Deepest intention

Last night at the weekly meeting of our local sangha, to mark the new year, we took the refuges and the precepts. Then, we tied red strings around each other's wrists. Rodney, our guiding teacher, said to reflect upon our deepest intention as our string was tied.

Over the past ten years I've frequently struggled to formulate what my deepest intention is. Initially, it was "to suffer less". That was why I was meditating. I tried to think of a more noble intention, but if I was honest with myself, that was my intention. As the years passed and my daily suffering decreased (yes, it did), this intention faded, but another did not arise. I experimented with "to become a more compassionate person". To me, to be compassionate is to resonate with other beings and to feel less separate from them. I love it when I can be compassionate; it is one of the best experiences in life, if not the best.

A couple of times over the last year I have reflected on the goals I had when I was a child. "To know God" was always among them. It was perhaps my highest goal, yet I didn't know how to pursue it. Eventually I abandoned it as I came to the conclusion that there was no evidence for the existence of God.

Yet the urge to merge with the divine has persisted. I have longed to lose what I think of as my self, to drop the burden of personhood, to push aside the veil that separates me from the rest of the universe. I can articulate this urge without reference to God, yet "to merge with the divine" did not seem like a worthy highest intention. It seemed selfish and dangerous.

Last night we were only given a minute or two to formulate our deepest intention. I stepped out into thin air and decided upon -- "to know God".