Gratitude | The Direction of Intention

Listen

Posted on November 28, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

629. 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 Orca returned today. The crowds gathered at the bottom of the street, binoculars pointed to the Sound. The word gets around and soon there was a crowd whispering things like, “Amazing,” or “Look!” These simple words of reverence were usually followed by an “Ohhhh” or an Ahhhhhh!” I stood with Riley the Samoyed and Charlie the black Labrador. Dogs to pet and whales to watch, the sun was shining, the water was calm; it was pretty much a perfect day. Extra magical.

After the Orca pod passed, I walked a loop through the neighborhood and was transfixed by two small trees. They’d dropped their leaves and their bark was brilliant red! At first I thought they were painted but this brilliance was natural, shockingly bright, a color in nature usually reserved for autumn leaves or feathers. Dado (my postman) joined me in my revelry. He said, “Can you believe it!” Dado is a great lover of the small moment. I’m not sure how he ever gets the mail delivered because he is always talking to someone, sharing stories, laughing, good for a joke or a shoulder to lean on. Dado is bartender to the world. He is used to finding me transfixed and always joins me. “Wow,” we whispered in unison and then laughed.

Today in class, prior to my date with the Orca and my walk, we introduced the tool of dialogue and deep listening. As a group we listened as a member of our class talked without interruption for a set amount of time. Then, as a group, we responded. In our daily lives we rarely listen because we often have agendas and, therefore, do not listen; we look for opportunities to be heard. We miss what is being said. When we give space for pure sharing and pure listening a magic thing happens: the speaker will often, to their great surprise, wade waist-deep into gratitude. They sort to the positive. They tip toward wholeness. And then, the responders, overwhelmed by the generosity of the speaker, open their hearts and celebrate their lives, too. The wound is not ignored; it is honored as the catalyst for awakening. That is what happened today in class. Our speaker, thinking she was going to bring a challenge to the group, found herself expressing her love of life after a rocky road. And we the responders, quietly released into our personal revelry of this extraordinary life. Deep listening requires space. Reverence loves a listener.

I was so moved by the class that I decided I needed to take a walk before jumping back into work. I put on my coat, walked to the end of the block and found the Orca passing by and all of the humans were holding space, listening. The entire dialogue of life is magic and immediately available when we slow down enough to listen.

Filed under: Gratitude, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: dialogue, listen, magic, Orca | 1 Comment »

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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Dance A Circle

Posted on October 8, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

We drove up Mount Lemmon to have a picnic and to scatter Margaret’s ashes. She loved the mountains of Tucson and there is no better leaping place for Margaret’s soul than the top of Mount Lemmon. We found a perfect spot, a view for miles, a place of utter beauty and inspiration. She would have clapped her hands together and said, “Perfect!”

Mary Ann made our picnic from the leftovers of Margaret’s celebration of life party the night before and we feasted and laughed. We told more stories. We waited for the right moment. Lora and her brother climbed down the rock face and discovered the place where they wanted to establish Margaret’s alter; it was an almost perfect circle of soil nested in this world of rock; it held a single hardy, sturdy tree. Her grandchildren built a simple altar: wild flowers, stones, crystals, roses, and a photograph of Margaret in her prime. We spoke words and read poems. And then, we took turns spreading some of her ashes. It was too solemn and Dante, the youngest of the grandchildren, somehow knew…. She took the sack of ashes and descended further down the rock face. We stood above and watched as she very slowly, at first very carefully, began to release Margaret with the wind. Dante’s gestures were large and soon took over; I do not think she noticed when her gesture became a dance of giving Margaret back: Dante danced Margaret. Margaret danced Dante. The circle of life peaked from behind the curtain for those few gorgeous moments. Time stood still.

Dante finish her dance. The curtain fell closed again. Ordinary time returned. We climbed back to our picnic spot with the simple inner quiet and satisfaction of completion. Margaret was free. Dante had showed us the circle. Mary Ann asked, “Does anyone want a brownie?” Life, once again, began to flow toward the ocean and with chocolate and friends and family we left the mountain transformed.

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Give Thanks To The Bunny

Posted on October 3, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Yesterday we went to Elsa’s Adult Care foster home to collect Margaret’s belongings. It was a simple box with several framed photographs, her wedding announcement, a large yellowing photo album made long ago by her daughter-in-law, and an oversized pink stuffed bunny.

When Margaret was early in her disease she volunteered at a hospital gift shop. One day she fell in love with a giant pink stuffed bunny and bought it for herself. She brought it home and for the rest of her life, as the Alzheimer’s slowly took more and more of her, she slept soundly wrapped in the embrace of the very large kindly bunny.

A few years ago, Lora did a photo essay of her mom and one of my favorite photos from the shoot was Margaret tucked into bed, ready for her nap. She is staring into the camera, secure in the embrace was her loving pink bedfellow.

Life is odd. As Lora clutched her mother’s favorite sweater and cried with Elsa, I could not help but stare at that pink stuffed bunny; I was overwhelmed with a deep sense of gratitude for it. It was as if the bunny was the guardian angel that supported Margaret through this final phase of her life. Elsa was certainly the living presence, the loving caregiver. But the bunny heard Margaret’s secrets. The bunny was with her deep into the night. She held onto that bunny like she held onto her life. She loved that bunny into tatters.

