Intent

You have been given an abstract gift: the possibility of flying on the wings of intent.

Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming 1993

Intent or intending is something very difficult to talk about. I or anyone else would sound idiotic trying to explain it. Bear that in mind when you hear what I have to say next: sorcerers intend anything they set themselves to intend , simply by intending it.

For sorcerers, because the statement I made pertains to intent and intending , understanding it pertains to the realm of energy. Sorcerers believe that if one would intend that statement for the energy body, the energy body would understand it in terms entirely different from those of the mind. The trick is to reach the energy body. For that you need energy.

The energy body would understand that statement in terms of a bodily feeling, which is hard to describe. You'll have to experience it to know what I mean.
Intending is a subject not for your reason but for your energy body. At this point, you can't yet comprehend the import of all this, not only because you don't have sufficient energy but because you're not intending anything. If you were, your energy body would comprehend immediately that the only way to intend is by focusing your intent on whatever you want to intend .

[…]

To intend is to wish without wishing, to do without doing.

Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming 1993

In the universe there is an unmeasurable, indescribable force which sorcerers call intent. Absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link. Sorcerers, warriors, are concerned with discussing, understanding, and employing that connecting link. They are especially concerned with cleaning it of the numbing effects brought about by the ordinary concerns of their everyday lives. Sorcery at this level could be defined as the procedure of cleaning one's connecting link to intent.

Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence 1987

Intent is the pervasive force that causes us to perceive. We do not become aware because we perceive; rather, we perceive as a result of the pressure and intrusion of intent .

[…]

The only way to know intent is to know it directly through a living connection that exists between intent and all sentient beings. Sorcerers call intent the indescribable, the spirit, the abstract.
Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence, 1987

Every act performed by sorcerers, especially by the naguals, is either performed as a way to strengthen their link with intent or as a response triggered by the link itself. Sorcerers, and specifically the naguals, therefore have to be actively and permanently on the lookout for manifestations of the spirit. Such manifestations are called gestures of the spirit or, more simply, indications or omens.

When a sorcerer interprets an omen he knows its exact meaning without having any notion of how he knows it. This is one of the bewildering effects of the connecting link with intent . Sorcerers have a sense of knowing things directly. How sure they are depends on the strength and clarity of their connecting link.

The feeling everyone knows as "intuition" is the activation of our link with intent . And since sorcerers deliberately pursue the understanding and strengthening of that link, it could be said the they intuit everything unerringly and accurately. Reading omens is commonplace for sorcerers--mistakes happen only when personal feelings intervene and cloud the sorcerers' connecting link with intent . Otherwise their direct knowledge is totally accurate and functional.
Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence, 1987

Intent creates edifices before us and invites us to enter them. This is the way sorcerers understand what is happening around them.

I want you to understand the underlying order of what I teach you. It means two things: both the edifice that intent manufactures in the blink of an eye and places in front of us to enter, and the signs it gives us so we won't get lost once we are inside.
Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence 1987

The Manifestations of the Spirit is the name for the first abstract core in the sorcery stories. Sorcerers know this as the edifice of intent , or the silent voice of the spirit, or the ulterior arrangement of the abstract.

Ulterior means knowledge without words, outside our immediate comprehension, not beyond our ultimate possibilities for understanding. The ulterior arrangement of the abstract is knowledge without words or the edifice of intent . The ulterior arrangement of the abstract is to know the abstract directly, without the intervention of language. The abstract is the element without which there could be no warrior's path, nor any warriors in search of knowledge.

[…]

Progress along the sorcerers' path is, in general, a drastic process the purpose of which is to bring one's connecting link to order. In order to revive that link sorcerers need a rigorous, fierce purpose--a special state of mind called unbending intent .

An apprentice is someone who is striving to clear and revive his connecting link with the spirit. Once the link is revived, he is no longer an apprentice, but until that time, in order to keep going he needs a fierce purpose which, of course, he doesn't have. So he allows the nagual to provide the purpose and to do that he has to relinquish his individuality. That's the difficult part.
Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence, 1987

Knowing what intent is means that one can, at any time, explain that knowledge or use it. A nagual by the force of his position is obliged to command his knowledge in this manner.
Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence, 1987

Sorcerers say that heightened awareness is the portal of intent . And they use it as such. Think about it.

You must reach the point where you understand what intent is. And, above all, you must understand that that knowledge cannot be turned into words. That knowledge is there for everyone. It is there to be felt, to be used, but not to be explained. One can come into it by changing levels of awareness, therefore, heightened awareness is an entrance. But even the entrance cannot be explained. One can only make use of it.

The natural knowledge of intent is available to anyone, but the command of it belongs to those who probe it.
Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence, 1987

Will is the force that keeps the Indescribable Force 's emanations separated and is not only responsible for our awareness, but also for everything in the universe. This force has total consciousness and it springs from the very fields of energy that make the universe. Intent is a more appropriate name for it than will . In the long run, however, the name proves disadvantageous, because it does not describe its overwhelming importance nor the living connection it has with everything in the universe.

Our great collective flaw is that we live our lives completely disregarding that connection. The busyness of our lives, our relentless interests, concerns, hopes, frustrations, and fears take precedence, and on a day-to-day basis we are unaware of being linked to everything else.

Being cast out from the Garden of Eden sounds like an allegory for losing our silent knowledge, our knowledge of intent . Sorcery, then, is a going back to the beginning, a return to paradise.

The spirit is the force that sustains the universe. Intent is not something one might use or command or move in any way--nevertheless, one could use it, command it, or move it as one desires. This contradiction is the essence of sorcery. To fail to understand it has brought generations of sorcerers unimaginable pain and sorrow. Modern-day naguals, in an effort to avoid paying this exorbitant price in pain, have developed a code of behavior called the warrior's way, or the impeccable action, which prepares sorcerers by enhancing their sobriety and thoughtfulness.

Sorcerers concern themselves exclusively with the capacity that their individual connecting link with intent has to set them free to light the fire from within.

All modern-day sorcerers have to struggle fiercely to gain soundness of mind. Sorcery is an attempt to reestablish our knowledge of intent and regain use of it without succumbing to it. The abstract cores of the sorcerer stories are shades of realization, degrees of our being aware of intent .
Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence, 1987