Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing sounds easy until you think about how much conditioning has taken place in your life, and how many of your current thoughts were influenced by geography, the religious beliefs of your ancestors, the color of your skin, the shape of your eyes, the political orientation of your parents, your size, your gender, the schools that were selected for you, and the vocation of your great-grandparents, to list only some possibilities.

You showed up here as a tiny infant capable of an infinite number of potentialities. Many of your choices remain unexplored because of a hopefully well-intentioned conditioning program designed to make you fit the culture of your caretakers. You probably had next to no opportunity to disagree with the cultural and societal arrangements made for your life.

In certain spiritual schools of thought, we have been conditioned to think of the ego in a negative and limited way. However it is an erroneous mentality to think of the ego as something that’s unwanted and to get rid off for spirituality purpose. The ego exists for a purpose and it’s an integral part of spirituality and the totality of being. To remove the ego is like removing the left hand and keeping the right. It’s a ridiculous concept that shouldn’t even be thought of at all. Spirit and ego go hand and hand for complete experience.

When it comes to manifesting intention, there is a misconception about the principle of what you think about is what you get. Some people have the idea that in order for their intention to manifest, they need to focus on it as much as possible. So they make it almost a habit of thinking about their intention all the time. But then they learn that in order for any intention to manifest, there needs to be a period of temporary forgetfulness so that spirit can do its work uninterrupted. This makes them feel confused.

We have been taught that to use the law of attraction to create the reality we desire, we must focus more on what we want and less on what we don’t want. But yet there are times when the things we don’t want continue to be created even though we try not to focus on them. The truth is that there are times when we must focus on what we don’t want so that we can attract it out fully and see it for what it is. What we don’t want could be part of what we want and that is why we are still creating it unknowingly.