Power | The Direction of Intention

Give The Gift

Posted on September 6, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Amy and I meet for coffee every few months. We usually meet early in the morning, bleary eyed and mostly exhausted by the path we’ve chosen to walk in this life. That’s why we schedule the date: we are exhausted and seeking inspiration. By the time we part a few hours later we are on fire with possibility. It happens every time. We spark each other. We ignite the imagination and remind each other of the riches of art and creativity in a community that understands the creative through the lens of commodity. We leave behind our need to assign value to our work and simple revel in our reason why.

Early on in life, artists learn to either diminish or inflate their gift. In looking for their place in this tribe that knows value only in monetary terms – and art cannot really be understood in such an abstract value system – they default to judge their own work. In the absence of any meaningful valuation they create a shadow standard. They cannot find a place so they invent one and the invention usually comes in the form of a value box: good enough, not good enough, appreciated, underappreciated, understood, misunderstood. It becomes an inner debate, a reason to hide, a certainty of inauthenticity, a story of hidden genius, a disdain for an ignorant community. It is a story of separation or suffering, a story as disembodied as the commodity system that inspired it.

I shared with Amy that a major part of my learning this year has been to get out of the valuation game. I’ve surrendered my shadow standard and am no longer interested in placing my work in a value box. I’m out of the business of inflation or deflation. I have a gift and need not concern myself with its reception. Mine is to give it. Mine is to give it as boldly and joyfully as possible. The value debate sucks air from my offer.

I’ve learned that arts live at the center so I need not seek any other place. They are connective tissue and any form of separation (belief that I am special or less than useful) is anesthetic; it is the antithesis of art. Art joins. Art enlivens. It awakens. It unifies. It does not fit in boxes. It is ordinary, ubiquitous, a path available to every human being. Gifts are meant to be given without condition. Gifts are meant to be opened and celebrated..

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Listen To Your Voice

Posted on September 5, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

892. 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 Soleil told me that she didn’t recognize my voice. We hadn’t spoken since last November and needless to say a lot has changed in my life since last November. She told me that I sounded alive and vibrant and last time she spoke with me I was a dead man walking (those are my words. She actually said I sounded sad and tired).

Her comment surprised and pleased me. I’m hearing myself from the inside so I’m not aware of how I sound to others. I feel more alive.

I have in one glorious year blown apart everything I knew, challenged everything I believe, doubted all of my first principles, tossed away all of my safety nets, and whittled away all of my worldly possessions, and a good portion of my body weight. I now own several paintings, a drafting table, an easel, and a rocking chair that needs a seat replacement. I’ve even eliminated most of the clothes I owned last November. I walk a small segment of Seattle each day, in fact, my life paths in Seattle fit within a few blocks. I live nowhere and am alive everywhere. My life is at the same time very small and infinite. Last year everything seemed so complicated and now my life is simple. I think, at last, that the world is my studio. I see art everywhere.

Last week while in Wisconsin, late at night, Kerri found a bat flying around the dining room of her house. She’s lived in the house for 24 years and has never had a bat in the house. We caught it in a mesh trashcan with an improvised lid and released it outside. Later I googled “bat medicine” because I like to know what an encounter with an animal symbolizes, especially when my encounters are unusual. Bats represent rebirth. They mark the passage from old forms into the new. They are symbols of initiation and require the conscious creation of new patterns. I laughed when I read it.

I laugh a lot these days. I laughed when Soleil told me that my voice sounded different. “Tell me what you hear?” I asked. She said, “I don’t know, it’s like you are a wholly different person. I’m having trouble reconciling your voice with the person I once knew. You are so alive!”

Before my call with Soleil I had a conversation with a chiropractor about the difference between choosing a path and defaulting to a path that by being chosen. Both are valid but for me there is an important difference. I started coming back to life when I started choosing. I believe what Soleil hears in my voice is someone who no longer defaults by being chosen. If I don’t want to play on a team I’ve learned to sit down. If I’m not sure which road to take I take a break. I’m learning to listen. I’m going nowhere and that is precisely the door to living. I’ve learned that life is vibrant now; if not now, then never, because I’ve given this moment away and I only have so many moments.

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See Her Hands

Posted on August 31, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Alan issued me a challenge today. He asked me, for a few weeks, to write about something other than the events of my day. Perhaps to write about ideas or dreams or imaginings or something that happened in the past. His challenge to me is about moving beyond the role of witness – a role I play well – and to actually inhabit the moments of my life. He asked me to intentionally be a participant more than an observer. It’s a great idea and a worthy challenge. And, I will start tomorrow. Today I have to write about Kerri’s hands.

