10/20/2025
Without Intention, Habit Runs the Week
Here we are at the dawn of a wonderful, fresh, clean week. We like to think of it as pure and undefiled — and in a large sense it is — but we also carry into it a lot of our karmic proclivity as the week begins. When we turn our attention inside, we notice these vestiges of a notion called “I” that we take with us, recreate moment by moment. We see it as substantively formed through our conscious thoughts, but of course, once we’ve seen that, it doesn’t take long to see its spatial implications — that we use it to project ourselves into the environment, into the things we come in contact with and consider “other.” We recognize there is a lot of skill we must wield when we are working with this karmic momentum.
All that being said, it’s important that we know we occupy space in a noble way, and that we recognize our true presence is all-inclusive. But perhaps even more importantly, there is a temporal aspect to karma. There is a habit-energy that we keep replicating over and over again — it is how we occupy time — and it depends on whether or not we carry an intention, whether we have set down a deep intention for how we are going to work with everything that arises. Once we have that intention set, that is where the chains of karma begin to unlatch.
When we know what we are working with in terms of our intentions — how we are going to manifest — then everything else becomes looser, and we can loosen our grip on the idea of self. But until we see that, our habit-energy will continue to control us. So look carefully, as this week begins, at what your intentions are. If our intention is to manifest as compassion moment by moment, you will reap all of the joy associated with being the medicine. But if we carry forward our current proclivities — the habits by which we promulgate the self through time, unawares — then we remain embodied in that way for the week.
