Intent < Will

Blessings Darlings!

It's cooler here today than it was yesterday.  It's a good thing we took our family walk yesterday!  And the freeze advisories continue for tonight and the next few nights.  If I do anything in the garden, it will be planting the hardy herbs only.

Other than the 'exercise for beginners' on tap for today, I'm also making bialys, probably making a loaf of bread, vacuuming my office, the heavy traffic area, and the family room.  I already did the dishes once, and unloaded the dishwasher.  Kinda normal Monday action for me.  But now that the school year is over, and the Spawn has 'recovered' from it, he gets to start cleaning the pantry today. 

Data point - the walking and the exercise bike time I put in yesterday doesn't seem to have bothered my knees much today.  I haz a happy!  Today is core exercise and VERY light weight upper body workout day.  I hate exercising, but I gotta start doing it. 

You could say that doing it is my intent.  But since IMO 'intent' is bullshit - it's my Will. Intent is such a passive thing.  People intend to lose weight.  They intend to quit smoking.  They never intend to have a car accident ... and yet they do.  They never intend to get behind on their bills ... and yet they do that.  They don't intend to become obese ... and yet they do. 

Why do you think that is?

IMO, it's because all the passive 'intent' in the universe isn't worth a bucket of warm spit ... unless you DO SOMETHING.  Intent is the idea. Will is the action.  And competence is further yet down the road to achieving anything.  Competence is will plus learning and applying knowledge and skills.

I want to become healthier and stronger.  To get there, I make a plan, and execute that plan.  I have made sure that I have a lot of fruits and veggies in the house to eat.  I have easy to access proteins that I like in the house.  I have several whole grain options to use for meals.  Thus I used my Will to make sure I have no excuses to not eat right.  Are they fruit and veggie options cheap ones?  Hell yeah.  Apples, oranges, and bananas, with some sale priced grapes for fruits, and frozen beans and broccoli, along with fresh cabbage and carrots, and canned tomatoes, and one spaghetti squash to step in to the place of pasta.  I'm sprouting my own mung beans.  Nothing is as cheap as white pasta and white rice would be, of course, but I have the room to do this. 

To that, I still have to apply my WILL to using those foods for my meals.  That's a fact.

I hate exercising.  But I'm doing it, as best my aging body allows it at this point.  That means doing a little each day, sometimes a little several times a day.  I have to use my active Will here, too.

All the 'intent' to lose weight and get fit isn't worth squat if I sit on the couch shoveling chips into my body all day.  Even if I 'send that intent out into the universe' as I sit on my ass eating chips.

The will is sort of like a muscle.  The more you use it, the stronger it becomes.  And, because it starts off weak, when you start the actual 'doing', you might need to throw in rewards for having taken action.  Not punishment for NOT having taken action.  The Chubby Hubby is tying a little exercise in with each time he comes upstairs to get a cup of coffee.  Maybe warm ups one cup, sit ups one cup, push ups one cup, etc.  The coffee is the reward.

Now - do I really have to point out that this stuff rules both the mundane AND the magical?  Gods, I hope not.

What's new with coronavirus?  Well, doctors keep finding new ways that it fucks with the body.  On top of fucking the lungs, we already knew that it causes clots in the blood system, thus affecting the lungs less directly and causing heart attacks and strokes and kidney problems.  Now we're getting new info on neurological affects.  Sigh.

And Trump keeps egging on the quarantine protestors, while bailing out big business.  And everyone in the White House gets coronavirus tests, to protect HIM, but virtually no one in the rest of the country does, because protecting the citizens isn't important to him.

Growl.

Frondly, Fern

AGAIN - COMPETENCE TRUMPS INTENT

Blessings Darlings!

I know that I keep harping on this fact - but your 'intent' doesn't mean a dang thing if you are too incompetent to formulate a working plan to pull it off. In fact, it is likely to totally backfire on you.
Last night I watched another prime example on why magical or mundane 'intent' is always - ALWAYS - trumped by magical or mundane COMPETENCE.

It was especially entertaining since it was aimed at me.

Someone I had been "energetically disagreeing with" in one group followed me to another group, and stated in her first post in the second group that her intent was to get me booted from it. Now, that was a GREAT statement of intent. Clear and measurable. Props for that statement of intent.

She then proceeded to make a fool of herself in the second group, repeatedly violating the rules of that group, and pissing off one of the admins. Thus she got booted.

The thing about measurable intent is that it also makes it easy to measure failure. In a very short time, she was booted by the admins, rather than me being booted by the admins. Her white knight, who had been stirring shit, was also booted - by a different admin (blocking admins in that group is a bootable action, and she blocked him.)

She was incompetent in her actions. Accusing me of doing something that was not against the rules off either the FB group or of FB is NOT going to work at getting someone booted. Or, at least so far, getting me even 'suspended' from FB (OF COURSE it helps that I don't fit the demographics of folks that FB tends to suspend. I have a pretty high level of privilege).

Let me repeat the lesson: COMPETENCE TRUMPS INTENT. Every day of every week.

Frondly, Fern

Light .... and shadow

Question on a Pagan group:

What is it with 'love and light' and 'Wiccan brothers and sisters'??????????

Why???

Why is such fluffy familiarity okay? And, without checking if the recipient even wants bloody 'love and light' and 'blessed be sister'??????

One reply (paraphrased and shortened): .I say those to people to express kind intent, to pass along the pure gentleness of my heart & soul...To express the truly sweet person I am, how I treat everyone from my friends to strangers. keep in mind that there are those of us out there who are REAL empaths, who are genuinely caring souls with true intentions.

Well.  I had to respond, because I am me.

First ... I'm still having trouble getting my head around "I'm an empath (but I can't understand that my words could be irritating anyone),"  

to get back to Liz's original question - why do folks always pushing light and love/blessed be

1 - not give a fig if the person WANTS that?

2 - not care if the person can HANDLE that?

3 - not VALUE the dark? Or the power of the lone path?

4 - Not respect that others have different boundries?

Look - for years I had stomach problems. My well-meaning husband always gave me milk 'to help settle my stomach'. Turned out I had lactose intolerance!  To put it mildly - my husband's 'cure' only made the problem worse.

 Pouring what may work for ONE person on everyone is NOT a good idea, NOT good magic, NOT good spirituality in my never humble opinion.

I have said this before, and I will say it again - intent isn't worth squat when you don't actually look at what you do DOES.  My husband TOTALLY meant to help me. His action HURT me.   

Addenum

The Empath responded: It's sweet that you have a well-meaning husband...Yet, irresponsible of you to not take your health seriously and take matters into your own hands to see a doctor. To me, that is someone not listening to their body - especially if you let it go on for years.


Baby girl didn't answer my questions .... and of course I HAD been to doctors.  Repeatedly. Because then I had good insurance.  But apparently if I did NOT have insurance and could NOT afford a doctor .... that is being 'irresponsible'.  Because the poor are irresponsible, I suppose.  

And I'm sure she still thinks she said nothing anyone can object to.  And she still thinks she's an empath.