Sense Half A Breath

Posted on January 28, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Last year Carol learned to sail. She went to the Center for Wooden Boats and took lessons from a man who’s been sailing all his life. He taught her that a sailor must learn to feel and see the elements just a moment ahead: he said she needed to sense what was a “half a breath ahead.” With the lead of “half a breath,” she could adjust, anticipate (not with her thinking mind, but with your knowing presence) what was coming. He taught her that it was folly to think that she could be any further ahead than half a breath, any further ahead and the conditions will have changed before she got there.

Today I stepped into my day believing I knew what I was going to do. The winds changed, the rains came, the sun broke through, the café closed, the phone rang, the rehearsal ended, the phone rang again, and finally I gave up and was surprised by Doctor Who. I stepped into the day invested in my folly fully believing that I could see beyond half a breath. I am still learning to sail and need to bring my sights much closer to my present moment. I close this day recognizing my folly and my lesson, sitting more easily in my boat, no further ahead than a single breath, knowing that although I am closer than I was this morning, I am still too long in my anticipation by half. And I hope that is always true.

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Find The Metaphor

Posted on January 24, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Metaphor alert. They might be subtle but see how many you can find… I started the day in Denver. I’ve been hiding out there writing like a demon and today was the day I had to fly back to Seattle – and I didn’t want to go. I’ve been happy in my seclusion. It was like spring in Denver; warm days and brilliant blue skies. When I wasn’t writing I was walking. No schedule but the one I created for myself. In a few weeks of writing, the book is nearly two thirds written. I’m a slow writer so I’m certain that I’m not channeling Mark Twain or the book would be done given the hours I’ve spent tap tapping at the keys.

I scheduled a Super Shuttle share ride to the airport but instead of the familiar blue van a limo pulled into the driveway. The limo driver told me there was no one else to pick up so they sent the limo instead of a van. He was a very old (emphasis on “very”) and got lost on the way to the freeway so I had to tell him where to go. His GPS was working fine (I could see it from my leather perch 10 paces behind the driver. There were water glasses but I felt like slumming it so I drank straight from the chilled bottle. My very old limo driver decided I was enjoying my ride so he went very slow (emphasis on “very”) – even though I was trying to catch a plane and even though we were on a freeway. He said, “People are in such a hurry these days.” I said, “I know!”

He shook my hand and told me it was a pleasure giving me a ride to the airport. I had plenty of time because no one was at the Denver airport. It was just me and the TSA. Just lots of blue shirts and me. I had my own private security screening. You’ll be happy to know it went very well (yes, emphasis on “very” – it turns out the TSA folks are really friendly when you are the only person going through the screening). I wanted to ask if they would give me my bottle of Sumi Ink back; they took it from me 4 years ago in Washington DC because I forgot it was in my bag; but I decided there must be a statute of limitations on ink retrieval. Best not push my luck.

I grabbed a mocha (best mocha ever!), hopped a plane, landed in Seattle to, well yes, it was raining. Denver = sun. Seattle = rain. The light rail from the airport to downtown was delayed so I stood in the rain (wet) but I finally made it to my studio (I’m not really living anywhere at present so my studio is my temporary crash pad). I walked through the rain (more wet) to the front door of the building and found that it was padlocked shut. There was a note that said, “The front door is broken, use your key card to get in the side door.” I’ve been gone a month so I suppose there might have been mention of a key card but this was the first I’d heard of it. I didn’t have a key card. I was very sad (emphasis on “very”). I stowed my luggage in a bush (still more wet), went around back, climbed a 12 ft fence (wet, wet, wet) and found a door that still accepted keys. I got in (soaked). After I propped a door and retrieved my luggage I sloshed all the way up the stairs to the fourth floor (my shoes made that nasty squeaking sound of wet rubber on concrete floors. That noise gives me the chills so you could say that I gave myself the chills).

My inner sociologist, dry in his sweater and smoking his pipe like a true academic, took one look at me and said, “Are you aware of the choices that you are making?” He took out his notepad to record my response. I know his game so as water dripped off the end of my nose I said, “Please define the word ‘aware.’” He took a puff on his pipe, closed his book and said, “You can be very annoying – emphasis on ‘very.’”

