Walk As One

From my archives. I call this painting, "Alki."

From my archives. I call this painting, “Alki.”

Alan and I talked today. We are planning our upcoming Summit in Holland in June. Our conversations are always as wide-ranging as they are deep dives into sense making and soul. There seems to be no horizon that we won’t step towards, no secret passage that we won’t explore. This has been true since the moment we met. We’ve always been verdant collaborators. We joked that someday clients will hire us just to listen to how our minds spark each other. And, given our conversation today, we’d be worth every penny. We are both in the business of facilitating perceptual shifts and transformation so we do it for each other. Our planning sessions are a festival of insight upon insight, shift within shift. Together, we are innovation squared.

Recently, I shared a short TED talk by neurologist V.S. Ramachandran about mirror neurons and how deeply and concretely we are connected despite our belief/experience that we are separate. It came up again for me because during our call Alan and I discussed the waves of far-reaching impact that any simple action or word generates. Paul Barnes used to say to young actors, “Never underestimate the power you have to influence another person’s life.” Most of us are unaware of the impact that we have on lives that we never directly touch. For instance, I have had great teachers in my life and I carry their work forward in every word I write and every group I facilitate. My teachers will never know the many lives they touched and continue to touch. And, neither will I. And, neither will you. The best we can do is know that our actions matter, our thoughts matter, our intentions matter. We are more powerful than we understand.

No one lives in a vacuum. No one creates without influences. No one has a purely original thought. In fact, if you grasp what V.S. Ramachandran is addressing, no one thinks or feels independently of others. We are not as isolated or as separate as we believe ourselves to be. We have to work at separation. We are, each of us, continually co-creating (to use Alan’s term) our world in every moment of every day. What might you see if you stopped and pondered the implications of co-creation, if you took a moment and considered that you are not merely a bobber in an ocean but, in fact, are the ocean? How might you read the news of the day or address your dreams if you understood that you were a participant, a dynamic part, a burning point for the ancestors, a sender of ripples through space and time, and not simply walking this path all alone?

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Step Into The Pool

From my children’s book, “Lucy & The Waterfox.” This is what Lucy looks like when she gives up her dream.

Do you remember this phrase from Richard Bach: Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they are yours. I am a notorious eavesdropper and today, listening to the conversations, I think all of life is one long argument for limitations.

The wicked thing about arguing for limitations (I think to myself while eavesdropping) is that we rarely recognize that we are doing it. For instance, blaming others for our misery is actually an argument for limitation. Blaming is an abdication of responsibility, an investment in the notion that, “I can do nothing about that which bothers me.” Blame is an assignment of potency to everyone but your self.

I think all things worth knowing are paradoxical. Arguments for limitation are double-edged because they often also mark the boundary between safe and not safe. An argument for a limitation often looks on the surface to be a defense of the perimeter or an argument for safety. The fulfillment of a dream usually requires a step or two beyond the perimeter and who hasn’t dipped their toe into the pool of their big dream only to pull it back and refuse to wade into it. The shore is safe and known. Stepping into the dream pool never feels safe because the depth of the water is always unknown – and no one ever knows how to swim in the dream pool until they jump in. Staying safely ensconced in Plan B is a great disguised argument for limitation. It is a disguise that will always make sense; self-imposed limitations always make rational sense.

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Love Yourself Better

this one is from the archives. I painted this 10 years ago.

this one is from the archives. I painted this 10 years ago.

He said, “The current goal is to love myself better.” And then he added, “Not so much a goal but something that needs teaching from our own mind.” His statement begs a great question, an ages old question: Can the mind teach itself? Really, the question is can the mind see itself clearly enough to teach itself?  Or, the question within the question: Can the mind teach itself to love itself? I scribbled the questions in my notebook and beneath them I wrote, “Is love teachable? Is love reachable through the mind, especially self-love?

We’d been chatting for a while and had covered a lot of territory, from Monte Blanc pens to typewriters to soap use around the world, clean water, the difference between good and bad scotch, the shapes of the 50 states and how they might influence personal identity and we’d somehow wandered into the epicenter: self-love.

His statement nailed the universal dilemma perfectly. It was a declaration of separation. The self watching and wanting more for the self. The separation is in the language: to love myself better. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t made this statement. Which part of the self will better love the other part of the self? Which part of the mind will teach the other to love?

