davidrobinsoncreative

Amplify The Possibilities

Posted on March 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Vanessa’s business is called Visual Minutes. She draws conversations. She maps discussions. She and a colleague, Amber, mapped the recent Transformational Presence Summit in Vught, Holland that Alan and I facilitated. Her work was gorgeous, informative and inspiring. The dynamic of a group changes when there is an artist working in the room. When a group’s words and thoughts serve as the source of a communal image, something shifts. A loop forms: people visit the image during breaks. They take ownership of what emerges. The images inspire conversations and the conversations show up as images. The resonance amplifies the possibilities.

Over the four days of our summit the mural began to stretch around the room. Soon, we were surrounded by our conversation; the four walls of the conference center were changed by Vanessa’s work; we no longer sat in a generic space but occupied a room specific to us, designed for and by us, a chronicle of our unique wisdom. The art transformed us. We were 35 people from 11 countries made one through our intention and the circle that the art invoked.

Vanessa shared with me a letter written to her from Canadian artist Robert Genn. She thought it might tickle my imagination. He writes about artists as a tribe (a universal tribe). Here are three snippets from the letter worthy of tickling the imagination and also descriptive of Vanessa’s gift to the world:

“The idea that art has the ability to rise above religion, nationality and race is well understood.”

“…I get the idea that art might even be a vehicle for peace. We artists certainly bring a worldview based on respect, observation, play, learning, celebration and mutuality. In the machinations of humanity, these traits must surely hold some value.”

“We dine at a table of many nations. As artists we celebrate our creative joy and toast our mutual humanity. While we all speak with some sort of accent, we do so in the universal language of art. At your table, when you get a chance, please consider raising a glass to our tribe. It is a tribe beyond tribes, and in my heart of hearts I believe our tribe has an illustrious future.”

Filed under: Art, Possibility, Truly Powerful People | 3 Comments »

Make A Nap

Posted on March 14, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

735. 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 is one of those post travel days. I’m exhausted. I avoid the mirror because my face feels like the face of a Basset Hound: droopy, blood shot eyes. My synapses are lethargic. Like half-hearted trapeze artists they leap but do not reach for the catcher. My thoughts fall to the safety net where they bob and refuse to get up. “This feels nice,” they say as they relax into the net, smacking their thought-lips while slipping into a nap. “I’ll be there in a minute,” they call to me from a sleep state, words slurred and intention clear (you are on your own without synapses so find something useful to do).

I used to call these “no-power-tools” days – as I appreciate my digits and I know better than to get near blades when my thoughts are asleep on the job. When I wear the mask of the Basset Hound I usually spend the day filing papers. I am an out-of-sight-out-of-mind kind of guy so I have no expectation of finding anything once it is filed. Since I am on the road and away from my files and my paper stacks I had no truly safe activity to keep me busy.

I managed to take Bodhi the dog for a walk. I couldn’t find his leash so I used my belt, which sounded like a good idea until I realized that using my belt for a leash created a whole new set of problems. While Bodhi proudly wore my belt I struggled to keep my pants up. We looked like a clown and his dog. I have the same problem going through security at airports, especially now that they make you raise your hands in the full body scanner. Three seconds is an eternity when your pants are edging down. With this knowledge in my memory bank you’d think that I would have solved my leash problem another way.

With my belt safely restored to my pants I watched Bodhi settle in for a snooze on the floor. Although his face is Australian Shepherd and not Basset Hound, Bodhi has a legitimate dogface; he was in no way resisting his impulse to nap. He wasn’t resisting his need to sleep. As I watched the natural wisdom of this special dog I wondered why I needed an excuse to nap. Humans are funny animals; rather than follow the simple impulse, rather than do the thing our bodies are telling us to do we need to create a reason. Bodhi snored and I remembered a quote from Jarod Kintz. He wrote, “I made a nap this afternoon. I made it out of two pillows, a bed, a sheet, a blanket, and exhaustion.” Perfect.

You’ll never guess what I made this afternoon.

