I read Thomas Campbell's My Big Toe: A Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics, and Metaphysics. It is mind-bending, and it wasn't easy to wrap my head around it. All 800+ pages of it. But it cracked open my mind just a little bit wider, and it made me realise what René Descartes, the French philosopher really meant when he said, "Cogito, ergo sum" - "I think, therefore I am".
Reading and quoting it is one thing - that's easy. To take personal responsibility that who we are past, present and future is what we created and will create ourselves; to internalise that we are both the creator and the result regardless of our externality, is an entirely different ball game.
What we think makes our intent; that makes our choices and what we do; that makes us who we are; and that makes our past, present and future. It starts with the right intent, and how willing are we to see it through.
"Your intent reflects the quality of your being and drives your choices. It is learning and personal growth that eventually enable you to make the right choices for the right reasons — naturally and intuitively.
Every day of every year we are forced to make hundreds of significant choices as we interact with others. We express ourselves with choice. We paint ourselves onto the canvas of the actualized present with brushes of intent and pigments of choice.
We juggle a thousand shades of competing need, fear, ego, desire, understanding, compassion, humility, caring and love in a swirling mix of contradiction until it all coalesces into a single result that is actualized into the present irreversible reality by the choices we make.
We are the sum total of those choices made over a lifetime, or a series of lifetimes. The substance of our being and the rate of our growth are defined by the quality of our choices.
It is the struggle of fear and ignorance against love and understanding; of ego, wants and needs against compassion, humility and balance; of good against evil; of what you can get versus what you can give. This struggle forces every choice you make, every interaction that takes place within your experience, to fall to one side or the other."
- Thomas Campbell
Our choices come from our intent - what drives us to make the choices we make and do what we do.
Positive intent comes from love, compassion, kindness, empathy, humility and what we can give. Negative intent comes from fear, ego, greed, pride, arrogance and what we want to take.
Our intent determines the outcome through our choices and our actions. Positive intent moves us towards positive outcomes, and negative intent moves us towards negative outcomes.
It's really that simple. It is universal law.
Outcomes mean the quality of our being, our existence and our life - not money, not fame, not how much sex we have, not how much we own. It's a good life, it's a life infused with joy, compassion and love.
Every choice we make comes from a mix of positive and negative intents. It is which intent we choose to determine our being, our existence and our life.
It is like the tale of two wolves - which one will we feed?