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.

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

Walk Simply

Posted on February 6, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

699. 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 an Aquarian and live in my head and at 30,000 feet. Practicality is not my strong suit. That makes the theme of my work this past few weeks most unusual: I’m discovering the sensible, the useful, the concrete.

This bizarre phase started a few weeks ago with the first few chapters of my book. I shared them with Megan-the-brilliant and she rolled her eyes and told me I needed to come down from the clouds. “Smaller steps!” she insisted. “Break your thoughts into bites that people can actually take!” I protested but she was right. So I set about trying to find ways to bring my balloon closer to the ground. “More weight!” my inner sociologist cried! “Less hot air!” my inner archeologist chirped.

I thought I was failing until last week while facilitating a workshop I went on a rant about the practical steps, the utter simplicity of steps in re-forming a culture of control into a culture of empowerment. It made sense to me, and much to my surprise, it made sense to those dear people on the receiving end of my rant. They got it. I achieved small steps! I achieved bite size thoughts! For the rest of the workshop I couldn’t help but wade into the sensible. Who was this man?

The book is now falling into place. I’m channeling a tiny model maker or a watch repairman. I’m giddy with detail. And, I’m recognizing the larger lesson is this: the philosophy, the ideas, the theory are easy for me, but to put them into action is what is now required. The bite size steps are really for me. If I can’t act on it, if the steps are too big, it is not useful to me or anyone who meets me at the crossroads. I’m a great witness, a studied observer, a world-class listener. And it’s time to walk simply. Or simply walk.

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

Call Your Name

Posted on February 4, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

697. 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 not lost on me that I’m unable to get back to Seattle. The initial flight delay set off a ripple of stand-by lists with actual guaranteed seats on planes 2 to 3 days from now. I waved the white flag, let go of what I thought was so important, and decided not to spend 3 days in airports. Instead, I went on a road trip. I made a run for Omaha, renting a car and driving seven hours, into and through a white-out-snow-blowing-so-that-I-followed-the-tail-lights of the car ahead of me because I literally could not see the road. I talked with friends on the phone while I drove. I had hours of silence and quiet. I saw a part of America that I don’t often see because I fly over it instead of drive through it.

When I looked at the ticket agent and said, “I’d rather not wait in the airport,” she thought I was nuts. How could I make the decision to walk away? She said, “But, we can’t change and itinerary, we can’t transfer your flight to another city. You’ll have to buy another ticket.”

“That’s exactly right,” I thought. I would rather go off the reservation and drive, not knowing when or where I will find a portal into Seattle. Spending 3 days of my life sitting in an airport waiting for the smallest possibility of a seat on a plane seemed crazier than walking out of the airport and asking, “Well, what’s next?” I’ve spent too much of my life waiting for something to happen. I no longer have it in me. The ticket agent had a rule to follow and I realized that I did not. Rather, I have one rule and my rule is: don’t wait.

I have a mantra new to this year. It wasn’t a resolution; it just seemed to find its way in: Act. Try. Aim. In other words, practice what I preach: step into the unknown as a way of being, not as a once in a while activity. Act. I don’t need to know where I am going before I take a step. If something seems to take life from me, walk the other way. Try. See what happens. And then aim.

I now have a seat on a plane out of Denver on Wednesday. I will have driven or trained halfway to Seattle before getting on a plane. I’m having adventures, spending time with people I love, and not knowing what tomorrow holds. And, I am certainly more alive now than I would have been had I decided to sit and wait for my name to be called. “Isn’t it time.” I thought as I left the airport in my rental car, “that I started calling my own name.”

Filed under: Awakening, Gratitude, Possibility, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , | 10 Comments »

Ask “What If?”

Posted on January 29, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

691. 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 was reminded today that “If” is a very powerful word. It is a magic word that is shorthand for “imagine the possibilities.” When you think that you can’t do something, when you’ve convinced yourself that you will never be able to do…(fill in the blank); ask yourself this magic question: “What if…?” It’s alright, continue to accept that you can’t or will never be able to…; you need not change your disbelief or assault your defenses. In the midst of your wasteland, ask “what if…?” Imagine what you would do if you could? What steps would you take? What is the first step you would take if…?

