Great replies, Don,

You made one fatal mistake though; you mentioned the "S" word, and the "E" word.  Now the hordes will descend on you, LOL.  Watch your back, my friend.

But to get back to the point, for me it crystalizes in terms of belief in the healing/intent.  We can meditate on one object.  If it is for selfish means, if we don't feel we have "earned it" through good works or grace, our belief will not be strong enough.  Perhaps this is why those who appeal humbly to God's grace will succeed.  But, I am convinced that intent with certitude and belief is what acts most strongly on the subconscious/all there is.

Do you not believe that all our thoughts create our general circumstances?  That those who feel they are pure victims may not have brought that circumstance into being by the seeds of thoughts, fears, etc?  The more one examines his/her life, the more clear this becomes.  We truly are our thoughts.  They gradually manifest, changing probabilities and attractions in the real world.  So we do reap what we sow.  Constantly.

Only one who, through complete mental discipline has purged his or her thoughts, into pure and loving thoughts could claim that he/she was a victim of outside circumstances.  Even seeming injustices or random events may be attracted by fears, insecurities, negative thinking. 

I don't think that you can have it both ways, Don.  Either our thoughts are constantly being translated into reality, or mostly our thought are our own, but only through occasional grace to they become real.  I see so much evidence of the former, that while I believe in humbleness and grace as a way to foster absolute belief and right-thinking, I am not certain that grace is necessary for all our thoughts to manifest themselves.

One can think of a greedy businessman, who has the notion of wealth in his mind like a meditation.  He may acquire wealth.  But he may lack love, have strife or gluttony.  Can anyone doubt that his thoughts were translated into the real world?

Yes, one can point to an innocent child who suffers horribly.  But we are not privy to that child's inner thoughts, nor his parents.  A parent's thoughts might influence their own children's realities.  So, it gets quite complex.

Deep within me, I believe in God, and divine grace.  I find it hard to think of my soul as divine, truly, although on an intellectual level, I believe we may all be a manifestation of God.  All that being said, I believe the use of intent is based on strong belief, and that those who appeal to God's grace may have stronger beliefs than others.

Best to you,

Matthew

I was kind of hoping that Don would pick up again on my and Kathy's posts, but you must be busy.  However, I have been thinking about it.  And I've come to the conclusion that in order to have certain intent, one must visualize the intent in a positive way, as if it has happened already.

This would mean congratulations, etc., the feeling that a healing or desired end is reached.  The more sincere and well visualized, the more likely it is to occur.

So this is what differentiates reality changing intention from  "I wish to win the lottery.  Please! Please!"  That would be a selfish wish and not a visualized certain intention.  We all have wishes, but as a sage once wrote: a man gets not what he wishes for but what he deserves/earns.  Wherever your inner certain intentions are, that is what will create your reality.

Matthew

[Matthew:] "Do you not believe that all our thoughts create our general circumstances?  That those who feel they are pure victims may not have brought that circumstance into being by the seeds of thoughts, fears, etc? . . .Even seeming injustices or random events may be attracted by fears, insecurities, negative thinking."  
_________________________

Yes, but only to a very limited extent.  I've known loving, highly positive Christians who seem extremely unlucky: e.g. a Christian doctor who gave up his lucrative practice to provide medical care and supplies for poor Amazonian Indians, only to be tragically killed in a plane crash en route to delivering supplies to the Amazonian interior.    On the other hand, an inner voice repeatedly warned Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones to leave the ticket line at an airport. He reluctantly complied and was forced to offer this embarrassing explanation of why he broke his promise to address a missionary conference.  Well, the plane crashed, killing hundreds of Indian Hindus.   Why weren't these victims also warned?  I don't know.   Jones was uniquely sensitive to divine guidance, but I doubt that Hindu fears attracted this crash to them.   The view that our thoughts create our reality is just inadequate to explain the diverse complexities of human fate.  

[Matthew:] "Yes, one can point to an innocent child who suffers horribly.  But we are not privy to that child's inner thoughts, nor his parents.  A parent's thoughts might influence their own children's realities.  So, it gets quite complex."
_______________________________

When discarnate humans or demons possess or harm babies who can't even speak, I doubt that the babies' attitude played a role in their victimization.  It also seems a stretch to blame the negativity of the parents.   When my cousin E (now a psychiatrist) was just 2 or 3, he was attacked in the car by an evil entity the very moment his pastor-father had performed an exorcism inside a house,  Only the whites of baby E's eyes were visible to his Mom.  Only the fervent prayers of his parents released him from this ordeal.   E was too young to have attracted this threat to himself and his very positive parents never dreamed that their baby could be attacked in this way.  

[Matthew:] "All that being said, I believe the use of intent is based on strong belief, and that those who appeal to God's grace may have stronger beliefs than others."
___________________

According to bibical teaching, an sustained attitude of surrender to God facilitates healing and other answers to prayer.   I have experimented with Silva Mind Control and other systems of releasing the power of focused imagination on certain needs and problems. I have encouraged church members to become Reiki masters.   But nothing has come close to the power of prayer in the name of Jesus.  

