INTENTION PAPER

It really amazes me that the third semester is upon us.  In parts I feel like this is just the beginning.  I feel as I am just on a solid start in my place and purpose.  While questions are continuously rampant in my mind and I’m still in a quest to find some balance in relationship between myself and all that is Devine, I feel like the fog that has caused much of that questioning has been accepted to a place of value.  The uncertainty is the most powerful place to live in.  In the uncertainty we are open to the possibility, and in that openness and unattachment we are guided by spirit and not by our thoughts or desires.  This is a time when doors open and magic happens. 

For this semester my deepest intention is to live and feel comfortable in the place of trust and surrender.  This will only truly be possible if my relationship with spirit is strong.  So for this semester I intend to continue to develop my communication and connection with self and Great Spirit.  With this strong I know that all aspects of my life will effortlessly be manifested.

In relation to academic intentions, which are turning to be professional intentions I hope to become a better community organizer and improve my outreach skills.  A big part of that and what I’ve been struggling with for the past year is how to promote and express sustainability as revolution.  How can I bring across to the disconnected masses that returning to our memory of building together and celebrating together we can overgrow the government and improve the quality of life for all?  I aim to be able to on an intellectual level as well as on a street level be able to express the racist and fascism by government/corporations and show the forced disconnections as well as articulate how with sustainability we can empower our communities and ourselves and see a true structural shift.   

I hope to better understand and embody systems thinking to a point of systems speaking, systems action and systems living.  Through the reading of great teachers like John and Nancy Jack Todd and Sim Van der Rym I wish to better understand ecological design.  I am fascinated and humbled by how “waste” is in truth one of the most valuable products found in our natural world.  How the illusionary concept of throwing something “away” simply does not exist in the organic world and how we have the capacity and knowledge to also turn what we dispose of as rubbish into product.

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As for spiritual intentions, like I mentioned above, I pray to strengthen my relationship to the great unseen and to walk my life in honor and in the beauty of the great mystery.   As I understand it, the more intention and work that I put in the inner connections the more naturally that the outer world will manifest in a true uncontrolled flow.  I continue to ground into the reality of these times, pray in gratitude and open myself to be a vessel for the work that I am intended to pull through in this lifetime.   

This past semester what was the strongest for me was our last weekend with Joanna Macy.  Grief has been something that I have not given too much value to in the past, seeing it as a sign of weakness.  I have for years swallowed my own tears and have had little patience for those who easily shed theirs.  With the work we did around Deep Ecology I saw what an important and fundamental piece it is in the healing and development of our world.  Bob Marley sang; “the stone that the builder refuse, shall always be the head corner stone.”  I feel that after Macy’s work I now have eyes and heart to accept the corner stone and even am inspired to go further into the work that connects, for it frees us from apathy and brings us to movement/action.  I saw how this is work that could have much value in Israel in healing the salt poured wounds of the Israeli and Palestinian people.  A ten-day intensive is being offered in August and while I feel it might be too much to add on right before thesis’s are due it is very enticing.  

I realize that I only have three weeks including this one of work at Hoover Elementary, while I am grateful for the time it will offer, I’m gonna miss my kids!  It has been such a blessing to every week hear from half a dozen little high pitched voices… ”Miss aManda…Miss aManda, what are we gonna do today?”  I understand it is part of it, to say goodbye, but it doesn’t make it any easier.  Back to focusing on moving forward, my intention is to not get another job, (unless we’re able to get funding to continue work at “Our Garden”) but to focus on my art.  I’m not thinking too much of how I’m going to financially make it but more on giving myself the time and create the space to invest in making things again, I really miss that part of me.  Part of the reclamation of self-reliance is craft.  To buy less and to make more, eventually my intention is to get to a point where I can facilitate others to support themselves through their craft, first I have to do and learn how and if I am able. 

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“Vision Quest” big shifts happening around that.  What I see of huge value and give much gratitude for in this process for myself is the reclamation of initiation, something that has been taken from us in the western world and something that is of huge importance.  It is through initiation that the individual was able to identify and to own the gifts that s/he was to bring to the tribe.  Without this the energy of displacement is manifested as destructive.  I hope to use this as becoming clearer on what my true work in the world is and to, in ritual supported by my community, respectfully leave the youth in me behind to make room for the woman who has been waiting to have voice.  

………….June 5,2006…..

I enter the last week at Hoover Elementary.  The idea of soon slowing down will be just that, an idea.  Today I was offered the position of spearheading a project in San Francisco through JVS (Juvenile Vocational Services) to facilitate the youth in creating a garden behind Yoga Mop’s space in the Mission district.  Yoga Mop is a co-housing community yoga studio that holds classes by donation.  I have to be real about my time so I said I would do it one day a week and hold a directorial position-no picking up shovels and getting too dirty.  I couldn’t turn it down.  This is the vision I had in the beginning of the year and Latoya, who I met through the New Dharma Center, found the youth and found funding for this to happen.   This is a vocational summer program.  The pay covers transportation and maybe a meal or two a month.  The experience will be the payment.  I am challenged by this opportunity therefore I know it will provide me with growth.  I feel much more prepared now then I was in the beginning of the year. 

Another recent development is a move I am thinking about making back to my mother’s house in Marin.  My intention behind that is to create a space for myself.  In essence I look to create my temple.  Since childhood I have been in constant movement often dividing my time between places in months and rarely feeling at home.  I am constantly thinking about the next move and what it’s going to be like…then.  This has caused me to never place too much importance or time in the places that I rest my head.  I feel that it is a reflection of so much and I wish to change that.  I wish to create my space and my temple outside so that it may reflect what is birthing and growing inside.  This will be an expression of love for myself, one of my most personal challenges.  I feel as I mend the relationship I have to self the more I will be in balance and able to find a reflection in another.  It is difficult to find someone to love you if you haven’t found that truth within yourself.  This is an old story that I wish to rewrite, to mend and recreate.  

The intention that pulls together the remainder of this year is to find balance with body, spirit and mind.  This is a life long journey and I wish to hold this intention in everyday and in every step that I take.  

aManda Greene May 24, 2006

CHECohort 16