The Power of Intention with Dr. Wayne Dyer

America’s best-selling author and speaker on transformational wisdom, Dr. Wayne Dyer, visits the Minneapolis Convention Center on Thursday, Oct. 7, to speak about his new book that gives readers a fresh definition of the concept of “intention.” The Power of Intention, Dr. Dyer transforms conventional thinking about how things happen in our lives into a profound understanding of how we each possess the power to co-create the life we desire.

Intention, explains Dr. Dyer, can be better understood as a field of energy to which every person is connected — that is, every one of us is able to harness its infinite potential. There is no question that we’re connected to the field of intention, because that bond already exists. Instead, he poses this question to the reader: How capable are you of keeping your “link” to the field open, and are you ready for what awaits you?

Many of the world’s greatest thinkers from an array of disciplines — such as renowned anthropologist/spiritualist pioneer Carlos Castaneda, Nobel physicists Max Planck and Albert Einstein, and the writers of the Bhagavad Gita and the Bible — speak of a force that intends things into the material world and animates all life. Dr. Dyer introduces the reader to these philosophies and explains that the keys to intention lie in understanding the qualities of this remarkable field of energy and learning to live in harmony with this universal force. His message is personal, clear, and empowering: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

He spoke with The EDGE by phone from his home in Hawaii on the power of intention.

I read on your website that you view intention as a source in the Universe that allows an act of creation to take place.
Wayne Dyer: Yes, it’s kind of a different view of intention. Most people think of intention as having a very strong will or determination. Actually, I got that idea from reading Casteneda’s last book, The Active Side of Infinity, where he says sorcerers have this idea that there’s a source in the Universe from which all things are intended, and sorcerers call this “intent” and that all of us are connected to it, there’s no way that we cannot be, but that some of us have a dirtier link, if you will.

How does one initially tap into that energy field?
Dyer: The fact is that we’re always connected to it. If you’re breathing and eating and digesting your food, there’s no way you cannot be. But, the way that we do it — and that’s what The Power of Intention really is about — is we try to match up to what this field of intention looks like and what it sounds like and what it feels like. The closer we are in harmony with it, the more we regain the power of it — for the power of intention is the power to create and the power to manifest, the power to heal, the power to allow anything to come from the invisible world of spirit into the world of form.

Quantum physics is teaching us that particles themselves don’t create particles. It’s what Jesus said 2,000 years ago, that it’s the Spirit that gives life and that you don’t get particles from more particles. When you trace a particle back to its origins, you find that it’s nothing but pure energy. All of us come from this energy field.

The whole basis behind The Power of Intention is that there are seven faces of intention. If you could have magical binoculars that you could focus and look at this field of intention, you would see what the source of all things looks like. It’s a source of love and kindness and beauty and creativity, and it’s a source that excludes nothing and it’s a source of unlimited abundance. It’s a source that never rests. It’s always in a continuous state of creating and it is kindly toward everything that it creates.

Every time we have a thought that’s inconsistent with that — if we have a thought that’s not a thought of kindness towards others — then we’ve left the field of intention and, therefore, lost the power of the field of intention, as well. The whole idea is to connect yourself back to this field from which all things emanate, to return to your source and watch it in every thought that you have. Then you’ll be able to do everything that your source can do, because you and your source are never separate.

So the key is to return back to that energy field?
Dyer: Yes, to connect back to this field and what it looks like and what it feels like. So anytime you have a thought, for example, that excludes someone, if you have a religion that excludes someone, then you’ve really left God behind, and you’ve really left your source energy behind.

If you have a thought of hate, imagine a source that is responsible for creating everything in the Universe that’s operating on hate. It wouldn’t create things that it hated. What would be the point of a source that would create things that it despises or that it is unkindly toward? It’s really having Paramahansa Yogananda’s God realization. Living from the perspective at which you came from and returning to source really is an act of remembering, rather than an act of learning.

In A Course of Miracles, it says that the memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It cannot come where there is conflict, and a mind at war with itself remembers not eternal gentleness. It’s when you’re at peace, when you’re quiet, when you’re meditating, when you’re allowing yourself to be all that you originally came from, then all incredible great powers come to you.

Where are the things that we see in the world now that appear harmful and hateful created?
Dyer: They are created from what we call ego consciousness — when we separated from our source, individually and collectively. Disease is really a function of detaching ourself or disconnecting ourselves from this source of well-being.

When enough of us do it and it becomes a regular part of our lives, we accept it as just the way of things. But, in fact, everything that emanates from source emanates from a source of well-being. When we take on this ego consciousness, when we take on hate rather than love in our hearts, we create all of this divisiveness, and we create all of the problems, the struggles, the difficulties, the diseases, the poverty.

We come from an abundant, endlessly providing, always forthcoming, always giving source. If we would just stay like that, if we would be forthcoming and giving and sharing and allowing, excluding no one, then it wouldn’t be possible to have wars in the Middle East, or poverty in Africa, or any of these kinds of things. We really need to not only remember that, but as a people we need to really reconnect ourselves to that.

I think it’s inevitable that we will.