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Join The Symphony

Posted on January 23, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

685. 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 exercise in class was a word cluster, a free association exploration about stepping into personal truth. Afterward, Winifred shared an image that surfaced during her cluster. She told the group that it was as if every living being on earth was a musical note in a song. When she stepped into a global perspective, she heard all the notes combine into a chorus. As she moved further out into a more universal perspective, the planets had songs and everything combined into a symphony of notes, high and low and everything in between.

According to her revelation, no note was insignificant; the symphony, to have full power, needed all the notes – so to diminish or minimize her self was to diminish the voice of the symphony. She said, “The world needs our notes.” And then, after a pause, she added, “…within every individual is a universe and each emotion is like a single musical note. In order for an individual to fulfill their universal note, they must feel the full spectrum of music within themselves.” She said, “Even suffering is a note, a note necessary to complete the symphony.”

Her message: Living your truth means to play without inhibition in the symphony of the universe. We need your note to complete the sound.

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Die To The Past

Posted on January 21, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

683. 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, Diane and I talked at length about dying to our pasts. She shared a potent meditation image – looking from her grave and in death no longer being invested in the limitations and attachments that previously confined her life. Her fears no longer mattered. She let go of her past and in so doing opened the way for growth and a new relationship with her future.

In story cycles, a character must leave behind all that they know in order to step into unknown territories. It is the movement away from the known, the comfortable, and the safe that is the metaphoric threshold to adventure and transformation. Leaving behind what you know is “story language” for dying to your past. Frodo will always return to the Shire but he will be a greatly changed. The Frodo that leaves on the adventure is not the same Frodo that returns. He knows too much about middle earth and himself to resume his former identity.

The caterpillar’s body does heroic battle resisting the cell replication that will eventually bring re-formation to a new way of being called butterfly. The caterpillar’s body reads the sweeping tide of change as cancer and fights back. This classic struggle within the caterpillar’s body of change meeting the conservative impulse ends when the resistance ends; the caterpillar can fight no more and surrenders the struggle. The imperative for change overwhelms the old identity; the caterpillar’s body releases the known and collapses into mush. Only then can the new form materialize and the new form is beyond the caterpillars capacity to imagine.

Diane’s meditation, Frodo’s journey, and the caterpillar’s process of transformation are the same metaphoric image. Each had to die to the past to step into the possible. The lesson over and over again, whether in story cycles, nature or human transformation, is that the new identity will always be greater than our wildest dreams. The only requirement is that we surrender the struggle, leave behind all that we know, experience the little death, and take a step.

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Take The Train

Posted on January 10, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

672. 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 on a train. It is night so I can see the distant lights, feel the swaying of the car, hear the whistle blow as if from a distance. I love riding trains. They are calming, peaceful. People relax when they are on a train. All around me people are sleeping and the few conversations happening are in hushed tones.

Although it might seem that planes and trains serve the same purpose, they are vastly different. A trip on a plane is nothing like the experience of a train. On the train, we are not crammed in to too tight spaces, buckled in and consistently distracted from where we are – as happens on a plane. When you are on a plane they don’t want you to think too hard about what you are really doing (hurtling through space in an aluminum tube at 30,000 feet). The beverage service and movie are there to keep you occupied. They tell me that babies cry on planes because the air pressure hurts their ears but I have a different theory: babies know they are skipping through space at 500 miles an hour and haven’t yet been socialized out of their feelings; they cry because it is the only sensible response to their predicament.

Not so on a train. Here, there is an entirely different philosophy at play. On the train, we are encouraged to look, we are free to walk about; there is a viewing deck! We are encouraged to take in our surroundings, not be distracted from them. We are on the ground. We are “in” it, not above it (if they are not yet sleeping, my car mates are staring out the window, deep in contemplation). Planes transport people from point A to point B; the “in between” space is tolerated. Trains are experiences; the “in between” space is the point. You can’t be in a hurry if you choose the train. Babies sleep on trains; they can’t help it, nothing rocks you to sleep like the motion of a train.

It is a happy accident that I am on this train tonight. And, I am amused at the theme appropriateness of this happy accident: this week I’ve been meditating on presence and slowing down – and wondering where in our contemporary lives does circumstance actually assist us in slowing down. I’ve found my metaphor on a train.