It is where myth meets the everyday. Every human being who has walked the earth has wrangled with separation and the yearning for self-love (re-connection to self, unity). The human journey is a walk from separation (birth, if you want to take it literally) to reunification (death). The story lives in mythologies the world round. If we were still willing to read our mythologies (religions) metaphorically, we’d see it. For instance, being expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating from the tree of knowledge is the story the ancients told of the experience of separation. The inevitable bite of apple from the tree of knowledge brought duality consciousness: male/female, us/them, mine/yours, haves/have-nots, me/you. Separation. The rest of the story, not often told, is how, through out the rest of our lives, we seek the Garden where there lives a second tree: the tree of everlasting life (unity). We journey from knowledge (separation) to everlasting life (reconnection). The death need not be literal. To die to the self is necessary to experience the SELF.

Here’s the great paradox: loving another person is an act of self-love. The path to self-love is found when we serve something bigger than our selves. Think about it: the movement is always from separation to joining, from isolation to connectivity. The obvious question is, “Connectivity to what?”

Self-love is not found when the mind teaches the mind but when the mind gets out of the way of the heart. The love is always there. Love is never missing. Self-love reveals itself when the definition of self grows beyond our own skin. According to our latest neurological science, we experience ourselves as separate because we dull ourselves to our fundamental connectedness to others. In other words, we cultivate a story of isolation and then set about the real work of our lives: to see beyond what we think.

And then he said, “You know what else I just realized?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I just landed myself in a blog post.”

Yep.

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Bang On Stuff

from Lucy & The Waterfox by David Robinson

from Lucy & The Waterfox by David Robinson

John said, “The real challenge is how to help people across the ‘I can’t’ line.” What a great phrase! I imagined myself drawing a line in the sand while my imaginary inner-voice shouted, “Don’t step over this line!”

“Everyone has an “I can’t” line.” John added, “The challenge is never the external stuff. It’s the stuff in our heads that stop us.” Too true!

John is a terrific drummer and extraordinary teacher. He told me that many people come to the drums from the place of, “I can’t” and his job is to hold their hand as they cross the threshold. “Of course they can,” he said, “they just need to know it.”

“How do you do it?” I asked. “How do you help them know it?”

“I have them bang on stuff and I bang on stuff with them.” He smiled.

In other words, gets them to experiment and play. When experimenting, there is no line between can or can’t. It’s a unified space called, “Let’s see!” In play, there is no need for achievement or expertise; there is only play. Bang on stuff and see what happens: it is a great definition for artistry. It is beginner’s mind.

In Austin Kleon’s latest book, Show Your Work, he suggests that we be intentional amateurs. He writes, “Amateurs are not afraid to make mistakes or look ridiculous in public. They’re in love, so they don’t hesitate to do work that others think of as silly or just plain stupid.”

If you desire to step across the “I can’t” line, embrace your inner amateur. Work for the love of your work and not the need to impress or “do it right.” Bang on stuff. Make messes. As Skip says, “Put a stake in the ground and then test it.” Pull on the chain. Walk through the door. Ask questions. Try a new technique. Invent a new technique.

In a bizarre and beautiful chapter in my life I was given a full ride scholarship for a masters degree in costuming. I’d never touched a sewing machine and was a danger to myself and others when trying to cut things with adult scissors. “Why not!” I said to myself and I went for a year. After turning in my first assignment in costume construction, the professor hugged my muslin mess to her breast and laughed, saying, “In the history of garments there have only been 7 possibilities (shirt, pants, skirt, etc.) and you have just created the 8th!” I didn’t know what I could or could not do so I did anything. It was fun. I had no “I can’t line.

John reminded me that the world’s first drum was (and is) a heart. “Everyone’s a drummer,” he said. “The day you can’t drum is the day you are dead.”

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, title_pageSeeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

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Be A Team

can you see the team boosting the child? I have many of these and will soon begin intentionally pursuing this form

can you see the team boosting the child? I have many of these and will soon begin intentionally pursuing this form

Many years ago Judy gave me a book by African writer Malidoma Some. He wrote that, in the village where he grew up, there were no locks on the doors. In fact, there were no doors. The people of the community respected the possessions and privacy of others. Locks were not necessary. The community cared for the health of its members so its members cared for the health of the community. From his point of view, a society that needs locks on the doors is a sick society. Locks are sign of communal breakdown.

I’ve been thinking much about sickness and the need for locks as I prepare to do a workshop for organizations about effective teams. I’ve done too many of these workshops not to recognize that the need to build teams is a sure sign of an unhealthy community. In Malidoma Some’s community, people were aware of and acted from a consideration of the health of the whole. Loyalty begets loyalty. “Acting for the good of the whole” is a great working definition for a team. It’s all you need to know to nurture great teams: make sure everyone in the organization, from the top to the bottom, is caring for the health of all the members. Make sure the choices are made for the good of the whole.

