The Direction of Intention

389.
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The sand hill cranes leave prints in the mud. They return to the river each night, find a nice sand bar, swoop in by the thousands and land en masse to await the return of the sun. Although I don’t know this to be true I imagine they huddle together, moving like a river eddy, impressing the sand and mud with a map of their movement. It’s an incredible map to see! The natural world’s Jackson Pollock made more impressive when you consider they’ve made versions of this map at this time of year for centuries!

Remove your shoes and walk the map and you’ll receive a crane reflexology treatment. Their map is 3 dimensional and massages the bottoms of your feet! All of life’s stresses slip away when you add your impressions to their map. Tragic tales and stories of woe melt like butter as crane perspective fills your body and soul. I felt an entire year’s worth of life gumbo leave with a sigh.

As I stood on the map I wondered what geography I scribe in the mud of my life. What mark does my eddy leave? Of this I am certain: if you removed your shoes and walked my mud map you would be more likely to break a toe than leave behind your stress. Now that I have had crane reflexology and filled my metaphoric cup with their perspective I am committed to tracing a different life map. Smaller steps, more circles, with attention paid to my natural migration pattern instead of walking the concrete paths and straight lines of urban human flight. At the end of my days I want my fellow walkers to be inspired to take off their shoes, stand in my impressions, and feel the goodness of the being that once walked in this place.

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381.
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I see him coming as I pull up to the crosswalk. He doesn’t look well. He is a tall man, thin, maybe 70 years old. I know he is going to cross the street so I stop well in front of the walkway. He looks tortured. He is in pain and I wonder what ails him. I think of Parcival sitting on the couch with the Fisher King, wanting to ask, “What ails you?” but social convention keeps his question unasked. I honor my urban social convention and keep my window rolled up. His clothes are curious, an odd assembly of worn blue jeans, high top sneakers, a rumpled misbuttoned shirt covered by a black pin striped suit jacket. He has a pink baseball cap tipped slightly to the back of his head.

As he continues across the street I am taken aback by the writing on the back of his jacket. In white paint, big bold lettering he has written: Rapture by Death in Progress.
“Easter must be nigh,” I think to myself. And, then, “What does that mean, really? Rapture by Death in Progress?” Several years ago I lived on the central coast of California and one chilly Easter Sunday as I walked on Pismo Beach I saw a man, dressed in a loincloth and a turban, crawling across the beach. Dragging behind from a length of rough rope he’d fastened around his waist was a large cross. He was in agony. He had a similar sign strapped across his shoulders though I can’t recall the exact wording. Something about his suffering setting him free. I learned that this crawling man tortures himself in the same manner every Easter.

Rapture (noun): 1. Overwhelming happiness. 2. Mystical transportation. Since there is no apparent happiness, overwhelming or otherwise I have to assume that both men’s desire is for mystical transformation. I wonder if the death that is in progress is intentional and imminent or the type that awaits us all. Either way I have no doubt that death, by definition is transformative; on the list of mysteries it holds the number one position so it is almost certainly mystical, too.

Suffering or exhaustion is common in the ritual practices of mystic transportation in many traditions. There are many routes available to go beyond the threshold where your rational mind is willing to go. I understand the desire to see what is on the other side of that portal. Yet, I know enough to know that the initiate or priestess has to be ready for the experience, mature. The vision is certainly personal but the point of a mystical experience is to benefit the community. If they are going across the boundary for personal gain alone, or to demonstrate their capacity, they are dangers to themselves and the community. The impulse to put a sign on your back announcing your pain is a warning that you are not ready. The journey is self-abuse for self-aggrandizement and should not be taken.

I pulled through the intersection and down the road I passed a man at a bus stop, plugged into his earphones and dancing ecstatically. “Ah,” I thought, “Rapture by Life in Progress.” I knew what it was even without a sign.

