How to Conquer Addiction with the Eightfold Path

Right Intention

Video

Hello everyone, there will be some questions for you to write down, please grab a pencil and paper. Today we are going to discuss the second step of the eightfold path, right intention. Right intention is also known as right motivation. When we take the time to get to know ourselves or anyone, we discover that we have goals and aspirations. We all have intentions and motivations. If we pay attention to ourselves from day to day, we will discover, at any given moment, we are motivated to do things and the motivation we feel comes from within ourselves. So, it behooves us to pay attention, to be aware of our inner motivations, because, to know whether our intentions will lead to actions that are negative or positive is important and fundamental for applying this step of the eightfold path. 

Our inner motivations stem from many factors and are connected to our psyche. The word psyche is a Greek word and relates to what we call “mind, soul, self, and is the root of the word psychology and psychic.” You don’t have to be religious in order to know that you have a mind or a self. In psychology, the psyche is the entirety of the human mind, encompassing both conscious and unconscious aspects. That being said, we all have intentions that are rooted in our psyche. Sometimes we are conscious of them, but in most instances we are not, and it’s important that we understand that our intentions are motivated by something within ourselves; something from within our own mind and heart. Each of us has different psychological aspects, so what motivates one person may be very different from another person. At any given moment we may feel motivated to do something. Some of the things we are motivated to do are positive and some are negative. It’s important that we are aware of where we are directing our attention and what is motivating us to do so. 

Let’s ask ourselves,

What is something positive you felt motivated to do today and what is something negative you felt motivated to do today? 

So, what is right intention and where is the motivation coming from? 

When we feel compassion or empathy and we feel motivated to express our feelings, we have an upright intention, upright meaning positive or pure. Compassion and empathy are coming from a feeling of love. Love is the world’s best motivator. The force of love seeks to be helpful and useful. 

What is wrong intention and where is the motivation coming from?

Anger for instance is very powerful and negative. Anger wants to lash out and we may intend to hurt someone when we feel anger. Another example is when we feel selfish: when we are motivated by selfishness we may have the intention to only be concerned with ourselves. Our anger and selfishness motivate us to cause harm. The intention to cause harm to ourselves or anyone else would be classified as wrong intentions. There are causes to our anger and selfishness and we need to discover them, be it frustration, greed, jealousy, addiction, etc. Become aware of what your triggers are. If we feel anger and intend to express it, then, that’s because anger exists within our mind and heart. We like to believe that it’s someone else’s fault for the way we react, we say, “you triggered me and made me get mad,” but that’s not reality; that is wrong view. What really happens is that something outside of you triggers what you already have within. 

What are my triggers? 

Energy is contagious, if we feel someone’s anger it may trigger our own frustration, pride and anger, but that anger and frustration already existed inside of us. It didn’t just magically appear. For example: If we pay attention to ourselves, we can catch the sequence of events that unfold around us and within us. If you, in the moment you feel someone’s frustration and anger, observe how you feel, observe what you are thinking, observe how you want to react while remaining still, keeping control of yourself, just observing, paying attention to how your anger wants to act out, observing what it wants to do, you can study it and comprehend how your anger is no good for you or anyone. Studying ourselves in this way helps us begin to comprehend how we are hurting ourselves and others. By being mindful we come to discover the causes and consequences. Some of us are very addicted to our anger, every day we may intend to express our anger, but why? Some say because it makes them feel powerful and they like others to fear them; they enjoy the sensation of others fearing them. For instance: I grew up with someone who thought that it was powerful to be angry all the time, and it made themselves feel like a God. This person called themselves “the man of thunder.” What he still to this day has not comprehended, is that his anger has caused him an inexpressible amount of suffering. It has aged him, destroyed relationships, and now he lives very alone. He has not placed himself in the shoes of those he has abused and therefore feels no remorse.

Know The Facts:

Knowing the facts is the first step towards right intention. Love, wisdom, understanding, knowing the truth, brings about psychological change; change in our minds and hearts. Love and wisdom bring about psychological transformation. This type of transformation brings about a longing for a better way of being. 

If you used to use intoxicants and are now living in sobriety, how do you view things now compared to when you were using, and what intentions do you have now? 

