Metaphor | The Direction of Intention

Dance With Alpha And Omega

Posted on November 4, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

When Kerri isn’t composing music or performing concerts, she is a music minister at a church. It is a great gift and irony of my new life that I am spending lots of time in a church. I have never identified myself as Christian – I do not believe that nature is corrupt, particularly my own nature – so the fundamental building block of the faith has never made much sense to me. However, Kerri is no ordinary music minister (imagine Sheryl Crow designing the music for church services). There is a raucous ukulele band boasting 50 players, a budding contemporary rock band heavy on the traditional drums; she is experimenting and innovating to help rejuvenate and rebuild a once waning congregation. Art and passion are now bubbling in the wellspring of this community.

During the services on Sunday I sit in the choir loft (side note: the pastor, Tom, is an excellent storyteller and I am at long last hearing the biblical tradition from someone who understands its oral beginnings) and lately I have been taken with the stained glass windows and banners. I am a lover of symbol and behind the altar is a huge window in three sections: the birth, the death, and the resurrection. This morning as I listened to Tom tell the story of the prophet Elijah, I studied the window. I admired the altar cloth that sported and Alpha and Omega symbol. Because I was listening to a story and taken by the Alpha and Omega as one symbol, one action, I had a no-duh moment. Every story is a birth-death-resurrection cycle. Every life is a birth-death-resurrection cycle – and isn’t that the point! When we know enough to read the stories/symbols as metaphors instead of taking them literally, they open like a lotus!

Stories begin when the main character is knocked off balance. Stories begin with disruption, when the old world no longer works, and we must leave behind all that we know and step into the unknown. That is both a death and a birth. It is the Alpha and Omega together as one action. And, isn’t that really the way life works? In living we are dying, in dying we are transforming and generating new life. I have heard it said that presence only becomes possible with the recognition of the impermanence of life. It is movement, as the cliché would have it, an ever-moving river.

In a hero journey, the Alpha Omega cycle ultimately leads to a return. At the beginning of many stories, the hero must go to the place from which no one ever returns and that is metaphoric. It doesn’t mean that no one returns. It means that the person that comes back to the village is not the same person that left. The adventure transforms the hero. This transformation is a resurrection. It is a return. It is a return that is universal to every life story. It is a resurrection open for everyone. Life is an Alpha Omega in every moment: it is a death, birth, death, and rebirth cycle. The return marks the beginning of the next leaving.

Before church this morning I was meditating on life as motion. Life never stops moving. Growth is movement. Learning is movement. It is when we try to stop the movement that we create pain for ourselves. In a physical body, the blockage of movement is the place where toxins accumulate and the same is true in a spiritual body or communal body. It is all movement. It is Alpha Omega in every moment.

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

Filed under: Art, Metaphor, Transcendence, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Feel It

Posted on October 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’m not making this up. It rained the entire time I was in Seattle packing up my studio. The morning we left the sun broke through and was with us as we crossed Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. We crossed five states during the days that the weather channel chirped about the quadruple threat of storms. Each day we were on the road we heard dire weather predictions and reports of record snowfall. Each day we experienced blue skies, crisp air and warm sun. It was so gorgeous that we dallied. We stopped in Idaho and spent the majority of a day walking through the leaves and snoozing on a warm rock. It was as if we were in a bubble of amazing autumn weather.

We talked with strangers along the way who told us of the miserable rains the day before we arrived. We heard more than once that the storms would come the day after we passed through – and they did. Since I am given to metaphor I want to believe that the weather was an affirmation of this move. I want to believe that the weather was a blessing by the universe saying, “Yes. You are on the right path.” Whether I believe it or not, that is how I felt.

I hear often (and say) phrases like, “It wasn’t meant to be.” Or, “The universe didn’t want me to do it.” Or, “I was blocked, it wasn’t the right time.” Or, “The door was closed to me.” Or the opposite side of the coin, “I knew it was my time!” Or, “All the forces were with me today!” Or, “It must have been my time.” Or, “It is my lucky day!” Affirmations and sense-making come in many forms and are expressed through a variety of phrases.

It’s worth the time to ask, “If it was meant to be, who meant it to be; who intended it?” If the universe wants something or doesn’t want something, then are we merely pieces in a chess game, a rook or a bishop. What is it that “wants?”

I like to think that the universe works the other way around: it responds. When we intend, when we act from clarity of vision and a deeper truth, the universe responds. We want. The universe responds when we have clarity of intention. When we are muddy, we get mud. For much of the past year I have been heart-split. I have been muddy in my intentions, conflicted in my thoughts and actions. When my internal warfare was over, when the smoke cleared and peace was declared, when I could see clearly and act with clarity, I was met with clarity, simplicity and light. And just like my move from Seattle, the rains stopped at last, the skies cleared, and the path has been gorgeous with sun, an open road, brilliant autumn leaves, plenty of supplies and places to rest just when I need them. A blessing from the universe? It certainly feels that way.