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363.
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On my drive home a few days ago I caught a bit of an interview with Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun. He was explaining an essential idea that he learned from his grandfather: passive violence is the root cause of all physical forms violence. “When we see people in poverty and do nothing,” he said, “that is a passive form of violence.”

I immediately thought of how we fund our public schools. Each school is funded according to the tax base of the property surrounding the school. The schools surrounded by wealthiest homes receive more money; the schools surrounded by modest homes receive less; the schools that receive the least amount of money are in the poorest neighborhoods. India has its caste system; the United States has its tax code. Is not this what Arun Gandhi means by passive violence? Add to this the application of a standardized test applied equally to all schools with the jaw-dropping assumption that all schools play on a level playing field. Is this passive violence or something more intentional? Certainly the children know the difference; the children feel the impact.

Here is a question I asked in one of my first posts:

What world would you embody if your desire was not a response to personal lack but an impulse toward greater wholeness for everyone?

What would be your dedication? What story would you tell?

So I change the pronoun and ask it again:

What world would we embody if our desire was not a response to personal lack but an impulse toward greater wholeness for everyone?

What would be our dedication? What story would we tell?

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356.
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Last night I watched Werner Herzog’s film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, about the incredible paintings found in the Chauvet caves in southern France. Over 30,000 years ago, for reasons about which we can only speculate, people painted images of horses, bears, lions, and rhinoceros; they left hand prints and other markings. These are the oldest known images created by humankind. They are shocking in precision, shape, and delicacy of line. They are contemporary – in some of the shots as the camera panned across the images, I could swear that Picasso had spent some time in the cave working out his chiaroscuro. Many of the images overlap and carbon dating tells us that there was 5,000 years between the earlier and later images yet they live as one cohesive intention as if drawn by a single hand.

In the film, Herzog made a statement that seems especially appropriate to ponder on this day. He said, “These people did not live in history.” They did not have clocks or calendars. They did not take classes in the history of the ice age or tribal war in the year 37,000b.c.e; they would never think to distinguish between before and after the contemporary era; the concept of an era would be meaningless, the word “contemporary” would be lost on them. They did not locate themselves in their lives in the same way we do.

It is a leap year and we think we have an extra day. I’ve read the same question in multiple places over the past few days, “What will you do with your extra day?” Having just seen the film I ask myself, “Isn’t every day of life an extra day?” If I lived “out of history” would I note this day as somehow special? I hope so, but not because I consider it a bonus gift in the cereal box of my life. This leap year notion is made possible by how we count, a small hiccup necessary to keep our numbers in line with the cycles of the moon. If I count this day as special, how do I count the other 365 days? Ordinary? I guess a better question is, “What am I counting?”

What if, like today, you went out tomorrow and did something special to mark the extra day of life that you have. And the next day, too. And the next. What if you woke up every morning and asked yourself, “What will I do with my extra day?”

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353.
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The tagline to this blog is something that I think about a lot: it’s not in what you get from life, it’s in what you bring to it. To me, this tagline is more than a clever phrase or nice sentiment. It’s more than a philosophical guide-star. The more that I think about it and do the work that is mine to do in the world, the more I realize that it’s an imperative of our time. It’s also an opportunity. Here’s my thought trail:

Something extraordinary is happening in my lifetime; it is something that has never happened before in the history of humanity. It lives under the broad category of The Pace of Change but this one we rarely talk about or factor into our news of the day even though it impacts every nuance of contemporary life. The first time I heard about it I was sitting in a classroom in elementary school though it meant almost nothing to me at the time. The second time I heard it I was in college and I leaned into it because I knew it was far more important than I could grasp as the time. Now, I’m living in the time that my teachers told me was coming; it’s not an abstraction, no need to think about it, I see it all around me every day.

It is this simple fact: it took many thousands of years for the population of human beings to double. The next doubling only took a few thousand years. The next doubling took a few hundred years. Never before now has the population of human beings doubled in the span of a single lifetime. And, in my lifetime, assuming I will live to a ripe old age, the population will triple. There were 3 billion people on the planet when I was born. In the space of 80 years, a mere blink of the eye, and there will be 9 billion people.

