The Power of Intentions – Part Three: Alignment — by Elazar Aslan

By Elazar Aslan

The sun is about 1.3 million times the size of the Earth. The Earth is about fifty times the size of the moon. Do the math, and the sun is some sixty-five million times larger than the moon. And yet, every so often, the moon completely covers the sun. For a few extraordinary minutes in the middle of the day, darkness falls, birds go quiet, and something sixty-five million times smaller appears to blot out a star. The moon did not get bigger. It did not try harder. It simply moved into alignment.

I think of this whenever someone tells me they need more—more effort, more hours, more discipline, more willpower. Often, what they need is not more of anything. They need to bring what they already have into alignment. I call this horizontal alignment: intention, thought, speech, and action moving in the same direction. When all four align, the impact can far exceed the effort. When they do not, even enormous effort can produce remarkably little. Most of us live with this misalignment without realizing it. Yet, before we can align our intentions, thoughts, words, and actions, we must first clarify the intention that guides them.

Imagine someone criticizing you. Before they have finished speaking, you are already composing your response. Your intention, you tell yourself, is to correct the misunderstanding and set the record straight. But look a little deeper. Beneath that perfectly reasonable intention may lie another: to make the person who embarrassed you feel a little of what you felt.

Now you have two intentions pulling in different directions. One seeks understanding; the other seeks retribution. Your words may be perfectly reasonable, but the edge in your voice reveals the hidden intention. The other person responds to that edge rather than your explanation, and suddenly you are having the very argument you claimed you wanted to avoid.

You may have aligned your words and actions with your stated intention, but your hidden intention will influence, if not sabotage your stated intention.

This is why alignment alone is not enough. We must first become aware of the intentions driving us. Some are obvious, others deeply buried. Some are generous, others self-protective. And some work directly against what we say we want. Until we recognize these competing intentions, we cannot truly align ourselves with any one of them.

The work, then, is not to become larger, stronger, or more forceful. It begins by looking honestly at what is driving us, bringing our competing intentions into awareness, and consciously choosing the one we wish to serve. Only then can we align our thoughts, words, and actions behind that intention. The same person, the same effort, the same few words—aligned—and, for a moment, the small thing covers the sun.

Read all five parts of Intentions and add this powerful tool to your toolkit.