Eckhart Tolle has written widely that all our problems stem from thinking – the chattering inner voice driven by our ego. So if thinking is so bad, what exactly, is intention?

Many people consider intention a wish, or a strong desire - something best used to manifest stuff. A bigger car, a better job, a different partner. Using spirituality to gain yet more stuff. Nevertheless, when they try using a vision board they are then upset that they didn’t manifest the stuff they wanted.

The problem has to do with our definition of intention. We think of it only as a mental ‘oomph’ - a specific, highly directed thought with a targeted outcome. The problem also stems from believing our one, puny little voice operates in isolation.

What Are We Really Transmitting?

What we don’t consider is what we are actually transmitting to the world - the unconscious thoughts and unintentional intentions that spill out of us at every moment.

Consider the implications of the idea that every biophoton we emit is rippling out to the furthest reaches of the universe, backward and forward through time. Imagine the information we are receiving if we receive it at every moment from everywhere in the galaxy.

This suggests that our ‘relationships’ are not simply our interactions with other human beings or, indeed, with only one or two special ones. We are, in effect, in relationship with the entire universe. Every breath we take is taken as a relationship. Consequently, we have to reconsider our concept of ‘self’ and our idea of ‘the other’.

Just stop and think for a moment about the effect of the negative thoughts that swim through your mind every single day. A negative thought about yourself (‘I’m untalented and lazy’) or your children (‘He’s such a slob’; ‘She’s lousy at math’) might ultimately manifest as a physical energy and become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Oftentimes you may be consciously sending an intention, but actually harbor many secret objections or fears about it. Or believe you don’t have the power to make it come true.

In a fascinating books column recently in the London Times, British author Jeanette Winterson wrote about her extraordinary goddaughter Eleanor, who at the age of 11, after reading a prose translation of Dante, created a virtual Hell on her computer. According to Winterson, “Eleanor’s Hell swarmed with streets of people ignoring each other or throwing up.”

Her main street had an abattoir of intensively farmed turkeys, a weapons plant called ‘Protection’, a child-labor sweatshop and its franchise outlet selling clothes and Northern Rock, the bankrupt British bank that was recently nationalized.

When Winterson asked her goddaughter what these things had in common, this wise little girl replied: “Hell is a place where nobody gives a stuff about how much unhappiness they cause, as long as they are having a good time and/or making money.”

Separateness vs. Connectedness

Living with intention is a far deeper journey than recognizing that you can use these powerful gifts to accumulate more. It is first and foremost, understanding on a deep gut level that we are connected.

Science is the story that defines us – that tells us, in effect, how to live. Our current scientific story is more than 300 years old, a construction largely based on the discoveries of Isaac Newton, of a universe in which all matter is thought to move within three-dimensional space and time according to certain fixed laws.

The Newtonian vision describes a reliable place inhabited by well-behaved and easily identifiable matter. This, in its essence, is a story that idealizes separateness. From the moment we are born, we are told that for every winner there must be a loser. From that constricted vision we have fashioned our world.

However, the latest discoveries, written by a group of frontier scientific explorers, suggests that at our essence we exist as a unity, a relationship - utterly interdependent, the parts affecting the whole at every moment. Applying these new discoveries to our lives requires nothing less than making our world anew. We have to imagine another way to live, an entirely new way to ‘be’.

Living with Conscious Awareness

In its purest sense, intention is not simply thought – more an alignment of the various parts of you — your interrelation with yourself —your animal needs, emotional needs and spiritual self — and the rest of the universe.

It is living life without the compartmentalization that we ordinarily have. We have our relationships, our spiritual concerns, our passions – and then we have our work. And all too often, they don’t coincide. For many of us work is something we do in between the important and spiritual highlights of our life – a simple means of paying the bills.

Everything you think, everything you do, is impacting countless people around the world. To live with intention is to begin to recognize your effect upon the world and to bring yourself into a constant state of conscious awareness.

Living with intention extends beyond simple ‘hoping’ and ‘wishing’ or eliminating thought, and it’s more than just thinking positive thoughts. It means that you are using all of the energies at your disposal, your smaller and larger selves – the part of you that exists in The Field – to move into alignment in every aspect of your life.

Lynne McTaggart is holding a series of Living With Intention workshops across the US this year, with the first in Chicago on May 16-18. For more information, see theintentionworkshops.com.

To participate in the next Intention Experiment on April 26, please pre-register on theintentionexperiment.com.

Lynne McTaggart is the author of five books, including the bestselling The Field and The Intention Experiment. To participate in her next Intention experiment in March, please log in to the Intention Experiment website (www.theintentionexperiment.com), register in advance and follow the instructions. In 2008, Lynne is running Living with Intention seminars in Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland and Boston/Cape Cod. Click here for more information or to book your place.