An organization that needs to team build is like a society that needs locks: most organizational systems support a philosophy of “every man and woman for themselves” while the executive suite needs cooperation and compliance to get the job done. No amount of team building can transcend compensation for individual merit. Once, a CEO asked me, “How do I get them to do what I want them to do?”

The short answer: you don’t.

A healthy team, just like a healthy community, requires no leveraging to act. It requires no policing. A team is a not a “thing.” A team is a relationship and just like a sports team or a theatre troupe, everyone needs to feel safe to really bring their game. They have to know the team cares for them as much as they care for the team. Many years ago, while sitting in a jury pool, the judge asked us, “Why do people resent being called to serve?” A lovely older woman raised her hand and replied, “The government offices are inaccessible and unhelpful when I need information or support. Why should I be happy to serve a system that wants nothing to do with me until it needs my money or someone to sit on a jury.” The rest of the jury pool applauded. When loyalty is a two-way street, teams form naturally. When loyalty is a given, people quite naturally offer their service to something greater than themselves.

There are a few other elementary things necessary for the relationship known as, “team,” like a common story (a common center) and a clear intention, but they are not possible when the metaphoric doors need locks. “Team” is something we are, not something we build or do.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, title_pageSeeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

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Dream It!

a blast from the past. A self portrait of yearning from long ago.

a blast from the past. A self portrait of yearning from long ago.

[continued from Step Into The Dot]

Standing with both feet in your life means you get rid of Plan B – or at least to put Plan A and Plan B in the right sequence. It has been a source of wonder for me why people (including myself at times) pour their energy into the back-up plan before they jump head first into their dream. Dreams rarely seem practical. Plan B always seems practical. In fact, that is the role of Plan B: lower the bar so it is easily cleared.

I’ve mentioned before how often in coaching relationships I hear the story of people diligently building their art studio but never entering it. Or, if they allow themselves to enter the creative space, they sit, frozen, unable to pick up the brush or the camera. It is dangerous to entertain the freedom that comes with dreaming. It’s as if we allow ourselves to pull back the covers, peek at the dream, to get close enough to feel the heat of it, but not close enough to ignite it into possibility. It is a special kind of pain to delay a dream. It satisfies the desire to want it but not pursue it. It affords the soothing notion of, “ I tried,” or the devastating notion of, “It wasn’t realistic.”

Kerri and I are bringing our work together in a new form: Be A Ray!

Kerri and I are bringing our work together in a new form: Be A Ray!

This is why Kerri and I are combining our performance, teaching and storytelling gifts in a palate of offers we’re calling Be A Ray! Dreams deferred cause energetic eddies; they make people swirl, putting time and energy into actions that feel good (like building a studio) but do not move the intention forward. To stop the spin is to see the pattern of deferment. It is to see the story beneath a lifetime of actions that lead everywhere but in the direction of the dream. In our vernacular, to “Ray Up!” is to stop the spin, to look squarely at the dream, and to seize the second chances. It is to claim the dream and pursue it.

Dreams need not be realized. They only need to be pursued. In fact, a proper dream pursuit is never realized just as an artist is never finished. Like every good art process, the dream changes with the pursuit. It grows and morphs until the pursuer and the dream unite. There is never an outcome, only a joining, a blending of dream and dreamer. And, this blending is the reason most people go with Plan B. Dreams can’t be controlled and neither can dreamers once unleashed. In other words, the first step in Raying Up! is to relinquish control. Pick up the brush and throw paint; let go of outcome and live in vital process. Let go of what anyone else thinks of your dream and dream it.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, title_pageSeeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

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Step Into The Dot

Kerri and I are bringing our work together in a new form: Be A Ray! More on this tomorrow

Kerri and I are bringing our work together in a new form: Be A Ray! More on this tomorrow

Raquel and I had an extraordinary conversation yesterday. We always have extraordinary conversations that serve to shake loose the penny in my mind that needs to drop. Yesterday’s penny was about the question of a universe by design versus a universe of utter chaos.

So much of this past year seems by design. There have been too many serendipities, too many perfect circumstances, too many uncanny seeming coincidences. Last year I told her I was in a fast moving river racing toward my destiny. I could feel it. I can feel it. Raquel asked if perhaps that has always been true and that I was simply seeing it now.