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

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

Join

Posted on September 23, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s been 24 hours of ritual passage.

Last night, far off the beaten path in an old barn swept clean and decorated simply, Kerri, Kirsten and I attended a wedding. Well, truth be told, we attended the reception. Kerri played for a wedding and then we jumped in a car and drove several hours into rural Wisconsin. There was feasting and toasting and dancing. Old friends reconnected. New friendships were established. I’ve always thought that a good wedding was like a barn raising: a community comes together in support of the creation of something new, special, and useful. This was a good wedding. The ritual was filled with laughter (so I’m told). The barn was raised. Two became united into one. The elements of earth, water, air and fire are part of this union, nestled in a cornfield, a bonfire roaring, wine flowing, and the dancers breathing deeply.

With a few hours of sleep we were back in a church for services that included a baptism. A water ritual, a blessing of transformation; I’ve not attended many baptisms so I paid attention. I was delighted to realize that this water ritual is meant to welcome the new spirit into the community. The pastor kissed the baby on the head and said, “We have your back.” The congregation laughed and nodded.

Later, the congregation celebrated communion. I watched this ritual, too. “This is my body, take this and eat. This is my blood, drink….” This, too, is a ritual of joining. The community eats the god, they take the god into their bodies and in so doing become the god. They unify. They transcend. The bread is earth like the body is earth. It returns to dust. When alive, the body is fire. It eats, consumes, burns calories, and is constantly transforming. The air moves through the lungs, oxygen is carried through the body in the blood. The blood and body are water and fire and air and earth. “This is my body, take this and eat. This is my blood, drink….” The Makah literally consume their god, the whale. They hunt and eat their god. Actually, the god, the whale, chooses the worthy hunter to enact the ritual. The god feeds the people. The people resurrect the god. The indigenous people of the plains ate the buffalo in an agreement of death and resurrection. The god will feed you and, in exchange, you must perform the appropriate rituals to bring it back to vital life. It is a beautiful cycle.

Marriage. Baptism. Communion. Thresholds all. They lead to joining, belonging, and transcendence of the small self to participation with something much greater. Life honors life.

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

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

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Welcome The Equinox

Posted on September 22, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

I just checked the official date and time of the fall equinox. Last night the moon was gorgeous so I thought the equinox must be today but it’s not. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac the autumnal equinox falls on September 22 at 4.44 pm on the east coast. That makes it 1:44pm on the west coast. It is the repetition of the numbers that stopped me and sent me to the internet. Lately I’ve been having a very special relationship with a sequence of numbers so my number radar is on high alert.

In numerology, 11, 22, and 33 are called master numbers and when they are found in a birth chart they carry significant and powerful implications. I am not a numerologist nor am I an astrologist but I like the notion that I will experience the equinox on the 22nd at 3:44pm.

From my brief internet search I found the master number 22 is the most potent and pragmatic of numbers. It signifies the translation of wild dreams into concrete success. I read that it is an ambitious but disciplined number. I’m particularly fond of this suggestion because I intend the coming year to be the era in which my wild dreams become concrete success and how lovely to cross that threshold on the autumnal equinox. Whether or not you hold any worth or meaning in numerology, the power of intention is undeniable and I appreciate the serendipity of the numbers in support of my intention.

In a birth chart, the master number 44 signals Opportunity. It signifies a great quest for knowledge. Through this number opportunities come as though they were road signs along your life path. The Alchemists appreciated this number as the signal of a visionary. I wrote a few days ago about closing my studio and I have always delighted that my studio number was (4)422. It is enough to say that, in these past few years, the road signs hammered me and my eyes were so crossed by hammering that my vision was blurry. So, I appreciate the obvious nature of the opportunities implied in the number 44 and look forward to kinder, gentler road signs and already welcome the return of clarity of vision.

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

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

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Exit The Smelter

Posted on September 20, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

Soon I will be closing down my studio of the past 3 years. A lot of life has happened while I worked from here. I made a lot of great art in this space. Some of the most significant moments of my life happened in this studio. I lost and found my soul (poetic but true), was gifted with a special shade of turquoise, received a message across time from a harper that knocked the air out of me for weeks, finished writing a book, dreamed for hours at a time while losing all of my illusions. It has been a refuge and at times a home. It is more than a space to paint!

