July | 2013 | The Direction of Intention

Be An Idealist

Posted on July 21, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

We rolled down the windows even though it was still hot. The sun was almost down and we just began the climb out of the central valley. Skip said, “Do you think it’s cool enough to turn off the air-conditioner?” Neither one of us liked air-conditioning and only used it when absolutely necessary.

“Of course!” I chirped. We rolled down the windows and the hot air blasted us. I put my hands out of the car window and said, “See! Nice and cool!” Skip smirked and called me an idealist. Truer words were never spoken. I am an idealist.

I’m told (often) that the best thing about me is that I tell a good story. I will put a good spin on every experience. I’m also told that the worst thing about me is that I tell a good story. Is it denial or optimism? Am I detaching, dealing, not dealing or dancing? Am I telling myself a lie or loving to live? Maybe it is all of the above.

Like everyone I know I’ve walked a broken road. No ones’ path is pretty. Earlier in my life I invested in the tragedy and wrestled with every angel. I made up lots of demons to fight. My gifts scared me so I pretended they were not there and served the gifts of others. I dialed down my life-force. I lived in resistance. I took on everyone’s pain and made others problems and priorities my own. I created limits and then moaned about my confinement. I did all of those things, made messes and looked to the heavens and asked for a break.

The heavens looked back at me and said, “It’s not happening to you. You are creating it. If you want a break then make a break, break something, or take a break. Either way, stop pretending that it is someone elses job to make it pretty for you.”

What I broke (am breaking) was my idea of myself. Carol recently told me that she was breaking up with her relationship with the world. She wanted a new relationship. She was tired of waiting for the world to change her story so she decided to change her story of the world. I was tired of telling a broken story. I was tired of telling a story of being broken. I was tired of making my focus other peoples’ stuff. So, I broke up with my story. Call me an idealist or tell me that I’m in denial but this life is mine to interpret and I much prefer joy stories to frustration. As someone once said to me, “I’m the only one who feels my anger so getting angry all the time is only hurting me.” That rule works in reverse, too.

An hour after the sun set we were off the valley floor and the air finally cooled. I looked at Skip and said, “See! I told you it was cool!” He laughed and wrinkled his brow. I said, “This is the strategy of an idealist. Claim that it is cool and then wait long enough for reality to match the ideal.” It always does.

Filed under: Perspective, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: broken, idealist, narrative, story | Leave a comment »

Release The Following Wake

Posted on July 20, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

“Have you ever noticed how the ferries in Seattle never come directly into the dock?” Skip asked. We were riding the ferry from Larkspur to San Francisco and it was moving along at a fast clip. “Pay attention to this ferry. It will slow and nearly stop and then make a turn before it docks.” Skip watched me watch the ferry. He was right. It nearly stopped and made a turn before docking.

I looked at Skip and he laughed at my confusion. “The water displaced by the ferry would smash the ferry into the dock if it went straight for a landing. They have to slow and turn to release the energy of the wave. It’s called a ‘following wake,’” he said. In other words, the displaced water, the wake, has such force that it would push the ferry into and smash the dock. In order to dock, the ferry first needs to attend to its momentum. It need to deal with what it has created. Now there’s a metaphor!

In the past six months I have displaced a lot of metaphoric water. I did not know about a following wake and have splintered plenty of docks. I tried to go straight into my landing and found myself being carried further than I intended. No amount of brakes will help when being pushed by a following wake. Good intentions will do nothing to mitigate the damage to the dock. The wave doesn’t care. It is energy in motion and does what energy is supposed to do when released. It transforms. It changes shape. It is equally destructive as it is creative and the energy does not make that distinction. Destruction and creation are false separations necessary only to we storying humans.

A few days ago Barney told me that water carries the memory. He told me that water brings up the memory from the deep. “Air is changeable. Water carries the memory,” he said. I couldn’t help but combine the notion of a following wake with the idea that water carries the memory. Memory is a powerful wave, a following wake and if it is not attended to, if it is not dealt with, its force will smash you into the dock. Take a moment. Slow down. Turn ever so slightly so the memory wake can release, and then you can move slowly into rest.

During this week Skip, Barney, and Daphne gave me a lifetime of incredible gifts. And without my “knowing,” they showed me how to put my hands in the earth, to slow down enough to feel it, and while I was sitting in the present moment my following wake released its energy. I turned ever so slightly as the powerful wave passed me by. Now I can safely go home.