My response to her question surprised me. I told her that all of my life I’ve had one foot in each universe. When the tides seemed against me or things were uncomfortable, then I was convinced that I was a bobber in a chaotic ocean. When I had one of the mystic/profound experiences that have become the hallmark of my life, when the tides seemed to go my way, I found it convenient to believe in a universe of a perfect design. I told Raquel that this year I’ve finally understood that I can’t have it both ways. I am either a bobber in a vast ocean or I’m here by design. Or, more to the point, I understand that the chaos I experience is my response to the design. Both feet are in one idea. The universe-by-design (a universe of participation and co-creation) must be true in the uncomfortable moments as well as the profound. It has to be true in the ordinary as well as the extraordinary. There is only one tide. It is a game to pretend otherwise.

In the past few years, the theme of my growth has been to finally see where I have been living with one foot in and one foot out – and to at last put both feet in. If you are driving to work waiting for retirement, you are one foot in. If you have a backdoor plan in your relationship, you are one foot in. If you are seeking proof of your faith, you are one foot in. You’d be amazed at what becomes visible, what you see, when you cease dividing your intention, splitting your presence, and stand with both feet in. Kerri and I call this, “stepping into the dot.”

[to be continued]

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, title_pageSeeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Or, go here for hard copies

Look Beyond The Box

one of my paintings (untitled) from the Yoga series

one of my paintings (untitled) from the Yoga series

[continued from SEE THE BOX]

Craig’s question is bigger than a single post can accommodate. He’s both reflecting and asking several questions about the boxes people construct around themselves, about building personal “stages” and what becomes visible to us when we open ourselves to life without editor or inhibition. He’s asking deep river questions about the assumptions we make when we look at others through the lens of our own experience. He asked about what I see from my stage and when did I know to create my stage. And, here’s the kicker question, “When was the last time you stepped up and saw something you didn’t know was there?”

I want to start with the last question first because I believe it colors all of the other questions. At this point in my life, there isn’t a day that passes that I don’t see something surprising or new. I know that sounds like a superficial dodge until you consider that it wasn’t always the case. Like everyone else, I was schooled in a long series of mistaken notions: 1) that people need to know where they are going before they go there, 2) people need to know what they are doing before they do it, 3) knowing is something that happens in the head, and 4) that truth is singular and knowable; believers in right/wrong paradigms are especially fond of this point.

It took a few years (okay, decades) to realize that “knowing” is a process and not an arrival platform and, therefore, no body knows. People build boxes around themselves because they think they must know what is unknowable. People build boxes around themselves because they think they must look a certain way or think what others want them to think. People build boxes around themselves in an attempt to control what they can never control. No one really knows where they are going (well, everyone knows where they are going but dying is an existential question – a topic for another post). No one knows what tomorrow will bring. As Marshall McLuhan wrote, people step into the future with their eyes in the rearview mirror. We make sense of today through yesterday’s eyes so we can only “know” what happened, not what will happen. The day before September 11, 2001 people walked into airports to greet their friends and relatives at the gate. And then, the very next day, like millions of people, I sat in front of a television and watched a plane fly into the World Trade Center. That day I understood that what I thought I knew was basically useless.

Each of us has, at one time or another, had a personal September 11th. People learn. They grow. They have experiences and then make meaning of their experiences. People change. Life is a moving target. At one point in my life I started my own school within a school. It was experiential and filled with filmmaking and theatre and performance art. At the beginning of that era of my life I thought I would run that school until I the day I died. Three years later, I was done with my exploration in education and I surrendered my cushy tenured position and ran for the air of uncertainty. People story themselves according to inner imperatives through lenses of past experiences. The idea that we are primarily rational and reasonable is…not rational or reasonable.

At some point, when you cease thinking you know stuff, your eyes open. You see beyond what you think. Everything is surprising beyond the dull-wit of thinking. Thinking (a language-based activity) will always be an abstraction. Put a word on something and you delude yourself into thinking that you “know” what it is. This is especially heinous when applied to other people. People build boxes around themselves because of the words placed on them or the words they place on themselves.

Mostly, people build stages for the exact same reason. Saying, “I’m not going to be influenced by others; I’m going to act independent of others” is also a delusion constructed from notions of “knowing” or trying to determine how others will see you. Most stages are constructed from the desire to control. Sometimes the biggest box looks like a stage.

When you no longer need to know anything, you see surprising things everywhere you look.

