With Good Intentions With Good Intentions
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"Study of a Young Woman" by Johannes Vermeer, ca.1665–1667./MET (public domain)
Wellbeing

With Good Intentions

On Cultivating Mindful Intention
Magdalena Róża Skoczewska
Reading
time 4 minutes

For the intention to act to form in our brains, a sense of freedom, will and need must first emerge. It is good if we can recognize each of these. As a psychologist, I often wonder what the reasons are behind human behaviour. What processes take place before we act in a certain way? One of the more enigmatic elements of the decision-making process is intention – a seed in our mind, the starting point of all other things. But where does this intention come from? Is there anything that enables or impedes it? What is its use?

In order to understand what an intention is, it is worth examining in chronological order how a decision is formed. Here, our inner sense of freedom is always the starting point. Without it, no decision-making process can take place – whether conscious or not. Second comes will, which is the feeling of knowing that we want something, but we don’t know yet what that might be. Will – contrary to common vernacular – is neither good nor bad. It is the accumulation of pure energy,

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All That Green Stuff Behind Glass All That Green Stuff Behind Glass
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Illustration by Basia M. (based on a drawing by John Tenniel)
Experiences

All That Green Stuff Behind Glass

On Nature, Cities, and Ourselves
Kamila Dzika-Jurek

Perhaps what we call nature today isn’t nature after all. Let’s take a look at the intricate relationships between the city, the woods, and ourselves.

“What can all that green stuff be?” asked Lewis Carroll’s Alice, as she dreamed the familiar dream, observing the world from the distance of her suddenly elongating neck. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published during the Second Industrial Revolution, when the sense of departure from nature was yet to come, like a waking dream. In living through an era when glass and plastic separate humans not only from greenery, but also from other people, what can a person of the fourth revolution dream of today?

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