Take the step. Hold onto your disbelief, invest in your limitation, and take the step anyway. No need to fulfill your dream, accomplish your impossible mission, move your mountain, or realize your potential – those phrases are misleading anyway, new age rhetoric, self-help marketing mantras that imply that your dream, your impossible mission, your mountain and your potential are some other place, things you might achieve, arrival platforms. Hint: they are really verbs, actions, and choices; you are infinitely un-full-fill-able because you are not a container with a limited capacity. You are your dream, your mission, your mountain, and your potential – you are uncontainable. Use upon yourself any ruler you choose, any metrics you think valid and at the end of the day your measurement will be false. Like a photograph you might capture a moment, an aspect, but you will never capture the all of you.

“What if” you started taking small steps without belief? What if you acted “as if” you could? Where might you someday find yourself? Magic and miracles are not dependent upon your belief; they are dependent upon your action. They are dependent on your capacity to realize that you, yourself, are fluid, moving, changing, dynamic,…, a living vital being. “What if” you started stepping in the direction of your “I can’t?”

Filed under: Awakening, Emergence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Grow Young

Posted on January 19, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

681. 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 child-like man is not a man whose development had been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.”
Aldous Huxley

It’s not that I don’t want to grow up. It’s just that I don’t want to be like most grown ups that I know. I figure that I will have plenty of time for being deadened after I’m dead so why numb myself to experience now? It makes me wonder if hunter-gatherers became complacent? In the absence of a laz-y-boy and an entertainment center, what constitutes good living?

Twice in my life I put myself on a television moratorium. Both times within a week, after the initial detox period of wondering what to do with myself when not anesthetized, I stopped pacing and began to experiment. I created things. I went places. I stopped shouting at the television and started engaging with people who talked back. I read more books, thought more thoughts, went out into a cold winter night so that I could feel the cold, see the stars and shiver just enough to make a good cup of hot chocolate taste better. Also, there are few things more satisfying than wrapping cold fingers around a hot mug. Once, I smoked a cigar while sitting on a wall that overlooked the city just because I’d never done it before. In short, when not distracted, when not “muffling myself in the cocoon of middle-age habit” I came back to life. Breaking patterns is more important than you might realize.

What are the multiple ways that we check out or pad ourselves from new experience? What paradigm do we embrace that makes “just getting through it” a viable option? If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone count the years before they could retire I’d be hauling around a ton of nickels. While sitting in the Blue Moon a few days ago I heard this: “Six more years to retirement and I can finally start living.” The others at the table nodded as if to say, “Hold your breath; you’ll get there someday.” With such a premise, why would anyone want to grow up? A real friend would have stood up, slapped them and screamed, Wake Up!”

The Buddhists say that life is the joyful participation is the sorrows of the world. The key word is participation. Protect yourself from the sorrows and you blunt your capacity to participate. We aspire to “easy” and “easy” comes with a cost. Children count the minutes until class is over. Adults count the years until retirement. And in the mean time, the rich textures of life, the capacity for joyful participation, passes unnoticed.

There is no mystery to fulfilling your potential or releasing your inner artist. Get up, let go your current form of distraction, look around, step toward the thing that will take some effort and is worth doing. Get messy. Do something for no other reason than you have never done it before. Aspire to grow young.

Filed under: Awakening, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , | 3 Comments »

Live Everywhere

Posted on January 14, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

For the past several weeks I have been in gypsy mode. I am traveling from place to place, landing for a few days and then moving on. There is a great gift that comes when you’re on the road as a rule and not an exception: when you’re not living anywhere, you start living everywhere.

I’ve noticed that I’ve let go of the expectation of norms or routines so consequently I am paying attention to the little things – each day is filled with little amazement, little gifts surround me. I’ve realized that when there are no day-to-day patterns, you cease investing in the comfort of the pattern so are capable of welcoming what is right in front of you. You truly begin to live everywhere because every moment is unfamiliar.

There are tiny arrivals in my gypsy mode, resting places but it is as if I am seeing life without its security mask. Sometimes a cliché is a cliché for a reason: the idea that I possess anything or own anything is an illusion. I am at best, a steward. We are all merely passing through. We are, as Jean Houston wrote, “the burning point” of the ancestral ship. Others came before and were witness to their time and have passed the burning point to me (and you). For this brief lifetime I am the eyes, ears, and hands of the experience; I am the witness; we are the stewards of our time. In gypsy mode there is only one question that really seems to matter: Did I open my eyes and ears and other senses to the full experience of being alive? Was I present during every moment of this incredible ride?

