Perspective | The Direction of Intention

Wake Up To A New World

Posted on September 4, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

891. 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 isn’t explanations that carry us forward, it’s our desire to go on.” Paolo Coello, Brida

I had a very late night. Combined with a very early flight I had no choice but to sleep my way across the country. Not only did I wake up in a different city, a different time zone, a different climate, I also felt as if I woke up into a different lifetime. I was away for a very long time. In that time I traveled by car across seven states in less than 24 hours. I stood in the pouring rain. I heard thunder roll without ceasing for over 15 minutes. I drank too much wine, ran from a skunk, loaded a truck with furniture and boxes, played poorly a ukulele, laughed until I had to sit down, cleaned a pond of leaves and debris, put my feet in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, fell asleep on the sugar white sands of the beach, danced like it was the last day of my life, ate when I was hungry, walked at midnight almost every night, sang a James Taylor song over and over, and took a load of treasured shoes to the salvation army. In that time, Tom died and I was inundated with calls from people who wanted me to know. Friends long lost reached out to me to wrap me in their warmth and condolences. I had conversations of grief and celebration while standing on a pier, sitting on a park bench, riding in a car, sitting in my bed, and walking through the leaves fallen too early. I took off my shoes so I could feel them crunch beneath my feet.

When I stepped off the plane I entered into a familiar airport but it seemed as if it was familiar from another lifetime. I knew the place but was no longer the person who knew the place. I stood in SeaTac for a few moments and wondered if I was dreaming. People raced passed me. They had flights to catch and family to meet. I was in the way so I stepped to the side. I kept waiting for the scene to change. I kept waiting to wake up but I didn’t so I wandered through the airport, I taught a tourist how to buy a light rail ticket, I bought one for myself and rode the train into downtown.

Once, many years ago, I visited my elementary school and although everything was as it had been when I was a boy, it all seemed so small. As I walked from the train station to my studio I had the same impression. This place has become small. Or I have grown and what once seemed boundless now feels tight and confining. Standing in my studio, I opened the windows to let in the air, I remembered Carol saying, “I’ve broken up with the world. I want a whole new relationship with it so I’ve let the old relationship go.” That’s it, I think. I have broken up with the world. I’m not going to wake up from this dream because I woke up into this dream. While I was gone I let the old world go. I can’t explain it. I have new eyes. I’ve awakened to an opportunity for a whole new relationship with the world.

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Play The Ukulele

Posted on August 30, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

888. 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 night I was at Ukulele practice in a garden on the shores of Lake Michigan. I am a rank beginner and learning to play the Ukulele with 47 other people. We were laughing our way through Over The Rainbow. I was playing air Ukulele pretending that I was expert at my chord progressions, when a sphinx butterfly circled us, flew into the garden right next to me, and began drinking from the flowers. It was close enough to touch. I’d never seen anything like it before. I was so captivated by the butterfly that I forgot to pretend that I was strumming.

A sphinx butterfly looks like an exotic hummingbird. It is shaped like a hummingbird, its wings beat like a hummingbird, it hovers like a hummingbird, and yet it is not a hummingbird. My section of the ukulele band completely dropped their chord progressions and joined me in gaping at the butterfly. We entered an intense debate about whether it was a hummingbird or indeed a sphinx butterfly. The people seated to the left of the garden voted for hummingbird. Those of us on the right were solidly in the butterfly camp. I had no idea so I went with those seated around me. Each camp had solid justifications and good reasons for their point of view. The butterfly paid us no attention. It was not concerned about our debate or our need to identify its species. It continued feeding regardless of the label we attached to it.

I can’t help it. In moments like this I step into the role of witness. I watched people enrapt by a butterfly. I watched their loving debate, their laughter, their awe. I watched this group of amazing people hold their treasured ukuleles of many colors – green, purple, midnight blue, orange, red, pink and sky blue, white and black – watching a butterfly of many colors – pink, orange, purple, salmon, white, blue and black – and I was in awe of their awe. They did not see how beautiful they were as they admired the beauty of the butterfly.

This is the role of the human being isn’t it? To see the beauty of the world. To appreciate and give a name to the awesome and unimaginable. To engage with the beauty and then to join in a simple way with the creation of beauty: this group who gathers each Wednesday night to play their ukulele’s together and laugh and drink wine and gape in utter amazement at a butterfly.

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Gratitude, Perspective, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: awe, beauty, witness | Leave a comment »

Stand In The Chaos

Posted on August 29, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Here’s the last one from the archives. I’ll be back live tomorrow. This was post 282:

This is my favorite revelation of the week. It comes from a friend who has for the past several years been doing big work on herself. Like all big shifts of perception it sounds so simple but is hard to embody. I’m beginning to understand that most revelations do not come with fireworks and a brass band; they are subtle. They are simple because they’ve been there all along and we just did not see them. They slip in with little fanfare, like removing your sunglasses.