Filed under: Body, Random, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: bodhi, exhaustion, nap, reason | 4 Comments »

Leap Or Show Up

Posted on March 13, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

734. 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 inner sociologist shared his notes with me. He tugged on his sweater and pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose before positing that personal edges only come in two varieties. Both varieties, he asserts, fall under the single category of “where the known meets the unknown.” Just as the sea meets the shore, the known meets the unknown in a convergence of elements. He told me that it makes no difference whether you are a sea or shore dweller, the other place, the unknown place, marks the line between comfort and discomfort. It also marks the line between stasis and growth. Stay in the known and stagnation is a certainty. Put your toes in the water or your fins on the shore and you will learn something new. I nodded my head. I agree with his assertion.

He tapped his pen on his yellow pad (my inner sociologist eschews technology) as he knit his brow and told me that stepping across the line into the unknown defines the first variety of edge. He labeled this first variety of edge, “The Leaping Point.” Apparently we visit the leaping point many times before actually leaping. We know what we need to do long before doing it – yet we pretend that we don’t know what we need to do. He explained that the most common mistake we make is to think that the discomfort comes from stepping across the edge; it doesn’t. The discomfort comes before the step. The discomfort is what drives us to finally do the thing we know we need to do. The discomfort comes from delaying the step. The step is liberating. The step transforms the discomfort.

He cleared his throat before telling me the second variety of edge comes from facing the thing we fear the most: being seen (note: fulfilling your potential is a subset of being seen). Being seen is a mirror-action to the first variety of edge. In this variety, the step is not from the known into the unknown; it is a step from the unknown into the known. He explained that the unknown in this case is the accumulated clutter of who we think we “should be;” we reject who we are. And then, one day, when we can no longer sustain the mask, we have to pull the mask off and reveal who we really are. We have to step into who we know ourselves to be. The transformation is from unknown to known.

He smiled, pulling his glasses from his face, and said, “It is really quite elegant if you think about it. Leap or Show Up. Those are our only two edges.”

Filed under: Edges, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: edge, leap, mask, self knowledge | 1 Comment »

Revel. Betray. Rediscover

Posted on March 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

733. 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 in Holland for the next 7 days and since I didn’t get my act together and get 7 posts ahead, this will be archive week at The Direction of Intention. This was originally post 469.

As I dust off and relearn the story of Parcival I have decided that it will be the spine of the work I do next week with teachers; we will follow the metaphors; we will open the story so the stories of our lives might open. As I work I am discovering that everything you need to know to be a great teacher is in this story! Parcival is a knight of the Round Table and, depending upon the version you read, he is the knight that finds the grail. Metaphor alert: the grail is not a thing to be possessed. It is what Maslow called self-actualization. It is a metaphor for finding your truth and fulfilling your purpose. What is the purpose of learning if not to seek and find your truth (do not be fooled, passing a test is far from the point of learning and will ultimately leave you empty and the test full)?

I love many aspects of this story and the section I reworked today made me smile. I giggled in the coffee house where I was rehearsing. The other patrons, afraid of the man in the corner talking and cackling to himself, gave me plenty of room to work (have I mentioned that I can’t talk without flailing my hands all over the place. If you ever want me to be quiet, simply bind my hands. I’ll make noises but words will be impossible). The story describes Parcival’s first entry into court. He grew up isolated, deep in the forest (not unlike Arthur, though Parcival did not have Merlin to school him) so he knew nothing of people or manners or custom. He thought dressing like a knight meant he was a knight. He approximated some armor, weaving a breastplate from reeds, a helmet from fronds, and he wielded a stick as a sword. He “borrowed” a mule and rode into Camelot. Arthur and his knights, thinking Parcival was a clown, laughed at him.

Growing up without instruction meant that he had the ideal upbringing for a trickster. He followed his nature without inhibition. Parcival had no inner-editor so the civilized world viewed him as a fool. He acted purely so he threatened custom. He spoke what others could not; he carried no conventions so he had no limits. He had no rules of conduct. Parcival would be the boy in the crowd to say, “This emperor has no clothes!” It would not occur to him to lie. When you are not doubting or protecting your purity you have no reason to deflect or manipulate or withhold. Lies are a byproduct of rules. He was powerful yet his power was raw, unrecognizable, so the world he wanted to enter could only laugh. And their laughter was his fuel. Their laughter propelled him into the world to learn. Arthur was capable of seeing his purity. And Arthur gave him hope. Arthur sent him into the world to prove himself, to learn the rules of society, and invited him to return to court once he’d learned the code and conduct of a knight.