Such prayer has revealed the number of a phone booth at an I-90 rest stop to a suicidal woman wishing to contact a pastor, whose location was unknown to her, but who just happened to be walking by that phone booth at the moment the phone rang.   Such prayer has instantly healed my cousin's shattered eye and  allowed my Sunday School to restore his accidently sliced off finger without a scar.  Such prayer has allowed my brother (then 16) to discern the name and location of a possessed man and, before my stunned eyes, leave on a long bus ride to the obscure locale to perform the exorcism--the first and only one in his life.  He is now a doctor in Colorado.   Such prayer allowed a deaf mute in my church to be instantly healed.  Such examples could be multiplied.  

But I don't expect you to live vicariously through my endless miracle stories.   I'd suggest that you try an experiment.   For a week daily try to create desired outcomes simply by the power of focused intention. Then for another week, daily bring these same desired outcomes to "the Father" in the name of Jesus.  Instead of concluding your prayers "in the name of Jesus," substitute the clearer phrase "with the help of Christ's grace and intercession."   Then compare the results.  Note especially whether you sense a sacred communion with God through the Christian way that is unmatched by the purely metaphysical approach.  In any case, experimentation is the only way to make headway in resolving such dilemmas.

Don

So much to read, so little time....(sigh)

I think intent is a force field but I'm not sure what generates it.

What is intent?

Focussed and directed conscious thought, with a deep inner underlying desire?

I am coming into this thread late, so there is a lot to read for me here.  And actually, I've skipped a lot so I don't feel I can respond to most of you.

But there are a lot of wonderful gems of advice I see.  Thanks for these reminders guys. 

And Matthew, you've mentioned that book a couple times now.  I just wanted to say that I have that book.  I bought it a couple years ago.  The little thing is so old it's literally falling apart at the seams.   I haven't read it for a while and it's still packed away from the move.  Maybe I'll go see if I can find it.   

I agree with several of the descriptions given here.  I think we all keep learning from each other, and passing what we know back and forth, and so our concepts keep altering just a bit, kind of like tweeking something until we feel it is near perect; and our growing knowledge is a combination of what we give and take from each other here, despite all the pride and arguing that goes on once in a while.  Even some negativity promotes growth. 
About intent, I think maybe mood has something to do with it.  When your mood is great, you feel like anything can happen, like you are on top of the world.  When your mood is not so great, it's a lot harder to see the bigger picture of things, and it's difficult to believe we have control over anything. 

This idea leads me to think about how we create these patterns in our lives.

When my life of faith is in a "miracle groove" (for want of a better term), I'm absolutely confident that my prayers can produce miracles.   The problem is that I subtly and gradually become the victim of my own wishful thinking.   Then my prayer life is much less effective.   When by God's grace, my original miracle-working faith is restored, I say to myself, "Oh of course, that's how it felt."   But again I gradually "fall off the wagon."   What I need are better ways of identifying the feel of the "real faith" state.   

What I do know is that prayer groups help a lot.   In such groups, the members tend to feed off each other's faith [intent] and reinforce it.   They give up "trying"--a buzz word for inevitable failure--and just relax within the loving group harmony.  I also know that a disciplined, regular prayer and meditation time makes a big difference.   It marks the beginning of a "faith swoon" for me when I find "legitimate" reasons for making other activities a higher priority.   

Many posters take offense at my objection to the gullibility so often manifested on this site.   They imagine that I consider myself a ruthless bastion of objective thinking.  In fact, my critiques here are efforts to help people see the dangers of succumbing to the wishful thinking that has often victimized me.   It took months before I was willing to admit my bias and concede that my very dramatic OBEs and retrieval were nothing more than lucid dreams.   That admission was painful because it placed in doubt the status of my ex-girlfriend who shot herself.   But her welfare in the hereafter is more important than my need to put that episode behind me.   

I thank everyone who has PMed their support for my recent confrontations on such matters.    I hope I've injected a healthy defensive spirit in some that will serve them well in separating the genuine from the spurious in future astral adventures.

Don

Jean I had been on another line of thought about intent when you posted your reply. That was most insightful. One thing that seems to be distinguished from another are intent like bending the finger vs the more generalized intent that seems to become a mood or atmosphere. I feel very stuck in reality some times and it sems to me difficult to change the mood, but intent should be change-able.

It is a radical thought for me to consider that mood may be a manifestation of intent. Mood....atmosphere...like the way playwrights talk about the atmosphere of a place. I always get stuck with trying to identify the mood in dreams..I can feel it but I can't name it. I feel a particular atmosphere now. What is my real intent, I wonder? I don't know what I am feeling, just that it is pervasive and strong. But the intent function must always be turned on, so what intent does this signify?