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

Step Toward The Pond

Posted on January 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

This is one of those days when I don’t have a thought in my head. It’s cold out and I have been writing all day. My thoughts generally float around at about 30,000 feet so to bring them down to ground level is often difficult for me. My inner archeologist complains about the altitude; he likes to brush dust off of small things and look at them with a magnifying glass. He gives me that look of disdain and I tell him I can’t help it. In truth, I would have done well in life as a hot air balloon. I could have carried Oz to far away lands and back again with no problem.

Recently in a class, after the opening meditation, one of the participants acknowledged that she’d come a long way in managing her out-of-control thinking. She said, ”I’m learning to manage my thought addiction. Sometimes I’m surprised at how quiet my mind can be.” I loved her phrase: thought addiction. I believe thought addiction is the road we take when we define our lives according to our problems. When we start to recognize the patterns of our thinking, then we can kick the habit and let go the addiction. Our personal stories reveal themselves through the patterns of our thought – not only the content of our thinking but the pace: is your thought a runaway freight train or a still pond or something in between. Most of us run between the poles of freight train and still pond; orienting according to the problems will bring on the freight train. Pay attention to the patterns and you’ll begin to move toward the pond.

I learned years ago that, as a hot air balloon, the only prayer I had for developing a still pond was to learn to ground myself. I needed a root. My route toward the still pond began when recognized I was free floating without a tether. Now that I have a good root my clue that I’ve let go of the tether is the return of the freight train. And, without fail, the train comes screaming down the rails of a problem that I think I have. Once I remember that I don’t have any problems, I have patterns, then it’s an easy reach to the root and a only a few short paces to the still pond.

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

Take One Step

Posted on January 9, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

671. 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 watched the sun come up this morning. I was sitting in Alan’s sun room sipping coffee, marveling at the winter colors of the sky: salmon pinks, lavender, and ice blue. And then, beneath the tree line, in a specific spot, the branches began to shimmer. I expected Merlin to materialize. And then the shimmer warmed, became orange and round and instead of Merlin, the sun lifted above the horizon, streamed through the trees, and washed me with the warmth of a new day. Were I a plant my leaves would have opened and I would have taken a might drink of the light of the new day. As a human, I had coffee on the inside, sun on the outside – I was warmed through and through.

I do not know what this day brings. Alan and I will teach a class, that much I know. Then, I will dash to catch a plane and then if the timing is right I will catch a train. If not, there will be an entire day between the plane and the train. Planes and trains are sometimes on schedule and sometimes off schedule depending on Mother Nature and the nature of machines. Tonight I could be in one of 5 different cities. I recognized as the sun rose that I am in presence training. I am learning to trust. For the next several months there will be no daily pattern that repeats itself. I will be mostly on the move; my suitcase is my home. Sometimes I will be with loved ones, sometimes I will be in isolation, sometimes with new friends, sometimes in another country. I am throwing my work away, tossing the patterns of my life as I knew them and re-imagining things. I couldn’t be more alive and present to my moment. My inner gypsy stubbed out his cigarette and hissing smoke through his nose said, “It’s about time.”

It is about time. We count our days, our minutes, we measure our lives, check our lists, stay on our schedules. We count ourselves into desperation when we forget what we are counting. Each breath is life giving. Each breath is unique and never to happen again. I watched the sun rise again and it was no less a miracle today than it was yesterday. It was not the same. Another year just turned over (if you recognize the same calendar that I do) and I can look to the past and think, “This and this happened.” At least that is the story that I tell, none of it is true for anyone but me. I realized an amazing thing about personal edges and story this week. The scary edges are only visible if you are oriented to the past; anchored into and trying to maintain the known. Orient to the unknown, anchor into present and there are no edges, only experiences. I think that is what I mean by learning to trust – I am learning to orient according to what is with me right now as opposed to what has been, what should be, or what might have been. Those things are mental abstracts – as are scary edges….the edges certainly exist, the “scary” is a story I can tell. Here is presence school, I am taking one step at a time, something I have done since first learning to walk only now, as an experienced walker, I am paying attention to the steps as I take them.

Filed under: Awakening, Gratitude, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Go Up!

Posted on January 8, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

670. 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 airports, people are often racing to catch a plane. I have, more than once, sprinted through a concourse trying to catch my connecting flight before they closed the doors and captured me like a bug in the airport pickle jar: no way out. When I was in the Philadelphia airport, having more than enough time between flights, I found a nice perch and watched other less fortunate travellers race to their liberation. “That’s what I look like,” I thought as I spied a man wearing his too intense face, trying to reconcile his need to sprint through the crowd with his desire to not trample other people.

