August | 2012 | The Direction of Intention

Create The World

Posted on August 11, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Random thoughts on a morning walk: Without my eyes translating it into a story, the earth (the universe) is action, pure fluid motion without distinction. It is energy in motion.

The birds chase. The waves roll. The fog lifts. The sun breaks through. The jogger waves at me. The cop sits in his car, the engine idling, he reads the morning news. A break? Hooky? The osprey hunts. The gulls complain.

This is what the old masters and gurus mean when they say, “we create the world.” Without my eyes translating, there is no bird chasing, wave rolling, or fog lifting. There is a single motion. There is no bird separate from wave as distinct from fog. I give it coherence. I give it separation and story.

How does this help me? I am certain that I will continue to story everything I see. It happens in a nanosecond. I believe storying is what makes us human: we are storytelling animals. It helps when I see the extent to which I tell my own story. Then I see that I have infinite choice in the story I tell.

A person can walk in gratitude. They can walk with anxiety. They can lose themselves in thought and miss the day entirely. We can be mindful. Mindless. We can be late or just be taking our time. We can try to please or simply do our best. We can try to change the world or recognize that world is motion, pure fluid energy.

Maybe, just maybe, the world is fine without my story. Maybe what needs changing is how I story what I see.

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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

Wink At Your Bully

Posted on August 10, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

It is a mistake to assume that you will someday shed yourself of inner resistance. The voice of resistance is there for the long haul. It will be barking at you all the way to the dirt nap. Trying to eliminate it will only make it stronger; resisting resistance reinforces resistance – say that six times fast.

Resistance is like the bully in elementary school; it says it wants your lunch money but what it really wants is to see you cower. It wants you to stay in your place because that makes it feel powerful and in control. The bully’s game is control. The bully fears who you might become if you show up in a big way.

A step toward your dream is often a step into the unknown; it requires vulnerability and a release of control. This will bring out the bully every time. The inner bully is handled in the same way as the outer bully: Laugh at it or love it, but do not listen to its trash talk. Name it and keep walking. A bully only has power if you cower – it only has power if you believe its threats. It will call you all kinds of vile things and all you need do is hang onto your lunch money and take another step into the unknown. You empower it if you take the threats seriously; it dissipates if you smile and say, “really?”

Resistance is a sign that you are taking a step. It jumps up because you are daring to fulfill a dream. You can cower and run back into the cave or you can step through it and see what is on the other side.

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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

What’s In Your Projector?

Posted on August 9, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

518. 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 at breakfast, Lora was in mid bite when her gaze went far away; she was suddenly lost in thought (I love that phrase because I think it describes the human condition). After several moments she came back into her body and announced, “I just had an epiphany!” She said, “You know the psychology behind projection, projecting onto others what you like or dislike in yourself? Or, how what you dislike in other people is usually something that you need to work on within yourself?”

“Yes…?” I replied. Caution is a good thing when Lora has epiphanies because she is essentially a trickster and I am an easy mark. Dig a tiger pit and I will step into it. Ask me to pull your finger and I will. Easy, easy, easy.

“Well, projecting is the same thing as that age-old phrase: It takes one to know one!” She was delighted with her discovery. “It takes one to know one is a simple way of saying, ‘I’m projecting my crap onto you! Or, I see in you the thing that I don’t like to see in myself; do you see? It takes one to know one!” Satisfied, she finished her bite of breakfast.

I thought that the opposite must also be true. If I see in you something I admire then it must also be available within me. If I can project my shadow on to others and see it in them then I must also be capable of projecting my light and seeing it in you, too.

I suppose the greater question becomes, “what am I projecting?” According to Lora’s epiphany, you’ll know it because you’ll see it.

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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

How Are You Filling Your Cup?

Posted on August 8, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

It’s an odd image but go with me. Lately I’ve been looking at people as if they were empty cups that fill themselves according to the story that they tell. For instance, yesterday I watched a man fill himself with angst and frustration. He stood in front of a photograph muttering, “I could never do that!” I watched as his body began filling with frustrations; it began to rise from his toes, filling his legs and his belly, seeping up into his heart, clogging his voice and drowning his brain in a thick liquid, “I can’t.” His story thwarted completely his desire to be a photographer. What liquid story might have filled his cup had his story been, “Cool! I’m going to learn how to do that?”