“What’s the big deal?” you might ask. Simply this: our systems and economic ideals – our way of thinking about the world – are rooted and structured in colonial intentions: it’s all about commanding and controlling the resources. It’s all in what we get. Manifest Destiny was a nice idea for the folks playing on the chosen team but was a horror story for the rest of the world’s people. It continues to be a horror story though now we have television and the internet so we can look at it if we choose to look. It might be new news but we citizens of the United States of America consume far more than we produce. We were the only nation on earth to occupy that special category until the late 1970’s. Now, each year, more nations join us in our model of consumption. It is an old and increasingly untenable idea to be in the world according to what we can get. It’s a global economy. That is more than a nice phrase; it is a functional reality and economies, local and global (no separation) run on the movement and flow of resources.

We are quite capable of going to war for oil or water or spice (salt was all the rage before the age of oil) but I suspect we’ve outgrown the good guys-n-bad guys storyline. The chosen people story is another variation of the good guys-n-bad guys story; it’s a useful story to mask a resource war but in a truly global economy it seems a bit out dated. We can do better. The earth’s belly is pregnant with people so obviously interconnected that it requires gargantuan hubris not see that we are, in fact, in this together. Transcending the tribal thing and the colonial thing is, in my mind, the real challenge of our times.

Life lived according to what we get prospers a few in the short term and wreaks havoc on everyone in the long term. It is an operating principle that worked really well for a few people when the population afforded lots of space and we communicated with smoke signals and pigeons. Today, it still works well for a shrinking few but since there are more and more of us… well, you get the picture.

The opportunity is not to continue cycling through models of dominance. The opportunity is to grow and reorient to the world in which we live now. We live in an extraordinary time because the opportunity for real change is present. We can continue to live according to what we get or we can pull our heads out of the sands of the past and take a look at what me might actually bring to the feast.

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334.
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 Bali you often pass through a “split gate” when you enter home compounds or temples. They are beautiful, ever present symbols. Two opposing towers that look like a single structure cleaved in two to form a gate. The halves are symbolic of the polarities, an architectural yin and yang reminding the Balinese of the polarities of our existence and the importance of balance in all things.

Budi took me to a split gate and said, “The half on the left is the masculine, the half on the right is the feminine.” He asked me to pass through the gate and to turn and look back at him. Once I was on the other side he asked, “Now which is left and which is right? What was left in now right, what was right is now left!” He threw his head back and laughed; Budi has a great mischievous laugh, a broad Cheshire grin. He said, “What is important is that you remember that you must pass between!” He was teaching me about balance, about the middle way. This symbol for balance, this split gate is the metaphor for a life transformed, for how it is to be done.

Polarity is not opposition; it is about relativity. It is about awareness. You only know the light because of the existence of dark. There is no light without the dark. There is no learning without mistakes. And there are infinite points between the poles. To walk the middle way it to embrace all the colors and textures in your story, to get out of the business of splitting yourself, to let go the notion of absolutes. It is to allow the full range of possibilities in your life.

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331.
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In his chapter on Taoism, Eric Weiner writes about Wu-wei: “Wu-wei is actually ‘effortless action.’ It’s the difference between making things happen and letting them happen.” I read the chapter this morning and recognized a theme for me in early 2012. Wu-wei is popping up everywhere!

Scott and I recently talked about the difference between soulful action and willful action. Soulful action is Wu-wei.

When I paint, I know I am in the “zone” when the painting comes through me, when I am merely the conduit. I am not trying to make anything happen. It is almost as if I follow; there is no thought, no pushing, no sorting, no composing. Flow is Wu-wei.

In coaching classes for the past few weeks we’ve been discussing the difference between acting according to “what wants to happen,” and trying to force things to happen.