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Open And Experience

Posted on December 27, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Walking through a driving rain in downtown Seattle, I had my hood up and eyes down and stepped into a flock of pigeons just as a bus passed spooking the entire pigeon squadron into taking flight – straight at me. I was suddenly and completely engulfed in a swoosh of wings and riot. I don’t know why but I closed my eyes, not for protection, but because I wanted to feel the experience of so many wings flapping around me. The sensation was as if being lifted, stirred and then returned to the ground. After having so many crow attacks I am generally skittish when birds fly at my face; my first reaction is to duck and cover. Not today. For some reason (that is beyond my capacity to reason), rather than close and protect, I opened and experienced. Lift, stir, gentle return to the ground. “The pigeons took me with them,” I thought as I opened my eyes and laughed.

I flipped back my hood and looked up into the rain. The pigeons vanished and I was getting soaked and awakened. It was as if I left this plane of reality for a moment and needed a cold splash of rain to bring me back. It was just a few days ago, upon Marilyn’s request, that I went outside to pick a fight with the crows and instead of having a good crow bout I ended up doing the same thing, hood back, looking into the sky as the rain soaked and cleansed me of my dark mood. This time, staring into a steel grey sky, rain running down my cheeks and off my forehead, I remembered a phrase that I read this morning from Thom Hartmann’s book, The Prophet’s Way: “You must behave as if your every act, even the smallest, impacted a thousand people for a hundred generations. Because it does.”

I stared into the sky surprised at my reaction to the birds and asked myself, “What ripple would I send through a hundred generations if my first response to any situation was to open and experience rather than close and protect myself?” And, an even better question followed, “How different would I be in the world if I lived open to any experience?” Isn’t that another way of saying, “be present to what is?” Flipping my hood back up I discovered in a chilly rush that my hood was filled with water that poured down my back so I took flight a second time, howling and dancing my own version of the pigeon launch, chanting, “open, open, open…!” Of this I am certain: a hundred generations from now they will most likely still be laughing!

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Shine

Posted on December 25, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

656. 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 woke up this morning thinking about lights under a bushel; hiding your light. Now, I’m not really a bible guy. I think there are many paths up the mountain and the higher you go the more distinct and individual is your path – and the more universal are your revelations. The path is yours and the recognition is oneness. So, it always piques my curiosity when I have a distinct image pop into my noggin, especially in this season steeped in metaphor and with the portent of transformation.

A week ago I put out an offer for 10 free coaching sessions and was delighted when over 30 people responded. I decided to try and honor each request. I have been bah-humbug during this holiday, looking for some way to reconnect with the deeper meaning and rituals of this season; I wanted to create a ritual for myself that was truly a gift of giving and receiving. I bumbled into my ritual with these calls. Each was rich and warm and magical. Each call in one way or another was about removing the bushel from the light – these amazing brilliant, beautiful people recognizing and desiring to offer without inhibition their gift to the world. I was more than once moved to tears at the yearning and courage and simple perseverance of their impulse to life. In every case, they wanted to share their light. Think about that for a minute. Isn’t that true of you and every person you pass on the street? The impulse to offer yourself and your gifts without inhibition is at the core of each of us. As Joe once said, “Our impulse is to wholeness.” What would it take for you to remove the bushel and fully share your light? I ask myself that question, too.

I realized that the light-under-the-bushel image was actually my wish – for myself and for you. If you are hiding it is a good bet that you think you will be judged. If you are hiding it is a good bet that you think your light is not worthy. Or, perhaps you have invested in a mistaken idea of humble. In any case, why are you blunting the light? I no longer believe in angry judgmental gods (they seem particularly human to me – gods worth worshiping certainly must live beyond the fields of judgment and selection); these notions live at the heart of separation and the need to hide. My wish for us in this new era is to share our light, without inhibition or editor, to throw away the debate of worth, to know unequivocally that the whole of nature needs what you bring, how you bring it, and masking it robs us all of the magnitude of our collective brilliance. Put down the bushel. Show up for me and I promise I will show up for you.

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Leave Yourself Behind

Posted on November 26, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

My grandfather is 103 years old. Last time I saw him he said, “Heaven don’t want me and hell won’t have me.” He feels as if he is ready to go yet remains in an earthly limbo. He eats. He sleeps. He waits. He has outlived two of his four children, his wife and all of his peers. He still flirts with the ladies in the lunchroom though it is more out of habit than from ambition.

In every story cycle there is a place where “what once was” no longer exists and “what will be” is not yet come. It is in this in-between place where the old identity dissipates: you are no longer a child though not yet an adult; it is the time of first pregnancy, you are no longer singular and not yet a parent. In a story, the in-between is usually told through the metaphor of a journey; you must leave behind everything that you know to find what has always been within you. Frodo leaves the Shire as one being; he returns to the Shire as another being, having discovered his darkness and his capacity to persevere. Journeys are bitter sweet.

