Lost & Found

Posted on February 18, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

…a long day of writing on the book. Since I have not another thought in my head, here’s another excerpt:

It is probably poor form to start a story in the middle, in a moment of high crisis. When a story stalks you through your lifetime you inevitably learn some things about stories; you unwittingly stalk them, too. One of the first things I learned was that the word “beginning” is arbitrary. An end is always a beginning. A beginning is always an end. What we call a beginning or the middle or an end is really a simple matter of our point of view. It depends on what we see.

Another valuable thing I learned about stories is that they unfold according to established patterns. Beginning, middle, and end is a simple pattern. Within this simple pattern is a more complex pattern structure. For instance, in order to grow, the main character has to leave behind everything they know and go on a journey. That journey can be literal or an inner, metaphoric journey. To leave behind what you know is part of the pattern that leads to trials, confrontations, and catharsis. It’s a pattern and since each of us is the protagonist in our own story, the pattern is alive and at work in our lives. The trick is to become aware of where you are in the story cycle. What part of the pattern are you currently living?

Stories never begin with being found. We hear a call. We pursue it blindly and discover that we are lost in the woods. Stories begin when someone, the main character, you, gets lost or is knocked off balance. In this sense, being lost is always a step toward being found.

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Keep Your Eyes Up

Posted on February 17, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Saul-the-Chi-Lantern talked to us today about fixing our gaze. “Where you fix your gaze often determines how the chi will run through you.” Tai chi is about rooting and alignment. It is like eliminating the kinks from a hose so the water can flow freely. Saul often says, “Receive the gift,” referring to the energy we receive when properly rooted. Rockets thrust into down to lift off and tai chi is like that; root and receive the lift. It is a process of learning to get out of your own way.

It seems like a simple thing to say: where you fix your gaze impacts the quality of your experience. For instance, fix your gaze immediately in front of you, not on the floor, not on what others are doing. Saul asked us to see softly what was immediately before us. As we moved through the form I was aware of how often I look at my feet. When I kept my gaze fixed in front of me, I was easier and more open. I was rooted! It is tangible! Do an experiment: place your focus in various ways, on various spot above and below and feel the impact it has on your posture. Where can you best fix your gaze to unkink the hose?

After class I finished the 3rd draft of the book and as serendipity would have it I rewrote the section on focus placement. I smiled as I reworked the passages about choices in where we place our focus and how potent we become once we realize we have choice about where we place our focus. Focus is like a flashlight, a beam. We see where we shine our light. We interpret what is in the beam. We cannot see beyond the narrow confines of our focus so the choice of where we place our light is important and very powerful.

As Saul said this morning, “Keep your eyes up and the energy will have someplace to go.”

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Pay Attention

Posted on February 16, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Marcia sent me a gift. It is a small notebook that her father, DeMarcus, made when he was a student. The calendar pasted into the front is from 1922. The leather binding is falling off, the pages are fading, and the notes, written in pencil, are smeared. But the thoughts are clear and sometimes startling. DeMarcus became a great artist in the theatre. The notebook dates from the time of his becoming with no notion of how his desire to be an artist would play out in his life.

The notebook came sealed in a baggy, a note from Marcia was tucked inside that read, “Pay attention to his thoughts on color. They are astonishing. Magic” I’ve not yet read his thoughts on color because I was so taken by the first page. This young man, nearly a century ago, diligent in his dream, wrote to himself: “Pay attention! The details matter.”

It was the exact thought I needed to receive today, a day lost in thought and overwhelmed by my swirling story, caught in the fast moving current. Pay attention. It came from the boy DeMarcus who wanted to see. So I stopped the swirl and stepped out of the fast moving stream. I watched the sun set over the city. I listened to the gulls fight over scraps from the market. I ate an orange slowly, making sure I tasted every bite. I smelled rich dark coffee.

On a large pad of art paper across the room, a line from Emerson is written: When the half gods go, the gods arrive. This is what I learned in paying attention: the half gods move really fast and would have us believe the worth of life is in the pace; the gods arrive when we step out of the panic and into our one single precious moment and pay attention.

