Awakening | The Direction of Intention

Put Ego Against The Wall

Posted on September 18, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Ana-the-Wise and I had a conversation this morning about ego. We were talking about a wide range of things: “cleaning house,” ridding ourselves of limiting patterns, when people think they are operating out of love but in reality are reinforcing limits (co-dependence), when she spoke this terrific phrase, she said, “That’s the moment you put the ego against the wall!” I loved the image: my ego with his back against the wall; my ego having to face the truth of the moment instead of the horrible fear story.

I asked her to talk more about that. She said, “Ego likes to make things look bigger than they are. For instance, if your ego can convince you that approaching a gallery to sell your paintings is very scary, you will delay the action. Ego likes to make things look too big so you will avoid taking action.” It’s so simple. How many times have I talked myself out of doing something because I feared the response or assumed I knew the answer; a recent client said it best when she said, “I fear the “no.”

When I coach people I often ask questions like, “What do you get if you don’t act?” The answer is inevitably something like “safety” or “comfort” or “I get to be invisible.” This is what Ana is talking about. Ego will have you create stagnation and call it safety. Ego will have you bar the door against non-existent wolves. Ego will keep your light safely under the bushel; after all, who are you to shine? Don’t you know that your light hurts other people’s eyes; tone it down! Keep your voice to yourself. Sit in your desk and raise your hand; don’t you know how to stand in line? And so on.

Often the mountain we need to climb is never as steep as it seems. I’ve found that when I put down my ego-fear-story (…is my work really not good enough, do I really not deserve it, etc.?) there is no mountain, just me stepping toward what I want.

Filed under: Awakening, Edges, Truly Powerful People | 4 Comments »

Dance With “What if?”

Posted on September 15, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

David just started his new job. He is now a professor of acting and directing at a university. He just finished his first week of classes after moving to a new city a few short weeks ago; he’s the new member of an old faculty; everything is strange. He has no comfortable patterns yet, the grocery store is unknown, the walk to and from work is more a discovery than a ritual. Creating a new life is never easy precisely because of the unknowns. And, what I most love about David is that he is the consummate teacher, a gifted artist that uses his experiences as fodder for class; he studies his life and uses what he finds as material for his work.

Our conversation was about his students, about how dreadfully reinforced they are in the notion that they must “know” before they commit to an action. He laughed and told me, “I was the same way! I had to work through this debilitating idea that I needed to know what I was doing before I made a choice. Consequently, I had a hard time making choices!”

I’ve yet to meet a dynamic, potent artist or businessperson who really knows what they are doing. Artists become potent when they stop thinking that they need to know. What they need do is try, experiment, offer, wreck, scribble, tear, sculpt; play. They need to make a strong choice and follow it. They dance in the fields of “what if…?” By the way, this is also known as good scientific method: state a hypothesis and test it. Dance with the unknown.

As David and I discussed, needing to “know what you are doing” is a certain sign of feeling like a fraud. All of us have at one time or another ducked behind a mask of certainty to hide our fear of inauthenticity – and we felt inauthentic because we invested in the tragic notion that we needed to know before we acted. Putting down your need to know is a passage ritual, it is the threshold to vitality and self-actualization.

Life is never found in the knowing. It is always found in the questioning. It is made vital by the freedom to experience without masking or hiding behind the castle wall of knowing. The sweet secret to bold artistry is the same sweet secret to vital living; whisper it to yourself as it seems to be a dirty little secret: nobody knows what they are doing regardless of what they pretend. So, dance.

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Glow

Posted on September 14, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Sometimes in the early morning, before the sun rises over the ridge, the osprey will soar high, higher than the ridge, catching the sun light before we land dwellers can see it, and burst into orange fire. The markings of an osprey look Egyptian to me, a pharaoh’s bird, so when they catch fire with the sun, not only am I dumbstruck with their beauty but feel as though I am witness to the appearance of a god or goddess, Thoth maybe, or Isis. And then the osprey dips beneath the ridge line and the glow extinguishes; they are once again gorgeous in their mortality, mere birds of prey. But, I caught a glimpse into their true identity, their godhood.

I feel that way about people everyday. We walk on this earth beneath the ridge line, beautiful in our mortality and every so often we rise above ourselves, we show up even for a moment, and the fire reveals itself.