[to be continued]

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Step Toward It

from the cartoon series, FLUB, by David Robinson

from the cartoon series, FLUB, by David Robinson

[continued from Expect The Possible]

Change processes are funky in a society wholeheartedly dedicated to maintaining comfort. Comfort and significant change are rarely bedfellows. Real change might include a sigh of relief or a temporary feeling of elation, but melting down an old form and forging it into something new requires plenty of heat and a sizeable hammer.

If the first Great Impossibility in transformation is the expectation of knowing “how to do it” before you do it, an insane expectation, the second Great Impossibility is insanity with thorns. It, too, is based upon a false expectation: the walk into the new thing will be a cakewalk. It won’t.

Pain plays a role in the body. It alerts us that something is wrong. Pain plays the same role in a psyche. It alerts us to discord. It wakes us up. It makes us look for options. It prompts us to seek health and the relief of pain. It motivates us to consider trying something new.

In story cycles, it is pain and discomfort that prompt the protagonist to step away from safety and the known and go on an impossible journey. Going into the belly of a whale is not supposed to be a party. Discomfort shakes the tree of perspective. It opens our eyes to whole new and previously unseen fields of opportunity.

To remove the discomfort is to stall growth and minimize potential.

In organizations there are people whose job it is to manage change. The change manager is supposed to make the change as painless as possible. It assumes the horse of change wears a rein. It doesn’t. Unless you are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, change cannot be managed.

Often in organizational change, people lose their jobs and that is the equivalent of an identity loss.  In personal change, people lose their way. Being lost in the woods or not knowing who you are is rarely fun. It is, however, painful and there’s nothing like discomfort to fuel movement toward something new.

Expect it. Court it. Walking into a fear is never fun but slaying the dragon you find in the fear is triumphant. The walk into fear is necessary to find the dragon. They go together. Just as life is not vital without the knowledge of death, transformation is not possible without discomfort. You might find that most of the pain actually comes from the attempt to avoid the pain. Step toward it.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, title_pageSeeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You

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Honor The Crow

In my studio are two wood, wire, paper and found-object sculptures of crows I made a few years ago. I made them at the time that crows were plaguing me. For a few years crows were a potent and ever present force in my days, dive bombing me when I least expected it. Once, a murder of crows circled my studio for hours. There were two fledglings in the yard outside of the studio door and I suppose I was perceived as a threat. I perceived the crows as a threat.

I’d like to think that I was in my personal version of an Alfred Hitchcock movie – and sometimes it felt that way – but in truth I think the crows did me a favor. They woke me up. If it is possible for a subconscious to manifest itself then my subconscious came at me in the form of crows. It began one day on Alki beach when a crow went berserk on me and would not let me go home. I’m sure I was the talk of the sidewalk as I fled to the beach and found a stick so that I might defend myself. My animal instinct kicked in and I sought open ground and a weapon to use for a fair fight (crows have beaks). The crow left me alone if I walked away from my home but unleashed a full aerial assault if I tried to walk in the direction of home. Finally, I fled to a coffeehouse and hid until the crow flew away (the time it takes to drink two Americanos and eat a chocolate chip cookie).

Crows have facial recognition so I told myself that someone who looked like me had treated the crows poorly. More than once they picked me out of a crowd and hit me from behind. Crows are masters at surprise attacks. But deep down I knew differently. They weren’t attacking me. It wasn’t malice. It was a wake up call. They were helping me.

As is my custom, I searched the symbolism of Crow and this is what I found: “Crow is the guardian of ceremonial magic and healing. In any healing circle, Crow is present. Crow guides the magic of healing and the change in consciousness that will bring about a new reality and dispel “dis-ease” or illness…. Do not try to figure crow out. Crow represents the power of the unknown at work, and something special is about to happen.”

Something special did happen. Something special continues to happen.

For some reason today, I have been hyper aware of my crow sculptures. I’ve found myself staring at them and remembering the original impulse to make them. I wanted to exorcise the aggression, rid myself of their attacks. Now I see them differently. Given the vast changes in my life this year I see them as harbingers of change. From this vantage point I can see how the unknown was at work and, I believe, continues to work. This year I’ve not had a single crow incident.

I laughed out loud this morning when I realized that every shirt I own is black. I’ve internalized my crow medicine. The crows are to me as bees are to Beowulf. What was once my nemesis may someday become my greatest ally. I hope so. That would mark the closing of a circle and the beginning of a new adventure and I’ll be able to bring my crow medicine with me into the next unknown.

(Post 894. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.)