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Open Your Hands

Posted on July 19, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

849. 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 morning before leaving the vineyard I walked back to the redwood ring, the faery circle. I had to go back and spend some time there. I wanted to be alone in the ring. I wanted to reenter that place of quiet and feel connect again with the palpable vibration.

It was foggy, damp and cool as I walked across the vineyard and up the hill to the ring. The crews were just climbing into the vineyard so I could hear distant voices, cars on the road leading to the property. As I stepped into the ring the rest of the world disappeared. There were no more voices, no cars, no machinery, no business, no future, no past. The fog closed behind me and I was suddenly in an ancient place. The quiet returned and I stood in the center of the redwood circle. As I looked up at the trees – so tall that their tops reached beyond my site and disappeared into the fog, it began to rain within the circle. In truth it was not rain but condensation from the fog dropping into the circle but I had the impression that it was raining within the circle but nowhere else. I felt like I was the recipient of ritual cleansing or baptism.

As I stood there looking up into the rain I closed my eyes and was suddenly transported to a day not so long ago when I knelt in the river. On that day I ran my fingers through the sand and pebbles, filling my hands with silt and watched as the current washed the sediment from my open hands. As the current cleansed my hands Megan-The-Brilliant said, “I want to learn to pray.” I thought, Yes. Me, too, but not the kind of prayer with my eyes closed to life as I chirp requests to some abstract principle. I want to learn to pray with my eyes wide open. I want to look to the miracle of life that is right in front of me. I do not want my prayer to take me away from life. I want it to bring me fully into it, hands in the soil, face to the rain. I do not to make prayers based on want or lack. I desire to learn to make prayers of participation and thanksgiving.

I opened my eyes and was once again in the faery circle. It was a magic place but then again, I understood (again) that the whole thing, this entire planet, is a faery circle. If I am ever going to learn to pray the first realization must be that there is no such thing as non-prayer. There is no in or out door to the sacred. There are only different elements, different energies, and different levels of participation. I stood there for a long time, hands open, and felt the water wash the sediment away.

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

Enter The Cathedral

Posted on July 18, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

848. 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 stood and watched the dragonflies at the pond. One came to visit me and I remembered a dragonfly a year ago that rested on my shoulder and stayed with me for nearly an hour. It was a harbinger of change. It comforted me and I knew that everything would ultimately be okay. That dragonfly was purple. The dragonfly today was vibrant orange and reminded me of a dragonfly statue that decorated the sill in a room that will always be sacred to me. Dragonflies have been with me all year.

Daphne caught up to me and gave me a large piece of obsidian. Barney looked at it and said, “The native people wouldn’t have use for this. They only used the pieces that were harder, blacker. They used the pieces that could hold an edge.” I thought it was beautiful: sienna, grey and speckled white. It was radiating the heat of the sun and also vibrant with the energy of the volcano that produced it. Elementally, it was fire and I didn’t want to let it go. I held it to my solar plexus and the dragonfly hovered with me. “I am in the most beautiful place on earth,” I thought as I looked up the hill at the vine terraces. I was standing at the bottom of a basin that forms the Benziger winery. It is a biodynamic farm. It is an energy vortex; a very powerful place and you can feel it pulse in you if you stand quiet and feel it. As Barney said, “This place is the cathedral.”

One of the Hermetic Principles is, “As above, so below.” Here, at the winery, it is not an abstract concept but a concrete, living dynamic. The roots of the vine are equal in weight to the parts that we see above ground. Unless of course the ground around the plant is subjected to weed killer or other additive chemicals, then, the plant protects itself. It cuts itself off from its deeper root. It cuts itself off from the capacity to thrive and cannot pull the nourishment from the earth. “The metaphors are everywhere,” Barney said. I was grateful; for once, it was not me seeing the metaphors. “People are like the vines,” he said, “Try to kill the weeds or cheat the natural process and they cut themselves off from deeper nourishment. Survival is the best they can do.”

Earlier I stood in a natural ring of redwoods. I stepped into the ring and it took my breath away. Daphne sat down. Barney smiled and said, “I knew you would love this place. This is your place. People call this the faery ring. It’s for air spirits.”

