August | 2011 | The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (163)

Posted on August 21, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

163.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I can’t help it – it is what I’m writing today so it is dominating my thoughts. More writing from the CreateNow Workbook. This is from what I’m writing for week 3 of the course:

Where are you? On what mountain are you standing? From what point of view are you asking questions about your life?

Before reading further do this exercise: On a piece of paper draw a pyramid. What themes, labels and judgments do you layer on yourself (good enough or not good enough, lacking or abundant, resilient or fragile,…). Write the labels, themes, and judgments in the pyramid. Now, draw a small stick figure (this is you) standing on top of the pyramid. What you wrote in the pyramid is your point of view; it is the screen through which you sift your experiences.

If you believe that you are standing on a mountain of deficiency, a pyramid of worthlessness, your fulfillment will look like a distant meadow. It is some other place. Every question you ask will be asked from a place of deficiency and reinforce the idea that what you want is some other place outside of you. What you see is separation. The story structure that you buttress holds the notion that there is an arrival place, another mountain or meadow – some other place called creative or happy or fulfilled. In this story your focus is on an outcome or result that resides somewhere out there in the distant future.

Look at the words in the pyramid. Are any of the labels absolute? Are you always good enough, not good enough or just sometimes? Are you poor every moment or just when you think about it? Are you abundant all the time or is it passing? Is it true that you are not creative enough? Why is this label your statement of being, your identity of choice? Do you even know what perfect is? Why is any of it fixed, absolute, or true?

None of the labels, themes, or self-accusations matter; what matters is that the labels locate you in a story of resistance; resistance to being where you are. Do you think you need to be some other place or some other person in order to find fulfillment? Your point of view, the mountain upon which you stand is called separation. You’ve separated your self from your self; in this story you will always look somewhere else for your answer and your fulfillment.

There is another way but it requires you to stop resisting where you are, cease trying to be something that you are not. It requires you to shift your focus from outcomes and investments in control. It requires you to focus on process and creating quality relationships. What would it look like to show up without justification, explanation, masking, hiding, or apology? How can you show up alive and 100% in?

Filed under: Creativity, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Truly Powerful People (162)

Posted on August 20, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

162.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Today I began writing the workbook for Patti and my next telecoaching course, CreateNow, based on Patti’s latest book, Creative Is A Verb. These thoughts are the frame for the first week’s exploration. All day I’ve been thinking about the questions posed so I decided to post them here as they apply to the path walked by Truly Powerful People:

Creativity is your birthright. It is possible for you to believe that you are not creative but it is impossible for you to fulfill that belief. You are infinitely creative; all the proof you need is inside your head. Listen to that inner voice telling you that this day is good or bad, that you have worth or not, that you wish people would get out of your way, that people won’t like you if they really knew who you are, that your new shoes are cool or daring or comfortable: that is you creating. That voice is you narrating the story of your life. What story are you telling? What do you want to create?

Unfortunately, for reasons too many to enumerate, early on in our lives most of us divorce ourselves from our creative identity. Ask a kindergarten class who is an artist and every hand will shoot to the sky. Ask a class of 5th graders the same question and a timid few might dare to claim that they are creative. What happens to us?

In her book, Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach tells the story of a daughter holding vigil at her mother’s deathbed. The mother regained consciousness before dying and said, “You know, all my life I thought something was wrong with me.” And then she shook her head as if to say, “What a waste.”

There is nothing wrong with you. Why do you need to put a disclaimer on your identity as a creative being? How are you blocking yourself or limiting your full creative capacity?

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Truly Powerful People (161)

Posted on August 19, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

161.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

When David O. turned 40 he had a dream. In his dream he saw the end of his life. He saw how the first 40 years passed in the blink of an eye and knew the rest of his life would pass just as quickly. In his dream he asked himself if he was doing with his life what he wanted to do with it. His answer was no.

He was a doctor and had a very successful practice. Being a doctor was what was expected of him. It was practical. It was lucrative. Some days he managed to believe it was a kind of service. It was a career but never a calling. It was work. He had no trouble answering the cocktail party question, “So, what do you do?”

He awoke from his dream and bought a camera. He began taking photographs of the seashore. He wasn’t interested in taking pretty pictures. He was interested in seeing the place where he lived, really seeing it. He wanted to engage. He wanted to be a part of this place, not merely move through it. He told me that photography became a way of putting down roots, an attempt at belonging.

