Welcome to my newsletter!

Heartfelt greetings to new and old Feathers, Rainbows & Roses readers. Welcome to this newly re-birthed journey through life in writing form. May it be a place to pause, to reflect with tea, to come home to yourself and journey the path to your truth, beauty and wisdom. May you find support, shared commitments to reclaiming joy and inner peace on this path where we walk together. I say ‘we’ because in our conversations, our shared remembering and exploring new ways is something that happens ‘in the field beyond right doing and wrong doing. I will meet you there. (Rumi)

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Intention, Attention and Our Vital Life Force (Energy)

Parable

Ruth woke up in the morning feeling tired in body and already exhausted in mind. Though she had promised herself she wouldn’t go down the rabbit hole of scrolling last night, it happened again and she went to bed late and her sleep was disrupted. The meetings scheduled today at work would demand her compliance to projects she didn’t care about and systems of communication that felt disconnected from anything real and heart felt. She was looking forward to the weekend when she could unwind and let her nervous system relax. As she was getting ready for work, she remembered she had agreed to attend and volunteer at a local fundraising event on Friday night. It wasn’t that she was against the organization and the fundraiser. Rather, she could feel the inner pull to move on and look into a new opportunity that had come her way through a trusted colleague. But she felt like she shouldn’t move on. She would let others down. She couldn’t leave work either. She knew she was only staying at the job for financial reasons. Everything else about work had long ago dimmed and the stressors were mounting daily. Her body ached and she couldn’t remember the last time she took time for herself to meditate, walk in Nature, listen to cello that she loved or even do the art she promised herself she would get back to this year. She hasn’t even got close to that room in her home. In fact, it finally occurred to her that she was living on autopilot, a default state of reacting to life and the social demands she perceived controlled her. Every night, to cope with either the stress and emptiness, she turned to scrolling, allowing her attention and focus to be manipulated and stolen. As the days turned to weeks, she realized how depleted in her body and spirit she felt half way through the year. She couldn’t find the vitality she had 3 years earlier. Something in Ruth stirred. She sent an email looking for some signal that someone could help her. It was Ruth’s first intentional decision in a very long time. This intention to do different started a journey of change.

INTENTION

Intentions help us focus on conscious qualities, values or ways of being that clarify how we show up to the moment, regardless of outcome. Intentions can help us orient towards practices of kindness, gratefulness, mindfulness, compassion, love—practices that come from the heart. Goals differ in that we focus on achieving specific results that are meaningful to us and often enrich our lives in some way. Goals are about the ‘what’ we seek to make happen. Intentions are about the ‘how’ we meet life as life meets us and the actions we therefore take. Intention sets our direction in life.

ATTENTION

Giving something our attention means that we allow that ‘something’ to occupy our mind, our senses and even potentially our heart. It means I am directing my awareness to a ‘specific something.’ Our attention answers the question, ‘what am I noticing or focusing on right now?’ Ii is where I place my awareness moment to moment and thus fundamentally creates relationship between ourselves and the ‘something’ we noticing. Our attention/awareness acknowledges the existence of ‘something’ and in our noticing we allow its influence on us. Our attention (awareness) is one of the most important and sovereign powers we have. Where we place our attention, mindfully and consciously, is what grows in significance and where we allocate more resources. Simone Weil described attention as a form of generosity, writing, “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Practicing right attention/right awareness over time deepens and strengthens our wisdom and discernment, she states.

VITAL LIFE FORCE

In Eastern philosophy, ‘chi’ (in Japanese-‘Ki”, in India -‘Prana”) is the vital life force that animates life. Ki is not something we manufacture. Ki is something we cultivate, nourish, receive. Vital Life Force is sometimes described as the phenomenon of ki (energy), blood (essence), spirit (kokoro), and Jing (DNA, ancestral). This “Energy” is something we allow to flow, hopefully with the least amount of obstructions and restrictions. In our everyday expressions, we refer to ‘our energy’ as representing our experience of our physical vitality, emotional state, mental clarity, presence, attitude, or way of relating to others. We know the impact when ‘our energy’ is depleted. Sometimes chronic depletion of vital life force is confused with depression. The symptoms can leave us lifeless as our purpose is inaccessible to us. With ‘energy’, we experience the vitality of living and taking action towards what we value and care about.

In Eastern philosophy, where we focus our intention and attention, energy (Life Force) flows. And where our life force flows —through meridians chakras and other systems and centres), blood (our essence) follows (a means to health). Intention, attention (or awareness) and life-force are foundations for happiness and health. Without intentions and awareness, we cannot experience spiritual, relational and personal growth and fulfillment. Our lives are rendered largely meaningless. Without vitality and healthy life force, we are incapable of taking action and achieving goals and aspirations that bring meaning and joy to our lives and relationships.