Any type of positive psychological change brings about a new way of perceiving things. For example: Before we got sober we viewed things through the eyes of addiction, but as each day went by in sobriety our minds became clearer and we began to view things in a new way and our intentions to stay sober became much more powerful. Another example is when we’ve been working on our anger management: when someone’s angry with us, instead of reacting with frustration and anger, we observe and transform it, and we feel compassion; instead of intending to cause harm we are motivated to empathize. Empathy helps us understand someone, why their angry, why they’re in pain, miserable, and sad. We understand them because we feel what they feel; we take the time to put ourselves in someone else’s situation because at some point we’ve been in their shoes. Instead of ignoring them, we seek to understand them. In this way, love and compassion are born in us, and little by little they replace our anger and selfishness. Compassion is rooted in love, and if we feel love our intentions are definitely motivated from a good place. Because of love, a new way of being is formed, positive and helpful thoughts surface in our minds. Because of love, we begin to have upright intentions, intentions that are helpful and don’t make things worse. Selfishness is profoundly abundant today. Selfishness is mostly why we are in our present situation. All over the world we see profound selfishness that only leads one to pain and suffering. When we become less selfish we begin to care about each other’s well-being. Most of us do not care about the suffering that others are enduring. Not caring about others is rooted in ignorance. When someone is being selfish or yells at us or says something rude, we do not take the time to try to understand them, instead we react with negativity; we mirror what we see. When we begin to comprehend that we are all in this together, that we are all equal, our intentions begin to change from negative to positive and we no longer care only about ourselves, we begin to care about our neighbors too. 

A great example of right intention is when Gandhi said,

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” 

What changes would you like to see in yourself and in the world? 

Samael Aun Weor stated,

“Only by radically transforming ourselves as individuals can we save ourselves and save humanity.” – The Revolution of the Dialectic

Truly, if we want the world to change, first, each one of us needs to change. If each person reduced their selfishness by 10 percent we would experience a significant change worldwide. 

Right intention relates to the way we think, feel and act. If we are feeling or thinking negatively our intentions will not be positive. If our moment to moment thoughts and feelings are centered in negativity, then we will not have positive intentions and motivations. It’s really that simple. “What you think, you become.” 

Obviously it takes great effort to be aware of ourselves, to be aware of our intentions and inner motivations. Everything we do takes work! In order to have a positive successful life we need to transform our view. It is very easy for us to see things in a negative way. But that can change, we can have a better outlook on life, and we can transform our intentions. We need upright feelings and thoughts so that our intentions with what we want to do with our lives can change. What helps is to understand how and why we became this way, and we begin by becoming aware of why we are thinking and feeling negatively. Why do I view things this way, what are my intentions? 

Questions to ask yourself:

Why are my thoughts centered around negativity? Why do I have wrong intentions today? What is motivating me to feel and think this way? Is it a memory? What triggered it?

Helpful tools: 

Practice self-observation every day, from moment to moment, observe yourself, observe what your inner motivations are and where they’re coming from. Almost all of our inner motivations are rooted in satisfying sensory addictions. 

What is sensory addiction? 

We develop cravings when we experience something that our senses really like, and since we do not pay attention to the causes and effects we develop many desires. Desires to stimulate ourselves through our physical senses. Many of us have developed many habits that involve satisfying sensory desires. We all like deserts but what happens when we eat to many? Our body becomes imbalanced right? 

Our five physical senses: touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing are triggered, when we smell, hear or see something; something within us is triggered psychologically. We feel, see, hear, taste or smell something and instantly it strikes our three brains, a sequence of inner events unfold, and if we are not mindful we make mistakes; we relapse, we hurt ourselves and others. If we are self-observing, we discover a psychological battle; a conflict between our conscience and egotistical cravings. It’s important to understand that we have inner motivations, and inner conflicts, “to be or not to be,” indecisions, all the time; “should I or shouldn’t I.” These conflicts are psychological and most of the time we are not completely aware of them and we give in to our cravings. When we sit to meditate, observing ourselves, we discover them, we discover that we are being pulled from one thing and then to another. Something is trying to get our attention. We get bored and we seek to stimulate ourselves in some way. With this step it is important that we become aware of them. It is important to become aware of our motivations and intentions to stimulate our senses. 

A good intention that we can all utilize is to deeply observe ourselves. To observe the patterns of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. If we are learning to meditate, we can sit and retrospect our day, or whatever comes to our attention. We can imagine whatever event we want and study it deeply. In this way we gain understanding, intuitive insights; knowledge about ourselves. In order to transform our wrong intentions into right intentions we need to gain knowledge of ourselves; we need to know ourselves better. Self-observation, self-remembering, mindfulness and meditation are keys to our success, they create a bridge over the barrier that keeps us from knowing ourselves better. When we understand why we think and feel negatively and why we want to behave negatively, we begin to open doors; doors that lead to self-discovery. When we truly understand what is keeping us down, why we are trapped in suffering, something new will arrive, a new type of motivation, an aspiration, a longing for something different. We begin to feel differently, we begin searching for a new way of life, we feel an inner urgency to change for the better, to know our Innermost Being, and these are right intentions. 