The story is a story of desire; it is a story of following an inner imperative. It is a quest for fulfillment. It has laughter and despair, triumph and shame, obstacles that seem insurmountable; it is a story of perseverance and letting go. It is a story of 2 teachers: one provides the rules for conduct; the other helps Parcival shed the rules of conduct. Both are necessary if you want a shot at entering the grail castle.

If it were a poem it would read like this: Revel in your nature. Betray your nature. Rediscover you nature: Grail.

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Use What You Find

Posted on March 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

732. 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 in Holland for the next 7 days and since I didn’t get my act together and get 7 posts ahead, this will be archive week at The Direction of Intention. This was originally post 468.

Sometimes I have the ultimate theatre mentality. Once, in college, I was running a spotlight for a musical; the tube from the fan to the bulb housing fell apart in the middle of the show and between cues, to keep the light working, I was able to build a replacement tube with a paper cup and duct tape. Use what you have. It need not be permanent. It only has to work for a while. The show must go on but no one need know how poorly it is constructed. Sometimes that’s the magic.

This used to drive John crazy. He is a real builder, a master woodworker. John built some stage sets for me that will be here long after they drop the bomb; the only thing left on earth will be the sets that John built. I’d say, “John, it only has to look real, no one will know.” He’d say, ‘I’ll know.” Now, that is a true artist! Once I was hired to provide a set for a commercial featuring the Mutant Ninja Turtles. There was a desert scene: I hauled in sand and dumped it on the floor. I pulled some scrub from the canyon by my house and stuck it in the sand. The producer was thrilled. The real non-construction was for a scene in a cave. Since it was a film my cave only needed to hold together for a single day. Old flats, cardboard, the sand from the desert set mixed with some good goop and lots of runny paint. I stuck it all together with a staple gun and duct tape, stood it up and prayed the turtles didn’t hit the walls. I told John about my cave and he said, “I don’t know how you live with yourself.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve designed or built a set. But, my “use what you find” mentality still comes in handy. Today I needed to ship a painting and it was too large to get into my car and too awkward to carry. The shipping place was only five blocks away so I scoured the building for a hand truck. No luck. I hit pay dirt in the basement when I spied an old wheelchair parked next to the garbage. I tied the painting on to the wheelchair with an old rope and like Nurse Ratchet gone rogue I wheeled my patient through the city to the shipping place. I think I added local color to the neighborhood. Some nice Dutch folks took my picture. Some people along the way gasped and parted as if I was the Loathly Damsel. Their horror might have been commentary on my packing job. The woman at the shipping place called my packing “Frankenboxing” though she gleefully applauded my method of transportation. Both were high compliments. Being from the theatre, I knew that, in such a moment of appreciation from a stranger, it was appropriate to take a bow.

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Laugh The Sacred

Posted on March 10, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

731. 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 in Holland for the next 7 days and since I didn’t get my act together and get 7 posts ahead, this will be archive week at The Direction of Intention. This was originally post 467.

Saul-the-Chi-Lantern turned his back to us. He settled, ready to start the form. We readied ourselves to follow. Just as he was about to take the first step he stopped, turned and said, “A lot of marriages would be saved if only the man knew what color of toilet paper to buy.” It was either a Zen koan or a fragment of his internal monologue and either way we fell on the floor laughing.

“No really,” he continued, as if we weren’t howling. “There’s a right kind of tissue, a right color of Kleenex box and men seem completely oblivious to this fact. It causes a lot of strife!” And then he turned back to the beginning position as if he’d said nothing. We wiped the tears of laughter from our eyes. Wondering what just happened, we followed him into the form. Our hearts were light, our concentration was easy and I suspect we learned to stop being so serious in our approach to our Tai Chi. We certainly found a flow and rode a current when we started from laughter instead of knitting our brows and thinking our way through.

