“A young man needs to enter life equipped for rough weather. However much of calm may prevail on land, it usually blows out at sea. The most serious question the novitiate can ask of himself is how he is going to keep from being a castaway. I am not using that term with any reference to his being lost hereafter, but with reference to his being wrecked here. I am not preaching, but only stating a commonplace, when I say that a man who submits to the current always goes down-stream. Nobody ever drifts upstream. Running water never stops till it gets to the bottom, unless something dams it. Likewise, a drifting boat never stops till it reaches the sea, unless it founders, runs aground, or drops anchor. A considerable part of a young man’s preliminary interest will, therefore, need to concern itself with anchorages. If he lived in a world where everything was fixed, and if his life brought him into no connection with drafts and currents, then he would have only to remain languidly and unconcernedly where he is, sublimely reliant upon his own vis inertice. On the contrary, everything is afloat. We are all loaded with responsiveness and harnessed up with gravitations. Everything is magnetic needle, and everything else magnetic pole endlessly plucking at that needle. Life without this arrangement would be death, but life with it is all the time on the edge of disaster and continually getting over the edge. If we could decide that certain currents should produce no pressure upon us, and if, then, result would wait on our decision, the problem would be freed from a good many of its uncomfortable elements. But the captain at sea has to take things just as they come. Deciding not to have his boat retarded by the Gulf Stream when he is coming down the coast does not expedite him, nor does a decision not to be obstructed by the northeast wind when he is sailing up the coast. And resolutions on land are just as useless as they are at sea. Resolution is facing in a certain direction, but it is not getting there, and does not necessarily imply any ability to get there.” – Charles H. Parkhurst

A great deal of emphasis in our era has been placed on the matter of intention. Set an intention, the theory goes, and it will manifest in short order. I contend that intention, or “resolution” as Parkhurst called it over a century ago, is an important part of moving forward in life, but it is really only the beginning of the matter.

When you set an intention, you finally come to the point in yourself where mind and heart are in agreement about a new direction. Setting an intention requires that you relinquish all internal conflict in relation to a desired outcome, which essentially sets the stage for the power of your emotional realm to come into the service of your rational mind.

You needn’t be conversant in Christian theology to understand that a house divided against itself will fall. If timing is everything, agreement sets the stage for the various components of timing – visible, invisible, temporal, eternal – to work out in due process. Your heart and mind must be in agreement if you are to do anything of import during your brief time on earth.

More on this point tomorrow…