According to the research 90% of what runs through your mind is the same stuff that ran through it yesterday. The story you tell yourself is on a loop. The story you tell yourself comes from a specific point of view. I don’t need the research to know that I tell myself the same story loop each day from the same point of view. Consider, for instance, if you assume the universe is against you, your cup will fill with a story of resistance, hard luck, and victimization; no matter what you do, the universe is against you. Every traffic jam, every paper cut will reinforce your story and keep your cup filled with liquid negativity. And, you will fill every relationship, every choice and opportunity, with the negative liquid in your cup because that is what you bring to the party.

I don’t know about you but if 90% of what runs through my mind is the same stuff then I might as well tell a story of opportunity, choice, and support. I’m seeing others as story-cups because I feel within myself how easily I can fill up with anger or blame. “Look how I just filled myself,” has become an awareness tool, a mantra as I literally fill myself with a story of poison or a story of pleasure. Either way, it is my choice and that is the point. I have choice about the story I tell. I have choice about the point of view from which I tell the story. I have choice about where I place my focus: what I choose to see, to emphasize…I choose how I interpret every experience.

How are you filling your cup?

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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

Doodle On The Walls

Posted on August 7, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

My dear Sam, poet, photographer and lover of life, is working on a presentation for coaches entitled The Art of Coaching. In preparation he asked a few lovely questions of his artist friends. He asked us not to think but to respond with our first thoughts. His questions were:
• Under what conditions does an artist flourish?
• What do you notice about the environment around you and in you when you are at your best artist self?

Here was my no-thought response:

It is perhaps too simple but this is what I know and experience: the artist in me becomes present (it is all about presence; artistry is not something you do as much as something you are)- there is no past or future, just what is before me (and in me) in that moment and we are not separate: the poem or the painting or the story and I are one fluid thing. The world (my seeing) moves from nouns to verbs, from object focused to process focused. When I am present the environment, my seeing of my environment, comes “alive;” the colors are more intense, the sounds and textures of my space richer and clearer. I guess, in my artist self, there ceases to be a separation between me and my environment, I am not moving through a day, I am in the day. All concepts of “time” disappear. I am the creator, the creating, and the created.

Artists flourish when the emphasis in life is moved from “answer seeking” and placed on “question engagement” – the capacity to explore, engage,…to sit solidly in uncertainty: that is the environment (and I think it is an internal environment) necessary for humans to flourish and fulfill their creative impulse.

Like me, Sam believes that all humans are infinitely creative. He’s dedicated his life to helping people reacquaint themselves with the inner artist that they sent packing too many years ago to remember.
The coaches attending his session are lucky. I’ve encouraged Sam to place boxes of crayons in the hotel as his session might inspire all of those over-serious adults to sit on the floor and doodle on the walls.

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

Filed under: Art, Power, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Where Are You Looking?

Posted on August 6, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Lessons come to me in loops; I get the learning, incorporate it into my life, and then it loops away until one day I find myself learning the lesson again. Today, the lesson that looped back is about focus placement. For the past several weeks I’ve been focusing on the struggle. I’ve been seeing a thick muddy swamp that I need to cross.

I’ve wondered why I am so tired lately and incapable of sustaining my intentions. And then this morning a client told me about her greatest learning. She said, “ I’ve learned that I need to put my energy and focus into the light and not into combating the darkness.”

I laughed. I know better and have learned this lesson many times. I will no doubt learn it again several times before my focus no longer slips into the swampy darkness. Today I’m re-learning that I need to put my energy and focus into the light. I have the capacity to see what I want to create instead of focusing on my obstacles. No amount of mud can daunt me when my focus, my energy, my will, my intention are on what I intend to create. In fact, the swamp often disappears when I stop insisting that it is there.

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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

Set A Thought Trap

Posted on August 5, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

514. 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 a master of writing myself notes. I fill multiple notebooks every year. They are choked full of excited scribbles, enthusiastic lines and arrows, doodles and stars: all attempts to catch my thoughts before I lose them. Thoughts are slippery devils that jump into my path and then disappear while I look for a pencil.

I have a variety of strategies to capture them. I track them through the dense forest of my mind. Sometimes I set traps for them. I dig tiger pits. I have sexy decoys and have learned mating calls: an evasive thought like “the default story” will come out of hiding when I tempt it with the amorous cry of “the necessary action.” Easy prey!