One of my great lessons from Bali was that the sacred is filled with laughter. The holy is ripe with giggling and joy. In addition to reverence, prayer, sermon, hymn, (such heavy words) humor, play, fun, and frolic are forms of worship. The gods might have a better sense of humor if we did. There’d be less road rage. Men would not wear ties and take themselves so seriously. We might not need a 24-hour entertainment-cycle-disguised-as-news to keep us occupied. Of this I am certain: we’d have a better flow of chi.

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Hold Their Hands

Posted on March 9, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

730. 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 in Holland for the next 7 days and since I didn’t get my act together and get 7 posts ahead, this will be archive week at The Direction of Intention. This was originally post 466.

Megan’s daughter turned two. Angie is getting married. Jamie is expecting her third child. Teresa is ready to fly. Dado brought the mail as he does each weekday; you can set your clock to Dado yet he always seems to have plenty of time to talk. I lost Bruce somewhere. Two paintings and two photographs were late for the party but allowed entrance anyway. Arnie is preparing for travels. Soon he will have set foot on all the continents of the earth. Elana resurfaced and is in LA. Anne painted her first abstracts. The crows chased the eagle. The osprey dived, both of them, but came up empty. Columbus cleaned windows in anticipation of his kids coming home. Jeanne won at pickle ball and the loser was sore. JT lost his momma. David missed a phone call and opened a play. Horatio prepares his boat for Alaska and his script for filming – all in the same week! Lisa drank at lunch and made me laugh (we’ll not talk about the pesto I could see but not permitted to eat). Harry’s package finally made it to the mail. Grandpa’s arms are not strong enough and why should they be; he’s 103 years old. Bob bought a new car. Secret messages were passed successfully. Lips were bit in anticipation. Judy is preparing room for Grace. Ben and Patricia opened their studio. Simon the dog used his inside voice and got a cookie. PaTan made a zebra collage from crayons. Tamara touched base because she knows when it is important. Angela sent Rilke. The IRS did not send their love much to my surprise. Patricia’s installments let me know she is on a big life adventure.

This list barely touches the marvels of this week. Reread the list and see the dreams and desires and yearning. Look for the life passages, the offers of love, the reaching and touching and trying. Sometimes the monumental is lost within the ordinary because the ordinary is monumental. There were lessons learned, love nearly lost but found, gratitude for simple things, pink umbrella’s, broken hearts, the smallest of messages arriving in the perfect moment: I love you. How many times do we almost miss it?

Today I know that life is short. Today I know I can focus on the troubles, the temporary gremlins or I can place my thought in the enduring. I know there is a choice but I wonder why I would ever throw away another day on the gremlin and miss holding the hand of the people I love.

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Know The Whole Sky

Posted on March 8, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

729. 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 in Holland for the next 7 days and since I didn’t get my act together and get 7 posts ahead, this will be archive week at The Direction of Intention. This was originally post 465.

“Can I tell you a story,” Teresa asked. She is brilliant and helping me market my business. We’ve been working together for a few months. She is one of a choir of voices telling me that I am my business – it is not something I do. She is brilliant and gentle and clear and helping me work, as she says, from the inside out. I’m having some world-class revelations – and I am impatient. I want to force things into being.

“Two robins built a nest in the utility box just outside my window. My daughters and I watched them quickly assemble an amazing nest and soon there were four eggs. My nine year old was especially taken with the nest so each day we would watch for progress. An egg broke and my daughter’s heart broke with it. Later, another egg cracked and we had another heartbreak. Finally, the two remaining eggs hatched. We saw two little beaks poking up from the nest. My daughter named them Rascal and Lazy.

As we watched we saw the two hatchlings slowly open their eyes. Then we watched as they grew their feathers. They grew stronger and one weekend, the weekend that I knew they were going to fly, my daughter was going to be away from home with her father. Sure enough, the momma bird chirped from the fence, calling them out of the nest. The babies were terrified but the momma knew they could fly. And, finally, one of the babies jumped and flew. Soon the other followed. They didn’t know until they did it. How could they?