As he began exploring his external geography, he also explored his internal geography; it is impossible to do one without the other. He recognized that, in putting down roots, he was creating a kind of legacy. With belonging comes commitment: to say, “I am part of this place,” means the place is also a part of you. The geography becomes you; you become the geography. You sense the air and feel the rhythms.

David O. told me that he was coming alive or perhaps he was coming back to life. Yes. I think he meant that literally: life is waiting for us to come back to it. All that is required is to awake from the dream (I’m a doctor) and recognize that you are so much more than what you do.

Filed under: Awakening, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Truly Powerful People (160)

Posted on August 18, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

160.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

This is what a friend said to me today: ”I know how to create a better life for myself. I recognize that I am always living in fear and looking toward tomorrow or angry at the past. I know that I can’t do anything about those things. I know that if I slow down and open to the intensity of the moment, I will see the subtleties. It’s the little things in the moment that give breath to life.”

Amen.

And then she said: “I know this. Why don’t I do it? Why do I drive myself crazy never being where I am but fighting past battles or resisting and fearing things that most likely will never happen? What is that about? I think it is a kind of addiction. I think I’m addicted to the drama. I think being a victim is addictive.”

Amen again.

Being a victim is addictive. What do you know about dealing with addictions? There is no magic bullet, only different choices and a determination not to dull or artificially heighten life (both take you out of it), but to live in it. And, as my friend so beautifully said, “Slow down and open to the intensity of the moment; see the subtleties.”

Filed under: Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Truly Powerful People (159)

Posted on August 17, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

159.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Robert bought his house many years ago. It was a crack house and in terrible disrepair. Slowly over many years, after stripping it back to the studs and adding a second story, he has restored it. That is not so unusual. What is remarkable is that Robert is a working actor, which means he makes very little money when compared to other occupations like trash collector or janitorial engineer. His dream was to buy his own house and restore it and he found a way to do it.

For years he went to construction sites and asked if he could pick through the scrap lumber. He developed relationships and people gave him tips about where to go to get free stuff. He picked up vintage moldings, doors and hardware. He learned how to plumb and do electrics. He said, “I don’t know. Let’s find out,” a lot.

He worked slowly, one step at a time, careful not to rush to an imaginary end; it was important to him to love his house and love the process. Over many years, he converted a house that most people thought should be burned down into a charming 3 bedroom, 2 bath cottage and it cost him almost nothing. It is brilliant yellow and makes me smile every time I see it.

When I think of living in possibilities I think of Robert. Anything is possible if you aren’t in a rush to “get there.”

Filed under: Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Truly Powerful People (158)

Posted on August 16, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

158.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Self-love is still on the front burner of my mind.

My last post brought a memory and a poem: a winter weekend retreat in Lake Tahoe, a gathering of special people investigating ways that we might bring our gifts together in some form or another: to offer workshops or retreats or…. Early on our conversations strayed from the form of what we might offer to who we were and what we believed and desired to do in the world. As I look back now I see how dissatisfied we all were with the work we were doing; we’d each compromised something essential in our selves and were looking for ways to get back to the center.

Early one morning Sam emerged from his room and offered a poem that he’d just penned:

Beloved by Sam Magill

First waking in rumpled hair
having not adorned myself
for public viewing
or put on my beauty masks –
will I allow myself to be
called Beloved?

This is a poem about self-love. Without my public mask, my wall of respect and my list of achievements, will I allow myself to be called Beloved? In the private space of my life, when no one is looking and I am not performing myself for others, will I allow myself to be called Beloved?

It is a given when you first enter this earth – there is no separation. At what point did being the Beloved become dependent shoe size, other’s ideas of you, university acceptance, bank account, and car choice? What would need to change for you to re-recognize your self as unique in the universe?

Filed under: Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Truly Powerful People (157)

Posted on August 15, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

157.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I am still meditating on how achievement and self-love are connected in our culture – and how central this idea is to every client I have ever worked with (individuals and organizations). It is certainly a Puritan notion. Self-love is also anathema to the Puritan notion; you get to heaven through a lifetime of hard work and self-denial not self-love. Hard pews and stiff collars seem counterproductive. It’s always been an oddly self-destructive concept to me.

