Finding Your Intention: An Honest Conversation with Yourself

A guide to setting intentions for ceremony—grounded in truth, not performance

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There’s something beautifully ironic about setting an intention for ceremony, isn’t it? We’re asked to name what we’re seeking before stepping into a space designed to reveal what we don’t yet know about ourselves. How do you articulate the shape of a shadow you’ve been carefully avoiding?

If you’re sitting with this question right now, feeling stuck or uncertain, let me tell you something important: that tension you’re feeling? That’s exactly where the work begins.

The Paradox of Knowing What We Don’t Know

Here’s what nobody tells you when you’re new to this work: much of what we need to heal lives outside our conscious awareness. It hides in the corners of our psyche—tucked beneath distraction, wrapped in denial, cushioned by the stories we tell ourselves to stay comfortable. This isn’t a failing. It’s human.

So when someone asks you to set an intention for ceremony, they’re asking you to do something that sounds impossible: name something that exists beyond the edge of what you can currently see.

But here’s the thing—you already know more than you think you do.

Deep down, beneath all the noise and the deflection and the “I’m fine” you say when you’re not, you know exactly where you hurt. You know where you’ve closed your heart. You know which parts of yourself you’ve been hiding from the world, and from yourself. The question isn’t whether you know. The question is whether you’re willing to get honest about it.

Intention as Honest Self-Inquiry

Setting an intention isn’t about crafting the perfect spiritual statement. It’s not performative. It’s about honesty—sometimes raw, uncomfortable honesty.

Think of your intention as the beginning of a conversation with yourself. Not the surface kind you have while scrolling through your phone, but the kind that happens at 3 a.m. when all your defenses are down. The kind where you finally admit the thing you’ve been pretending isn’t true.

Maybe you’ve been in therapy. Maybe you’ve done support groups or read all the books or talked to friends who really see you. If you have, you might already have words for some of what you’re carrying. You might be able to say, “I close my heart when people get too close” or “I run from conflict instead of facing it” or “I use work to avoid feeling lonely.”

If that’s where you are, your intention might be about going deeper: Why do I close my heart? What am I so afraid will happen if I let people in? Where did I learn that love isn’t safe?

Or maybe you’re earlier in the process. Maybe you just know something isn’t right. You feel disconnected from yourself, from others, from the life you thought you’d be living by now. That’s okay too. Your intention can be as simple as: I’m willing to see what I’ve been avoiding. I’m ready to face what’s shown to me with courage.

Sometimes the most powerful intention is just a willingness to look.

When We Know the Pattern But Can’t Break It

Then there are the times when we know exactly what we’re dealing with—we have the words, we understand the psychology, we’ve analyzed it from every angle—but we still can’t change. We know we’re stuck, but we don’t know why we stay stuck.

This is where so many of us live: in the space between understanding and transformation.

You might know you have an addiction—to substances, to work, to relationships that hurt you, to the phone you can’t put down, to the validation you chase but never quite catch. You might even understand on some level that the addiction is filling a hole, masking a pain, keeping you from feeling something you’re not ready to feel.

But knowing isn’t the same as healing. Awareness isn’t the same as release.

If this is you, your intention might be: I want to understand what this pattern is protecting me from. I want to see the wound beneath the wound. I want to know what fear or hurt or shame I’m covering with this behavior.

Or maybe it’s even simpler: I want to understand why I can’t let this go.

The beautiful thing about Ayahuasca as a teacher is that she meets us where we are. She doesn’t require us to have everything figured out before we show up. She asks for one thing: honesty. Even if that honesty is just, “I don’t know what I need, but I know I need something to change.”

We Are Only As Healed As Our Secrets

There’s a saying we come back to often at Two Birds: We are only as healed as our secrets.

The parts of ourselves we refuse to acknowledge, the stories we won’t tell, the feelings we won’t feel—these are the parts that keep us trapped. Healing doesn’t begin when we finally understand everything. It begins when we stop hiding.

Your intention is practice for that moment. It’s your chance to bring something out of the darkness and into the light—even if you’re just saying it to yourself at first. Even if you’re not ready to share it with anyone else yet.

What are you hiding from? What have you been pretending isn’t there?

Maybe it’s grief you never let yourself fully feel. Maybe it’s anger you were taught was unacceptable. Maybe it’s shame about who you are or what happened to you or choices you’ve made. Maybe it’s fear so deep you’ve built your entire life around not having to face it.

Whatever it is, naming it—even privately, even imperfectly—is the first step toward freedom.

The Evolution of Intention

Here’s something important: your intention doesn’t have to be perfect because it’s not permanent. It’s a starting point, not a finish line.

As you prepare for ceremony—as you journal, as you sit with yourself—your intention will likely evolve. What felt true two weeks ago might feel shallow now. What seemed important yesterday might reveal itself as a surface concern masking something deeper.

