Chapter 9 - Intention

Written on 01/01/2026

Stephen Ridley

Chapter 9 - Intention

All things are known within their time.

This book took five weeks to complete. The Book of Life also took five weeks. Sometimes I set my alarm to awake at 4am, the best time to get help. This shows the power of ‘receiving’ and being connected at many different levels through personal sacrifice. Giving is receiving.

Many messages were given during that time, some directly and others through an intuition that helped to connect all this information and enable it to flow. In all cases I had to understand through both direct and indirect experience and acceptance of the knowledge within me.It is as though I already knew. Time had no meaning, except to manage the energy and enable my mind, body and soul to cope with the knowledge and changes within. This was universal intention. It is as though I was surrendering and my energy was being directed. All you have to do is go with the flow, the influence or intuition, my conscience. God is my conscience.

This book has my name because it contains some of me, my own personal journey, connected to a higher ‘self’. The Book of Life does not, because it is ours, it belongs to the universe, I was merely a messenger. I know that I belong to and serve the One because of this process.

In both books, the chapter headings were written down in order and without change. When this happened, I received confirmation by a quickening, something that feels like an energy surge going through your body. I intended to write this book in three weeks.It took a further two weeks to review and finalize. I was also told five months beforehand that on 17^th August 2010 that I would make a serious commitment to someone. That was the date the Book of Life was finalized. I now know that this commitment was to the One. I still had to make choices when the door was opened. I am and will always be amazed at the power of creation.

Intention is when you intend something. It starts within your thoughts and then manifests through your actions. I am not sure, knowing now what I had to go through, that I would have chosen and gone through that journey in order to be able to write this. At times it was painful in the extreme, but I coped, I carried on and it was meant to be. That process of surrender gave me the guidance and information to experience what I had to and to be able to write it down and share it with others.

I travelled to places that I knew I had to go to, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, where around one million Human Beings were exterminated. At the end of each emotionally and spiritually exhausting day there, something extra-ordinary happened: each day birds flew over the concentration camps, something that previous visitors had informed did not happen. God works in mysterious ways. That is how you and I get the inspiration and sometimes the confirmation of what we are doing.

During a particularly difficult period, I asked a dear friend and colleague, one with his own deep scars, why I was not getting any help, guidance or sign. I felt that I was in trouble, not able to cope. He replied by telling me a story.

Once there was a man who had fallen overboard at sea and was at risk of drowning. Along came a boat and someone offered to throw him a life-line. He declined saying he was waiting for help from God. This happened a second time with another boat, and again he declined. The third time he got it and understood, and so did I.

The friend and the story were my life-line. I had learned. This story was handed down to him by his own healer and teacher, further evidence of intention, connection and continuity, both through time and through a heart-warming soul connection.

Anything is possible. Intention, when it is created, becomes part of the universe, which is created in the here and now. As the saying goes ‘there is no time like the present’. It is created through both our thoughts and actions.

We can choose to believe in God or not. If we choose not to believe in good then we are in dangerous territory and missing the point at every level. Human Beings cannot survive without Godliness, goodness or benevolence, the gift of creation.

We are here to learn, and the best way of learning is by living and experiencing both the good and the bad. We can only learn from our mistakes, or choose not to (which seems like a particularly stupid thing to do). Yet it has taken me many times before I sometimes learned the lesson, mainly because my ego didn’t want to let go or the lesson was too painful. I had to learn to reconnect and swallow my pride, forever questioning why I was doing this when the process hurt so much.

There is a duality in all of this.

There is a saying that ‘there can be no light without dark’. If you reflect on this, it is a paradox.You will come to recognize and understand that this also means that ‘there can be no dark within light’. So, good intention, for all of us and by all of us, would be that ‘darkness is nothing more than shadow cast by the light’. This is the way back to truth, the path to enlightenment. This realization was a major learning for me.

When I came to also realize that I had signed up to this long before I can remember, I finally understood the connection between the past, present and future that began when I was six years old. At that age I had glimpsed infinity and eternity. It is difficult to describe, except that it is something like time standing still within the moment, except that the moment lasts a little longer than expected.

This was better described by a friend who had asked if I had experienced that no-thing-ness, when time or change ceases to be. She said that she had felt that only once, when she had held her new born son for the very first time.

