Question: What is an intention worthy of action?
Answer: Our world is a world of action. All our earthly deeds are based on action itself. It is only by action and not by intention that our deeds are counted. In our world, we cannot be certain whether we have recognized, reproduced, evaluated, and weighed the intention correctly, whereas actions can be seen, measured, and compared because they leave behind a clear material result.
Intentions are our inner motivations, which are incomprehensible both to others and to ourselves, and are forgotten within a minute. Nothing can be done with that.
The science of Kabbalah says that we are special beings that consist of both actions and intentions. The more developed a person is, the further removed from mere animal existence, the stronger his intention is, and it is the intention that determines the action. That is, the action itself may be insignificant, but the intention behind it is great. In such cases, the person carrying out the action pays attention precisely to the intention.
For example, if I give someone a small gift or perform some deed that was very difficult for me but into which I put my whole soul, then the person receiving the outcome of my action measures it not by the action itself but by the effort and the good intention.
How can we measure intention? That is a problem because the world is becoming increasingly global. We must build a single system of relationships between us. But we cannot evaluate this only through actions.
After all, I am not working like a machinist in a factory whose contribution is measured by a thousand units of production that determines his pay and how others treat him. In our time, more and more professions arise where intentions are measured. We try to measure the relationships between people: how I influence them, how they awaken because of me, how we exchange services, and so on. That is, intention is acquiring ever-greater significance.
And so, our world faces a great problem. The more we develop, the more we move away from an animate state, the greater becomes the need to measure intentions. Yet, we cannot measure them.
Thus, the attitude of a person defines the world. The world itself becomes a consequence of our intentions.
And here a problem arises: the world falls into crisis not because of overproduction nor because we cannot get along with one another, but because our intentions are incorrect. But how to make them correct, how to evaluate and weigh them, we do not know.
Suddenly, quite unexpectedly for us, we find ourselves in an immaterial world because countless emotional, spiritual, and soulful connections arise between us that we cannot measure or account for. Intentions turn out to be more important than actions, and the world becomes awkward and unfit for human life. It begins to “push us out of itself” because it was created only for the animate state of humans.
At present we are like animals. Animals are not embarrassed by each other: I want to eat you; if you manage to escape, you escape, if not, I will eat you. Everything is based not on intentions but on clear actions. And intentions are absolutely obvious because action and intention coincide.
But when we rise above the animate state to the human level, we are obliged to begin taking our intentions into account. And they can only be evaluated with the help of the science of Kabbalah.
Question: Can you give us an example of intention in its pure form? What is it?
Answer: Suppose I have a certain intention toward you. You neither see it nor know it. I must determine it within myself, recognize it, and test it. If I wish to harm you with my intention, then by that, I will harm myself.
On the other hand, the world of intentions is much simpler. When we enter it, we as if erase all actions, “delete” our entire world, and only points remain along with intentions of those points toward one another. This is the spiritual world.
Try to imagine 7 to 8 billion points each of which, at least in some radius around itself, relates to others with a certain intention: either evil or good, plus or minus. The intention is directed either toward making another feel good according to how he understands it, not you, or toward making another feel bad according to how you understand it, not him.
Question: Can there really be only two intentions?
Answer: Only two, nothing else. And each of them can be graded in magnitude. Our attitudes toward others determine our world and our passage into the upper world.
We sort all the possible intentions people may have and take into account only those that exist between them. If they are positive toward others, they are called spiritual; if negative, they are called earthly.
All intentions of our earthly level are only for oneself and to the detriment of others.
[228917]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 3/25/2018
Related Material:
Where Is The Intention?
Intention And Its Influence On Reality
All The Difference Is In Intention
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