One of the biggest hurdles first set by the The Maya Express on the Path of Walking is the infamous “Illusion of Sacrifice” table.

You see all these obstacles in your path and things to “give up“

You see all these things I don’t say or don’t do or don’t eat anymore.

The idea that when seeing others paths that they

“Gave up all the good things”

“Sounds like a whole lot of not fun to me”

“If walking the walk on the Path of Walking is about sacrificing everything I like to do, then I’d rather just talk the talk”.

That’s the illusion of The Maya Express; its sole purpose is to prevent you from going farther on your Spiritual Path.

If we see everyone who is on these Paths not doing this or that or this or that. Then it can become overwhelming.

You don’t need to give anything up.

You just need to start paying more attention to your Spiritual Path and have it incorporated with the Path of Intentions. The rest will sort itself out.

Our Intentions show up whether we consciously do or not. Our base Intentions are written into our four basic instincts of eating, mating, defending, and sleeping.

On our Spiritual Path, we use the fifth element we humans have, that other creatures do not.

We have elevated to the height of reason; to ask why.

How can we tell though whether our Intentions are good or not?

The Three Gunas

Everything in life can be broken down into three modes. Sattvic, Rajasic, Tamasic.

Goodness – Sattva.
Passion – Rajas.
Ignorance – Tamas

The words we hear and speak.
The foods we eat.
The music we hear and sing.
How we do our job, cook our food, drive our car.
Television, podcasts and media we consume.
The way we treat strangers, especially different than how we were raised.

Foods? Fruits – Sattva; Ice Cream – Rajas; Beer – Tamasic.

Music, TV, Podcasts? Are the words in the mode of goodness, passion or ignorance.

Social Media, Blogs? Grow your spiritual path through association, watch a lot of cat videos, doom scrolling violence and gore.

They always tell you that you are what you eat. When in reality we are what we consume.

When we start walking the Path of Intention, your perspective changes over time. Some tables on the Maya Express will try to convince you the only way to follow your Path right now is to give everything up that you enjoy.

In reality we just need to take a step on the Path of Intention on our Spiritual Path and let everything else sort itself out. If we don’t incorporate the Path of Intention, then Autopilot creeps in.

Autopilot

When riding the Maya Express most days our lives are just on Autopilot. Even during the most intense dangerous moments of our jobs or just driving home we are on Autopilot.

Think about it, how many days this week can you recall the drive home. Can you recall every moment of work this week or today? Even as the most dangerous jobs, become a muscle memory. When it comes to Autopilot, even our brains put things on Autopilot and fill in scenes around us in what becomes our peripheral vision.

We don’t even think about it most the time and that is where the Maya Express comes in and starts manipulating us. We fall into the Paths of Complacency and Maya quickly when we live a daily life on Autopilot.

Thats when the windows to our Spiritual Path start to get blurry on the Maya Express. Everything just becomes a daily grind, a daily blur.

How often when you see someone and approach them and ask, “How are you?” Do you ask and not really want to hear the response? What if they aren’t okay and need to talk, right now?

We rush around on Autopilot so much we can even be Self-Destructive in our relationships just by not being intentional in our time with each other.

We lose relationships when they become comfortable and we go into Autopilot and stop being Intentional in our relationship and our past instincts come in and press the big red button even when we dont want to.

Someone ever ask, “Why did you do that?” and you honestly responded, “I really don’t know”?

Nurture or Nature?

Every basic instinct of sleeping, eating, mating, and defending comes with a core process.

As passengers on the Maya Express most of us grow up in a structure that doesn’t really promote personal Spiritual Path walking. Many times, we aren’t even taught a Path at all.

For the first few years of life, we build our Autopilot based off the family and friends around us.

Trust me watch a toddler observe and learn for an afternoon.

Watching and observing and absorbing every inch of our foundation of our basic instinctual responses on Autopilot. Whether we want to teach the child or not. Its peering through the world reaching out for everything.

Whether we are operating in our own basic instinctual mode or being Intentional in our time in front of our kids, they are learning from BOTH.

For the first decade of our life, we sit at the tables on the Maya Express that are designed for us by our parents. We hope they have laid them out with the best of intentions. We grow and slowly shape our basic instincts based on observing everyone and how they handle situations we never have handled before or haven’t mastered.

Many times, as parents we lose sight of the Intentions of our children. Their Intentions are hardly anything more than Sattvic. Most things we see as inattentiveness, inappropriate, or even destructive, aren’t because their Intentions aren’t pure. They just haven’t learned or absorbed enough information to act appropriately. Lack the tools of knowledge one could say.

After we really start getting involved in the school tables of the Maya Express our instincts and our Intentions take a turn through the hormone roller coaster.

Eventually around the mid-twenties the roller coaster ride on the Maya Express starts to level out.

It’s at this time when the Path of Intention is vital to continue working on.

Once we start working on our Path of Intention and nurture it, we have to figure out how to feed it.

Feed the Gunas

Most of us have heard the old analogy of feed the wolves of the mind. Whether good or bad depends on who we are.

