Know your intentions. Look at the list of spiritual intentions above and make sure Set your intentions high. Aim to be a saint and a miracle worker. Why not? The same See yourself in the light. The ego keeps its grip by making us feel needy and

5. I want to be free of restrictions. Inner freedom is greatly compromised when fear is present, and fear is a natural outcome of separation. As you move closer to your soul, the old boundaries and defenses start to melt away. Instead of being wary about the future, you flow with the river of life, awaiting the day when no boundaries of any kind hold you back. If these basic intentions are present inside you, God takes the responsibility for carrying them out. Everything else you do is secondary. Someone who is in the grip of fear, for example, cannot move beyond stage one, despite good deeds, a secure home life, and positive thinking. We all attempt to mask our limitations with false attitudes; it is only human nature to try to appear better than we are, especially in our own eyes. But once you set your intention in the right direction, self-deception is rendered irrelevant. You will still have to face your ego needs; you will still continue to play out your personal dramas. This activity takes place on the stage of first attention; offstage, spirit has its own devices —your intention is like a blueprint handed to God, which he carries to completion in his own fashion. Sometimes he uses a miracle; sometimes he just makes sure you dont miss the plane to New York. The fact that anything can happen is the beauty and surprise of the spiritual life. Strangely, people who feel extremely powerful and successful often set the worst intentions in motion, as far as spiritual growth is concerned. Here are some typical intentions that have nothing to do with finding God: I want to win. I want to prove myself by taking risks. I want to have power over others. I want to make the rules. I want to be in control. I want to do it all my way. These intentions should sound very familiar since they are repeated ad nauseam in popular fiction, advertising, and the media. They all center on ego needs, and as long as your real intentions come from that level, your life will follow suit. Such is the fate of living in a mirror universe. One meets hundreds of people who mistake their own intentions because their egos have taken complete control. Some of the most powerful figures in the world are spiritually quite naive. If intention is left to the ego, great things can be accomplished, but these are minuscule compared to what can be achieved with infinite intelligence and organizing power at your disposal. God is on the side of abundance. It is a great misfortune that the spiritual life has earned a reputation for being poor, reclusive, and ascetic. God is also on the side of increased happiness. The shadow of the martyr has fallen over spirituality with dire results. In general, to be spiritual in these times means going it alone, far more than in the past. In a society with misguided conceptions of God and no tradition of masters, you are responsible for setting your own intentions. Here are the ground rules that have proved effective for me personally and which I feel will work for many people:

1. Know your intentions. Look at the list of spiritual intentions above and make sure

that you understand how important they are. Your destiny is to move in the direction of your soul, but the fuel that makes destiny move is intention. Intend for yourself that the gap of separation gets closed just a little more each day. Dont let your false intentions remain masked. Root them out and work on the anger and fear that keep you attached to them. False intentions take the form of guilty desires: I want someone else to fail, I want to get even, I want to see bad people punished, I want to take away something not my own. False intentions can be elusive; you will notice their existence by the feeling tone connected with them, a feeling of fear, greed, rage, hopelessness, and weakness. Sense the feeling first, refuse to buy into it, and then remain aware until you find the intention lurking beneath. 2. Set your intentions high. Aim to be a saint and a miracle worker. Why not? The same laws of nature operate for everyone. If you know that the goal of inner growth is to acquire mastery, then ask for that mastery as soon as possible. Once you ask, dont strain to work wonders, but dont deny them to yourself, either. The beginning of mastery is vision; see the miracles around you and that will make it easier for greater miracles to grow.

3. See yourself in the light. The ego keeps its grip by making us feel needy and

powerless. From this sense of lack grows the enormous hunger to acquire everything in sight. Money, power, sex, and pleasure are supposed to fill up the lack, but they never do. You can escape this whole package of illusion if you see yourself not in a shadow fighting to get to God but as in the light from the first moment. The only difference between you and a saint is that your light is small and a saints is great. This difference pales in comparison to the similarity: you are both of the light. The irony of near-death experiences is that when people come back to report how rapturously they felt bathed in a blinding light, they overlook that the light was there all along. It is the self.

4. See everyone else in the light. The cheapest way to feel good about yourself is by