Beyond Intentions

By: Shaista Khurshid , Calgary Alberta

What is an intention and why do we intend? Is it autonomous or are there deeper notions churning beneath? What ideas and voices constitute our decisions? Beyond intentions explores the deeper beliefs embedded inside our subconscious, which manifest their power when we make decisions. This article explores the ways we can become more mindful and more in control of our intentions.

Every opinion we form or action we take, has a presumption. Our intentions are formed with the careful and meticulous work of our minds. These are the products of complex thought processes that span a wide range of cognitive behaviours. It includes our creativity, upbringing, experiences, belief systems, personal narratives, and pressures of the societies we live in.

Every intention has:

∙ A purpose, which determines why we are doing it.

∙ A benefactor, which decides who and what we want to satisfy.

∙ A peddler, our core assumption, and our personal narrative. A voice in our heads which pushes our beliefs.

Together they act as a background processor for our intentions, which then manifests into an action.

“I heard Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) saying, "The reward of deeds depend upon the intentions and every person will get the reward according to what he has intended. So, whoever emigrated for worldly benefits or for a woman to marry, his emigration was for what he emigrated for." Sahih-al-Bukhari– 1

The PURPOSE

When we ask ourselves, ‘Why are we doing it?’ This question reveals its purpose. There may be several wide-ranging purposes of an intention. The purpose could be based on necessity, judgment or expectations from surrounding people, out of the goodness of our hearts, or fear of missing the boat. It could be that we think that we deserved it or it has been done for ages by our parents and society. Whatever we think our purpose of action is, our psyches subconsciously validate and rationalize the deed for us.

“O believers! Do not waste your charity with reminders of your generosity or hurtful words, like those who donate their wealth just to show-off and do not believe in Allah or the Last Day. Their example is that of a hard-barren rock covered with a thin layer of soil hit by a heavy rain—leaving it just a bare stone. Such people are unable to preserve the reward of their charity. Allah does not guide ˹such disbelieving people.” Quran 2:264

The BENEFICIARY

For every intention we make, there is someone or something benefiting from it. This subconscious benefactor is not necessarily a direct recipient of the action. It is a hidden voice or desire inside us, which guides us to the subject we want to appease. When we ask ourselves a question; whom and what do we want to satisfy with this action? The answer is the beneficiary of the action.

Beneficiaries can be ego, faith, perfection, self, or validation. It could be seeking approval from Allah, people, systems, family, society, or simply to feel good.

If the action is done to satisfy our egos, we are gratifying our ego - it makes us believe how lofty and great we are to have done such and such. If we are doing the action to make others happy, those ‘others’ are our beneficiary. If the background voice suggests that people should be the audience of my greatness; then, we are feeding our hypocritical self. The catch is, the beneficiary (the one we want to appease), does not know or have to know, that they are being appeased.

“A knife in the hands of a butcher yields a completely different result than a murderer, based on the intentions of who is wielding the knife.”

Like some society prefers boys over girls. In those societies, regardless how much they say that they love them equally, their actions will benefit the boys over girls. The boys might not be able to comprehend that they are being implicitly favoured or even reject the idea of unequal treatment.

Another example of this would be if person X donates money in order to show off to person Y. Person Y is the beneficiary of Person X’s action. The interesting part about this is that person Y does not benefit or possibly does not even know that person X is doing this action to appease them.

The PEDDLER

Every intention has its peddler. Our peddlers are the narratives we believe and the biases we hold. These are the voices in our heads which give us the tools, the push, the drive.

When we ask ourselves, what are our basic assumptions? We will understand the peddler behind it. The mindset made through our upbringing, education, experiences or traumatic incidents creates its base. Thus, when our beliefs and biases are formed, the emotions, vices and narratives become the peddlers.

If we see ones who are raised where perfection is demanded, they will insist on or at least expect perfection in their lives. They will judge themselves and others based on this lens and discard what they think is slightly imperfect.

Similarly, those who have seen that people with money get what they want, might gravitate towards power and money. Or if in an environment where people of certain skin tones are privileged, those who live there inadvertently prefer the privileged people in their dealings or hold negative bias against people with the other skin tones. These deeply embedded peddlers play a role in forming our intentions, which we are usually unaware of.

“And the example of those who donate their wealth, seeking Allah’s pleasure and believing the reward is certain, is that of a garden on a fertile hill: when heavy rain falls, it yields up twice its normal produce. If no heavy rain falls, a drizzle is sufficient. And Allah is All-Seeing of what you do. “Quran 2:265

A BUTCHER OR A MURDERER

“A knife in the hands of a butcher yields a completely different result than a murderer, based on the intentions of who is wielding the knife.”

When we take hold of our intentions and the background voices that form them, we become mentors to ourselves, because then we start judging ourselves against a criterion defined only by Allah. When the goal becomes to please Allah then the perspective of why, what, how and whom to please changes. Moreover, the earlier objectives - to satisfy our own greed, power, racism, chauvinism and much more objectives we didn't even know we had - lose their credibility and become an alternative, less pressing reality. Seen through this lens, this world then rightfully becomes the ground on which we cultivate our deeds purposefully and wisely and set our intentions straight and in order. Only then we will be able to see the differences between actions of either pure or crooked intentions. Only then we will be able to distinguish between right or wrong intentions successfully.

Photo by Nicolette Meade on Unsplash