percent of the time, at best! Why?
2. Where do the promises, the plans, the intentions actually come from?
   As a reaction to current circumstances, out of a need to reduce the discomfort, to maximize my gain?
   Or as a genuine insight into contribution I must make to ensure the desired outcome?
3. For instance take this plan to write and take a writing break. What is all this about?
4. Is it a genuine response to an impulse within – which seeks to communicate to self and others the essentials of life?
5. Or Is it an ego drive to feel important?
6. To give vent to many a thoughts
   or
   is it to see with a fresh pair of eyes such that the freshness a reality for-ever?
7. There is a lot to be said about the power of intentions. A clearly held intent often is the pivot around which a situation, a life, even entire societies change.
8. Life throws so many swinging Yorkers. You can spend a life-time digging them out. Instead if the intention is to win, by scoring runs, then like Sir Viv Richards, you can step up and tonk the meanie for a big six over extra cover!
9. All it takes is a clean hit through the line
   You need to step-up
   Trust your ability and your judgment
   Stay totally fit (heart and body, mind and soul) all-the-time so as to perform whenever called upon!
10. This is feasible if you have a healthy image of your self and your role in life. To stay fit, requires either real attention, vigilance 24 by 7, or sheer Grace (One can argue that even the capacity to be vigilant also is a sign of Grace)
11. Plans are outputs for a process called planning. For a plan to stand a chance, there has to be a clarity about the desired outcome, the current reality as well as a sound theory, an “approach to design” of getting from Current Reality to Desired Future.
12. And this is never enough! As you start acting on the plan, it in itself triggers a dynamic which changes the “reality”, besides the own inherent dynamic nature of Reality!
13. So plans often have to undergo many a changes but that is what planning is all about!
14. Plans can be useful filters to sift “noise” from music. However, there is always a case for paying attention to the noise as well. It is only then “new, emergent music” breaks through, changing our very notions of music.
15. So intentions are actually Goals which give us a direction for our movement – our unfolding, our growing, out maturing – Not just accomplishing a task!
16. In other words, there are outcomes, which appear desirable, even required, from where we stand and what we know!
17. Plans are then, more like maps we build to navigate the terra incognita between “here” and “there”.
18. Now one can plan “from here to there” or “from there to here”, i.e. From the known to the desired via the unknown or From the desired through the unknown to the known!
    
19. Another way to look at it is that this is not a journey in space or in time but an unfolding in the space of our minds, in the eternal now.
    
20. It is a journey only because we think of it in this way. It could also be seen as creating conditions for the desired “unfolding” to happen.
    A bit like what happens in Nature, where the collaboration – together laboring of the seed and environment is required to make the tree happen
    
21. The seed has every intention of becoming a tree!
    Does it “will” into existence suitable conditions including where it falls?
22. Do all seeds, germinate to full blown, adulthood?
    
    Certainly not. What happens to the “failed” once? Do they not contribute by becoming manure that enriches the soil, which helps the successful seeds in their journey?!
    
23. So isn't a “failed” plan, but a key ingredient in the plan that “succeeds”?
24. What is success? Is it always reaching the envisioned goal? Or it is developing the sensitivity to course correct not only the journey but also the very goal?!
    
25. Like right now, there is a deep questioning, around the world, about the consumption driven, “I”-centric, control driven, Nature-dominating, world-view prevalent for at least few hundred, if not few thousand years. (Affluenza as it is so aptly named)
    
26. Back to plans and intentions and direction of “planning”
    
27. The purpose of “purpose” and “goals” is to give a direction to our travels, our explorations, may be even a meaning significant enough to get us to travel in the first instance!
    
28. But no journey can be truly undertaken if we do not know where we are, at least in relation to where we want to go, if not in some absolute sense.
    
29. Also required for the journey is preparation in terms of our readiness, our fitness as well as the equipment and supplies we are willing to carry.
    
30. This preparation is driven by the “road map” and the road, planned and actual, in turn is shaped by the preparation. (Ah, the inescapable circularity of life!)
31. The road taken is sometimes, (rarely, very rarely,) as per the proposed map, mostly taking us to the “chosen” destination and then often enough, for the perceptive, aware traveler, into completely new vistas and journeys
    
32. The notion of arriving at a destination is an interesting one. It is related to this whole business of Goal, of an ideal, of a preferred place other than where one is!
    
33. May be the whole journey is about being the “newer” me by becoming all the intermediate “me” ?!
    
34. Hence "planning as learning" is a correct, appropriate way of going about life .
    
35. Planning in present-continuous is therefore everything, synonymous with the very act of Living.
36. Plans which are intermediate, working maps, are useful in navigating through distractions – within and without.
37. However, typical of God’s design, this instrument, the plan, can become a deadly distraction if we forget that the map is not the territory and even a bigger one if we forget what Krishnaji said so beautifully, “Truth is a pathless land”
    
38. So we become less and less of who we are conditioned to be, sometimes becoming who we desire to be,
    At all times seeking to be who we fully Are.
    Which is in totality to be JUST BE!
    
39. So the intention is to BE! And then the plan has to be a device to warn us when are merely becoming as per latest fashion rather than being!
    
40. So What is this dance of being and becoming, the so called eternal dance?
41. Is it a shedding of ignorance, at a pace we can handle?
42. Is it a slow dawning that beneath all conditioning, the “Reality” was always accessible, always livable, if we could shed our fears and our cravings for security.
43. Accessible the moment we BE(come) Whole.
44. We cease the journey of individualism and become indivisible
    Whole! Purna! (Via wonder, Wisdom, and wealth)