Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 269

What Is Intention?

If a friend comes to you and begins flattering you, telling you how beautiful and good you are, and says that he has never met anyone as wonderful as you, while secretly acting against you, this is called an intention to harm. There is an action and there is an intention. The action is that the friend comes and speaks to you with flattering words, while the intention is to harm you. Everything depends on the intention, not on the action. It does not matter how the action appears outwardly. Intention is key. A person who sticks a knife into another person’s back can be a surgeon or a murderer. What is the difference between them? The action appears to be the same action, that is, the surgeon and the murderer both thrust a knife into a body, but their intentions are different. One intends to give life, and the other intends to take life. Everything depends on the intention.

Action and intention coincide only in animals and beasts, the still, vegetative, and animate. The speaking degree has an intention and an action, even on the corporeal-animate degree in our lives. Although certain animals pretend to be asleep in order to catch prey, such an action comes from the force of nature and is not conscious or planned in advance. In human beings, intention and action are two completely separate things. Intention is the weapon of one who serves the Creator. There is nothing other than intention. We can begin working in the society, for instance in the kitchen or in dissemination, and excel at what we do while our intention is to become a manager. We might get what we want because we excelled in our work, but we will gain nothing from it in spirituality. We will be able to advance spiritually only when our intention changes, and it will change because we are incorporated in a society that will influence and change us. Advancement takes place only in the intention, and not in anything else. Intention is an inner attitude toward someone or something, from the innermost point in the heart. Intention is an attitude.

Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 268
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 267
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 266

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