In Tai chi class, we practice letting the energy move us instead of trying to move the energy. Tai Chi is the practice of Wu-wei.

I suspect Wu-wei means to step out of the story of struggle. Today, I was late meeting a friend for lunch. If I hit a red light I’d tell myself a story of being blocked. If I hit a green light, I’d tell myself a story of good fortune! “What great luck!” I’d think. Being “late” was a story (in fact, I got the restaurant before my friend). Being “blocked” by a red light was a story. “Good fortune” in a green light was a story. All was willful action, pushing to make something happen. None of it mattered outside of my mind.

Here’s the paradox: effortless action is something I strive for. Funny, yes? I am most alive when I am stillness in action. I am learning not to strive but to allow.

Eric Weiner continues his thought: “Wu-wei means approaching life less like warfare and more like navigation.” Who doesn’t want to bury the sword, call a truce between the factions in the inner warfare and instead pick up a compass? Woo Wee!

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328.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

You’d be surprised by how much in common training an actor has with coaching an executive. Clarity of intention, specificity of target, honesty of relationship, and ability to honor the greater integrity of the story are just a few of the similarities. The forms are different but the path is the same. Here’s the map:

Know what you can control and what you can’t. It is impossible to clearly see choices if you are trying to control the things that can’t be controlled (like other people’s thoughts and feelings).

Once you’ve let go of what you cannot control, choices become very clear. Where you put your energy shifts from manipulation to creation. In shorthand, you begin to control what you can control: your choices, your opinion of your self, what you want to create.

Intention is a fuzzy thing until choices become clear (and owned). Your relationship with control clarifies your relationship with choice – not the other way around. Your relationship with choice, once clarified, opens the route to a specific actionable intention.

It’s dominoes: a proper relationship with control reveals choice and a proper relationship with choice reveals intention. For the actor, there is nothing more powerful than a clear choice in service to a specific intention. The same is true of an executive. And, intention is pointless if not in service to a greater relationship. In business or on the stage, this is the map to transformation (if you are business type and shudder at the “T” word, insert the word “Innovation” for increased palatability). Art is business. Business is art. The language may be different but the path to mastery is the same.

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321.
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 studio is in an old INS building (immigration and naturalization service). It is the place where people were detained before being admitted into the country or sent back to their home country. Before it was converted to artist’s studios, there was a cellblock, dorms for men and women, dorms for children. On the second floor there are two open-air courtyards, places where the detainees were allowed some time in the sun. On the brick walls of the courtyard, written in black tar, are the names and home countries of the generations of people who were detained here. They were not allowed to have pens or pencils so on warm days when the sealing tar got sticky in the hot sun, the people would dip sticks (or their fingers) into the tar and write their names. In this liminal space, a place that is neither here or there, in the hours and days of detention and boredom and uncertainty, these people left a record of their passage. There are hundreds of names. I was here.

Sometimes I sit in the courtyard and read the names. Some days it is hopeful, as if each name represents a dream in process. Some days I find it depressing, as if each name represents a dream dashed. Some days I don’t see the names at all but a Jackson Pollack wall, a painting that caught the movement of the artists that left their mark. Some days it is like a cave painting, a sacred space like the belly of the whale, a place where people met their monster and were transformed by the trial. Some days I am compelled to add my name to the wall; I was here, too.

Once, I watched a brilliant art teacher work with beginning students (they were teachers) and he had them on oversized paper write their names as big as possible. He asked them to do it again and again, to play with their signature, to write full body signatures until the motion was a dance, layering new signatures on top of old until they realized that to write their signature was the same as drawing. He said to them, “To write your name is to draw yourself into existence. It is to say, ‘This is who I am.’”

Sometimes I think this is what we do everyday, whether we are scratching our names in tar on the wall of detention or dancing our names again and again on oversized lives, we are drawing ourselves into existence. Through our choices and actions we say, “This is who I am and I was here, too.”

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