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Love Until It Hurts

Posted on February 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

LOVE UNTIL IT HURTS
708. 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 have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” Mother Teresa

Today is St. Valentine’s Day – though you will read this the day after.

When I was a kid in school we decorated sacks and wrote valentines for everyone in our class. By the end of the school day we had a sack full of I-love-you notes and a belly full of cupcakes and sweetheart candies. Some of the valentines in the sack mattered more than others. For instance, in 1st grade I was in love with Nancy and when she put a valentine in my sack I was elated. And then I was scared: was she as excited by my valentine as I was by hers? I delight in Valentines Day because it is (or can be) a festival of the irrational; a day acknowledging the transcendent power of love. All day I thought of people I love dearly and although I only told a few, I basked in how many people on this planet I hold dear in my heart and wanted to send sweetheart candies printed with the phrase, “Be Mine!” Valentine’s Day is a celebration of things that cannot be measured.

All day I’ve smiled at the men passing me on the street carrying large bunches of flowers or strings of heart balloons. These rough tattooed or polished business suited men basically carrying a large sign signifying, “I AM IN LOVE,” looked sheepish and vulnerable to step beyond their macho and publically share their tender heart. It was refreshing to wander through the financial district surrounded by normally steely-faced men in ties blushing in excitement and fear: would their Nancy return their affection? As I passed through the metal detector in the Federal Building a box of heart cookies was delivered to the security staff. The men and women in badges grinned and shared; they were thrilled.

The Odyssey is one of the great pieces of literature in the western world. It is the story of Odysseus trying to return home to his wife Penelope after the Trojan War. He tries for years to return home with the gods and elements working against him. He loses his ship and his crew. He survives monsters and Cyclops and witches. He is stranded and held hostage. He suffers terribly. He loves until he hurts and in his hurt he finds more and more love. This greatest of Greek epics is a story of the triumph of love.

Stories of great love are not stories of ease. Stories of great love are about reaching through fear, the irrational, the elements, stepping into the unknown and with the gods stacked against you, and yet you continue; still you persevere. Step into the hurt. Reach across the fear and take their hand in yours. Take a chance and say, “I love you so much that it hurts.”

Filed under: Love, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Show Up

Posted on February 14, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

707. 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 one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.” Neil Gaiman

The clichés are ubiquitous: fingerprints and snowflakes, each of us is unique in the universe. There will never be another like you and if you’ve ever looked through a telescope into the universe you will recognize how profound a recognition that is. The universe is vast and you are unique in it. You are vast.

The paradox of our uniqueness, of course, is that we want to fit in. As E.O. Wilson suggests, the strongest human impulse is to belong. The question becomes do you need to sacrifice something essential to fit into someone else’s idea or is bringing to life your unique perspective the very thing that will make you belong?

I recently heard a speech and the speaker was making a case for self-love. She spoke of the myriad of opposing opinions she’s heard and sometimes entertained about who she should be. Like most of us, she spent many years trying to conform herself to those conflicting ideas – other people’s ideas of who she should be. Aesop wrote a fable about that and the moral was clear: you will lose it all if you don’t listen to yourself. No one has the capacity to love you like yourself. When you come upon your idea of who and what you want to be, and strive for that, there is no conflict or sacrifice. You will fulfill it all when you listen to yourself. This, too, was the speaker’s conclusion.

To me, the shorthand is to orient your life according to what you bring to it and not according to what you get from it. Show up as you know yourself to be not as anyone expects you to be. Let yourself be seen as who you are: unique in all the universe.

Filed under: Identity, Perspective, Power, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Touch The Eternal

Posted on February 13, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

706. 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 my last evening in Anacortes and I sit with the lights off watching the grey northwest sky fade into night. The trees lose their dimension and move into silhouette. There is a slight breeze and the silhouettes sway. The colors are cold and my little oasis is warm. I do not want to move from this spot.