There are over 100 studios in the building – it has a long (and dark) history. Many years ago it was the Immigration and Naturalization facility. The 2nd and 3rd floors were detention facilities for people attempting to enter the country. Dipping sticks in tar made hot from the sun, the detainees wrote their names on the walls of the courtyard. They didn’t want to disappear and scratched a record of their passage with the only tools available. The people that renovated the building were wise enough to preserve the proof of life. I like the idea that artists now occupy the building. The history isn’t being erased but explored, honored, challenged and informed.

During the era that it was the INS building, the 4th floor was actually an assay office. Citizens carried their gold nuggets to the 4th floor to be weighed and exchanged for dollar bills. They rode an elevator through the detention center to arrive at the assay office. My mind swims with metaphors.

My studio space is on the 4th floor and was, at one time, the smelter room. It was the room where the gold was melted, the impurities burned off, and the raw nuggets transformed into bars. In preparing to leave I can now look back and see that I was in the perfect space. The heat of the past year burned off more than a few layers of impurity and I barely recognize the person I was when I first rented the studio. I feel thoroughly smelted.

Viktor Frankl wrote that happiness ensues. It follows. It is a decision. It is not something you pursue but something you feel after the pursuit. Gratitude is very much the same. It follows the heat. It becomes available when the heat of transformation has fired. As I transfer my studio to another place, closing down this era, I am eternally grateful for the meaning I am now able to make from my time smelter.

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

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

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

Step In Front Of The Canvas

Posted on September 16, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

I used to stand in front of a blank canvas, clear my mind, and look for the painting that was waiting for me to draw it out. Mostly, but not always, there was an image waiting for me. It was like a very shy animal staring back at me. I would coax it forward and it would slowly reveal itself to me. The act of painting was the act of following the signals. If I moved too fast the image would retreat. It drew me out as I drew the image forward. As it advanced, coming into the light, the image would shapeshift. It would try to frighten me. It would test my agility and capacity to pursue it. Finally, after it had tested my respect for it and gained respect for me, the image would rest, give up the chase and open. In that moment we merged. I was the art and the art was me. Many hours would pass in a single moment. Time was no longer fixed. None of the usual rules of life applied.

This sounds like a strange and reactive process until you consider that I spent days stretching and preparing the canvas. I prepared myself, too. I opened the portal and chose the moment to step in front of the canvas, brush in hand, and issue the call. Sometimes the animal that came forward was aggressive, sometimes magical, and sometimes swift. Always it was dedicated to opening a portal in me. Art is like that. Art opens portals in people.

Today I know without doubt that the world has at last become my studio. Each day is a blank canvas that holds a unique gift and demands one from me in return. It is a portal that I open that, in turn, opens me. It calls me to the center. I’ve spent a lifetime preparing this canvas. Each morning I step forward into the day and so begins a unique relationship with this vast field of possibilities shimmering in front of me – as it teases forward the vast field of possibilities within me. Life is like that. Life opens possibilities in people.

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

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

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Live The Metaphor

Posted on August 25, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

It’s 3am and I am wide awake.

I have been goading Horatio for years to write a screenplay called 3am Man. It’s about a man who can’t sleep. He is troubled about the events of his life and his insomnia drives him to the streets and he makes a pass through the culture of the night. After months of walking through the underbelly of the world he finds peace and sleep. I think the story is Greek in scope. It’s Orpheus descending into the underworld. He’s torn to bits and resurrected (put back together again). It is Osiris, the same story from an earlier mythology. It’s a universal cycle of life.

Mythologies are not dusty old stories. They are metaphors of our personal stories, the stories of our lives. If you know how to read them they can be enormously helpful during times of being lost or alone. They can help orient you when life is spinning you around. In this lifetime we will all be torn to bits and put back together again, more aware, and usually with a new assignment. This is the story of the year past for me. I’m like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. I lost my stuffing. Now, having been torn to bits and in the process of reassembly, I can help Horatio write his screenplay because I understand.

I used to work at this time of night. I found it peaceful to paint while the world slept. It’s almost as if the frenetic psychic energy of the daylight hours scrambled me. I found peace, clarity and an open channel in the quiet. Tonight, in this quiet, I am sitting in a house that is being pulled apart, the possessions of a lifetime pulled apart, put into boxes and divided among relatives. If I understand my mythology correctly, even this process of a life torn to bits will ultimately lead to reassembly somewhere down the road. New life will come of it. Energy will take another form.

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Use All Of Your Colors

Posted on August 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

873. 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’m tired today and getting ready for travel. Actually, the last time I truly got ready for travel was in December when I left my last apartment. To travel one requires a stable place to leave. I’ve been traveling all winter so in truth I’m not getting ready for travel I’m preparing to shift locations. I am my only constant and isn’t that a great lesson to learn!