Of course, there is a serious flaw in my thought-hunting prowess. Open any notebook in my stack, flip to a random page, point to any note and ask me what it means. I will stare at the excited scribble – often a terrific phrase, perhaps useful for a line of poetry, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was supposed to cue for me. What was the revelation, the connection, the greater ah-ha?

Even when captured those trickster thoughts leave a small alphabetic footprint, a cryptic mark and somehow the greater meaning slips away.

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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

No Containment Necessary

Posted on August 4, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Several years ago I wrote these notes to myself. The operative word is “contain” and it is wrapping me on the head again:

It is a necessary movement, when you cease looking for answers in other people you will step into the present and begin living with the question. Let go of the idea that there is an answer! Life lived in pursuit of an outcome will set up a false expectation: try to contain life and you will kill it.

In the movement from answer-seeking to embracing the question, there are stages or levels:

1. The slowing down. When you stop seeking answers in other people, you begin finding your answers within yourself. You have to slow down to hear what’s inside.

2. Change the self-talk. Doubt the validity of the chatter; instead of confusing your self with the chatter, separate from it and develop the capacity to witness it. You are not the chatter. You are not at the mercy of the chatter. You can work with it. You begin to understand that your language has power; you have the capacity to change your language, change your self-talk, and thus, change your world. This is the warrior phase; you will necessarily be at war with yourself while you learn to separate yourself from the inner blather.

3.Recover seeing, sensing, feeling. Living in choice, you will have the opportunity to cease fighting within yourself. You will no longer need to turn off your feelings, disconnect from your impulses, or deny your self. No containment necessary.

4. Reorient and align with your nature. Enough said.

5. Stillness is possible. Action in stillness (action without story) is available. Be still. Be rid of containment. Act, not according to your limitations but according to your capacities.

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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

The Crux Of The Matter

Posted on August 3, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

In my head today I am having the most interesting conversation. The crux of the matter is this: could I love myself, truly love myself, if I did nothing for the rest of my life? What if I sat on a park bench tomorrow, gave up all pursuits, let go of all ideas of service or gain, swore off all forms of productivity; could I still love myself?

I am the son of good puritan Iowa farm stock. More than once in my life I have heard people speak of my father as a good man because he was a hard worker. Both of my grandfather’s were blue collar, hard working business owners that “did well” in the world. One was a milkman; he owned a dairy in Monticello, Iowa. The other had a business fixing sewing machines. They belonged to service clubs and sometimes attended church; we don’t talk about those things when we talk about how good they were; we talk about what they did and how hard they worked. We talk about the virtue of their toil.

This is no flippant question. I work with too many people that hate themselves because they are not doing what they want to do or they think they need to do more to be valuable. I am hard on myself if I do not achieve everything on my list each day- as if I didn’t do enough to earn my love.

What if loving myself had no requirements; what if loving myself had no conditions? What if loving myself had no connection to my doing or not doing? What if I did not have to earn it? What if loving myself was the beginning point, the first assumption, the prerequisite,… the structure of the land so that all of my behavior and my actions, like water, followed this path of least resistance?

I do not think I would do less work. I am certain I would work differently. How can I possibly be fulfilled if my center point is anything other than love?

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

Filed under: Love, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: self-love | 10 Comments »

Follow The Sound

Posted on August 2, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Inside the Volunteer Park Conservatory in the room just beyond the orchids there is magical piece of art called the Over Lyre. It is the work of Portland, Oregon artist Dan Senn. Suspended just above your head, small wooden dowels and metal disks are suspended from lines of piano wire. A gentle vibration sent through the wires tilts the dowels tapping the disks; it is a chime that soothes and inspires inner quiet.

Lora, Megan and I watched as a young boy, maybe 5 years old came into the conservatory chamber. He was following the sound to discover its source. He was enrapt the moment he stepped into the chamber and saw for the first time the Over Lyre. His stillness (presence) was so…full, that we were enrapt by him. His quiet became our quiet. His parents entered a moment later and were literally stopped in their tracks by the power of his presence. His presence swept us into the present.

We were, all of us adults, moved to tears.

This capacity for awe, this is what makes us human. This desire to follow the sound to the source, to give ourselves over to it, to marvel and be-come the delight, this is the purest form of creating; it unifies us.

How long has it been since you followed the sound and gave yourself over to delight?

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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

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