Jim Edmondson told me that people go to the ocean to touch the eternal: the waves have been rolling into the shore for millennia and will do so long beyond our short lives. I have this small moment, this blink of an eye and tonight I know I have come to this guesthouse, home of my dear Horatio and Teru so that I might touch the eternal, too. The sun drops in the sky every night and has done so for millennia and will do so long after I am gone. Tonight, on the eve of my next wandering, I watch and know. I touch it and recognize that we are all wanderers here for a moment. My heart breaks and becomes whole in the same moment with the beauty of this sunset and the realization of what I touch.

In a moment it will be full dark and I will stand and leave my oasis. I will walk across the lot to the big house where Horatio is making dinner. We will laugh and talk about art and learn about the man Teru interviewed this afternoon; she writes personal histories. She captures stories for families before the storyteller is lost, before the story fades into silhouette, sways and is gone. Her work is sacred though I think she does not know it.

Yesterday Megan-The-Brilliant sent me a short video that she shot one night a few weeks ago. It is of Lexi and me coloring with crayons between our toes. We called it foot coloring and cheered when we drew with our toes on the page. “We did it!” we cheered, arms waving, hooting in triumph as Lexi jumped onto the paper saying, “I have to dance on this paper!” Small treasures. Simple moments. Touching the eternal and so very grateful for this blink of an eye.

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Play For Meaning

Posted on February 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Horatio took me on a whirlwind tour today. We met his art teacher, Jo, and I listened as they discussed artists like Sylvia Plath and Diane Arbus, artists whose work explores the darker shades of life. Both women killed themselves. Horatio posits that their artistry in some ways chronicled their march toward an inevitable conclusion. Like a raft caught in the current, hurtling toward a waterfall, they determined that there was nothing to be done, no greater meaning to be found, and went over the falls.

Horatio and I often stray into the topic of meaning making. What’s it all about? What is the greater purpose and meaning of this experience of life? I’ve decided that meaning is something we make and not something we find. Meaning is something we bring to the dance. However, we come to the dance with great expectations. We look for someone to dance with, we look for an experience that might lift us from the ordinary routine, we yearn for someone to notice us, we want food to eat, a future to create; we seek experiences. We want more. Life is made sweet in the yearning.

We get lost when we think someone else has what we need or that someone else can fulfill our yearning. Our job is to engage life; no one can do that for us. Our job is to bring our selves to life (I intend the double meaning of that phrase). Our job is not to fulfill another person’s need just as their job is not to fulfill ours. The meaning is in what we bring to the dance; if we bring joy there will be joy. If we bring blame there will be blame.

Tonight Horatio and Teru made a lovely dinner and had a cake for my birthday (coming soon!). Their daughter Nina and her beau Keith came along with Nina’s 4 year-old daughter, Jordan. I spent much of the evening learning from Jordan how to play Chutes and Ladders and a cupcake game. The first rule is that there are no rules. The second rule is that because there are no rules things like winning and losing are ridiculous. The only thing that mattered was that we played. She showed up and I showed up and the rest was imagination and wonder. You’ll be surprised to know that in a single evening I played the role of Santa Claus AND was placed forever on the naughty list (my name is written on the list in magenta crayon). It is an existential dilemma of massive proportion that required the creation of a third rule: naughty and nice are relative terms and who needs lists anyway? Meaning is never found in the list and always found in the play. So, as Jordan taught me tonight: play and the meaning will soon follow.

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Receive

Posted on February 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi

In the past several weeks I have traveled many places. I’ve spent some time in the house where I grew up. I walked the streets of my boyhood and revisited the sacred sites of my childhood. The houses in the neighborhood seem so small. I’ve had the opportunity to revisit memories, to stand in spots where life seemed to bring overwhelming experiences; these, like the houses, now seem so small. I’ve chuckled more than once at monsters that I used to tote and how, from this vantage point, they seem like stuffed animals, cuddly toys. That is the power of memory, our great capacity to re-member our lives with every visit to the past.

