The Value of Hiddenness in Intention-Setting

When setting an intention or goal, one of the conventional tidbits of wisdom seems to be: Find something or someone to which you can hold yourself accountable. Thus, at the new year when folks are making resolutions, they make public announcements about what they plan to do. If it's weight loss--to use a common example--maybe you join a group that requires you to check in at set intervals to report on progress or set backs--and receive feedback and encouragement from others. Group support, we are told, provides strength that helps to carry us through various resistances.

Maybe, for some intentions, this equation works. But for me it has often backfired. I might start out with determination, make lists of small reachable changes that lead up to the goal, find a circle of people on a similar path of intention to check in with, share successes and frustrations, reach some preliminary targets... only to be felled by some surprisingly strong wave of resistance. Or a series of small defiant choices that eventually shifts my trajectory so that I end up, at best, back where I began. My plan turns into a treadmill and feeds into a cynicism about setting other intentions. And thus the resistance is reinforced: "Why bother? I won't really get anywhere with this..."

Part of this may be that I have a primarily introverted temperament. It's just not my inclination to check in with others about where I am on a self-initiated project. (I'll admit that certain kinds of deadlines have value. But I wrestle with them mightily, and that's a lot of energy that would have been better applied to the project itself.)

Some intentions are best kept hidden, protected and shielded within the cave of the heart -- especially at the outset. Think of what happens when you light a new candle. The fresh wick cannot instantly hold a strong, sustained flame. The new fire is so small and tender. It needs protection from even the briefest of breezes. It must be hidden from too much air and held close until it can burn on its own.

Some intentions, especially those involving repeated acts of creativity, need to remain secret in their initial stages. Don't tell people about the song, the painting, the story that's still forming. Explaining and sharing too early is like exposing the tiny new flame to a breeze. Or, to use another metaphor--like exposing a fresh sprout to too much rain. The energy that goes into sharing what "is to be" can dissipate what is just starting to take hold.

This has a certain resonance with my primary contemplative practice, encapsulated in Matthew 6:6--"When you pray, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. Then your Father who sees what is in secret will cause your life to blossom."

I will go into my room, into the cave of my heart, where I can open in deep sincerity and radical vulnerability to the mystery I know as God. My heart trusts that God will cause the prayer, the intention, the yearning, to blossom into a fruit that I cannot now taste or see.

At some point, the flame remains strong in the breeze, and the sprout blooms into nourishment that is to be shared with others. But it needs to begin in a sheltered place, in a hidden room where it is tenderly held between you and the divine, or between you and whatever name your muse prefers.