Kerri is a musician, a composer with many albums to her credit. When she plays the piano she drops into a deep root, she grounds into her music, and a river of sound flows from her. Life flows through her. So much life flows through her that she cannot sit at the piano. She stands and life flows through her hands as sound and vibration and heart. It is her music.

The first time I met her I asked her to play something for me. I stood at the side of the piano and I watched her reach into the earth. I watched life pour through her hands. They knew just what to do. When she grounded and gave herself over to the music, her hands merged with the keys and I wasn’t sure if the hands were playing the keys or the keys were moving her fingers.

This morning while I was talking with Alan she began to play a new composition. I left the call and stood by the piano. The lid to the piano was open so I could see her hands and the hammers touch the strings as she touched the keys. I know this sounds obvious but the piano is an extension of her hands. The piano is a channel for her soul.

Later we stood on the front stoop as a storm blew through. The thunder rolled and rolled without ceasing. It was magic, something I’ve never heard before. The same power I saw in her hands I also saw in voice of the sky. I took her hand and felt the life, the thunder and the power. I felt the music. It was breathtaking.

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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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Become Life

Posted on August 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

872. 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 learned a lesson again in tai chi today: stop trying to force action or push forms into being. Instead, drop into center and listen. It is in the deep listening that the path will become clear. It is in the deep listening that the clarity of action, the simplicity of impulse will be apparent.

In class we are practicing push hands, a partner exercise in which the object is to knock your partner off center. It is deceptive because the way to successfully knock your partner off center is to NOT push. It is to listen. It is to feel when they are moving off center and simply help them go in the direction that they are already moving. As Saul says, they give you their center so you merely take it. The moment you push, the moment you try to force an outcome, is the moment you will offer your center (abandon your center) and be helped off balance.

At only 2 years into my practice, I am a novice. The more experienced students say that if I continue I will in 7 – 10 years have developed a sufficient capacity to listen. I delight in this practice that acknowledges that there is no end. There is no path to expertise. There is a greater and greater capacity to move the chi and root the energy. I believe my life is changing because of this practice and the reorientation it requires.

In the past several months I have repeatedly learned that life opens for me when I stop trying to force outcomes. Life flows when I stop pushing and pulling and fretting and worrying. When I listen, feel and respond to what’s there, when I release all impulse to control, I participate. I become a “part of…” instead of a resistor or governor. Instead of blocking the movement I enter the relationship. Instead of forcing life I become life force.

There is a vast difference between the consciousness of a controller and the consciousness of a participant. A controller withholds and resists. A controller judges him or her self and, therefore, the world (good enough and not good enough are judgments and epicenters of control). A controller separates. A participant joins. A participant becomes. Life is always found in the direction participation.

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Meet The Opponent

Posted on July 30, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

On the white board Skip wrote, “The enemies.” We were planning our business and as we moved deeper into specific details, the forces of opposition became apparent. Skip listed them as “enemies” rather than “obstacles” because forces that rise against clear intention are not passive. A boulder in the road is an obstacle. A tide of opposition is an opponent and the strategy for meeting an opponent is different than that of meeting an obstacle. Both strategies begin with respect and then the paths diverge.

Innovation will always bring a tide of opposition. Several times in my life I have seen “the system” crush the very innovation that it purports to seek. It smashes the innovators that work to improve the lives of all involved. Their innovation would necessitate change and the fear that change inspires in a system is lethal to change makers and the advances that they bring. Tom used to say, “You will know the worth of your work by the size of the tide that rises against you.”

On the list of enemies Skip wrote “The Four Overcomings.” This is a reference to one of Carlos Casteneda’s books. The Four Overcomings are 1) The Fear of Learning, 2) The Fear of Clarity, 3) The Fear of Power, and 4) The Fear of Old Age. In the book, Don Juan tells us that very few people move beyond the first fear. A true learner must open to change. A true learner must embrace the unknown and become practiced at stepping into it. One in ten will face this fear and overcome their need to know. The majority will seek safety and grasp firmly to what they know.

Learning brings clarity. Of the people that move beyond the first overcoming, only a very small percentage will face their fear of clarity. As Skip explained, those who become clear are dangerous to the status quo and are ostracized or worse. It takes courage to speak truth in a society dedicated to maintaining the safety at all cost. Most will hide their clarity. They will pretend ignorance. A very few will embrace their clarity and give voice to what they’ve learned.

