On January 29^th, I turned 40, and it was one of my best birthdays ever. I felt such bliss and gratitude all day long. During my birthday weekend, I went snow-shoeing on Mt. Shasta with a dear girlfriend, and she suggested that we speak our intentions out loud while on the mountain. After hiking for a while in that invigorating atmosphere, we came to a place where there were two large rocks above us. It felt like an appropriate time to voice our intentions, but then, instead of speaking, we both just spontaneously closed our eyes and stood there in silence for a few minutes. While silent, I felt tremendous gratitude, and I heard an inner voice say, "Have openness to receive."

As I gazed out at the sun sparkles on the snow, I remembered my teacher’s last words to me. The last time I saw my beloved spiritual teacher, Basil (who passed away in July, 2009), he said, “Receive, receive, receive. You are trying so hard to go up and get the Divine. You need to allow the Divine to come down into you. Receive, receive, receive.”

Next I thought about how funny we human beings are. We are funny in how we think that our regular thinking minds are capable of knowing what we truly need. In this case, my girlfriend and I were all prepared to tell the mountain what we want to manifest in life, but instead, the mountain guided our intuitions to tell us what we truly need!

The intuition is a higher mental faculty than the regular thinking mind. When we relax our thinking minds and repeat the mantra, “I don’t know,” then our intuitive minds can guide us in a fruitful process of intending. This past year I began working with the process of intending as one of my spiritual practices, and after several attempts to tell the universe what I thought I wanted, I have come full circle back to the “I don’t know” mantra.

My journey with the intentions process began in July. The day before my spiritual teacher passed away, a friend told me that it was time for me to start teaching. I said, “I don’t know. It seems like that is what I am supposed to be doing, but I don’t really know what the Universe intends for me.” A few weeks later, I met a gypsy yogi who gave me a little book called, The Intenders Handbook by Tony Burroughs (Dolphin Press, Revised 2007 Edition). My favorite line in the book is: “What you are reaching toward is also reaching out toward you.” After reading that book, I thought I understood how to create a list of intentions that the universe would not be able to refuse!

While I was creating my super great (or so I thought) list of intentions, I met another yogi who is quite skilled at manifesting his intentions in the world. I shared my list with him and he gave me lots of suggestions on how to ensure that my intentions would manifest. He shared a couple of tips from his own experience: 1. “Whenever I need to make money, I go and have as much FUN as I can, and then the money comes. 2. “Whenever I need to make more money, I spend all the money that I have so that more money can come in.”

At that time, I didn’t yet understand something that this friend also told me, which is that manifesting intentions comes from a place of knowingness. I will explain that more, when I get to the point in the story where I really ‘got’ what that means. So, at that point, I thought that I could just ask for anything I wanted, as long as I stated “if it serves the Highest Good” at the end of each intention.

Now here is the embarrassing part, and I’m going to share it, because it is a part of my journey in humanness. One of my intentions was for the universe to send me thirty-thousand dollars by the end of September. I know that probably sounds totally crazy, but keep in mind that I was really flexible with that intention – I told the universe that it could send the money any way it wanted to! I wrote out exactly how I would use the money to create a website, to publish and promote my new book, Radiance Rising: Spiritual Practices for Daily Living, and to get out teaching in the world. I read the intentions out loud several times each day, and I was pretty convinced that somehow the money was going to come to me. Well, as you’ve maybe already guessed, there was no thirty-thousand dollar deposit in my account when the bank closed on September 30^th.

Since I am a fiery, emotional type, I was not initially able to calmly say, “Well, that’s okay. I guess that just wasn’t meant to be.” Instead, I reacted with a full-blown breakdown on the tantrum yoga path. During one of several long, loud, sobbing cries, I said out loud to the universe, “This intention making process doesn’t work for me – I am on the Raja Yoga path, and what works for me is to just surrender everything to the Divine and then trust that everything happens in perfection.”

After I calmed down from the tantrum yoga, I was able to have a rational discussion about it all with a dear yogi friend. He told me that I needed to learn a lesson in trusting the universe to support me. He said sometimes the universe requires us to spend down to our last dollar. I understood what he was saying, but then I also thought about how we have to strike a balance between surrendering and taking action. So, I typed up a sponsorship proposal and sent it out to a few people, and within a few weeks one of them deposited some money into my account. It wasn’t the thirty thousand dollars I had asked for, but it was enough to create the website and publish the next book. And, more importantly, it was enough to let me know that the universe is in support of the work I am doing.

At that point I signed up for The Bridge, a series of free email teachings on the intentions process that you can sign up to receive at www.intenders.org. While receiving those inspiring teachings, I attended a training in Reiki, a gentle hands-on energy healing system. The Reiki teacher also talked about manifesting intentions. He said that the manifestation has to go through the mind, heart, and body. That resonated with what I already believed: even though we create our realities with our thoughts, when we want to consciously manifest intentions, we first have to tune in to our intuitive minds and our hearts to discern what is really correct for us to intend. Once we surrender and deepen into the knowing of what wants to come to us (or to come through us), then we relax into that knowingness, and then the intentions can manifest.

So when we say the “I don’t know” mantra with true humility and surrender, then the intuitive mind and the heart can speak their wisdom to us, and then we suddenly DO know, from a deep place within, what it is that needs to manifest. So by admitting that our regular thinking minds do not know, then our higher minds allow us to truly know. And it is in that state of knowingness that something shifts within us, and that shifted something creates a vibration of openness that allows us to receive what it is that we intend to manifest.

When we regularly practice sitting meditation and we consciously practice cultivating the witness, then we are already well versed in listening to the guidance of our intuitive minds and of our hearts. (To learn how to begin doing spiritual practices yourself, check out my new book, Radiance Rising: Spiritual Practices for Daily Living.) This ability to sense in and listen to our own inner teacher is really what spiritual practices are all about.

Now that I have come full circle back to the “I don’t know” mantra, I am able to continue working with the intentions process as one of my spiritual practices. It didn’t work for me when I was making red-hot demands on the universe with my regular thinking mind, but it works for me now that I ‘get’ that the workable way of making intentions is through surrendering and deepening into the “I don’t know” mantra. In that state of not knowing, a real knowing emerges, and then you DO know what it is that the universe wants to give you (or to give through you).

May you surrender into what wants to arise through your life. May you have the openness to receive, receive, receive.

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Mt. Shasta photo by Teja Shankara.