One of the things I've been discussing with friends and family of late is the idea of intention as a causal factor in what each of us view as our reality.

There are so many cultural aphorisms cast about to try to capture this idea. The capitalist version is also the title of a book by someone called "Think and Grow Rich". The "new age" ideas are embodied in what seems like a million books about self-healing and self-improvement. And the classic cultural idea is the Norman Vincent Peale book, "The Power of Positive Thinking". The religious and spiritual approach is to use prayer.

I've always--before now--dismissed these ideas as nothing more than ways to sell books, religion and myriad self-improvement courses. The negativity I've created in my own life didn't allow me to consider the proven ideas behind all these ideas.

But now I think I get it.

Even a word like prayer, which has made me recoil since I was a teenager is starting to have a different meaning for me.

Basically these ideas are all fundamentally about creating an intent which while starting as an intellectual idea becomes incorporated into the brain's wiring and probably involves the right brain's creative apparatus.

I believe that the right brain is the gateway to the magical realms that are used to manifest reality. In quantum terms, the right brain is where we collapse the quantum waves that surround us until realized by our imagination.

But as I try to work through why this is all still just an intellectual exercise for me, I think that perhaps it has to do with a personal characteristic that has been part of me since childhood.

I've been awash with interests for as long as I can remember. Few things I've encountered in my life have passed my consciousness without me wanting to know more about them. But along with that has been an equally strong desire to work only so hard to accomplish my goals.

Only once in my life, in fact, can I recall a period of time where I was so focused that my inherent "laziness" was overcome. My motivation at that time was that I'd been recently laid off from a dead-end job and had a family to raise. I'd never achieved much in the way of a career, hopping from job to job for years. But as I approached forty, I knew that it was only going to get harder and harder to find the kind of jobs that would sustain us.

So for nearly a year I worked my ass off to become a computer programmer. Afterwards I entered my new career and haven't looked back.

But old habits returned and in a technological world, things change and evolve quickly. My tendency is to work only as hard as needed to get by. This meant that I would never be a great programmer. My talents would get me to a point where I could do the job and that's all I wanted. Sadly, I've had one or two jobs where more was required, but I was unwilling and perhaps incapable of giving more to them.

And so, while I have the "best intentions" of learning as much as I can about the subjects of my journey, I lack the discipline to create the intent required to go further. This is exemplified in two things I should be doing daily: mediation and exercise in the way of the simple Hatha Yoga Sun Exercise. I can always think of a thousand reasons not to do either and so I simply don't. But this attitude is subverting a creation of intent within me.

I find that even recalling dreams takes discipline. When I awake during the night, I don't spend a few moments trying to recall the last dream. I'll simply decide that I'm too tired and forget it all.

I must begin to do difficult things; and for me difficult things are anything that goes counter to my inclination to "veg out".

Intentionality is something I must develop if I want to get beyond the superficial. Discipline is the key to creating intentionality.