I remembered that I had felt that also at the moment when I witnessed each of my children being born. I wanted to be no-where else, in no other place, in no other time, this was the moment and always will be. Maybe at that moment both she and I had witnessed the miracle of creation, the seeding of a soul, a purer possibility.

Was there a continuity of service in these observations? I undoubtedly think that this happens at many levels. I received confirmation of this during my own process of learning, which has been throughout my life since I was that young child, emotionally, intellectually, physically and spiritually.

This six year old child’s experience of connection manifested many years ago on a family holiday in the south of England.I was playing on a children’s climbing frame, on my own, and looked up at the sky. The grey clouds billowed in the wind, and it was then that I saw or felt it, that connection with the eternal.

Forty-five years later, I went on a salsa dancing holiday in the same area of England. I decided that I would find the exact place that this six year old remembered. The buildings had changed, but the large open space was still there, without the climbing frame which had probably long since gone.

I was thinking about where it had happened, the exact spot, and was looking at a patch of ground but wasn’t entirely sure that this was it. Just before this happened, I noticed a large bird of prey take off in the distance to my right. While contemplating the original place, the bird swooped very low over the exact location I was looking at. This was my confirmation. I then stood again in exactly the same place as I had forty-five years earlier. The quickening happened again.

I have a big personal ambition before I die: that is to dance like a Cuban, a purely connected spirit in flow with the meaning and the essence of the music.I am not so sure that I will achieve this, however some say that I don’t dance so badly for an Englishman! However, I noticed an amusing connection in this. While on another dancing weekend, I attended a class on the Orishas, spiritual dances that come originally from Africa. The African slaves that were transported to the Caribbean were banned from performing these dances, and so they perfected something called the Rumba, a side to side stepping in the line of ankle chains in unison, as One. This later evolved into another dance called the Son. The Son then progressed into Salsa, interpreting the different rhythms and flavours within the salsa music, itself a mixture and progression of different types of music. Salsa is Spanish for ‘sauce’. Maybe God is the sauce (or Source) in all of us, the original connection within us, and the spirit of the Orishas! Maybe all religious faiths could make the same connection with each other.

I could tell many stories that have happened in a very short space of time during this journey, too remarkable to have been coincidence. I will restrict it to a few to give some idea of the serendipity that is in play, a design if you will that is difficult to fathom, and impossible to anticipate.

One of particular note is that I had never seen an eagle flying outside of a zoo and in the wilds of nature before the age of fifty. Then, during the space of two months, in two different countries while travelling for The One Project, I observed six different eagles flying very close by. Suffice to say that I took these as signs that I needed to overcome my own unwillingness to carry on and continue with the journey.

During the summer of 2010 I travelled over 3,000 kilometres in eleven days, driving from England through France, Switzerland and Italy, and back again. I risked my life on that journey, something I will not expand upon so as not to upset my mother if she read this!

During this time, three extra-ordinary experiences out of many are worth recalling as they happened. Each was totally unexpected. I had not booked any hotels, since I was not fully aware of the actual route that I must take until I was on the road each day. I was living in the moment, in the flow of service and learning.

The first experience was when driving south through country roads in France, and I ignored the satellite navigation system that persisted in instructing me to turn left.Instead I turned right, following my instincts, guidance or flow. I came upon a very straight and long road, an ancient Roman road. I knew that I had been there before through the quickening, only that time I had been walking and riding a horse (obviously not at the same time). Yet I had not visited this route before, at least not is this lifetime.I then ignored the navigation system again, and found another long, straight road that bisected the first road at right-angles.I knew where I was. This was the site of the Roman fort, the main command post before the Battle of Alesia with Vercingetorix and the Gallic tribes in 52 B.C. This was a recall of an incarnation, and a connected awareness accompanied by another quickening, a link to the past and to a very different life with very different values.

The second extra-ordinary experience was on the same trip, again when I had had ignored the car’s navigation system and followed my guide or instincts. I ended up on the outskirts of a town called Salsomaggiore Terme, a place I did not know. I kept on driving until I knew where I had to be. This was when I had parked the car in a road facing the church of Saint Anthony.