Do you see a growing momentum in that direction?
Dyer: I do, but, of course, I always …

You always see the cup half full, right?
Dyer: Exactly, or more so, on the way to being totally full.

I absolutely believe the species, the planet and the Universe can’t survive if we function on hate. And I do see more and more people who are moving away from traditional religions that exclude others and have hatred as their basis, as part of their ideologies, that conceptualize an angry God that is going to take retribution on all the people who are not a certain way.

I just don’t think that kind of thinking in organizations is going to function very much longer — and I think we’re seeing the deterioration of a lot of that right now. I think we’re seeing that it’s at the basis of a lot of these conflicts in Iraq, for example, the misinterpretation of Mohammad.

Exactly. I was going to say it’s not necessarily the religion itself, but the interpretation of it.
Dyer: Absolutely! You know Christ wasn’t teaching people to hate Jews. He was a Jew himself. He wasn’t teaching people to hate anybody who didn’t believe as he did.

I always say, don’t be a Christian, be Christ-like. Don’t be a Muslim, be Mohammed-like. Be Buddha-like. Emulate these great spiritual Masters and what they were teaching. What they were teaching was kindness and love and peace and forgiveness — all of the kinds of qualities that if we all practiced them, we wouldn’t have these kinds of things in our world.

I think it’s always based upon misinterpretations. You see, so many of us have separated ourselves from our source and have lived on ego consciousness. Then we take a conceptualization such as, “It is only through me that you will reach the kingdom of heaven,” whatever that exact wording is, and it is interpreted to mean that Jesus was talking about his form, his body, the man that he was. But he wasn’t a human being having a spiritual experience. He was a spiritual being here having a human experience, and he wasn’t speaking of his sandals and his beard and his body. He was speaking of the spirit that is in all things. It is only through that that you will come to know the Father.

And so these gross misinterpretations based upon ego consciousness — that take a spiritual conceptualization and turn it into something that is used to justify hating other people or killing other people and having crusades and having endless jihads and so on — are nothing more than an ego-oriented interpretation of a spiritual message.

You talked about what you see as a growing movement toward a realization of the energy where the power of intention comes from. What does it take for a person to stay in that space?
Dyer: It’s actually the easiest thing in the world to do. It’s actually much more difficult to do the opposite. It’s much easier to be at peace than it is to hate somebody. It’s much easier to love somebody than to fight with them.

Like they say, it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.
Dyer: Than it does to smile! It takes more work. We’ve just become so accustomed to identifying ourselves on the basis of this body and its accomplishments, its achievements, its collections, what it owns, its acquisitions, its reputation, rather than seeing ourselves as divine, spiritual, infinite beings just having what Joe Goldsmith called a “parenthesis in Eternity.” What we experience is just this tiny little {birth death}, but our essence, our true essence, is this infinite source. Everything that composes, decomposes and returns to that source. There’s nothing — nothing in this Universe — that doesn’t decompose and then composes from that invisibleness. If we could just identify what that invisibleness is and be it.

My goodness, there’s nothing that feels better than to meditate, than to get quiet, and then to be at peace, and to tell someone you love them. There’s nothing that feels better than to do something nice for somebody. I mean nothing feels better. I was walking in the grocery store the other day and there was a woman who had walked in and didn’t take a cart. And she was slowly grabbing more and more things and trying to balance some peaches on top of some tomatoes — and I ran over to the front of the store and grabbed one of those little hand baskets and took it to her — and you’d have thought I’d just given her $10,000. It felt so good to to help her. I couldn’t wait to do that for her. I mean you multiply that by ten billion acts and we’ve got a planet that’s on purpose, that’s connected to source.

We need to start thinking collectively as a people about what we should be looking at. Why are we so hated around the world? In the history of our planet, the United States has never been more hated than we have been in the last three or four years, and yet, if you ask every American out there what kind of a people we are, we would all say, “Oh, we’re really good people. We do good things in the world.” Then you go around the world and ask what America is like, there’s a completely different conceptualization of what we are.

We ought to really be looking at what it is that we are doing that is attracting this kind of energy back to us. A big part of it is that we’re playing power games and acting like Big Brother, that we’re better than everybody else and that we’re going to show everybody instead of being the kindly, giving, beautiful, soulful people that we know we are. We’re no better in God’s eyes as Americans than Rawandans are, or anybody else.

How does a process of group intention work?
Dyer: It becomes an energy. I’m working right now on an idea for a book based upon an observation of Victor Hugo that there’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

The big social issue right now in this new election is the gay marriage thing. Now, it’s a complete non-issue and there’s no possibility in this world that there will ever be a constitutional amendment to the United States Constitution identifying marriage as whatever it is. It’s never going to happen, it could never happen.

But other ideas have to happen. The fact is that just when it was time for slavery to end, then when it was time to integrate the schools of this country, and when it was time for women to vote, and when it was time for smoking to end on airplanes and all of those other kinds of things, those kinds of ideas simply could not be stopped.

The question is whether you’re on the side of the angels or not. Is your internal energy one that is connected to the will of those who are more connected to source — a source that says we exclude no one, that no one has more privileges than anybody else, that no one is any better than anybody else? That’s God Consciousness, and when God Consciousness begins to surface, it can’t be stopped. It just picks up people as it goes along.

