There’s a phrase that gets used a lot in this work: “What’s your intention?”
It’s a useful question and a terrible question at the same time. Useful because pointing your attention at something does seem to matter. Terrible because the moment people hear the question, most of them tense up and start performing.
I’ve watched people arrive at ceremony with elaborately crafted intentions written out on paper. Three pages, sometimes. Bullet points. Specific outcomes they want delivered. The medicine, they seem to believe, is a vending machine. Insert intention, receive insight.
This is not how it works.
The medicine does not respond to elaborate requests. It does not reward the cleverness of your phrasing. What it appears to respond to, if it responds to anything specific at all, is the honest shape of what you’re actually carrying. And the honest shape of what you’re carrying is usually much simpler than what you’ve written down.
Here’s how I’d suggest thinking about intention instead.
A few days before we sit, sit somewhere quiet and ask yourself one question: What’s the thing I’m actually here for? Not the thing that sounds good. Not the thing you’d tell a friend. The thing underneath.
You’ll probably notice resistance to letting that question land. Most people do. The mind will offer you several acceptable answers — to grow, to heal, to find clarity, to connect with something larger — and you can use any of those if they’re true. But the question is whether they’re actually true for you, today, or whether they’re answers you’ve borrowed from somewhere.
Sometimes the real answer is uglier. I’m scared of dying and I don’t know how to stop being scared. I’ve been carrying something from when I was twelve and I want it to stop. I love someone and I can’t tell whether to stay or leave. I’m successful at the thing I do and I hate it and I don’t know who I am if I stop. I want to know whether there’s anything beyond this.
Those are intentions. Not because they’re profound, but because they’re honest. The medicine seems to meet honesty in a way it doesn’t meet performance.
If you can’t find an honest intention, that’s also fine. You can arrive with: I don’t know what I’m doing here, but I’m here, and I’m willing. That counts. Some of the most useful experiences I’ve witnessed came from people whose only intention was openness.
What I’d avoid:
Intentions that are really demands in disguise. “I want the medicine to show me my purpose.” The medicine doesn’t show you your purpose on request. Asking it to do so sets you up for disappointment or, worse, for fabricating an answer to fit the question.
Intentions that are really other people’s intentions. If you’re sitting because your partner thinks you should, or because your therapist suggested it, or because the friend who introduced you to this work has been pushing you for a year — name that. Bring it as part of what you’re carrying. Don’t pretend it’s your own intention if it isn’t.
Intentions that are escape routes. “I want to feel free from this depression.” The medicine isn’t going to remove the depression. What it might do is show you something about how you’re holding the depression. That’s different, and it’s the kind of thing you can work with.
Write your intention down if you want, but don’t memorize it. Don’t rehearse it. The moment we begin, you should let it go entirely. The intention is for the days leading up. It’s a way of pointing your attention. Once we’re in ceremony, the work is to be present, not to recite a request.
And whatever you do, don’t grade the experience afterward by whether you “got” what you asked for. The medicine rarely answers questions directly. What it does is rearrange the room you’re standing in, so that the question itself looks different. Sometimes the rearrangement is so subtle you don’t notice it for weeks. Sometimes the answer arrives months later, in a kitchen, while you’re doing something unrelated.
The intention isn’t a request. It’s a way of saying: this is the part of me that’s listening.