Rumi said, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” It is ironic, isn’t it, to leave yourself behind so that you might find yourself? To think we will find love in another person only to discover that it is the love within ourselves that we seek.

I am not yet half of my grandfather’s age and yet I already know that heaven and hell are both here – not some other place – and we choose which we occupy. We are both the seeker and the gatekeeper. I am perfectly capable of dividing myself against myself and, therefore, occupying hell. I am also capable of knowing myself as whole, regardless of my circumstance, and that is the door to heaven. And, there is a third “place” that is neither heaven nor hell but the space of the journey; all life is movement after all. There are no arrivals; heaven and hell are rest stops, the occasional oasis along the way.

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Live Like Riley

Posted on November 8, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Riley the black Labrador is 15 years old and fetches logs from the Puget Sound. Riley’s human has a tough time lifting and launching the logs for Riley to fetch. He doesn’t throw them, they are too big to throw; he launches them. Riley waits until his log is really far from shore and then he does what retrievers do. It is a beautiful thing to watch because Riley’s mouth is not big enough to bite the log. He has to find something at the end to chomp and then, rather than swimming the log to shore in his mouth, he tugs it inch by inch until he drags it back onto the beach, wagging his tail the whole way. His task seems impossible but he finds a way. The enormity of his task is a source of his pleasure. Riley will no longer fetch little sticks; they pose no challenge.

We are like Riley only rather than retrieving logs we tell stories. We wrap stories around our challenges. Riley would never think, “That stick is too big!” If he had language (and who really knows, he might), he’d think, “Let’s see!” or “What’s next!” Riley is not invested in what the other Labrador’s think or how he measures up with the other pooches. He does not spend time wondering if he is a good enough retriever. “Launch the log!” he thinks wagging his tail in anticipation of his task. Our challenges are rarely too big – the actions necessary are rarely difficult; only our stories make it so. Do you wish to write a book? What is the story that prevents you from writing? Do you yearn for more space? What is the story that leads you to pack your days so full? Do you love your humans? What is the story that prevents you from letting them know?

There is no greater point to Riley’s task; the purpose is in the relationship with his human. We derive our purpose from much the same thing. And, not unlike Riley, we find great pleasure when the sticks we fetch are just beyond what we believe possible to achieve. If the stick is too small, like Riley, we get bored. Unlike Riley, however, we will tell a story justifying why the small stick is just the right size of challenge, safe, and good to fetch because we already know how to do it. I admire Riley. When he sees the too small stick he sits on the beach, looks at his human, wags his tail with pleasure as if to say, “Oh, we can do better than that!”

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Exit The Mind Field

Posted on November 6, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

607. 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 self-judgment that I often hear from clients, “I should be in the world in a more dynamic/expressive/productive way. I am not fulfilling my potential.” Probe a bit deeper and inevitably I find that there is also a world-view supporting the self-judgment: “I live in a minefield.” I love this term, minefield, or, as another client used to say, more to the point, “mind field.”

How can you possibly expect to fulfill your potential if you believe you live in a field of mines? If you exist in a minefield, you step lightly if you step at all. The expectation to fulfill potential does not match the world-view. In a minefield, survival is the best you can do.

The expectation of fulfilled potential comes from the desire to be in the world in a different way. The question is rarely about potential and is usually about safety. A child that does not feel safe will not play. An adult that does not feel safe will not bring their best offer; they cease to express. To be more dynamic/expressive/productive you must first decide to exit the minefield. It is not fulfilled potential but freedom of movement that we seek; “fulfilled potential” is an abstraction; freedom to move and breathe and speak is tangible.

Identify the mines. Do you compare yourself with others? Who? Why is this other person the standard bearer for your life? Have you set an absurdly high expectation or invested in the notion of “perfect?” Who set the bar that is impossible to clear? Whose permission do you seek? What story do you wrap around your choices? There are legitimate minefields in this world and then there are mind fields. Learning to distinguish between the two is a great first step. If you are truly in a minefield retrace your steps and get out. If you are in a mind field, retrace your steps and get out. Reclaim your safety.

The rivers of creativity cannot flow through you if you are afraid to move. Potential is not a vessel to fill it is a quality of movement in your life.

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