This is how she said it: I’ve learned to be in the chaos without buying into the chaos. See, no fanfare. And, if you are truly underwhelmed, ask yourself when was the last time you resisted, defended, justified, needed to be right, fought for others to see what you see, needed approval, bought into the notion of perfection, or any of a thousand other ways you buy into the chaos. Are you anxious, afraid, motivated by what you fear or do not want, in survival mode, or certain that the universe is throwing obstacles in your way? Chaos, chaos, chaos.

Can you imagine what it might mean in your life to be able to stand solidly in the chaos without needing to control it, contain it, or deny it? Can you be present without needing to manipulate or force anything or anyone yet say without inhibition exactly what you need (it’s not the need that matters, it is how you fill it that defines you).

Reread the first part of her statement: I’ve learned to be. Her focus shifted. The earth did not shake, the clouds did not part, no ascension or angels or twenty-one gun salute. Her focus shifted, she realized choices are creative acts and instead of being caught in the whirlpool, it swirls around her.

What could you buy if you stopped investing in chaos?

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Grasp The Impossible

Posted on August 5, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

866. 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 406:

Yesterday David and I were supposed to talk about teaching opportunities but instead we fell into a great conversation about communal narrative, the power of belief, quantum mechanics, and the incomprehensible size of the universe. If you want to experience the sacred all you need do is look through a telescope or a microscope. Or, better yet, take a walk and pay attention. Or, even better, look into the eyes of someone you love. Or, even better still, look into the eyes of someone you don’t know and allow that their hopes and dreams and desires are just as big and potent and real as are yours. Incomprehensible! And that’s precisely the point: if you can grasp it in its entirety it is probably not worth knowing. How might we tell our story together if we allowed that it is impossible to grasp the enormity of any living being?

Just before I went scuba diving for the first time Lora was giddy but she couldn’t tell me why. She was an advanced diver and knew the revelation that is available for first time divers. There is the surface of the ocean in all its beauty and drama and that’s what most of us see; ask most people about the ocean and they will talk about the surface or what they’ve seen in National Geographic. The first dive beneath the surface, not just seeing it but being in it, there is beauty and color and the shocking infinity and power of life that opens when you go just a little ways beneath the surface. There are no words. Your inner world changes when you recognize how little you really know of the outer world.

What was even more shocking for me was returning to the surface after my first dive. What was true beneath the surface was also true above it. I’d stopped seeing the beauty and the color and the teeming life above the water line because I had generic words for it: I assumed I knew so I stopped seeing and experiencing how incomprehensible (sacred) is this world we inhabit.

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Force Nothing

Posted on August 4, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

865. 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 402:

Today Saul talked about moving through life with more than a dull force. It was an amazing clear image to me, a community of people who only know how to move through life using dull force. Not sharp force, not intense force: dull. I imagined the word ‘dull’ to mean a few things: 1) unconscious and 2) blunted from feeling; life as dull color.

Many years ago just prior to moving to Los Angeles my friend Dwight gave me a how-to-drive-in-LA lesson. He said, “It’s all about forcing traffic to do what you want it to do.” We laughed as my usually benign and peaceful friend Dwight morphed into a self-centered road demon forcing traffic to his will. His lesson was more than insightful, it was prescient: I found drivers in LA to be mostly aggressively unconscious of others and aggressively protected against feeling the impact of their hostility: accidents and a violent city was always the other person’s fault. It was, to me, the city of moving-through and very hard to be present-in. It was the image that hopped into my mind when Saul said, “dull force.” Rodney King, road rage and marshal law; I imagine the land upon which the city was built to be in shock with dull force; all of those orange groves paved over, the hills and blue-blue sky choked with the exhaust of automobiles driven by people trying to be some other place.

Saul bent over to demonstrate a point, pretending to tie his shoe, he said “If you allow there are options other than trying to force your way through your day, you might actually be in your day; you might see that there is no stress necessary to engage with the tasks before you. Rather than dull force you might actually participate within your day!” The idea tickled him and we laughed.

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Be Zero

Posted on August 2, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

863. 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 401:

I told Scott that I was at zero; all around me was a blank slate. He smiled and said, “That reminds me of a poem by Hafiz I recently heard:

Zero
Is where the Real Fun starts.

There’s too much counting
Everywhere else!”

I laughed and he said, “You’re right where the real fun starts.” How does this always happen: seeking sympathy my pals hit me with a poem and I realize with cartoon stars swirling around my head that I am again standing right where I want to be! Zero is the beginning of the adventure. As choices go, Zero can be utter stillness, the wasteland, lost in the woods, a score on a math test, or the moment before the big bang. It most certainly is a state of mind.

