Mental & Emotional Preparation
Setting your intention
Coming into any ceremony, it is essential to bring something with you. Your intention plays a crucial role in the entire process. Remembering what brought you to explore and heal in the first place can re-center you.
So, what are intentions exactly? They are nothing more than a response to the question you have had coming up within yourself. These intentions are very important for the actual ceremony and also in the days, weeks, months and years following to adopt new lifestyle habits that enable you to continue to grow, heal, and thrive.
When our intentions are clear, when we are sure about what we want, we give the universe full permission to deliver it to us. When we focus on what we don't want, the universe is likely to deliver us more of the same drudgery that led us to want to transform our day-to-day reality. Clarity of your objective, of your purpose and intention, will enable you to experience profound healing beyond your wildest expectations.
When setting an intention for this work, you may like to contemplate the following questions:
• What is it I want to realize for myself? What would be my ideal outcome? How would I like to feel?
• What is my main aim or objective? Think about this in terms of what you want (not what you don't want).
• What is my purpose for wanting to do this work? Be sure that it is an authentic purpose, not simply wanting to check an experience off your bucket list.
• How does this purpose look and feel to me? Try to imagine it in your mind, write it down or draw it out.
Setting your intention includes the mindset! Your intention of the journey's mindset is defined as the emotional and psychological state of your approach and experience. An intention is like a prayer; it is a statement of one's motivation or direction. Your intention directs your journey and communicates to our Higher Self what it is that we are seeking.
You can support the process of setting an intention by journaling, making art, playing music, singing, or writing as a way of expressing what is coming through. Try to write every morning. Read through old journeys (if you have journeyed before) and reflect on how far you have come. Explore wounds, painful memories, and issues, and open up emotionally. If you are not a meditator, begin a simple daily practice of mindfulness. You can take 10 minutes and focus your attention on your breath and journal. Record your dreams! Uncover your subconscious.
Mental & Emotional Preparation
In expanded states of consciousness, we are granted access to the domain beyond our normal ego structures. The veil that lies between our conscious mind and the vast ocean-like realm of our unconscious becomes more permeable. Because expanded consciousness gives us access to these normally elusive layers of our minds, a journey should be thoroughly prepared before entering the space. We can do this by becoming familiar with the ways the mind functions.
As human beings, we develop defenses and strategies as well as ways to cope with the painful experience of not getting our needs met or having been violated in any way. These defenses and strategies take shape as coping behaviors, thinking patterns, habits and fears. On a basic level, the function is to create safety and avoid emotional pain associated with challenging psychological material
It is a basic animal instinct to not want to feel pain and to do whatever is possible to avoid it. Expanded states of consciousness have the effect of relaxing your psychological strategies and defenses and bringing a face-to-face with the content that our ego structure normally keeps hidden.
We also want to become familiar with the content and flavor of the emotions that arise in our body and awareness. The more in touch we are with the way the states arise within us, the more profoundly we can engage our core material and expanded states of consciousness.
To best engage the preparation process on the level of the mind and emotions, we begin by bringing mindfulness to our immediate experience. In this way, we begin to prepare a conscious mind through the simple act of becoming aware of our actual state of being, whatever it is. For most people, the thought of going inward to explore unknown territories of the mind will trigger apprehensions. Facing the unknown with some apprehension is a normal response.
Just like in everyday life, expectations are the root cause of disappointment. Although we live calculated, scheduled, and, for the most part, predictable lives, we are usually under the illusion that we are in control of many things. At any given moment, disruption to our routine and predictions can incur massive frustration and loss just because it's unexpected. On the other hand, experiences we look forward to and build up in our minds often underwhelm us because they are different from the image we constructed beforehand.
The answer to having a constructive journey?
Have an intention, but no expectation.
Let go, and surrender!
