The Direction of Intention

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

Kicking back on the hood of her car, gazing at the stars, Megan said, “Now, there is something I can worship.” The sky is so big in Nebraska that it is almost impossible not to fall into it and I had the feeling we’d been falling into this moment, this place and time for a lifetime. How many people before us have looked into the sky on a still quiet night and felt the enormity of their universe and the quiet intensity of being alive for the few turns of the earth that we have together? It is a gift to bear witness and story it into existence. Sky gazing opens us to the mystery and isn’t that the purpose of worship?

Earlier in the day Megan, Jill and I stood in the Platte River. We’d come to see the cranes. Megan said, “I always wonder where this water has come from; how far has it traveled to be here?” We immediately put our hands in the water to feel it – not just any water but this water that traveled this way at this moment, the same moment we decided to wade into the river. Little did we know that soon we’d be covering ourselves with mud to incite stories from kindergarteners, Jill’s inspiration. As I stood in the back of a classroom watching these incredible mud covered women listen with rapt attention to small people telling stories of bear hunts and being shot from a cannon into a mud pie I felt like the water having traveled so far and was grateful for the hands that reached into the river to touch my life at just the right moment.

Sitting on the hood of a mini-van parked far beyond the city lights on the spinning earth with a brilliant half moon slowly circling around us, coyotes howling far in the distance, cranes by the thousands sleeping beyond the fields, clock time was no where to be found. I marveled at the currents that brought me here to this place and this moment and thought, “This is what it feels like to worship. Isn’t it amazing to be alive?”

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380.
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 talked of being neutral. She tells me that love is neutral. When I think of being neutral I think of scuba diving. The first and last lesson in diving is how to be neutrally buoyant. When you are neutrally buoyant, there is no resistance, you quite literally hover, neither sinking nor rising; movement in balance with the element, as the element. Your breathing slows, your awareness opens, you are present within the ocean of your life.

Both Ana and I are soon walking into potentially charged situations and that is why we were talking of neutrality. We spoke of not investing in the story or the circumstance; we talked of not investing in the fear or the angst. Being neutral is a practice. In Tai Chi, the master often asks, “How are your feet placed on the floor?” If your feet are properly on the floor, all the other relationships take care of themselves. Proper placement of your feet brings neutrality, balance, and alignment.

It is not detachment as much as non-attachment. There’s a big difference! Ana said, “When I think I need to change someone or make them see my way or help them see their opportunities, then I get hooked.” To be hooked is to attach to the story, to invest in being right. It’s a tiger trap that all of us step into: every right needs a wrong or else it has no way of knowing who/what it is. Can you define yourself from what you are as opposed to finding definition from what you are not? Can you define yourself from what you are instead of from what you assume others want? Detachment is to push away, to stop the flow. Non-attachment is to be in the flow without damming the river.

I’ve decided that presence is a quality of relationship – as flow is a quality of movement. We become fully present when we are neutrally buoyant in the world and not grasping or resisting, pushing or chasing. It’s a paradox: when you are present, separations drop away so to what are you in relationship? I imagine Ana would smile and say, “Exactly. That is love.”

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375.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

In Bisbee, Arizona the library board holds a fundraiser on the Saturday before Valentines Day. It is an event that could have been designed just for me and I am still stunned at my good fortune to 1) have been in Bisbee, Arizona on the exact date of the fundraiser and 2) have a life partner (Lora) that arranged in advance for tickets. My knees went week when she told me what was in store for me in Bisbee.

Here’s how it works: Many of the town’s residents make their favorite chocolate concoction: chocolate nut clusters, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate coconut crunch monster bars, chocolate fudge, Mexican chocolate pudding, chocolate cakes and breads, chocolate truffles, chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate; dozens of choices. In the old library they set up long tables with chocolate choices; there is one station upstairs and one downstairs. $10 gets you in the door and six tickets; each ticket is traded for one selection of chocolate. You have to choose six! Out of the hundreds of possibilities, the amazing chocolate opportunities, you have to choose! No hording, no mouth and pocket stuffing, no tipping the tables contents into your pie hole. Delicious torture of the paths not taken with local granny’s to keep everyone on good behavior.

There are pots of coffee and tea strategically located near sitting areas. It is a commons, a place for people to meet and share their choices and discuss strategy. One older man with a miner forty-niner beard used his tickets as a divining rod; he let the tickets tell him what where the best choices. The lovely chatter was a high note dancing over the baseline of groans and moans of satisfaction, “What did you get? Oh, where did that come from! I didn’t see that one! Please, just a taste!”

In chocolate, everyone is a local. All are included in the community bonded in chocolate lust and the stories it invokes. I’m in some serious training to get ready for next year; I hit saturation far too soon and had to save some of my choices for later. Bisbee, 2013. I’ll meet you there.

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291.
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Sammy showed up one day outside the door to my office. She was a white dog, a Samoyed. My office was in an old army barracks and my door opened to the sidewalk. I looked up from my desk and Sammy was looking at me. I knew the moment that I saw her that I was to be her steward though I didn’t know why. She knew it, too and I’m certain that she knew why but was not going to tell me.

She followed me around all that day and I took her home with me that night. The next day I put up flyers, Dog Found, all over campus. No one called. After the third day I took down the flyers; Sammy was mine to care for.

She was fully trained. She was easy to care for. She was happy and always by my side. Where did she come from? She had no collar, and no tags.

For a short time I had to hide Sammy from my landlord because I wasn’t supposed to have pets though I’d resigned my job and was moving at the end of the month so I wasn’t too concerned. My friend Roger was moving in and I didn’t want to make things difficult for him.

I moved a long way away, entered a time of deep turmoil and Sammy came with me, my constant companion, my studio dog, the steward of my transformation. She was never hooked by my story of pain, she never bought my doubts or reinforced my self-imposed limitations; she loved life regardless of the story I played and reminded me at crucial moments to step out of my story and breathe; a wagging tail, a reminder-bark, “It’s time for a walk. It’s time to get out of your head and that dark story you are telling.”

New Years eve, two years after leaving my old job and my old house to my friend Roger, I was driving through my old town on my way home. Sammy was suddenly very sick. Roger had given me his keys to the house in case I needed to stop. I needed to stop. Somehow (before the age of cell phones) I found a vet. It is uncanny to me that Sammy died in the place where I first found her. The vet told me that she had lupus and in dogs, the first episode presents as a false death. The second episode is the real death. I found her – well – she found me after the first episode. Someone had dumped her body thinking she was dead.

Her death was the straw that broke me. All that dark story and logjam of feeling came busting out. Everything that I had hidden, withheld, denied, feared, loathed, poured out of me. And then there was space for the new. Circles come back around. Loss brings found, growth is never linear, stories sometimes need catalysts to loosen our grip; sometime you hope the fall will kill you and you are grateful when it doesn’t. I thought I was her steward and she knew that she was mine. She had limited time and a big job to do. Unconditional love was the only trick in her bag and it worked like a charm. Circles come around and around and I’m still amazed at the coincidences and serendipity of my life. All I know is that letting go, as painful as it seems, will never kill you. Hanging on will slay you slowly every time.

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