Once, I was represented by a gallery whose owner was also a painter. His home was his studio and in one of the seasonal fires sparked by humans and blown into conflagration by the Santa Ana winds, his house and all of his paintings burned. He was at zero. He said, “There’s nothing but space around me and I’ve never felt more alive.”

Scott watched my thought train and said, “It’s a good one isn’t it.” I said, “Now that I know better, Zero is the only place I want to be.”

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Consider Laughing

Posted on July 31, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

861. 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 every FL!P cartoon I also write a short bit of commentary that will someday blossom into a blog post. I pass the commentary to Skip and magician that he is, he jumps into an incredibly complex process to enter the strip and commentary into the FL!P site for publication. I give him the commentary on a separate document and identify for him which strip goes with which comment by the last line in the strip. Tonight I was preparing the next batch of commentary and saw the list of last lines as a kind of poem or theme map. Here’s an example of 6 last lines in sequence:

Are the edges cutting you?
They forget to use their precious time creating relationships.
Now, no one has enough time and everyone is looking for money.
I think it’s been a while since you made contact with humans.
Wouldn’t it be easier to ask people what they want?
Shoot me an email and I’ll get back to you.

I laughed when I saw it. I’ve known for a while that I am producing micro series of cartoons based on themes that interest me in the moment but I had no idea how clear the themes actually were.

I learned in school that humor is all about other people’s pain. We laugh at the guy slipping on the banana. A pie in the face is funny as long as it happens to someone else. Beneath the mask of humor lives the mask of tragedy. The reverse is also true. Tricksters are in the world to help us not take our selves or our gods too seriously. Every bloody king needs a court jester. Beneath the tragedy runs a river of humor. You’ve heard the phrase, “I laughed, and otherwise I’d have cried.” The mask of humor and the mask of tragedy work together like the vine and the soil. They provide nutrient for each other. They also provide relief from the other. That’s how polarities work. They are dynamic.

Skip and I started FL!P because there are conversations in the world of entrepreneurs that people aren’t having because they are taking themselves too seriously. We thought that if we poked some fun at the whole affair we’d be able to surface some of the deeper conversations. Humor creates movement. Humor creates chaos and chaos moves toward order. I’m of the opinion that most of our world could use a bit of the trickster. Our national jammies are wound too tight and could use some counterclockwise rotation. The issues won’t go away. The tragedy will wait for the laughter to stop. I think it’s time we made some contact with humans.

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Embrace Your Discipline

Posted on July 28, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

858. 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 occurs to me that during this phase of my life I am learning discipline. Not that I’ve ever been undisciplined but a short gander at my current daily activity looks like a masters class in self-direction. I laughed out loud when a few minutes ago I looked up “discipline” in the thesaurus and the word “punishment” topped the list. The other choices are regulation, self-control, and subject (as in field or specialty). I generally resist rules, am not in to punishment, and am a generalist to such a degree that I have no field or specialty. So, discipline must be necessary to help me come to some semblance of balance before I’m too old to balance. All will be lost the day I wear pants with elastic waistbands and Velcro shoes but until then some balance may be possible.

Two years ago I decided to write posts every day. I decided to take on a daily writing commitment because the need for fodder opened my eyes. I had to pay attention to all the colors of life swirling around me if I was going to have something to write about. Little gestures of kindness became visible. The world is much more vibrant than I understood before I began paying attention. I’ve always been a painter so I’ve practiced “seeing” all of my life but a new kind of sight opened when I decided to write. Also, I’ve never considered myself a writer so my sub-intention for writing each day was to learn to write. Double discipline: open my eyes to see and become a better writer.

Two months ago I committed to publishing a daily cartoon strip for an audience entrepreneurs. Although the strip is crude (by design), each panel takes a few hours to complete and in just a few months I’ve drawn over 120 panels. Today, like most days, I spent the afternoon drawing and inking cartoons. I’m trying to get two months ahead because the strip publishes everyday, seven days a week. It is not lost on me that since beginning the cartoon I find that I am listening with a new set of ears. I’m becoming a world-class eavesdropper. Everything is fair game for cartoon material and everything – especially the most serious conversations – sound like a cartoon. People have no idea that they are riotously funny. In cartooning I’ve already learned that few things in this life warrant the weight that we give to it. Our addiction to drama and blaming is a comedy gold mine. I am my own best source for a good yuck. The discipline is to listen and laugh.

Walking home from tai chi this morning made me realize that I also have a daily tai chi practice. I began my study almost 2 years ago and I love it. I start each day with my practice and I am changing in some fundamental ways because of it. The discipline is to root over what Saul calls “the bubbling spring.” Connect to the chi and empty of all forms of pushing. The discipline is to empty and listen.