During intake sessions for new coaching clients I like to ask, “What is yours to do? What is the thing that drives you?” I’ve been asking this question for years, it has become an experiment of sorts. You might be surprised to know that 100% of the time my clients respond, “I want to help people.” The form of helping varies but the impulse to serve others is universal. People seek my services because they feel they have not fulfilled their potential and fulfilling their potential always means helping other people.

It’s a paradox unique to a society that celebrates individual achievement over communal health and well being: we place our focus on personal achievement and feel vacant, unfulfilled if our work has no impact on others. We focus on the gold medals and miss the moments that truly matter. Artists who paint but do not show their work soon stop painting; there is no point without the other.

Dado delivers my mail everyday. Ron fixes things in my apartment when they break. What would I do without them? The good folks at Alki Auto fix my flat tires and don’t charge me. Jen checks me out of the Metropolitan Market; she knows my name and always asks where I’ve recently traveled. Someone I don’t even know stocks the shelves at the grocery store, someone I will never meet grew, nurtured and tended the peach that I just ate: it was so flavorful that it made me moan.

The osprey does not know when it flies above the ridge line; it does not know it is glowing with sun fire. Perhaps we would recognize the godhood in each other and ourselves if we sought our fulfillment, not in an abstract outcome like “potential” and instead took stock of the little generosities and service that we offer each other every single day.

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Listen To The Heron

Posted on September 6, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Janice and Francis appeared with the herons. It is not unusual for a single heron to be fishing the Sound at low tide. I have never seen two herons flying together until this morning.

There is a smallish park wedged between two apartment complexes; it is perfect for my morning Tai Chi because it is lower than the street, shielded by shrubs, and the waters of the Sound lap against the west side. It is quiet. I was midway through the form, deep in a quiet mind, and I heard the croak of a heron. Turning, flying just over me, were two gawky and graceful herons, cutting through the park. When my eyes dropped back to the earth, Janice was standing there with her dog, Francis; she was looking at me as if the herons had interrupted our conversation. From my perspective, she simply appeared.

She said, “Heron’s represent patience.” I was still a bit startled at her appearance so she continued, saying, “I’ve lived here for years and years and I’ve never seen two. Have you? It must be a magical day.”

“Yes,” I said.

As I gave Francis a pet, Janice continued, “I’ve done a lot of reading about heron’s and what they represent. Patience is important and they are also symbolic of the need to passionately pursue what you want and need. They are a very determined bird, very self-reliant.” I smiled when she said “They came right through here… just for you I think.

“I think you are right.” I said, as she bid me a good day and turned, calling Francis. Together they climbed the stair and disappeared.

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

Join The Dance

Posted on September 3, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

543. 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 a love letter to movement. If you take the time, if you move slow enough, you begin to see and feel and sense the swirling of air, the dance of grass, flicker of light through leaves, the beat of your heart, the tide of the Sound, the woman walking her dog, the heron’s eyes looking for movement beneath the water’s surface.

Is there anything that is not in motion? The earth is turning on an axis as it rotates around the sun, not to mention the satellite moon tracing its orbit. They tell us that the universe is expanding until, someday in a distant future, it will contract. My hand opens and closes a thousand times each day. This afternoon I walked through a forest and saw pollens wafting in the beams of light streaming through the canopy; bees bobbed on ferns triggering an explosion of particles that caught an air current and whirled. Leaves, somehow knowing that the earth is turning, trade their viridian coats for ochre, scarlet, and brilliant yellow before releasing their branches for another kind of motion.

Sound is motion and I know that seems like an anemic revelation though I challenge you to go out into the world and feel the waves hit you. A few times in my life I have performed a story standing in front of an orchestra and I felt the tsunami of sound crash into and through me. The drums hit my belly and the violins pierced my heart. I told the conductor that his orchestra gave me the best massage I’ve ever had. “Moved to tears” is an incredibly apt expression.

I recognize that thought, too, is motion. I cannot lift a glass and take a drink without first instructing myself to do so. I suppose the thought is literally a squirt of chemicals moving through my brain that sets off a series of electrical impulses the cause my muscles to move, my fingers wrap around the glass. And, as a lover of paradox, I delight in the realization that to slow my mind I must first slow my body, to experience the miracle of motion in and around me, I must intend with my thought to slow my breath, to slow my gait, so that I might slow my thought. Only then am I capable of moving in the moment, not through it (both are forms of motion) and experiencing myself as a full participant in the dance.

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

Shatter

Posted on September 1, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

541. 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 revisited an old Joseph Campbell lecture the other day and as always happens a specific image captured me. Once captured, I linger in it – or it lingers in me – until each layer opens. The image was this: The universe is a dynamic undifferentiated whole that “shatters” when it comes into form. You and I are little fragments of the shattered whole. And, through the course of our lives and experiences, we shatter ourselves so that we might come to realize that we are merely forms of a dynamic undifferentiated whole. It is divergence and convergence. It is a tide motion of consciousness. It is the Hindu image of the god opening its eyes and a universe comes into being – and then closing its eyes and all forms dissolve into the dynamic undifferentiated whole. It is the cycle of birth to death to birth to death.

I learned in my 11th grade physics class that energy doesn’t go away it merely changes form. The word “shatter” is a very specific action; it is abrupt. It is non-negotiable. I’ve shattered wine glasses and windows and more than one coffee cup. Once, I bought a box of ceramic plates so that one of my students could release his anger by throwing them at a brick wall. There was some serious shattering and laughter that day. I have shattered myself more than once and will likely do it again. My friend Jim once asked me, “What is it with you and the need to live so close to the margin, with this desire to leap over edges?” I did not have an answer for him but now I know: I’m getting glimpses of the undifferentiated whole.

Today in my assignment, Megan asked, as we leave August on a blue moon, a magic time: “What will you carry forward? What will you leave behind?” This has been the summer of shattering. I am leaving bits and shards everywhere, the tide goes out, the goddess closes her eyes; what I take with me is the understanding that after a period of undifferentiated wholeness, the tide will come in and the goddess will open her eyes and I will surely emerge in a new form.

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

Get Lost

Posted on August 31, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

540. 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 riding in the passenger seat and Judy (she-who-I-revere but promised that I would no longer write it because it drives her crazy when I do) was driving. We were on Bainbridge Island headed to a beautiful spot for a picnic. Judy told me that she “kind of knew” where she was going and sighed, saying, “I have a rotten sense of direction. I could get lost in a box.” I howled at the image.

I love Judy. There are a thousand and one reasons I love her. She followed her “lost in a box” admission with a great life lesson. She said, “I love getting lost because I just go with it. I discover some really interesting routes that way. And, who says I have to name my route before I take it! Why can’t I say how I’m going to go after I actually get there?”
Judy does not know when she hits me in the face with the thing I most need to hear. She does not intend to hit me in the face with the thing I most need to hear. Yet, she has this uncanny capacity to help me find my way while we are talking about getting lost. I told her that I am lately paying attention to paradox – the presence of paradox is becoming my test for truth. I think Judy lives comfortably in paradox, she finds riches in emptiness, knows that when you are falling it is best to dive, and understands that to serve others you first need to serve yourself. She knows that there is no such thing as getting lost unless you decide that is where you want to be.

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Raise Your Eyebrows

Posted on August 30, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Over a decade ago I did an interview for entrance into a graduate program. I wanted to study art beyond self-expression, intellectual statement or forms of commodity; I knew art was at the center of identity and transformation. I knew intuitively myth and communal narrative were key. Harold, the man conducting the interview, raised his eyebrows when I told him what I wanted. He said, “You understand this is an organizational systems degree don’t you? You recognize this is a Whole Systems Design degree?” I did. I understood completely. “What greater organizational system is there than a culture?” I responded. “What could be more whole than a culture operating from a cohesive narrative?” Harold raised his brows again and nodded, saying, “This should be interesting.” It was.

That day Harold offered me two tidbits to ponder. He told me these two notions were things that all people studying organizational systems came to realize. The first was this: I already knew everything anyone at the university could teach me; what I sought was a way of seeing and I just didn’t yet recognize that I already saw systemically (insert the word “artistically” – they are largely the same thing). The degree program would open my eyes to what I already knew. Second, he said, “ You will set out thinking you know where you are going; you believe you know what you seek. Yet, what you find will be far greater than anything you ever imagined.” He was right on both counts.

I’ve thought often of Harold’s two tidbits of advice and I think they apply as much to life as to the university. First, there is nothing I can teach anyone that they don’t as some level already know. I can help them with their courage or shake up their assumptions, but at the end to the day self-knowledge is what the game is all about and it is a game of recognition. Second, as Joseph Campbell said, “No one lives the life that they intend…” and usually, the life we live is far more rewarding, far richer than anything we initially imagined. The obstacles and intrusions and unforeseen challenges are what give life its dynamic, the relationships are what give life its potency. What if you approached each day raising your eyebrows like Harold, saying, “This should be interesting.”

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Sense The Season

Posted on August 28, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

537. 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 few days ago on my morning walk I sensed a hint of autumn in the air. There was the slightest breeze, cooler than the day before, and the subtle smell of leaves turning. I savored the moment as I do every year. I look forward with great relish to the day each year that I catch on the breeze the first hint of fall.

My grandfather lived his entire life in the same small area in Iowa. One day, as a boy, I was visiting, and we went to the park on a beautiful hot sunny day. He was looking for treasure with his metal detector and I followed with an old coffee can to hold the bounty and a screwdriver to poke into the dirt when treasure was detected. Suddenly he stopped, looked into the sky, closed his eyes – and “sensed” a change in the air. After a moment he said, “We better go home, it’s going to storm soon.” I was baffled. I could not sense anything. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky yet an hour later an intense storm blew through dumping buckets of rain. He had senses available to him that I did not; he had a specific relationship with a place and felt the rhythms and changes in his body. He was connected.

Brian McDonald opens his book, Invisible Ink, with this story: “An anthropologist was living among tribal people with little to no contact with the modern world. Wanting to share the marvels of technology with these isolated folks, the anthropologist took a photo of the chief and his wives. When the picture was processed and shown to the chief he was unable to recognize the blotches of black, white, and gray as an image of himself. He had never learned to translate two-dimensional images into recognizable three-dimensional shapes. That same chief, however, could look at a patch of grass and say what kind of animal had traversed it and how long ago with no more difficulty than you or I would have recognized ourselves in a photographic image.”

I look forward to that first hint of fall because I know it is a remnant of connection; it calls forward something in me, something deep and ancient. It is satisfying and evokes a kind of quiet affirmation that is rare in my urban indoor life. Catherine once told me that, “Nature yearns for us,” and I know that it is true. Often, when I am coaching or working with people and their creative blocks, deeply invested in their abstractions, I know that all they need do is go outside, recognize and reclaim their natural rhythm, and their capacity to sense the changes in the air. Just as nature yearns for us I know, like a long lost love, when we feel lost or blocked or void of meaning, we need only walk to shore, step into the woods, climb the ridge, close our eyes and receive the quiet touch that says, “Welcome home.”

Filed under: Awakening, Body, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: nature, sense | 1 Comment »

Pull Your Paddle From The Water

Posted on August 26, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Megan-the-brilliant and I are engaged in game that I adore. We give each other daily assignments meant to wake us up to life, to challenge our assumptions, help us see our choices, drop our illusions, or simply stir the pot. Following Margaret’s death yesterday, this is my assignment today:

“…be present with this day. Set down the goals, the planning… leave aside anything that doesn’t directly touch today. As in a river canoe in the wind, allow yourself to be slowed enough to look around, to see where you are.

It’s a paradox, isn’t it? Each day is a step on this journey and yet we cannot have the whole journey; we only have one day at a time. Why don’t we put the journey into the day? What it is that, looking back on this long path, you want to have lived… created? How can you live that in this day? Perhaps a journey of many days is only truly one day long.

There is another gift hidden within this assignment, for presence is a paradox in itself. When we are present with ourselves and our surroundings we hear the subtle clues that, if noticed, can help us to create. For instance, we can learn a great deal from being present with pain, from not running from it or avoiding it. The pain teaches us how to let it pass through us… or to pass through it. For the point is not to capture pain, to get stuck in it, but rather to be present with it on it’s short life and watch it transform. To learn from it’s story. If we aren’t listening, we’re not truly present.”

Once I was with Megan in a canoe paddling into a very strong wind. Sometimes we paddled and went nowhere. Sometimes we paddled hard and made good headway but all I remember is the paddling; I missed the river entirely. Sometimes, we lifted our paddles from the water and rested and it was as if the river came into focus. The vibrant life beneath, around and above us seemed to materialize: an eagle robbing nests, the music of wind in leaves, the abundance of life swimming, crawling, waving, and dancing under water. I looked back at Megan and she was aware of it also, her eyes were blue fire with recognition.

Today she gave me the ultimate assignment (and gift): Pull your paddle from the water, stop moving through life and be in it, even if the wind blows you backward, recognize that the place you think you need to go is never where you really need to be.

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