I am air and water and today I held obsidian (fire and earth). The dragonfly, vibrant orange and yellow, the color of flame, flicked around my shoulder and the past month of my life suddenly made sense. I held the obsidian closer and was quiet for the first time in months.

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Can You Hear Them?

Posted on July 16, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Two simple images: as we descended from the vineyard, walking the path between the properties, Skip asked, “Can you hear the stories?” Earlier in the day he said that five stories where shared when drinking a single bottle of wine. That means that vineyards are full of stories. “Yes,” I said, “I can hear them.” And I could.

Barney walked with me up the hill to the insectory. He is teaching and practicing biodynamic winemaking. He said, “We’re not in the business of growing grapes. We’re in the business of making great soil. It all begins with the soil.” He clarified that by saying, “We’re in the business of getting out of the way and letting Mother Nature do what she does, which is make great soil.” He jumped up and down and asked, “Can you feel it?” I jumped up and down. Yes. I could feel it.

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

Be A Master

Posted on July 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Many years ago Doug and I waded into the river that ran just beneath his cabin and he taught me to fly fish. Doug was amazing. I remember watching him place the line in the stream exactly where he wanted it to go – it was like watching a dancer or a sword master. He was doing something more than fly-fishing. He became present. His “being” changed. He became the flow.

Today Skip took me behind the scenes at a winery in the Willamette Valley. We walked the vineyards and he taught me about growing grapes. We went into the winery and he walked me through the process of sorting, fermenting, barreling, blending and aging the wines. I learned about oak and stainless steel and concrete. Skip was like Doug. When he began telling me about the wines he changed. He became present, excited, passionate, and joyful. His “being” changed. He became the flow.

I have been fortunate in my life to meet and come to know a few masters. They inspire me. They delight in sharing their passion. They delight in offering their gift. They seem to have all the time in the world. They know their craft so well that it becomes an extension of their bodies. They are easy in their doing. They know what they can control and what they cannot and have long ago given up trying to control the uncontrollable and so they radiate a kind of peace when they enter the temple of their passion. And their peace is infectious. It is as vibrant as it is quiet.

I asked myself the same question today that I asked myself years ago standing in the stream with Doug: What is the temple of my passion? What do I love to do so much that my being changes and I enter the flow? And why would I give my time to anything else?

Filed under: Power, Random, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Know Where You Are Looking

Posted on July 14, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

845. 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 morning Saul said, “The chi will go where your focus is.” I’ve heard variations on this theme: where you place your focus grows. Or, another: what you think is what you create. Mo was a world-class cyclist and she would say, “Don’t look at the pothole because you will go where you are looking.”

I’ve been thinking about my thinking – or more specifically, paying attention to my thoughts. This has been an unparalleled time of transition for me so all of the old thinking patterns are laid bare. They’re easy to see. Yesterday I wrote this sentence as commentary for my comic (www.flipcomic.net): Most significant limits to success are self-imposed so it follows that all paths to success are also self-imposed. I place the limits. I am the only one who can remove them.

I look at the limit or I look at the horizon. It is my choice. I want to go to the horizon and not into the pothole. I’ve spent significant time in potholes and would like to explore something else. This morning on the break, Craig told me of a blog he’d recently read. The blogger wrote about the two sides of practice. We think of a practice as a movement toward what we want to create but a practice can also be destructive, like discomfort avoidance. The inner monologue that says, “I can’t” is, in fact, a form of practice. The inner monologue that says, “I can” is also a practice. The difference is focus. And, as Saul taught me today, the chi will go where you place your focus. Practice “I can’t” and you surely can’t. Practice “Try and find out,” and you surely will.

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Say Yes Each Day

Posted on July 13, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

There is now a poem on my desktop by e.e. cummings. It’s entitled, “i thank You God for most this amazing.” I’ve read it every morning since the poem found its way to my desktop. I read it to remind myself to say Yes to each day; to say Yes to each moment of each day.