My daughter called and was sad to miss it and this is what I told her: If you only knew your nest, if your whole life was in the nest and one day you jumped and suddenly your life opened and you knew the whole backyard – and then one day you flew and came to know the whole sky, wouldn’t that be the best day of your life? Today was the best day in those little bird’s lives.”

Teresa told me her daughter got it. She was thrilled that the birds came to know the whole sky. And, I got her message loud and clear. Hatching comes before feathers. Feathers come before flying. No amount of pushing or forcing will expedite the process. In fact, if I try to skip steps, I will be as an un-feathered bird leaping from a nest. Cat food. Hearing my sigh Teresa added, “One day you will know the whole sky and that day will be the best day of your life.”

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Tell Me!

Posted on March 7, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

728. 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 in Holland for the next 7 days and since I didn’t get my act together and get 7 posts ahead, this will be archive week at The Direction of Intention. This was originally post 464.

I am preparing to tell the story of Parcival. It is a story that I haven’t shared with a group in 5 years. I wanted to tell a new story to this group – to offer a metaphor for transformation and Parcival kept tapping me on the shoulder. “Tell me,” he said. “They need to hear my story.” I was determined to tell a new story but Parcival was persistent and I have learned to pay attention when a story comes calling. I acquiesced.

Sometimes a story stalks you. If I were from another culture my elders would have given me this story long before I understood it. I would not have been expected to understand it and would have known that it was following me, waiting for me to become ready to receive it. Not having elders or an understanding of story at the time, I was surprised years ago to find this story following me around. I tried to trick it and throw it off my trail but it always seemed to see through my deception. Sometimes it was standing too close to me – like the person behind you in line at the grocery store. I’d take a step forward to get some space but Parcival would take a step, too.

When the day came that the source of my power was shattered and I, in disillusionment, finally took off my armor, Parcival was waiting. He knew that armor removal was his cue to step into me. His warm awakening rushed through my bruised and battered soul and I knew I would survive. I knew after a while I would come back to life and perhaps even prosper. I knew my grail was close at hand and I knew because Parcival was there; he told me so.

Parcival is again tapping my shoulder and there must be a second awareness for me – or someone in this group is about to have their magic sword shattered and they will need Parcival waiting for them when they, too, at last remove their armor and forget their quest. He will quietly step into them and they will know as I did that just beyond the wreckage they will find their grail castle and come home for the very first time.

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Think About It

Posted on March 6, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

727. 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 in Holland for the next 7 days and since I didn’t get my act together and get 7 posts ahead, this will be archive week at The Direction of Intention. This was originally post 463.

It is my habit to cycle back to old posts to see what I’ve learned and review where I traveled in these 463 days. Today I crawled all the way back to the source. Here is the first post in this series:

Truly powerful people are dedicated to inspiring true power in others.

It goes like this: empowered people empower others.

Think about it.

How powerful must you be to free yourself of the need to diminish others? No more reducing others to elevate your self. No more reducing yourself to fulfill the mistaken belief that, “you are not worthy.”

What if your worth was no longer in question? What if your value was no longer an issue? What would you do with all of that newfound time and energy that previously was dedicated to bullying your self or reducing others?

One of my favorite books is David Ball’s Backwards & Forwards; A Technical Manual For Reading Plays. I love it because I believe that one night David Ball saw one too many bad productions of Hamlet, stomped back to his office and banged out this very clear and concise book on what makes a play work. It’s a great book for leaders and managers and teachers after they learn that life is storytelling even if it looks like business or education or vacation. If you want to tell a better life story, read the book.

This blog came from a mini David Ball moment. I’d just had a significant conversation about power and leadership with a diversity team in Chicago. I came home to a week of coaching calls with brilliant people singly dedicated to reducing themselves, diminishing their gifts, and confusing the word “power” with the word “control.” And, I saw clearly my personal struggles in their confusion. After one particularly heart rending call I signed into my previously inert-hanging-in-cyberspace-I-don’t-know-what-to-write-about-blog and dumped in the first words that came to mind. I like the questions I asked. Were I to write this post today I would add this question: What if you understood that you are incapable of loving another human being until you truly love yourself?

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