As I walked up to the church and down the left hand side, I saw a group of young children playing, supervised by a beautiful young Italian woman. Music was coming from a portable music player. She looked at me, directly in the eyes, and immediately changed the music. The song that she played was Mrs. Robinson. The words came on, ‘And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know. God bless you, please Mrs. Robinson. Heaven holds a place for those who pray’. The lyrics stopped me in my tracks. I immediately turned and walked back through the doors into the church.

On the left of the church facing the altar was a beautiful painting of a warrior hanging on the wall. He was kneeling, praying for and accepting absolution. I sat and prayed for forgiveness, for past transgressions. It was a very emotional experience, and another quickening.

The third experience that I will recount is equally unusual. I continued on the journey to Rome via other places and, whether by chance or design, I entered the city through what I noticed was the Porta Maggiore. The name link with Salsomaggiore was not lost on me. I drove the car through the intimidating Roman traffic, miraculously without an incident, and drove straight into a parking space, the only one available. This was free to park in all day, in the centre of Rome, opposite the Column of Marcus Aurelius, very near to where I needed to be. I was there to go to the Coliseum, another place of death, and the main arena of the Gladiators, and St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. The energy at the Coliseum was massively and sadly overwhelming, which I felt the closer I walked. All of these connections are connected.

The return journey from Rome took me through Switzerland. It was there that my own passage through the Gates of Light took place. It had lasted about ten minutes. I had passed the test that was set.

During this time, while I was still driving, I could see the world as I could not recall seeing it before. I saw the mountains, beyond the mountains, the road ahead, and the surface of my eyes at the same time. Others will know this as four-dimensional viewing. Time stood still again. Many will not have experienced this, until their time comes and when their transformation accelerates, then they will know what to expect and to have no fear.

This road trip, covering many miles in eleven days, gave the intense experience that is now recorded in the first book of The One Project, the Book of Life. In order to write, I had to experience the journey, consciously think about each learning, creating a succinct way of describing them and then acting on this journey by writing it down to help others.

This raises an important question: which is more important, conscious thought or action? The truth is that they are meaningless without one another.

If we act without conscious thinking, we are simply reacting to the environment, the same as any ‘unthinking’ organism moving towards self-serving benefit. If we think without action, we cannot prove one way or the other that our intentions are correct. If the intention is for sustainability, a correct way of living and Being, it is part of a learning process that manifests holistic connection and the resulting transformation of Human consciousness.

The outcome of this transformation is that all Human Beings will ultimately choose, consciously, to understand that Being is based on love, the same Being that is within you that also ultimately serves you. It is the true way to reconnect, sustain and return to Source, because love is the ultimate gift that created everything from no thing in the first place. This is the true intention of all faith systems.

My own breakdowns and breakthroughs happened frequently throughout this journey, sometimes more than once each day and sometimes continuously over many days. During the past two years there has never been more than three days without a lesson and an important learning, so many that I lost count of them.

The lessons to learn were primarily about my own Being, my understanding, the knowledge I had acquired, my hopes for a better world and the falsity of my fears.More importantly, the process also helped an important understanding of others with their own hopes and aspirations, including learning to live with compassion, never to judge, and always to forgive, but never to forget what is needed to be learnt. Most of the experience and lessons were painful, but all of them were enlightening and ultimately gave me the strength to face and cope with anything and any situation. I broke through the barriers of my own mind. That is why it now relatively easy to make all those connections and record them in a short space of time.

As I write this down, the process is cathartic, and the intention is becoming self-fulfilling. Look at the words in this book and you will probably see what this means to me and for the rest of my life. The journey will never end, and I will always agree to serve, but perhaps a better way of putting it is that service is its’ own reward when the words become one-fulfilling for all of us.

Put another way, if we all share and return the gift to each other, and help each other to progress through the Gates of Light, ultimately we serve each other, and therefore the One.

Do I have an intention that I think would help create collaborative, constructive and benevolent outcomes for all living things?

I think it is captured in these words, written many years before I fully understood them:

If we only could

Live as we should,

In God’s own loving way;

Neither wrong nor right,

Neither black nor white,

Just differing shades of grey.

Love all, connect with all, and forgive all. Progress through the Gates of Light, serve One and another, and you will know, much more than I now know, long after this life of mine.

Love and peace be with you, and within you, the ultimate intention of The Universe, The One.