How much time does it take to manifest intentions?

I burned my finger with sage. It throbbed in pain for two days, blistered, and now three weeks later I have a little scar indicating the healing process,  a passing of time. Eventually that scar will fade as will memory of the smudging incident.

Before I burned my finger, I would not have been able to state how much time it would take to heal. Healing was based on several factors, including my overall health, mystical cellular regenerative abilities that I don’t understand, the severity of the burn, and how I treated my finger after the burn. The distance between the burning and the healing was about two and half weeks, knowledge I did not have and could not have accurately guessed before the experience. Now I know and that understanding informs how I'll respond if ever I'm again popped with a crackling, hot, dry leaf. And so it would seem that time is measured in distance; how long it takes to get from one place to another. That's an easy concept to understand when we're talking about things that are concrete. Physical distance is easy to measure.

And that’s one reason to write down your intentions — to make them concrete and therefore tangible! The purpose is to ground our dreams, which are not physically present and are therefore timeless, in reality. When something is timeless, it exists forever. If a dream exists “forever,” it will never come to fruition. It will never come true. Grounding an idea by writing it down brings it into the present, into reality. Presence, focus, and mindfulness are factors that determine the amount of time needed to achieve our waist bead goals. Grounding also places us in a time-controlling role.

We have the ability to slow down and speed up time with our thoughts and actions. For example, we may feel that we have limited time for certain things, like having children, or too much time for other things, like heartbreak. Patience and anxiety have a different timeframe than avoidance and ignorance. Yet these are all emotions that we equate with time. Fortunately these are also emotions that we have the ability to control. With the power to control emotions and time, consider how you’re approaching your intentions.

Are you rushing the process to quickly manifest? Are you delaying the process because manifesting means the end of the dream? Does reality scare you a little? Do you want what you want right now because you feel you deserve it right now? Remember this: the time it takes to manifest your intentions is based on your often unconscious-motivations and on pleasure. Becoming aware of your motivations can set the right course for your intentions or conversely derail your goals. What lies between you and success is the work you must do. Take some time to think about the distance between yourself and your goals and how much pleasure the work brings. Make the work your intention and you'll find pleasure in it.

Intentions include more than just the big picture. Intentions also can be smaller steps that reduce the amount of time it takes to achieve your goals. Details can help you feel in control of time. This doesn’t mean form new intentions or goals, or focus exclusively on productivity! It’s simply a call to provide incremental support for yourself while you remain ever aware of your overall goals. This will ensure that you stay on task to manifesting your intentions and that time is on your side.