One of the themes that appeared in my conversations these past several weeks is the realization of each precious moment of life. My friends are losing friends to death. We know that we likely have less life in front of us than behind us. And, so we talk of our lives with the kind of appreciation that only a limit can bring. Here’s the poem for your desktop if you are so inclined:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping green spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Filed under: Random, Truly Powerful People | 3 Comments »

Step Beyond The Woe

Posted on July 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Somehow, somewhere, I lost my debit card. I used it last night in the grocery store when I sprinted across the street to get some food before the store closed. I didn’t discover the missing card(s) until this morning. In retrospect I wish I’d had a camera trained on my panicked search-and-rescue response. Although the missing card could only have fallen from the wallet resting on the shelf, I opened drawers, dug through pockets, lifted papers (evidently those pesky cards can crawl), opened drawers again, looked inside coffee cups, crawled on the floor, dug through the garbage, opened and closed the door three times (I can’t explain it so don’t ask), and am certain I performed a perfect triple flip and stuck the landing (unassisted).

During my panic I told myself a horror story and had myself convinced that my survival depended on those cards. It was the zealousness of the story that brought me back into my body and my senses. When I heard the narrative I was whipping up in my mind I came to a full stop and started to laugh. Our thoughts are indeed the mother lode of comedy.

I crawled out of my drama hole and took care of it. The cards were gone. No one had attempted to buy a yacht with my vast holdings. I went across the street to the store, inquired with the lost and found, and then went into the branch of my bank that was conveniently attached to the store. It was simple. The people at the bank were pleasant, funny, and very helpful. They laughed at my panic reenactment (I didn’t attempt the triple flip but reenacted it with full body gesture), and in a few moments the old cards were cancelled and the new cards were on the way.

My survival was never at risk. There was no tragedy. Even if someone had taken every dime from my accounts, my survival was never at risk and there would have been no tragedy. The necessary actions are never hard; it is the story that we attach to our experiences that make life a struggle. There are legitimate struggles in this world and I’ve very rarely actually encountered them though you’d never know it by my inner monologue. How hard is your life really? Really? What would the day look like if you dropped the story of woe and simply took the necessary actions? And, what might your story become if you looked at your tale of woe from the lens of the ridiculous? I was a Keystone Cop this morning. I had the people at the bank looking under their coffee cups in mock search for my debit card. We had a great time.

This week I have been prone to telling myself a story of difficulty. After leaving the bank I crossed the street and was, for a moment, grateful that I lost my card(s). It was just the dope slap I needed to see beyond the story of woe and step again into a quiet center.

Filed under: Seeing, Story, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Pick Up Your Ordinary

Posted on July 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

842. 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 his book, The Pilgrimage, Paulo Coehlo writes that the path to wisdom can be identified by three things: 1) it must involve agape (love), 2) it must have practical application in your life, 3) it has to be a path that can be followed by anyone. My pilgrimage this winter has brought me face-to-face with the third characteristic.

I’ve many times taught the phrase, “Put down your clever and pick up your ordinary.” This concept comes from the world of improvisation and it reveals the path to full uninhibited expression. What you label in yourself as “ordinary” is actually your most extraordinary and potent gift. You think it is ordinary because it is natural to you. Because it is natural to you, you assume that everyone has it. They don’t. In addition, trying to be clever or smart pulls you out of the moment. It creates a façade. It pulls you away from your extraordinary gift. To put down the need to be clever or right actually allows you to show up. It’s a paradox, to put down your clever and pick up your ordinary is the route to extraordinary fulfillment. It is the route to presence.

The path of the ordinary is a path that can be followed by anyone. To distinguish or attempt to be above the herd is an excellent way to block the flow. It is a remarkably effective strategy for creating inner poverty. This winter I have been summarily stripped of my many devices for distinguishing myself. I have been expert at keeping myself aloof and above it all. I have preached a path of unity while investing in a devoted separation. I isolate myself in a studio, walk like a ghost across a city each day, belong nowhere and refuse to join. And since I desire to walk a path of wisdom I have necessarily been crushed and ground into a fine powder. I have, in the process, crushed others in my confusion, acted poorly and been reintroduced to the ugly side of my nature – the part that makes me ordinary and human. I have been messy and brutal and can no longer be above it all.

I have no clever left to heft. All that remains is basic, essential and very ordinary. And now, because there is no more illusion of “special” or “different,” perhaps I can begin. Perhaps my artistry will find its community because I am no longer attempting to be distinct. Artistry is about joining. And this brings me back to the first characteristic, agape. Love cannot exist in a world of better or worse. Love is never found in the separations; separations preclude agape. Agape must include everyone, no exceptions, even when the exceptions are self-imposed.

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