Listen. Empty. Laugh. See. Balance. Punishment is nowhere in sight. Alan says that the root word of discipline is disciple –and today I take great delight in my chosen path of discipleship.

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Be An Idealist

Posted on July 21, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

851. 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 rolled down the windows even though it was still hot. The sun was almost down and we just began the climb out of the central valley. Skip said, “Do you think it’s cool enough to turn off the air-conditioner?” Neither one of us liked air-conditioning and only used it when absolutely necessary.

“Of course!” I chirped. We rolled down the windows and the hot air blasted us. I put my hands out of the car window and said, “See! Nice and cool!” Skip smirked and called me an idealist. Truer words were never spoken. I am an idealist.

I’m told (often) that the best thing about me is that I tell a good story. I will put a good spin on every experience. I’m also told that the worst thing about me is that I tell a good story. Is it denial or optimism? Am I detaching, dealing, not dealing or dancing? Am I telling myself a lie or loving to live? Maybe it is all of the above.

Like everyone I know I’ve walked a broken road. No ones’ path is pretty. Earlier in my life I invested in the tragedy and wrestled with every angel. I made up lots of demons to fight. My gifts scared me so I pretended they were not there and served the gifts of others. I dialed down my life-force. I lived in resistance. I took on everyone’s pain and made others problems and priorities my own. I created limits and then moaned about my confinement. I did all of those things, made messes and looked to the heavens and asked for a break.

The heavens looked back at me and said, “It’s not happening to you. You are creating it. If you want a break then make a break, break something, or take a break. Either way, stop pretending that it is someone elses job to make it pretty for you.”

What I broke (am breaking) was my idea of myself. Carol recently told me that she was breaking up with her relationship with the world. She wanted a new relationship. She was tired of waiting for the world to change her story so she decided to change her story of the world. I was tired of telling a broken story. I was tired of telling a story of being broken. I was tired of making my focus other peoples’ stuff. So, I broke up with my story. Call me an idealist or tell me that I’m in denial but this life is mine to interpret and I much prefer joy stories to frustration. As someone once said to me, “I’m the only one who feels my anger so getting angry all the time is only hurting me.” That rule works in reverse, too.

An hour after the sun set we were off the valley floor and the air finally cooled. I looked at Skip and said, “See! I told you it was cool!” He laughed and wrinkled his brow. I said, “This is the strategy of an idealist. Claim that it is cool and then wait long enough for reality to match the ideal.” It always does.

Filed under: Perspective, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: broken, idealist, narrative, story | Leave a comment »

Be Very Human

Posted on July 8, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Being human is messy. We are a mass of contradictions. We say one thing and mean another. We hold others to standards that we do not ourselves hold. We change our minds. We often hear but rarely listen. We misunderstand, miscommunicate, mistake, and simply miss. We judge and run and hide and then pretend that we have courage and conviction. Sometimes we do. Mostly we have courage when we don’t try to have it; courage usually feels like terror. Conviction shows up when there is a distinct absence of dogma.

And we learn. We try again. And again. We gaze at the next hill and wonder what is beyond it. We get back up after being knocked to the ground. We are eternally hopeful even if we do not see it. We reach. We take another step. We desire to get better, be better. We want to know. We read self help books and aspire to create a better world. We want fulfillment and peace.

Recently I watched an irate woman frost a birthday cake. I thought the cake looked fine but she was fuming with herself, thinking she should have done better. When I asked why she was so upset she cried, “Because it matters!” It is the little things that matter. It is the small stuff that rings our humanity.

Another day and I wade through the muck. In the mire I had a conversation that upset me. She saw me retreat and said, “Come back out again.”

I said, “No!” and pouted like a five year old refusing to eat broccoli. I shook my head to emphasize my resolve.

She said, “Please. Please come out.” I looked up and realized that she was not trying to hurt me and that I was being silly. I stepped out from behind my steely resolve. No one wants to be in a shell. We reach toward each other even when it looks like refusal.

We humans are optimistic. We tip toward love even in the midst of the murkiest moments. Lurking beneath the phrase, “I don’t know how I am going to get through it,” is the faith that transformation is not only possible but it is imminent. We get through it every time and we never know how. We understand how only after we have done it. The stuff of life is in forging the path through it. And then we are changed; we are better for the slog.

“Step into the love. Move toward it.” I said. She was hurting. When she scowled I added, “It is all that I know how to do.”

She said, “That sounds like a phrase from Saint Michael! It’s not very human.”

In fact, it is the very thing that makes us human. To step the other way is a path to nowhere. And I know in her despair that she said one thing and meant another. We are both humans. We are messy. Transformation is imminent.

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