This is the same thing but instead of wolves we are talking about the gunas. On the Maya Express the Gunas are laid out into three tables on your train cart.

Theres the lit-up glitz and Vegasy glamour that is the Maya-Express-Tantric-Table-of-Tamasic-Turn-ons. We have gold, gambling, guys, and girls. We have babes, booze, and bitcoin. Get it all here twenty-four seven three sixty-five.

Theres the Maya-Express-Purple-Passion-of-Rajasic-Raves Table. We have the things you crave. The sweets, the saltiest, the most fried foods you could ever want.

Want movies? Scary, horror, romance? We have it all, we can binge for days.

Let’s go shopping and buy all the latest fashions.

You don’t need to work for others. Just feed your passions nothing more, nothing less.

Finally, the folding table that is the Maya-Express-Perfect-Pants-Sattvic-Sacrifice-No-Fun-League-table.

Go there to be good or something.

Wait what was the Intention of this Path?

Path of Intention

The reality is starting to walk your walk on your Spiritual Path doesn’t start with sacrificing everything and changing every aspect of your entire life all at once.

It just starts with your Intentions.

Whether we succeed or fail in any of our tasks doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters was what was your Intention.

The fruits of your labor, the results of your actions, do not matter on your Spiritual Path.

Say for example, you organize a charity event and work your heart out.

Whether you raise zero or a million, has ZERO impact on your Spiritual Path. It only matters whether you did it in the mode of Goodness, Passion or Ignorance. Your Intention while you worked on the event. That is what matters most.

Walking the Path of Intention is about making the conscious effort every day to try and bring awareness to your Intentions and affix the direction of our Path accordingly. It isn’t making you be good in everything you do.

It’s to recognize when we aren’t operating in the mode of goodness. Then decide if we want to change the directions; or accept the fact, hey yes, I know this food is in the mode of passion, but I’m doing it anyways. I know I’m going to have to work these calories off later. I accept that.

Break Down the Instincts

When we walk the Path of Intention, we look at our reflections in the water, in the mirror. We bring our awareness to the moment more often and break apart, disassemble, and rebuild our basic level of instincts.

The Path of Intention is a Path that once we become aware of its existence, we can’t help but start to wonder more and more, is this really what’s good for me? Is this what’s good for those around me?

Your Spiritual Path doesn’t ask you to give up anything or sacrifice anything. You just find other things that are more rewarding. You find the Maya Express was the one making you think things were punishments and “sacrifices”.

The 6 am morning sunrise with a smile and hot tea ends up being more rewarding than World of Warcraft raiding until 1am and sleeping until you have to leave for work and late all the time. It sure does feel better throughout the day, than the barhopping until 3am table. Doesn’t mean you give up playing your games or spending times with friends. You just find more appropriate times, activities or limits than before.

The types of entertainment, movies, podcasts, music starts to be seen in a completely different mindset. Many things become enriching, and you find inspiring, while others don’t quite feel right anymore.

Comedy, even things we used to find funny and share with others, start to be seen even differently when viewed from the Path of Intention.

A Simple Prayer

There are so many prayers similar, but I made one for myself that I say each morning before I do anything else.

For the sole purpose of helping me stay on the Path of Intention

I set my Intentions to be the best person I can. To help anyone I can and not ask for anything in return. I pray for the tools of knowledge to overcome any obstacles; and the mercy for those things I do not.

While we all will continue to live most of our time in a world that promotes the fun of Autopilot, I just want to ask that we start to consider, what are my Intentions right now?

We must set our Intentions even in situations where our basic instincts tell us differently. These are the moments we reprogram our basic instincts ever so slightly, little by little, overtime.

When a waitress comes up to you and serves you a meal and there is a mistake.

• Stop and consider what was the waiters’ Intentions?
• Were their Intentions to bring a wrong meal?
• Are your Intentions on bringing the matter to them, to get it fixed, or release some anger from work earlier today?

When a person, whether family, friends, pets, or strangers, we should follow the same process

• Was their Intentions to make a problem, spill something, make a mess etc?
• Disregard if they got distracted or didn’t know any better.
• Judge your response on their Intentions.
• Then set your Intentions before you react.

I recognize this isn’t a full proof method. There are past traumas that can affect and also play into things. That can cause us to react in ways we normally wouldn’t.

While avoiding those moments are vital on the Maya Express, there are moments it becomes unavoidable.

As I have said with the Path of Walking, we will fall and fall often. The Path of Intention is a railing to help us stabilize ourselves after our Spiritual Guide helps us stand back up. Then remember the last part of the prayer “and the mercy for those things I do not“.

Then learn from it so it can then become a tool of knowledge for the future. Just like little children lacking the tools of knowledge, we lack those tools in something we do every single solitary day.

Test of Intentions

Just like many other Paths, the Path of Intention would lead me to test those Intentions.

As I found myself setting my Intentions to clean up the bricks broken during the Path of Jesus and the Swami and stumbled on during the Path of Maya, I found myself walking alongside a path that I swore I would never go near, let alone walk alongside it.

The Path of Christianity.

Yours Forever Grateful.