In order to acquire anything in the physical universe, you have to relinquish your attachment to it. This doesn’t mean that you give up your intention to create your desire. You give up your attachment to the result. This is a very powerful thing to do. Attachment comes from poverty consciousness, because attachment is always to symbols.
This quote from Deepak goes a bit deeper than we’re used to, but that’s OK because it’s pretty important. There is an important difference between your desire for something, and your attachment to something, and it has a lot to do with how you feel about yourself.
Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that there’s this one thing, this one person, this one circumstance, that will validate our progress and move us into the life we’ve always wanted. So we set our intention to bring that into our life and our experience.
What happens if it doesn’t materialize the way we have imagined it? Well, often it leads to great discouragement and disappointment, and that can lead to quitting. We may miss the possibility that the idea didn’t work out because there was something better.
That’s why learning to have intention without attachment is so important – we feel the disappointment, but we can immediately move on with the idea that something better is going to show up. If we live our life without attachment, we’re psychologically prepared to shift gears and move in another direction when we need to, rather than feeling like a failure because something didn’t work out.
Can you see how that would be helpful? For many of us it’s the missing link in successfully living a life of conscious intention.