How do we Develop and Grow our Intention?

This article is based around my response to a good question that was asked in response to last weeks article on ''The Vital Importance of Context for Spiritual Practices''. First, here is the question:
I guess after reading the article one of the questions I had was how do we know what is the "correct" state of mind or the proper intentions and motivations with which we should approach meditation and spiritual
growth ?

Here is my response:
Well, there are a few different ways to answer this, but one way of doing so is to say that you need to have a context or conceptual framework within which you can gradually grow and improve the scope of your intention. One such framework is a four fold division of intention and perspective as follows:
Egocentric
Ethnocentric
Woldcentric
Cosmocentric 
These four stages represent four stages that ideally speaking each human being should evolve through in their lifetime. Unfortunately most people are somewhat stuck in the first two. Someone who has a solely egocentric view is basically someone whose perspective and intention includes/is focused on only themselves. we are all functioning from this point of view as young children, but if we do not grow out of this as we move into adult hood, then essentially any act we engage in, including spiritual activities will be based around selfish motives, and in its extreme form will manifest as sociopathic or psychopathic behaviors.
Someone who then evolves (as most people growing up into adulthood naturally do) to an ethnocentric worldview essentially learns to identify with family, racial, religious and other conventional ''tribal'' roles, behaviors and ways of viewing the world. Such a person may develop compassion, love, humility and sacrifice, but it is always bias toward their particular race, religion etc. For example the Nazis did advocate compassion, sacrifice, humility and all sorts of other noble qualities, but it was all in the in the service of the Aryan race. It was this ethnocentric bias that enabled them to cultivate these good qualities with regard to ''their own'', whilst at the same time euthanizing groups that did not fall into the Aryan ideal (eg: mentally and physically handicapped), and attempting to wipe out other racial groups (eg: Jews). So, although it is not taken to the extreme of the Nazis, probably the majority of the worlds population is ethnocentric in one way or another.
Someone who them moves to a world centric perspective and intention basically goes beyond cultural, racial and tribal mindsets and includes all humans within the scope of their care and consideration you  could say that this is the first truly ''spiritual'' level of intention in the sense that it transcends cultural conditioning and truly starts to embrace the whole. So, as spiritual practitioners/mediators, we are trying to magnetize our motivation to this level at least.
From world centric we them move to Cosmocentric or Universal levels of perspective and intention, when our actions are engaged in for the sake of all living beings, not just humans (ie; animals, forests, sea creatures etc... all forms of life in the Universe are taken into account).  
 
So, each of us as individuals have the elements of all four of the above perspectives within ourselves, and the journey toward a truly spiritual intention involves magnetizing ourselves gradually toward the 3rd and 4th levels, worldcentric and cosmocentric, over a period of time.
A final point here is that we should try and adopt a policy of ''transcend and include'' when it comes to these four levels. So, for example to transcend the egocentric level ideally means that we are making our motivation bigger than just self, but at the same time we should learn appropriate ways to look after, nurture and develop our everyday ego as a healthy, functioning unit. Looking at the ethnocentric level, to transcend this and go to worldcentric does not mean that we cannot enjoy and nurture our cultural and racial roots, it just means that our identity and behavior is not dictated by our racial and cultural background. So, the basic idea is that ego and ethnicity are included in our makeup, but they do not dictate our behavior or limit our perspective or intention .
You can find a complementary article on the above on stages of development explanation here, by a guy called Ken Wilbur who is the originator of the expression''transcend and include'' that I use above.

The Vital Importance of Context for Spiritual Practices

I recently discovered a documentary that demonstrates very clearly how it is possible for people to be practising all sorts of ''spiritual'' activities, and yet for all of the activities to be completely corrupted by the consciousness of those who are practising it. The documentary is called ''Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy'' (click here to go to website where you can see the whole film)and it basically shows how the Nazis systematically used a whole gamut of religions and spiritual practices in order to promote and justify their message and actions. Amongst the activities that they used were:
Claiming to be descendants of an Atlantean master race (as in from the ancient drowned city of Atlantis which is so prominent in new age circles today), believing themselves to be reincarnations of past (Germanic) heroes, extensive use of astrology, pendulums and other forms of divination, use of runes, meditation, creation of temples and the list goes on!
So, the documentary really is an eye opening piece of work, and I recommend you watch it. The essential message is that it is possible for our own beliefs, agendas and motives to completely corrupt any spiritual activity that we do, and so combining activities such as meditation with ongoing work on our intention, perspective, worldview, clearing of shadow aspects of our personality and so on really is absolutely vital. If our psychology or the complex of thought structures, beliefs and perspectives in our mind is off kilter then this will be reflected in all that we do, including the things that we think of as beng spiritual.