I’ve understood since I was little that negating myself can only lead to negating others. When I look on the world as filled with either angels or devils (dualities) and they are having a tug-o-war over my soul, then I am fundamentally creating a split consciousness. If angels and devils are the context through which I see (the circumstance of the story I tell), I will see dualities and splits everywhere. Temptation is the name of the self-denial game and I will be suspect of myself and therefore suspect of everyone I meet. I reinforce the split and not the unity. Why would I do that? Why would I create through the eyes of separation? Why would I reinforce within myself a split consciousness?

So what does this have to do with achievement and self-love? We identify ourselves through our doing. Every client I have is asking questions about the quality and value of their doing: comparisons, expectations, perfectionism, investments in stories of validity, questions about being enough, questions about doing the right life’s work; questions about voice, about creativity,… are questions of doing. All of the judgments and self-criticism are about doing enough or doing “what I was meant to do.” We are asking questions of doing and missing the questions of being. What about the quality of your being? This is akin to asking the question “How?” before asking the question, “Why?”

And so I ask myself, am I capable of loving myself if I never again paint another picture, teach another class, write another story, or achieve another thing? Yes. I believe the self-love comes first; achievement is only useful if it serves a greater community and service is only useful if it begins from a source of love.

Filed under: Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Truly Powerful People (156)

Posted on August 14, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

156.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

The owner of the boat dropped anchor at night just off the beach at Alki. He didn’t know that the water is shallow and the tides this time of year are extreme. He awoke to find his boat sitting on a sand bar.

Today, I feel like that boat. I dropped anchor in waters that were a bit too shallow. I wasn’t paying attention. When I woke up this morning everything was slightly askew. I opened my eyes and looked out into the world and found myself…stranded. There was no particular reason for my stranded condition, nothing that I could point to.

So, you can imagine how fortunate I felt when on my usual early morning walk and I came upon the boat on the sand bar. The owner and I exchanged smiles and shrugs. “Nothing to be done until the tide comes back,” he called and smirked. “I think I’ll make some breakfast.”

Sage advice. Sometimes when you find yourself stranded on a sand bar, real or metaphoric, there is nothing to be done but enjoy the place where you are stranded. The tide will come back, real and metaphoric, make breakfast and soon you’ll be on our way.

Filed under: Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Truly Powerful People (155)

Posted on August 13, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

155.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I met Emma today. She is two years old. Her picture is in the dictionary next to the word Cherub. It is also next to the words Cute, Adorable, and Sprite. She taught me how to do nose kisses and reminded me what full-body joy can do to a collection of weathered adults: her joy-explosions sent us over the edge into delight.

Here’s the picture: Her 5-year old brother Noah and I were playing hide and seek (I also learned to count to ten. Noah wanted to make sure I was qualified to play. We rehearsed counting for several minutes until I got it right. I am a slow study and Noah was a patient teacher). Emma wanted to play, too, and at two years old anything goes. I count (correctly). Noah hides with Emma hot on his heels. The moment I count ten and say, “Ready or not, here I come!” Emma leaps from her hiding spot and bounds to the center of the room and presents herself as if she just won a car on The Price Is Right. She finds me and is found and what could be more thrilling! It is, after all, the point of hiding, isn’t it?

What part of you are you hiding? What part needs to be found? Emma reminded me that hiding is just the first part of the game; in life the real joy comes when you bound to the center of the room and say, “Here I am! And, there you are.”

Filed under: Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Truly Powerful People (154)

Posted on August 12, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

154.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

“Please don’t ever let your mind stop you from having a good time.” Jason Mraz

This is the way Joe introduced me to the concept of high dream/low dream: suppose you are meeting your lover after work for a walk on the beach. While you are waiting to meet, you imagine how great the walk will be. You imagine how loving your partner will be, how excited he will be to see you. In your mind’s eye there is a magical sunset, perfect breezes, perhaps a whale swims by and you take this as a sign that everything is perfect in the world. This is the high dream.

When your lover arrives he is quiet. He is sullen and doesn’t want to talk. He walks a few feet away from you and is lost in thought. You dive head first into your fear. You think he doesn’t like you anymore. He wants to leave you. He’s had an affair. You did something wrong. This is the low dream.

Both the high dream and the low dream are…dreams. Anticipation of what may or may not happen, fear of what might or might not be happening, expectations and assumptions and…stories. Both get in the way of what is really there.

One of the most potent Circle Project practices is to have the experience first, and then make meaning out of it. High dream/low dream is an attempt to make meaning of the future before it actually arrives. Have the experience first; it’s a practice that will open your eyes to what is in front of you and not what you think is there.

Filed under: Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »