Awakening | The Direction of Intention

Find Your Pivot Point

Posted on October 25, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

[Continued from 594]

It is a full decade since I learned to dive with Terry. Until last week it had been 6 years since my last dive. Although I live on the Puget Sound, near one of the world’s great dive spots, the water is cold and I am skinny; I hate to shiver and all I need do is look at the divers preparing to enter the frigid waters outside my door and I start looking for a blanket.

A few weeks ago I flew to Belize for a dive vacation. Apparently I was ready for my second master and the next level of the lesson. And, lucky me, since it was time for the second master, I actually had two masters show up: the first was the dive master, named Luckie (note: I am considering a name change; how cool is it to be a dive master AND to be named Luckie). Luckie, above the water, is a trickster and filled with laughter; beneath the surface he is easy, clear, and neutral. He radiates trust. I would follow him anywhere. Luckie dives without any weight. Most divers need a small amount of weight to take them down and to assist with neutral buoyancy. This is too big of a metaphor for this small post but just consider the implications: how much weight do you need to carry to become neutral? Luckie needs none. He is neutral all the time and like Terry, that does not render him without personality, it does the exact opposite: Luckie is a riot of laughter and joy. He is a magnet for life. He is hungry to know and engage and experience. He is the embodiment of what it is to be neutral and efficient. Luckie has fire and he burns clean.

The second master is Luckie’s boss, Declan (okay, another cool name. Apparently you can only live in Belize if your have a cool name). He came with us on our second day of diving. The first time I saw Declan in the water I almost cried; I have never before seen a human being that easy and present. He was so…beautiful…in the water that I was stunned: the absence of struggle. I had to swim behind him. I wanted to know what he knows, I wanted to mimic what he did. And, remember, I know Terry. I was amazed and inspired by Luckie. Declan in the water becomes the water; he is not easy in it, he is it. He teaches a class in mastering your buoyancy and I will go back to Belize to take the class. Like Terry or Luckie, diving with Declan is not about diving; it is about how to be in the world; it is how to be the world.

I told him that I wanted to take his class and he said, “Oh, it’s easy! It’s not the same for any two people. It’s all about the right amount of weight and recognizing that balance comes from your hips. Find your pivot point, it’s in your center and feel your way into it and then practice. There’s no other way.”

So, crib notes from Belize: you can’t think your way into it. Neutral knows how to laugh. I now know what the absence of struggle looks like. Embodiment. Perfect balance. Practice, practice, practice. There’s no other way.

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Buy Terry A Beer

Posted on October 24, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Scuba diving is rife with life lessons. I learned to dive in Bali from an American ex-pat named Terry, a former surfer, drug runner, and underwater welder turned Buddhist. And, since I was the only person in the class, I had my own private life lesson delivered through the metaphor of diving. As Joyce would say, Terry was an old soul; he was comfortable anywhere in the world, above or below the water, in the west or the east; he’s one of the few people I’ve known who was truly at home in the world. I had to buy Terry a beer for every gaff I made on the way to ease in the water and I will go on record saying that there is not enough beer in the world to pay Terry what I owe him.

The primary skill for a diver to learn is neutral buoyancy. Regardless of depth, a diver wants to hover in the water, not sink or rise (unless he or she intends to change depth). Terry used to say, “Get neutral. Use the least amount of energy necessary. The skill is presence.” Re-reading that last sentence makes Terry sound old and wise and he was young and energetic, filled with crazy mischief and daring, so please insert your best brazen Hawaiian surfer gone rogue dialect into the previous sentence; my Yoda liked reggae and once said to me, “Let’s spin the ptomaine wheel!” as he strode into a smoky roadside eatery.

Neutral buoyancy is balance; it is the physical experience of perfect balance though you can’t achieve it without balancing your breathing as well, which balances your mind. When you become neutral, your breathing slows, you become efficient – and not the American puritan notion of efficient – as that implies work, sweat, hard pews and squeezing life out in a cubicle. This type of efficiency is the form that comes when you are most alive which means your mind is most quiet; there is no need to achieve or change or grow or do anything. Breathe, rest in balance, witness. No impulse to resist the present moment or to be elsewhere. In fact, when you relax into it, the colors suddenly heighten; there are amazing fish and creatures moving all around, and you can’t believe the shapes or the vibrancy of the world in which you find yourself. It is magic and you are magic (not separate from “it”). And, best of all, after a while it occurs to you that you don’t need to be underwater to practice being neutrally buoyant. It is a skill you can practice anytime, anywhere.

How much beer would you buy Terry to learn neutral buoyancy?

[to be continued]

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“FEED ME!”

Posted on October 13, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

583. 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 a special place in my heart for momma seagulls. Each morning I see them stamping across the beach, their teenager close on their heels squawking for food. The teenager doesn’t squawk once or twice; their cry for food is incessant, unrelenting. Their squawk is high pitched and piercing. The momma gull looks as if she needs an aspirin. She looks like some momma humans I have seen in grocery stores: every fiber of her being resisting the urge to end the life that she birthed. I am undecided whether the momma gull is frantically looking for food to stop the squawk or racing to get away from their fledgling before committing a capital bird crime.

Yesterday I took a walk with Pete. He is a gifted artist though is convinced that he must know something or achieve something to be valid. He is wrestling with the artist-as-outcome demon. What must he do to allow that he is and always has been an artist? Pete is retired and has been pursued his entire life by an inner squawking that refuses to yield. It says, “FEED ME. FEED ME. FEED ME.” And, like the momma gull, he either runs to find food (art-as-product) or runs to get away from the voice.

His dilemma is common among people who finally listen to the inner voice and attempt to feed the artist that chases them. The mistake is to think that validity is something that others grant to you. This mistake will have Pete hunting for scraps to feed a bottomless pit of hunger; the squawking will never stop. There is a happy day in every seagull and artist’s life when the momma turns to the squawking teenager and roars, “FEED YOURSELF.” For the artist, the equivalent comes in the moment when they realize that the squawking will stop the moment they care more for what they think of their work than they care what others might think of their work; validity moves inside. For the artist, the squawk is to be heeded, it is literal: “FEED ME,” means to feed my ideas, my opinions, and stop giving away the worth of my artistry, the nutrient of my opinions to others.

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Set Up Your World

Posted on October 7, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

577. 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 said something to me that stopped me in my tracks, took my breath away, opened my eyes and made my wee heart flutter. She said, “Set up your world to feed you and you will feed the world.” It is such a simple thing. She was dope slapping me for attempting to set up my world to feed everyone but me – an old pattern. As Patti once wrote, put your oxygen mask on first. You are no good to anyone if you pass out or otherwise deplete yourself.

As I said, I used to be a master of depletion, serving the needs of others at great cost to myself. During those years I often wondered why I consistently gave the farm away, why I was always so tired, why I crashed and crashed again and had more and more trouble recuperating. Survival, I have learned, is not the same as thriving. I am much more capable of helping others find their creative potency when I first attend to my own. In fact, when I attend to my own I don’t have to try and help others; it just happens.

I’ve decided that there is no place in this world for martyrs or saviors. We need healthy vibrant creative dynamic souls who celebrate life and each other on a daily basis. We do not need more sacrifices. I know this runs counter to the canon but I now believe that life is sacred – all life – and that must include my own life. How would I act each day if I understood that I was sacred, too?

People run into burning buildings to save others, not out of some notion of sacrifice but because in such extreme circumstances we transcend our notion of separation. The otherness vanishes; the life in the burning building is my life. All life is my life. Joe used to say that, “the universe tends toward wholeness,” and this morning I would amend that statement to read, “the universe is wholeness,” and we can see it when we put down our martyr stories and get our savior complexes out of the way.

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See For Yourself

Posted on September 26, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Someone told me today that I see the world in a different way than any other person they’ve ever met. It was a compliment and I took it that way. And, I couldn’t help think that this is true of every person. No one sees as I see. I cannot see what anyone else sees. They have never been behind my eyes and I will never be behind theirs. Our patterns and beliefs and experiences and expectations have more to do with what we see than anything in our sight line.

A few days ago I passed a man sitting shirtless in the dirt. He was tossing handfuls of dirt into the air and with eyes closed he would look up so the falling dirt would cover his face. Then he ground the dirt into his face. I thought he must be homeless, out of his mind; I worried for him until another man stepped from a doorway and said, “I think that’s enough. You look great now so let’s get the shot.” It brought to mind the day Megan, Jill and I rubbed mud into our hair and on our faces because we were going into a kindergarten classroom with a story of high adventure to tell. Mud made us credible. Many people saw us rolling in the mud and must have thought we were nuts or at least dangerous.

I am consciously changing the way I see. I’ve lived too many of my precious years on this earth with eyes focused only on the negative. I found my worth in pushing back. Once, my friend Roger told me that my darkness could “suck the air out of a room.” He was right. My darkness was sucking the air out of me. And the light, too. I count myself fortunate that I was conscious that my seeing was my choice; my story was my creation. If there was no light in my life then I was to blame.

This earth is extraordinary and the vast majority of people on it at present are well intentioned, deeply caring, and just as clueless as I am. The one thing I know for certain is that I will never know what they see, but I do know that their hopes and dreams and ideas are just as potent, just as real, and just as valid as are mine.

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Step Toward Your Dream

Posted on September 24, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

The opportunity comes when the artist is ready. Horatio made a single pitch to fund his next film and the money came roaring in. “Oh God!” he wrote. “Green light! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear….” Tamara will perform her first public gig. She is an extraordinary musician, prolific, and as she stepped toward her dream, the pesky dream stepped toward her. “Oh!” she wrote, “I know I can do it, but….”

Step toward your dreams and your dreams will step toward you. And when you touch, for the first time, the thrill of contact, like meeting your true love, will always evoke trepidation and doubt. You will shake and say to your self, “I can’t believe it.”

Once, just after I signed a lease for a studio, a friend said, “Uh-oh, now you have to show up!” My great directing mentor, Jim, surprised me when he confessed that before every new rehearsal process, prior to the first read through, he would get sick to his stomach. He told me each time he was certain that he had nothing offer, that he had no idea how to direct a play. Jim directed hundreds of plays and each time was certain he knew nothing.

What impresses me most about artists and seekers of dreams is that they feel this fear and do not turn and run. They feel it and keep walking. Their dream opens its arms and despite their certainty that they will be a disappointing lover, they step into the embrace and offer the world their gifts. We fling around the word “transformation” like we used to toss about the word “paradigm;” it has come to mean something generic. Mark, and Tamara and transforming; they are feeling it, the dream, the step, the doubt, the embrace. Consequently, neither they, nor their dream, will ever be the same.

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: dreams, transformation | 1 Comment »

Where Is Your Fire?

Posted on September 23, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

563. 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 awake very early, way before sunrise. I sat on my balcony and watched the sky progress from ultramarine through several shades of purple before resting in turquoise. The clouds were fiery balls of cotton. The fires burning on the eastern slope are facilitating extraordinary colors in the sky. The sun rose magenta. Through the smoky filter I could look at it directly for almost an hour. Sun and I had a staring contest. I lost.

This will go in the books as the summer of fire. I was in Colorado when fires burned across the entire state. Now, there are fires everywhere in Washington State. In May, Alan asked me a question that would give rise to the summer’s theme: he asked, “Where is your fire? Where is your rage?” I am too nice, apparently. Later, while in Colorado, I reminded him of his question and he said, “You are taking this a bit too far, don’t you think?” So, my meditation these many months has been on fire. Where is my fire.

All of the elements are transformational; they work at different speeds. Nothing beats erosion for leveling a mountain. Have you seen what wind and rain created in Bryce, Zion, and the Grande Canyons? If you do not understand the word “sacred,” go to Bryce, get out of your car – in fact, get far away from your car – be quiet, and after a few moments you will understand. The world is in constant motion.

Once, a few years ago, I stood on the lava fields, newly cooled, and watched the bright orange lava pour into the ocean, steam hissing a welcome. Lora said, “This is an island being born.” Later, as the sun set, a storm thundered down the mountain like an invading horde; I was drenched in an instant, laughing as we ran to the car, pummeled by rain. I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed with the power I felt all around me: the lava, the ocean, and the rain.

And then there is the earth. While living in Los Angeles I rode through a few earthquakes but none so impressive as the Northridge quake. It came in the wee hours of the morning and is the only time I’ve awakened in mid-flight. My dog was flying next to me and I will never forget the look on his face. I can only imagine the look that he saw on mine. I thought I might be dreaming until I hit the wall. It is awesome to consider the transformational power of the quaking earth. In addition to the destruction it opened symmetrical paths of beauty. Neighbors talked. People helped other people. The city rebuilt itself in record time.

I thought about all of these experiences as I stared at the sun, magenta through the smoke and haze and asked, as I have asked every morning this summer, “Where is my fire? Where is my rage?” The sun stared back, silent, grinning a knowing grin, like a good teacher, refusing to offer an easy answer.

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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.

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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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