Think of your intention like a conversation that deepens the longer you stay in it. You start with what you can see. You say the thing that feels safe enough to say. But as you stay present, as you get more honest, as you build trust with yourself, you can go further.

“I want to heal” becomes “I want to heal my relationship with my mother.”

Which becomes “I want to understand why I recreate the same dynamic with every woman I date.”

Which becomes “I want to see where I learned that love equals control.”

Which becomes “I want to release the belief that I have to earn love by being perfect.”

Each layer is true. Each layer is worthy. But each layer also opens the door to something deeper.

What If You Don’t Know Where to Start?

Maybe you’re reading this and still feeling stuck. You don’t have words yet. You don’t know how to name what you’re feeling, or you’re not even sure what you’re feeling at all. You just know something needs to change.

Start with what’s honest. Start with where you actually are.

Maybe your intention is: I want to feel something real. I want to stop numbing out.

Or: I want to know what I actually want, beneath what everyone else expects of me.

Or: I want to stop running. I want to face whatever I’ve been avoiding.

Or even: I don’t know what I need, but I’m willing to find out.

These are powerful intentions because they’re true. They’re not trying to sound spiritual or enlightened. They’re just honest admissions of where you are right now.

And honestly? That’s exactly what ceremony needs from you. Not perfection. Not profound wisdom you don’t have yet. Just willingness. Just honesty.

The Practice of Getting Honest

Setting an intention is really a practice in learning to be honest with yourself. For many of us, this is harder than it sounds. We’ve spent years—maybe decades—learning to lie to ourselves in a thousand small ways. We’ve learned to ignore our feelings, dismiss our needs, override our intuition, pretend everything’s fine when it’s not.

Ceremony asks us to undo all of that. But we can’t wait until we drink medicine to start practicing honesty. The preparation is part of the healing.

So sit with yourself. Journal. Notice where you feel resistance. Notice what you don’t want to write down. Notice the thoughts that whisper, “Don’t look there. Don’t feel that.”

Those whispers? That’s where your intention lives.

But ultimately, the conversation happens between you and you. Between the part of you that’s scared and the part of you that’s ready. Between who you’ve been and who you’re becoming.

The Mirror Can’t Show Us What We Refuse to See

Ayahuasca is often described as a mirror. She shows us ourselves—clearly, honestly, sometimes uncomfortably. But here’s what’s important to understand: a mirror can only reflect what’s in front of it.

If you show up to ceremony unwilling to look at yourself, unwilling to feel your feelings, unwilling to face what’s uncomfortable—she can’t force you. The medicine doesn’t override your free will. It doesn’t bypass your resistance.

This is why intention matters. Not because it controls the experience, but because it measures your willingness.

When you set an intention, you’re saying: I’m willing to look. I’m willing to feel. I’m willing to face what comes, even if it’s hard.

And that willingness—that honest, vulnerable willingness—is what opens the door to healing.

You might set an intention to “hang out with aliens all night” or “experience pure bliss” or some other escape from the real work. And if that’s genuinely where you are, that’s okay. But deep down, you know. You know if you’re seeking truth or avoiding it.

Ayahuasca will meet you wherever you are. But she’ll also gently, firmly, lovingly invite you to get honest about where “wherever you are” actually is.

Bringing It Into the Circle

When we ask you to refine your intention and share it with the group, we’re not asking you to perform. We’re not looking for the most poetic or spiritual-sounding statement. We’re creating a practice of vulnerability, of speaking truth out loud, of letting others witness us as we prepare to witness ourselves.

There’s power in saying the quiet thing out loud. In admitting, “I’m scared” or “I feel stuck” or “I don’t know how to change.” In naming the wound instead of just managing its symptoms.

Your circle—the people preparing for ceremony alongside you—they’re strengthening with each honest word. Not because anyone has it all figured out, but because we’re all practicing the same thing: showing up as we actually are.

Your Intention Is Enough

So here’s what I want you to know as you sit with this: Whatever intention you land on, if it’s honest, it’s enough.

It doesn’t have to be profound. It doesn’t have to encompass your entire healing journey. It doesn’t have to sound like anyone else’s.

It just has to be true.

True to where you are right now. True to what you’re willing to face. True to the conversation you’re ready to have with yourself.

And if your truth right now is, “I don’t fully know yet, but I’m looking”—that’s perfect. That’s exactly where some of the most powerful healing begins.

Because the willingness to look, the courage to be honest, the commitment to stop hiding—these are the real medicines. Ayahuasca is a teacher, a mirror, a guide. But the healing? That happens in the moment you decide to finally, fully, bravely see yourself.

Your intention is your declaration of that decision.

So take your time with it. Be honest with yourself. Refine it as your awareness deepens. Bring it to ceremony as an offering—not of perfection, but of truth.

And trust that in that honesty, in that vulnerability, in that willingness to face what comes, you’re already healing.

The ceremony will take you the rest of the way.