In my walk-about I am consciously pulling down the barriers. I am surrounded by people who love me and whom I love. I am astounded by a generosity of spirit that greets me everywhere I go. I am learning to receive and the curious thing about receiving is that you need do nothing but open or perhaps surrender. The only requirement to receive love is that you show up. Who knew!

During this period of wandering I’ve been working again with the Parcival story and thinking about the moment in the story when Parcival removes his armor. Armor protects but it also restricts. Armor is a great way to not be seen. In order to want to take off your armor you must first put down your sword; you must change your idea of the world and your place in it. Carrying a sword is a great way to keep love away. After dropping your sword, you must be lost for a while and break your rules. Parcival’s sword shatters and he weeps. He removes his armor and follows a hermit into the woods. He stops seeking, stops trying to prove, suspends the fight and starts living moment to moment. And, when he’s forgotten about roles and knights and proving, the Grail castle reappears. He steps inside unprotected and claims his inheritance. He becomes the Grail. Love finds him when he stops looking for love.

Sometimes we wear our past like armor. We hang onto injustice, we identify ourselves by the trauma, and we claim our limitations as if we were born to bear them. I’m learning that these are the barriers we erect against love. To drop the armor all that is required is to let go of the past and re-member. The love, like the Grail castle, is waiting for us. As the hermit says to Parcival when he turns and discovers the castle, “Boy, it’s been there all along.”

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Open Your Words

Posted on February 10, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

703. 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 an old theme but has floated to the surface of many conversations this week: language is not passive. The language you use orients you to the world.

A few nights ago, Judy and I talked about the power of language, particularly paying attention to language that “closes” as opposed to language that “opens.” For instance, to say, “I can’t” is to use language that closes you to possibility. To say, “I wonder…” is to use language that opens you to possibility. Try it. Pay attention to whether you use language that opens or language that closes you to possibility. Make a game of interpreting your world according to opening to possibilities and pay attention to how your worldview changes.

In another example, Skip helps his students be conscious of their left-brain language of measurement. When they ask if something is good or bad, best or optimal, he’ll ask them to rephrase it so the emphasis is not on a measurement, not on a judgment, but on the engagement. A wine is not “better” or “worse,” it is an experience; describe the experience. Open. Participate. Judgment or measurement removes you from the experience. Step in. Move into the other side of you brain. Judy tells me that she asks students if a choice is “skillful” or “useful” rather than good or bad. Discernment is different than judgment.

It seems like such a small thing. Plenty of people dismiss the notion that their language has power; they tell me that life happens. It does indeed! Life happens and then we story it. We give meaning to our experiences. We interpret our lives. The color, shape, texture, movement, and power we experience are according to the story that we tell.

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Step Into Not Knowing

Posted on February 9, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

702. 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 past 24 hours have been extraordinary. I was witness to an incredible man and teacher, Skip, haul boxes of wine glasses and bottle of wine to his MBA class. He was teaching his students about “not-knowing” and decided to take them into an unknown culture, this complex world of wine. He taught us many things about wine but above all, you can’t ever fully know it, you must engage. To master is to “not-know.”

Tonight Judy made an amazing dinner for her neighbor, Sharon and me. I learned that Sharon is following her heart and, because her heart called, she leapt from the known world, leaving comfort behind. Now she is vital and alive and deep into the unknown. She is, in her leap, practicing “not-knowing.”

After dinner Judy played her harp for me. When Judy plays, the world changes. Magic happens. Watching her play is a gift because she closes her eyes and opens to that force called music that comes through. It is not accurate to say that she disappears; she opens. She joins. And, in the joining, she enters into an expansive state of “not-knowing.” In watching her play, I was transformed because through her I entered that world, too. I joined with the music and expanded beyond my capacity to intellectualize, beyond my capacity to contain or explain. I was gifted with “not-knowing.”

Judy told me that Kim taught her to never let an opportunity for generosity pass you by. I have been the recipient of mountains of generosity from these amazing people who have seized the opportunity to support me in my step into “not-knowing.”

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