The Role of Acting with Intention
Jeff Smith/Staff Photographer Grand Rapids sophomore Amber Hargett, left, prays with 33 other volunteers from His House Church Saturday after they met in front of Comerica Park, 2100 Woodward Ave. The volunteers split up in to seven groups and headed out across the city, handing out 100 blue bags filled with necessities and food, and hundreds of articles of clothing to the poor and homeless.
Weekly Column By Sharon Salzberg for On Being Blog
Published December 14th, 2015
We’re often told to follow our hearts, as though raw emotion is the truest stuff there is to go by in life. Life shouldn’t just be about “following” the heart. The idea of training our hearts is much more skillful, as it takes into account the importance of finding a purity of motivation.
If we are aware of what we are thinking and feeling, and thinking critically about what we want to do and say based on those thoughts or feelings, we are acting with intention. We are not simply walking along the path of least resistance, but creating a productive route for ourselves, and sometimes that’s challenging. It’s in that challenge we come alive. That is the place where what we care about most and what might seem like the easy way out — or what everybody else seems to want, or the most we can get — meet.
Sharon Salzberg
To read the entire article visit the On Being Blog.
About On Being with Krista Tippett
On Being is a Peabody Award-winning public radio conversation and podcast, a Webby Award-winning website and online exploration, a publisher and public event convener. On Being opens up the animating questions at the center of human life: What does it mean to be human, and how do we want to live? On Being airs on more than 330 public radio stations across the U.S., distributed by American Public Media. The podcast reaches a global audience via SoundCloud.
Photo by Jeff Smith