I just saw a movie on the women’s suffragette movement called Iron Jawed Maidens. Look at President Wilson back there in 1918 and 1919, fighting women getting the vote. It was just an idea whose time had come. Our Constitution was developed at a time when people forgot that half the population was left out. They left out 50 percent of the people to make decisions — and more than that, because if you were black, you were left out too. Those kinds of ideas are not consistent with spiritual awareness and spiritual consciousness. The same thing now is true of George W. Bush, who down the road in the history books is going to look like a fool.

The spiritual trend is inclusion, not exclusion.
Dyer: Exactly. That’s the way that you show spirituality, through inclusion, not exclusion. And he will look as bad as the people who were on the side of slavery, even though they’re not the same issue. I remember even when I was a teenager about the idea of integrating neighborhoods. I was in my 20s when President Kennedy was killed. You talk about a man who took a stand. I think he saved the world from nuclear holocaust. You should go see the movie Thirteen Days if you haven’t seen it and ask yourself if George Bush was in the same position as Kennedy was at that time.

How do you know when you are connected to source?
Dyer: I think that you know when you’re at peace. The ego’s mantra is “more”: I need more…more recognition…more stuff…more money…to be separate from everybody else. And when you’re connected to source, you’re at peace. You’ve arrived. You’re not striving any longer. You’ve gone from striving to arriving. You know you’re here. You don’t have to have more in order to be happy. Compare that to the high that comes from, say, a drug, a shot of heroin, which is a counterfeit high, because you have to have more in order to sustain it. You don’t get to arrive. You’re always constantly looking for more of that. Whereas, when you’re at peace, there’s no counterfeit freedom. When you’re connected to God, every moment is perfectly perfect. You don’t tell yourself, “I’ve got to have more of this in order for myself to feel good.”

There’s no need for more, because it’s unlimited.
Dyer: Exactly. You’re already there.

What role do words play in the act of intention — affirmations?
Dyer: I think anything that you can use to connect is fine. For some people it’s meditation. For some people it’s yoga. For some people, it’s running. For some people, it’s affirmations. For me, it’s photographs and drawings, and affirmations, and statues, and crystals. I fill my writing space and I fill my home with symbols of what I think of as higher energy.

Everybody has their own way of arriving at the same place. There’s a big difference between oneness and sameness. Oneness implies that we’re all connected and that we all come from the same source. Sameness implies that we all have to do things and exactly think the same way as everybody else does. The key is avoiding that and just seeing ourselves as connected, and that there are many ways to the garden.

Most people think that God wants us to demonstrate our love for God by having churches and by having symbols — and I think that’s a huge error. I think the way we show love for God is by loving each other, by extending the love that we are.

I don’t believe any single so-called creator of a religion — Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha — ever wanted to have their images spread around all over the place.
Dyer: No, not at all. It was always the opposite. They’re not into the ego part of it.

When people come to hear you in Minneapolis on October 7, what can they expect?
Dyer: I never quite know how to answer that. I think they can expect to be entertained, that it will be compelling, that it will be challenging, that it will be fun. I never know because it’s all in order. I don’t take notes. I don’t use notes and I go out there on stage and I just get quiet and I just let it come. I don’t really worry about whether people get it or don’t get it or whatever. They just keep telling me to come and they keep showing up and they pay me and it just seems to all work — and I just have a great, complete trust that it will be a love fest, that we’ll all feel better, as much for me as for them. It’s probably more fulfilling for me to be offering what I offer than it is for the people who receive it.

So the people who follow Wayne Dyer could really learn a lot by going to all the shows.
Dyer: Oh yeah, absolutely. I remember there’s a great story of Sir Laurence Olivier. He gave the greatest performance of Hamlet that had ever been given at the Palladium in London. He was backstage after the show and got something like a 15-minute standing ovation. The accolades were just greater than he had ever experienced in his life. And he was back in his dressing room throwing things around, just in a fury.

His aide said to him, “How could that possibly be? You’ve just given the greatest performance of Hamlet!”

He said, “Don’t you think I know that?! The problem is, I don’t know where it came from and if I could ever do it again.”

I’ve often felt that way. A lot of times, I give two church services in the same morning. I’ll give a service at 9 and then I’ll be ready to do the 11. And I’ll say, “I’m not sure what to do.”

And the minister will say, “Well, just give the same talk that you gave this morning.”

And I say, “But, I don’t even remember one thing.” I’ll sit there and I’m getting ready to get up there and to give the second service and I have no memory of what I just said two hours ago. None. I don’t know what story I told, what order it was or anything.

And you just have to go back to that trust.
Dyer: It’s a surrendering. Just like when we do interviews like this. If you ask me the same questions all over again an hour from now, you might get similar answers, but you certainly wouldn’t get identical ones.

For more information on Wayne Dyer, visit his website at drwaynedyer.com. The Power of Intention book and CD programs, by Dr. Wayne Dyer, are published by Hay House, Inc., and is available at local bookstores, www.hayhouse.com, or through Hay House at toll-free 1.800.654.5126.