Over these months I’ve unloaded most of my possessions. I have my paintings and my books. I have a few treasures from friends. I’ve eliminated most of my clothes. I am light in the world and it feels good. For me, times of great change have always come with layers of stuff (literal and metaphoric) dropping off. It has happened so many times now that I recognize it like an old threshold guardian. “Ah,” I say, “time again to let go.”

In these times I am always reminded of what’s important and most real. I spent the day with friends. I talked to people I love. There is nothing better. I’ve been thinking about the last chapter of the book Siddhartha: an old man in a shack by a river. Metaphors upon metaphors upon metaphors – nothing is permanent. What matters is this moment and this is no longer and abstraction to me. It is not a cliché. Walk out of your door for a year and after a few months you will know what it is the live in the moment and recognize that all you have is a moment. Even if life looks like the same thing day after day it is not but it takes old eyes to see the impermanence in everything.

I have had the gorgeous opportunity this past year to have no patterns. Life today bears no resemblance to life yesterday or tomorrow or last year or next week. I work. I draw cartoons. I listen. I consider where to stay tonight. I eat when I am hungry. There is no day-to-day rhythm to even the most basic of my needs. I’ve never been happier. I’ve never felt so much terror, laughter, grief, joy…, all the colors of life are on my palette and I have a big brush and nothing but canvas in front of me.

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Seek The Key

Posted on August 6, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

For the next few days I’ll be at the gathering of my clan. My papa turns 80 so I’m reposting from the archives. This one was post 407:

I found a key today. It was on the sidewalk. It was a skeleton key, antique and mysterious. “Now here’s a story,” I said to myself. A lonely key is a beginning of a mystery tale.

Finding a key is different than finding a button or a toy. The story of a lost key points to treasure or secrets or diaries. A key is a guardian, a gatekeeper, so finding a key can be like finding a genie’s bottle. What requires locking implies value.

The flipside can also be true. Malidome Somé wrote that a society that needs locks on its doors is a sick society. When you cannot trust your family, neighbors, and community the society has disintegrated: the real value is lost when the society resorts to locks.

This key comes to me at a time when I am unlocking life patterns, seeing my life, past-present-future, through new eyes. My experiences of the past several months have worked like a key unlocking new chapters in the book of, “How did I get to this place again?” One question illuminated; many more beckon.

I hear Megan’s voice announcing, “metaphor alert!” Yes, indeed. Isn’t it the mystery that keeps us vital? Isn’t it the search for the keys to ourselves that drive the quest?

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Release The Following Wake

Posted on July 20, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

“Have you ever noticed how the ferries in Seattle never come directly into the dock?” Skip asked. We were riding the ferry from Larkspur to San Francisco and it was moving along at a fast clip. “Pay attention to this ferry. It will slow and nearly stop and then make a turn before it docks.” Skip watched me watch the ferry. He was right. It nearly stopped and made a turn before docking.

I looked at Skip and he laughed at my confusion. “The water displaced by the ferry would smash the ferry into the dock if it went straight for a landing. They have to slow and turn to release the energy of the wave. It’s called a ‘following wake,’” he said. In other words, the displaced water, the wake, has such force that it would push the ferry into and smash the dock. In order to dock, the ferry first needs to attend to its momentum. It need to deal with what it has created. Now there’s a metaphor!

In the past six months I have displaced a lot of metaphoric water. I did not know about a following wake and have splintered plenty of docks. I tried to go straight into my landing and found myself being carried further than I intended. No amount of brakes will help when being pushed by a following wake. Good intentions will do nothing to mitigate the damage to the dock. The wave doesn’t care. It is energy in motion and does what energy is supposed to do when released. It transforms. It changes shape. It is equally destructive as it is creative and the energy does not make that distinction. Destruction and creation are false separations necessary only to we storying humans.

A few days ago Barney told me that water carries the memory. He told me that water brings up the memory from the deep. “Air is changeable. Water carries the memory,” he said. I couldn’t help but combine the notion of a following wake with the idea that water carries the memory. Memory is a powerful wave, a following wake and if it is not attended to, if it is not dealt with, its force will smash you into the dock. Take a moment. Slow down. Turn ever so slightly so the memory wake can release, and then you can move slowly into rest.

During this week Skip, Barney, and Daphne gave me a lifetime of incredible gifts. And without my “knowing,” they showed me how to put my hands in the earth, to slow down enough to feel it, and while I was sitting in the present moment my following wake released its energy. I turned ever so slightly as the powerful wave passed me by. Now I can safely go home.

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