Coming from opposite directions, entering a knot of people, two wheelchair bound travelers, each late for a connection, spurred their airport attendee to go faster. It was like watching an old-time film clip of two trains roaring toward each other, unaware, an imminent head-on collision. They couldn’t see each other through the throng of people. The sea of travelers parted, the wheelchair riders caught sight of each other, eyeballs bulged, eyebrows raised, hands came to protect faces, and time – as it does in a spell or a moment of presence – came into a sharp, clear focus. At the last moment, in an impossible maneuver, the pushing attendees, as if choreographed, altered course. The chairs kissed, the spell was broken, and neither chair slowed down; grins of relief broke across the faces of all concerned. Mine, too. “That was well done!” one of the riders hooted to her wheelchair pusher as they sped off into the distance.

There are moments on the stage when an actor forgets their line and all pretenses fall. It’s called, “Going up.” Eyes bulge, eyebrows rise, their mind double clutches in panic, locks up, and for brief moment, without thought, they are intensely present, vitally alive. It feels like a mini-spell as time expands. And somehow, inexplicably, the words show up, moving the mouth without the assistance of the mind. The moment passes; the spell is broken, presence retreats behind the notion of control; waves of relief crash on the sandy shores of the actor. And yet, when the evening is over, the actor will tell you that moment was the most honest moment of the whole play. It was the most “alive” moment of their performance. It was the only moment that was not controlled, constrained, premeditated. It is what they attempt to master: presence on stage.

In watching the near wheelchair collision and remembering those brief moments of vitality on the stage, I couldn’t help but think that we (or I) have it backwards. The spell is not those moments of intense presence; the spell is a life that is rarely present. In those moments of near collision, when we lose control or are snapped into the immediate, the spell of the mundane is, for a moment broken, time no longer matters, nothing is measured or contained or controlled, and we enter life as we exit the predictable. I’m delighted that the wheelchairs did not collide and yet what a gift! Just like the rider I was left thinking, “For a moment, I was here and nowhere else. Well done.”

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

Click, Click, Click

Posted on January 5, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

SeaTac airport. 5:30 am. I’m sitting in the atrium holding coffee with both hands, staring into the void waiting for consciousness to catch up with my body or at least to know that my heart is beating enough to sustain life. I am not alone in my stupor though my stupor is decidedly less active than the stupor practiced by others. There is a different dull hum of voices in the morning; luggage wheels click over tile at a slightly slower rate, setting a tempo for the morning rush.

There are more business folk than families at this obscene hour. If I were a farmer I’d fly at this time of day and I’d move through the airport as if it were one of my fields. Slow, respectful. Business travelers have forgotten their inner farmer and walk with a deliberate goal in mind: get “there.” Even at this early hour and in their pre-coffee diminished capacity, they move with a studied determination. Click, click, click. No time to waste. A plane to catch. A sale to close. A deal to make. Ten minute rest interval. A trip to the gym. A light meal. Most have heads down and are answering emails as they move with intention to their portal.

Don’t get me wrong. I love business people. I work with business people. They live in a different culture than I do. They play by a different set of rules; they hire me because my rules are different and so I can see what they cannot. For instance, I do not believe that “time is money;” were we living in the industrial age that might still be true but it was an antiquated notion before my parents were born. I’m certain that “relationship is money,” that the path to efficiency is to slow down and not speed up (I can prove it). From my vantage point the prerequisite for success is cooperation, not competition. Cooperation is an infinite game and competition is finite; competition can live within cooperation, but not the other way around. I’ve learned from famous consultants that the only real purpose of a business is to serve a customer – that is cold language until you realize that the verb is “to serve” and “customer” is an antiseptic word for “human being.” Do you want to succeed in business: serve a human being. Serve lots of them. Focus on what you bring to them and not what you can get from them.

As I contemplate another cup of coffee (oh, okay…if I have to…) I want to whisper to the morning sprinters, “Markets are made-up just as are economies; they are constructs and not forces of nature; we make the rules, we thrive or suffer according to the world we make up. Let’s play a different game. Let’s practice health. Slow down. Live today. Take a look around: you are surrounded by those you serve.

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

« Previous Page — Next Page »
  • buy us a coffee :-) Thank you!

  • visit the studio melange at kerrianddavid.com

  • The Seer available on Amazon.com

  • Lucy & The Waterfox is also available on Amazon.com