The Power of Intention

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.- William James

[edited for cheesiness]
I was watching a PBS fundraiser today featuring Dr. Wayne Dyer, talking about his latest book, The Power of Intention. I don't usually watch PBS fundraisers, but I kind of got stuck on the channel when he mentioned that he had drawn most of the inspiration for his latest book from Carlos Castaneda, one of my favorite authors. The doctor told a story that I felt was worth posting:

Victor Frankl, pictured above, was a prominent neurologist and holocaust survivor who wrote a book called Man's Search For Meaning, describing how he survived the horrors of WWII in Germany.

During the war, Victor was in several camps, including Auschwitz. His mother, father, and wife had died in concentration camps and his only living relative left was his sister. His only meal a day as a prisoner, when he was lucky to receive it, was hot water, flavored with fish-heads.

In the book he explains how he forced himself to learn how to genuinely look at the world around him and see only beauty and perfection. Somehow, he taught himself how to see perfection in the fish-heads floating in his dirt filled water of daily soup. Later on in his life, Victor developed a school of psychotherapy called logo-therapy, which stressed the act of detecting and applying some kind of underlying meaning to the events that take place in a person's life. Simple idea, not so easy to practice.

Okay, so your attitude impacts your perspective on life. Your perspective on life affects every single seemingly insignificant decision that you make, thereby influencing the world around you. In other words, reality doesn't affect you, you affect reality. I would go so far as to say that the universe, or God, or [fill in blank], has a tricky way of indirectly cooperating with you're personal attitude. Dr. Dyer calls this force "intention", which is drawn from Castaneda's description of reality, or God.

What you expect to happen, and what you think about what is happening right now, will continue to happen to you over again in cycles, as long as your attitude and "intention" stays the same. Scary idea, but if nothing has meaning, save for your interpretation, what does that say about God? To me, all it means is that the word "God" is defined a little differently. Instead of God being the sole creator of reality, He's the main collaborator, He's the "producer" of your vision of your life and your surroundings.

Many of today's religions preach both openly and subtly that an all-knowing personal deity has a very specific plan laid out for your life. It's a comforting idea, but I don't think it positively serves society as a whole, at least in the long-term. I have a problem with it because it takes all or at least part of the responsibility for the state of the world off of our shoulders. We don't have to think about the horrible things that happen, because we subconsciously think that somehow they'll just work themselves out.

We're all products of our environment, but the first step to actually changing our external environment is acknowledging the fact that we can change the way we interpret the events that take place in our lives. It seems obvious and simple, but when you stop, and critically think about it, it's a pretty complex concept. Victor owed his survival in large part to his positive outlook on life, and his intent on finding something meaningful in the world around him, even under the worst conditions.

This of course is based on an assumption that beauty and meaning can even be found in things like death, war, starvation, disease, catastrophe, etc. But I guess that's the beautiful thing about beauty... it's in the eye of the beholder. I like to think that meaning can be found in anything, but placing meaning on something like war or starvation almost feels like justifying it.

Somehow Victor Frankl saw beauty in the fish-heads he was choking down everyday, because he chose to. He somehow accepted the suffering around him and found meaning in the utter destruction of his life and family. I envy his courageousness and perseverance. But is his logo-therapy merely an exercise of denial... or is it really possible to just 'alter your attitude', and thereby alter the course of your life? I'd sure like to think so. Victor survived to tell his story and went on to live a happy and fulfilling life.

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
-Victor Frankl