Of Setting Intentions

©Orly Avineri

It was many years ago, in the month of May, at Ghost Ranch, a retreat center in Abiquiú, New Mexico. It is known for the dramatic landscapes it is nestled in, breathtaking scenes of pale pink, rust-red, and gold ochre, cliffs, mesas, and vast skies.

And so many tumbleweeds, still attached to earth, awaiting departure into the unknown, or to a fence nearby.

It is also known as the home and divine muse of Georgia O’Keeffe.

That’s where the retreat organizer asked us, eight ‘creativity guides’, at the opening night, to gather each morning in all the coming days, before we head on to our respective spaces.

We were to meet under a large Piñon Pine, in the dry ravine. She said: In order to set our intentions for the day.

I’m not sure if it was the first time I heard the term ‘setting intentions’, or the first time I was asked to do it, and then with a group of women, while closing eyes and holding hands. I’ve never done this before.

There was something about that ask that felt constricting as soon as her words hit the arid air, like a physical pressure on my body. What seemed to be a spiritual and a well meaning quest felt to me less like setting intentions and more like setting limits on freedom, on choice, on honest expression. To me.

I thought: Here is another human invention I’m asked to take part of against my free will.

All I wanted which I often do is not to be human for just a bit, but to be a bird perhaps, a beaver, a spider, to be like that high-desert owl who knows how to live without setting intentions, having expectations, acquiring knowledge, explaining things, defying nature, complicating, inventing ‘events’.

I asked: May I be like that owl who dwells in this place, who ‘unintentionally knows’ how to swallow mice or voles completely in one piece? Digests their soft meat, then coughs up the undigested leftover pieces into a tight bundle?

May I be like that owl who creates that pellet made of bones, fur, feathers, teeth, and claws, and then releases it back to the earth to mingle with soil?

Like the owl, to separate what nourishes, replenishes, from what is not meant for her?

Like the owl, not make a fuss?

May I please skip this little group ritual invented for me and instead use this precious time to prepare myself quietly to meet the twenty people who came to be with me?

And after that first morning when I was compliant, I said: I wont be coming back here tomorrow morning, to the ravine, to this tree.

What I will do instead is walk to the space of learning, to quiet my body, to ready my spirit to receive the twenty brave women who are attending, and are about to dissect owl pellets.

To find the bones underneath the rest, the fundamental truths that soothe their very own and unique souls. Something that ‘setting intentions’, in my world, cannot really do

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