Right intention or motivation is coming from a place of purity. We all have the ability to change the way we look at things and the way that we interpret things. Learning to be impartial will help us. Learning to look at difficult situations in life without blaming others and without being too hard on ourselves is to be impartial. If we are too hard on ourselves, living in shame, we are viewing things in the wrong way and our intentions will be motivated by impure thoughts and feelings. Positive change doesn’t occur by being negative. Positive psychological transformation occurs when we comprehend our negatives. 

We need ethics!

Right view and right intention are rooted in in ethics. If we know right from wrong we see things more clearly, our intentions improve, but, we all have psychological filters and our perception becomes distorted when we try to understand things because of them. For example: When you are prideful about something, you only see your pride and your perception is not clear and accurate. Our pride tells us that we are better than others or worse than others and that is not true. Our greed for example only sees what it covets; what it wants and doesn’t have. We may become jealous of others because they have something our greed really wants. When we see someone with a nice car, we think, “I wish I had one of those, they don’t deserve it, I do,” or when we see a man with an attractive woman, or vice versa, we think, “I wish they were with me and not them.” Instead of being happy for others, we envy them. Envy and greed are at the root of many of our issues. Pride, greed and envy are a few of the psychological filters that we all have, and they keep us from right intention. 

How about lying? Is it ok to lie or is it wrong? How does lying cause suffering? What are the consequences?

Lying is usually motivated by fear and leads to wrong intentions. When we lie, our intention is to deceive. Study this about yourself, question it and take a deep look at it. Seek to understand yourself! Don’t judge yourself, be indifferent, just observe what is motivating you to lie. What is your intention? Remain impartial and indifferent while self-reflecting and self-observing. Impartial means to treat everyone fair and just: this includes yourself. To be indifferent is to be neutral with yourself and to not fall into extremes. So when your observing yourself or anyone else try to do it impartially and indifferently. If you judge yourself or anyone else you will not discover the facts, but instead view things in an egotistical way. Our aim is to seek true understanding, and the seeking is motivated by upright intentions.

What affects our intentions?

What we’ve experienced and learned throughout our lives affects our intentions; the things we intend to do from moment to moment. In fact, what we’ve picked up, what we’ve learned plays a crucial role in the way we perceive things as well. Some of our experiences have created psychological scars. Some of our experiences have caused us to create negative psychological elements that we call ego, and they influence the way we behave which also relates to our motives. What would greatly benefit us from this moment forward is to make a moment to moment intention to be aware of the way we think, the way we feel, and the way we act. Study what’s motivating you to do anything, and know that a red flag should go up if it’s not coming from a place of purity. 

Question your intentions, “what will happen if I act on this emotion or thought?” 

Observing oneself helps with self-awareness; to be more aware of our intentions and motivations. When we self-observe we have a better opportunity to remain vigilant of our psychological wellbeing; we have a better chance of knowing when something is imbalanced. When we are alert, when we are present and watchful we can catch ourselves thinking and feeling negatively. By being present and observant we can consciously choose to better understand what is going on inside of us and what triggered it. We are observing the causes and effects. When we fully understand that what we intend to do will result in pain and suffering we comprehend, and that knowledge becomes wisdom. Understanding, knowledge, love and wisdom bring about psychological change. But we are not solely responsible for all of the transformation of our psyche. The changes in our psyche, such as the elimination of our ego is due to a power greater than ourselves. Our inner divinity helps us transform psychologically. Our Divine Mother has the ability to take what we have comprehended and eliminate it. Any vice that we study, observe and comprehend can be eliminated. But it doesn’t happen because we believe or because we have a theory or a great idea, it happens because we did the work to fully understand and comprehend the psychological aggregate. The psychological work that we perform on ourselves helps our inner divinity eliminate any given vice that we have.

Self-observation and self-remembering bring about fundamental changes in our hearts and minds. We change the more we comprehend that what I intend to do will harm me and possibly harm others. Important tools that get us there are mindfulness, and meditation. But we also need a power greater than ourselves, our Innermost Being. Self-Remembering, developing a relationship with our higher power is key for the positive development of our psyche. When we meditate or deeply observe ourselves we eventually experience that a power greater than ourselves is helping us comprehend the facts, gaining wisdom and wisdom helps us with right intention. We are constantly receiving help and when we comprehend our wrong intentions they are transformed little by little into right intentions. When we comprehend our vices our higher power transforms them into virtues. For instance: when we do our best to understand the effects of our addictions, when we comprehend some of the causes and consequences, our higher power eliminates part of the vice we’ve comprehended. This means that part of the vice may still remain. So when the vice surfaces again we continue to chip away at it. Eventually, when the vice is fully comprehended, our Divine Mother reduces it to ashes. 