3 SOVEREIGN POWERS

In my life, these foundations are sovereign powers to me. It may seem obvious why these are our raw powers when we pause and absorb their purpose and function. “Of course my energy and resources flow where my intention and attention goes. Of course my blood follows my flow of ki.” When air (wind) moves, water (and its currents) moves. The water follows the river bed. Nature is always in motion because its’ life force is always in motion. The seasons, the cycles, the reciprocal relationships between all things reveal Her intention for sustainability, harmony and balance through the nourishment of love. We see that She is always seeking balance and harmony, regeneration, through cause and effect, growth and death, like attracts like and repels the opposite (examples of Natural Law).

Giving space here to identify and clarify the foundations, to recognize the power they give us, helps us with choosing and creating the meaningful and peaceful life we want to live. When we bring our choices, decisions, or actions to these foundations and core powers, we will find an honesty in what is needed, what is ours to do and not do. If, for example, our intention is do be kind in how we show up to our relations, and then make a thoughtless decision out of greed or jealousy, we will lose power in our vital life force. We also create an inner conflict between intention, awareness and energy flow. We create a blockage or restriction to the flow of our life force and the actions that arise from it.

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I like a simple life. A simple life paradoxically includes incredible challenges and is equally harmonious with complexity. A simple life for me means my intentions are conscious and clear. My attention towards my intentions is daily, steady and focused. My life force follows in the direction of my spirit-mind’s intentions (kokomo-heart-mind, as we say in Reiki practice). At the end of each day, I can trust that I have taken steps, flowed my energy in the path of my intentions for joyful living. I personally don’t like the feeling that I gave away my energy (raw power) towards what didn’t nourish me, didn’t fulfill me. In living with conscious intentions and attention, influencing the flow of my life force, much like water flows, I reclaim my sovereignty from the colonization, the corporatization, or the violent expressions of hegemony from military to pharma to political to religious to AI technology who want me to betray and acquiesce my sovereignty.

BOUNDARIES AND PRACTICES

I create boundaries that support my intentions. I give permission for my attention and awareness to be sustained in the direction of my intentions as a boundary. I harness my energy towards these intentions (and goals) and attention as boundary work. This kind of boundary creating is the work of my soul. When we are conscious and mindful with these foundational powers, creating and maintaining boundaries is soul work. When our boundaries align with our core powers, they help to sustain our core power. Most simply, to return to a place of our power is to say NO to what misaligns us with our intentions, steals our attention and drains our energy. It equally calls us to say YES to what uplifts our energy, what positively guides our attention and what manifests our intentions for a meaningful, happy and healthy life.

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Spiritual practices that cultivate mindful (awakened) intentions, build sustained attention or awareness of our senses, feelings and experiences and restores flow and balance to our life-force will light up our inner knowing (intuition) of the choices, decisions and actions needed in the moment. It will awaken us to love, beauty and possibilities.

Mental rehearsals or multi-sensory anchoring (visualization techniques) can trigger the Reticular Activating System (RAS), the gatekeeper system in the brain. Among other functions, it helps your brain look for resources and opportunities that align with your pictured and clear intentions and goals. This system helps you notice the book, the song, the item that previously was irrelevant and suddenly becomes valuable for your intention (and goals). And simultaneously, it prioritizes attention to your survival.

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THE WORKING EXAMPLE

Intention: to love and be loved

Attention: to notice what love feels like in my body (senses),

to notice what love does (ie be kind, forgives, be generous,)

to pay attention to love’s true nature (it’s honest, warm, light-shines like the sun everywhere)

to notice the way love expands my heart (and mind)

to pay attention to the way love opens, includes, flows

to be present to love, know love as presence

to notice what nourishes love (and what dims its light)

Energy (life force) flow: to give hugs and affection as a living expression of my love appropriate to the relationship

to sit in awe and wonder in the beauty and miracle of Nature

to speak honestly, kindly and from the heart

to release my judgements and negative prejudices

to move my body in the movements of sharing love

to move my body in the movements of receiving love

to listen with heart and mind (kokoro), with ears, with intention

to release what dims and restricts the flow of love (giving and receiving)

to breathe in and receive love in all its expressions

to breathe out and let go of the resentments that block the flow of love

Boundaries: breathe in love, breathe out judgements

say YES to expressions of love that honour my relationship with myself, the environment and the other

Say YES to loving myself

Say NO LONGER to beliefs that I’m not worthy, nor deserving of love

Say No to what dims my love (light)

Say No to what distracts my attention from loving and being loved

Say No to what depletes me, or steals my energy away from my intention (and attention )

Say YES to beauty (beauty invites our attention, opens the heart and awakens love)

Say YES to where love invites me to participate,

Say YES where love affirms my belonging

Say YES where love manifests my sovereignty

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FOR YOUR REFLECTION and CONVERSATIONS:

1). Write out and clarify two core intentions deeply important to you

2) What attention/awareness do these core intentions require of you? What are you being called to notice as you declare your two intentions

3) When you think about, feel, speak these intentions, what happens to your life energy as you begin to express your intentions and attention in this way?

4) What boundaries do you need to communicate to yourself and others to protect, give life to and sustain your intentions and the energy needed to express and live these intentions?

5). I said that your intentions, your attention and your life force are your sovereign powers. Why does having sovereignty over the core powers matter to you?

©️Shirley Lynn Martin

July 2026