I’m certain my personification of this stuffed toy reveals more about me than it does Margaret or the bunny. I was surprised at my affection for the rabbit wedged in the box between photos in frames. I was even more surprised that it was not grief or loss evoked by the pink velveteen rabbit peaking from the box but a profound sense of appreciation that one day, many years ago, Margaret looked at the shelf and said, ‘Oh! I love that bunny.” And this amazing 75 year-old warrior-woman bought herself a stuffed animal that stood almost as tall as she did, and at the end of her day as a hospital volunteer, she carried it home. And, at the end of the day, it was a large pink stuffed bunny that carried Margaret home.

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Do You See It?

Posted on September 27, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

One morning last May, Megan-the-brilliant picked me up at my hotel and said, “Before coffee, I have to show you something.” She was excited and I could tell this was a vulnerable offer, she was opening to me and I adored her courage. We drove into the country to an undulating stretch of road and Megan squealed, “Do you see it? Do you see it?” I did. The shadows of electrical lines cast by the early morning sun made a vibrant pattern on the blacktop: the road looked like a heart monitor tape. She giggled as we descended into the strip, riding through the record of a giant’s beating heart. It was glorious and subtle. She turned up the music and rolled down the windows so we would have the full sensual experience of that moment in time. She made a memory. Ten thousand people have driven that stretch of road and few if any saw the shadows. And, because she took a chance to show me, in that moment just before I die, in my moment of my personal life review, I will feel the wind, hear the music and her giggle, as we roared through the shadows like kids through a sprinkler. We were alive.

Megan-the-Brilliant teaches me that it doesn’t take much. Keep your eyes open. Revel in the small discoveries because, if you engage with the moment, there are no small discoveries. Make your memories. You don’t need to travel to France to do it – and, frankly, the grace you give yourself during travel is to open your eyes and see. You drop the idea that you know what’s there and actually look. The same capacity is available each moment of every day of your life. Nothing is ordinary if you decide to see beyond your boredom (your boredom does not exist outside of you).

If I could give the world a gift on this day it would be for Megan-the-Brilliant to pick you up at your hotel. Before coffee she will take you for a treat. Open your eyes as you may miss it. You’ll know it is there when she rolls down the window, turns up the music and asks, “Do you see it?”

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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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Find Joe

Posted on September 12, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

552. 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 surrounded by amazing people. No one in the past decade has been more influential on my thinking, more loyal in friendship, more dedicated to my growth than Joe Shirley.

A few days ago I sang the song of Sean Smith and later that day I talked on the phone with Joe. He moved away a few years ago and I miss our weekly coffee dates. Like Sean, Joe is in dogged pursuit of his dream but unlike almost anyone I know, Joe’s dream began as a nightmare. His story is the stuff of great art, an intentional passage through the belly of the whale, a film ready to be made.

Joe was bipolar (emphasis on “was”). Because he has an amazing scientific mind he was unwilling to take the brain numbing drugs that his doctor’s prescribed. He suffered great darkness and had to find another way. He had to find a way to navigate life; he knew there must be a way to “cure” himself, to address the cause instead resigning himself to merely blunting the impact of his dis-ease. What he discovered, almost by accident, started a decades long pursuit of his personal liberation and now he is applying what he learned to the liberation of the human spirit.

He was his own best test subject and over several years of intense work he came to understand what he calls the “feeling mind” that is highly structured and infinitely knowable. Learning its “architecture” avails a kind of freedom and power to anyone seeking greater well being. He’s developed and mastered a process that anyone can use to be free of anxiety, blocks, limiting patterns and beliefs. His process is concrete, accessible and designed to be self-directed. He introduced the work to me a decade ago while we were in graduate school and it has provided a tool of transformation that I use with my clients and with myself.

He calls his work Enteleos (“the completion within”). Find Joe. Of this you can be certain: you will never see the world the same way again.

Filed under: Gratitude, Heroes | Tagged: emotion, feelings | Leave a comment »

Unleashing Sean Smith

Posted on September 9, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Today I celebrate Sean. He has done what many people desire to do, what most people talk of doing but few rarely do: he is pursuing his dream.

I had already been Sean’s coach for several months when he said in a voice that was barely more than a whisper, “What I really want is to do write a book.” He spoke his hidden truth and we both knew it. The idea was more than daunting to him, it seemed nearly impossible. He works more than full-time. He is married and has two kids. He volunteers and is active in his community. Like most of us, his dream sat at the bottom of his list for a very long time.

And, he started to write. He set some realistic goals, writing everyday on his commute to and from work. He allowed himself to take one step at a time and did not forget the all-important matching action: he continued to take steps. Soon there was a chapter and then two, and after some months there were five chapters and then a rough draft. His disbelief took one step at a time, too; about the time he had a rough draft he also had belief. He knew he could do it. He knew he would do it.

But “doing it” was no longer the goal, being a good writer was now the goal. And this goal, he knows, is also only temporary; the real goal is be become masterful. He began attending seminars and classes. He sought and interviewed writers; he did not hide or pretend because he surrendered his outcome-focus for the more vital and satisfying process-focus. He sent his draft to editors and entered the purgatory of an endless cycle of rewrites and revisions. And he kept taking steps.

As he wrote he also he put together a solid plan for publishing and promoting his book that included personal and professional networks, reviewers, publishers, and more.

Sean’s first book, Unleashing Colter’s Hell, a fiction thriller set in Yelowstone National Park is now available through Amazon.com. He told me he’ll soon begin work on the screenplay but wants to do a rough draft of his second book before jumping into a screenplay. Sean is on fire. It’s what happens when you strap on your shoes and walk toward your dream. (I’ve already read chapter one of book two and I’m desperate to know what happens next….).

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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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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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