“We need a power superior to the mind, a power capable of atomically disintegrating any defect which we previously discovered and judged in depth. Comprehension is a fundamental part, but it is not everything. Elimination is necessary. An observed defect must be analyzed and understood completely before proceeding to eliminate it. After having fully understood any I-defect, we must submerge ourselves in profound meditation, imploring, praying, and asking our particular, individual Divine Mother to disintegrate the previously understood defect. The Divine Mother Kundalini has the power to reduce any subjective and inhuman psychic aggregate to ashes.” – Samael Aun Weor, Great Rebellion

This is how we work to conquer addiction, this is how our vices are eliminated, our Divine Mother helps us become free of vice, free of addiction. 

When we feel motivated to work on ourselves we have arrived at right intention. The longing to be loving to people is right motivation and intention. Compassion, altruism, happiness for others, temperance, and selflessness helps us with right intention. When we feel motivated to be kind, caring and helpful to ourselves and others we have arrived at right intention. Right intention comes from the motivation to not harm ourselves and others. Right intention is motivated by purity; by love, by conscience, by our Inner Divinity. 

Right intention and motivation help lead one to relaxation, peace, and serenity. In order to get there we need mindfulness. When we intend to be mindful we have a right intention, but we need to follow through with our intention. We may tell ourselves that we need to pay attention to our thoughts, emotions and impulses from moment to moment, but that doesn’t mean it will happen. We can intend to do something all day but not follow through. 

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” – Samael Aun Weor

That being said, right intentions are helpful, but we need to know where the motivation is coming from; what’s behind each intention? Being mindful, paying attention to ourselves will help us discover their roots. Mindfulness and meditation will lead to more and more self-control. If we pay attention to our thoughts, emotions, and impulses we will have a better opportunity for self-control. If we aspire to know what the facts are about ourselves we have arrived at right intention. We also need ethics: an ethical code of conduct leads one to self-improvement. Without ethics we will not arrive at right intention. Living ethically is a powerful way of changing the way we think, feel, and act. 

It’s helpful to study the consequences of our actions, but it’s also helpful to observe the law of impermanence. If we retrospect our lives we will come to understand the law of impermanence very well. We see that we are born, we get older, and eventually we will die. We come to understand that most of what we experience is impermanent, but, most of us ignore the facts. We simply do not pay attention. Pain and pleasure only last for so long. When you feel pain, does it last forever, and when you feel good, does it last forever? No right? Nevertheless, we mistakenly believe in the permanence of things. If we are addicted to narcotics or alcohol we know that the effects of the substance we’re using only last for so long. But some believe that they can keep it going, that they can chase the high that they desire and make it last forever. Those who are addicted to material goods hoard as much as they can and believe that they can keep their possessions forever. Those who are addicted to acquiring as much wealth as they possibly can believe that they can keep it. Those who are addicted to vanity, become very attached to themselves physically and are not aware that one day they will grow old. What happens when they begin to age? What happens when they lose their physical beauty? They suffer a great deal. The person who chases the ultimate high from intoxicants eventually loses their mind, their conscience disappears, they end up only caring about their addiction, and they do not comprehend that what they’re doing has an end. Ask yourself, what is the outcome of a life of drug and alcohol abuse? What is the outcome of hoarding possessions and money? What is the outcome of a life spent primarily concerned with one’s physical appearance? What are the consequences of those intentions and actions? 

If we study nature and the laws of the universe we will come to understand that our world is impermanent and subject to change; this includes our body, relationships, material possessions and all the sensations that we receive through our physical senses. When we comprehend the law of impermanence, we have a better opportunity to stop wasting our time with activities that are destroying our bodies, minds and hearts. We will begin to see things differently and come to understand the importance of every moment. 

If we continue to indulge in addictions we are wasting our lives, because every moment we are getting closer to death. So, what is truly important? Fleeting sensations or becoming a good person? Greed or generosity? Vanity or modesty? Reflect on these things; see what in you ignores the law of impermanence and seek to understand what you intend to do with the time you have left in this physical body. 

We are learning these things so that we can become a better person; so that we can conquer our addictions. 

Set goals:

Positive goals are right intentions, our intentions are important, but remember, we can intend to do many things, but if we do not act, if we do not do the work, we will not change. Learn to observe everything about yourself impartially and indifferently. If you learn to investigate yourself in this way you will discover deep truths. Be fair, just, and neutral with yourself, but don’t give yourself excuses for unethical conduct either. Get motivated and follow through with your right intentions. 

Seek to understand!

May all beings be happy!

May all beings be joyful!

May all beings be at peace!