If one is able to face the fear of learning, move beyond the fear of clarity, they become potent. They become powerful. And the powerful must embrace their power. They must not deny their power and in fact must willingly use their power. Fear of being power defeats almost all people. As Marianne Williamson famously wrote, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” All people are powerful beyond measure but would rather measure than be powerful.

The fourth and final overcoming is old age. Skip smiled and said, “By the time you get beyond Overcomings 1 – 3 you will be old. And no one overcomes number four.

Learning, clarity, power, and old age are forces. They are not obstacles. They are not passive. They are opponents and to overcome them one must begin with respect – not for the opponent but for one’s self. And then you must ride out to meet them on the field of your life.

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Open Your Hands

Posted on July 19, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

This morning before leaving the vineyard I walked back to the redwood ring, the faery circle. I had to go back and spend some time there. I wanted to be alone in the ring. I wanted to reenter that place of quiet and feel connect again with the palpable vibration.

It was foggy, damp and cool as I walked across the vineyard and up the hill to the ring. The crews were just climbing into the vineyard so I could hear distant voices, cars on the road leading to the property. As I stepped into the ring the rest of the world disappeared. There were no more voices, no cars, no machinery, no business, no future, no past. The fog closed behind me and I was suddenly in an ancient place. The quiet returned and I stood in the center of the redwood circle. As I looked up at the trees – so tall that their tops reached beyond my site and disappeared into the fog, it began to rain within the circle. In truth it was not rain but condensation from the fog dropping into the circle but I had the impression that it was raining within the circle but nowhere else. I felt like I was the recipient of ritual cleansing or baptism.

As I stood there looking up into the rain I closed my eyes and was suddenly transported to a day not so long ago when I knelt in the river. On that day I ran my fingers through the sand and pebbles, filling my hands with silt and watched as the current washed the sediment from my open hands. As the current cleansed my hands Megan-The-Brilliant said, “I want to learn to pray.” I thought, Yes. Me, too, but not the kind of prayer with my eyes closed to life as I chirp requests to some abstract principle. I want to learn to pray with my eyes wide open. I want to look to the miracle of life that is right in front of me. I do not want my prayer to take me away from life. I want it to bring me fully into it, hands in the soil, face to the rain. I do not to make prayers based on want or lack. I desire to learn to make prayers of participation and thanksgiving.

I opened my eyes and was once again in the faery circle. It was a magic place but then again, I understood (again) that the whole thing, this entire planet, is a faery circle. If I am ever going to learn to pray the first realization must be that there is no such thing as non-prayer. There is no in or out door to the sacred. There are only different elements, different energies, and different levels of participation. I stood there for a long time, hands open, and felt the water wash the sediment away.

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Be A Master

Posted on July 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Many years ago Doug and I waded into the river that ran just beneath his cabin and he taught me to fly fish. Doug was amazing. I remember watching him place the line in the stream exactly where he wanted it to go – it was like watching a dancer or a sword master. He was doing something more than fly-fishing. He became present. His “being” changed. He became the flow.

Today Skip took me behind the scenes at a winery in the Willamette Valley. We walked the vineyards and he taught me about growing grapes. We went into the winery and he walked me through the process of sorting, fermenting, barreling, blending and aging the wines. I learned about oak and stainless steel and concrete. Skip was like Doug. When he began telling me about the wines he changed. He became present, excited, passionate, and joyful. His “being” changed. He became the flow.

I have been fortunate in my life to meet and come to know a few masters. They inspire me. They delight in sharing their passion. They delight in offering their gift. They seem to have all the time in the world. They know their craft so well that it becomes an extension of their bodies. They are easy in their doing. They know what they can control and what they cannot and have long ago given up trying to control the uncontrollable and so they radiate a kind of peace when they enter the temple of their passion. And their peace is infectious. It is as vibrant as it is quiet.

I asked myself the same question today that I asked myself years ago standing in the stream with Doug: What is the temple of my passion? What do I love to do so much that my being changes and I enter the flow? And why would I give my time to anything else?

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Step In Front Of The Wall

Posted on July 9, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

K. is an entrepreneur and asked me to help her with her investor pitch. We met in a small conference room and the moment she stood before me to give her pitch she disappeared. She retreated behind a wall of words that had no real meaning. She is a vital, dynamic woman so it was startling to see how far behind the wall she fled.

We did a few exercises designed to help her laugh and bring her self back into her body. Language is a physical act, speaking requires embodiment and she needed to be coaxed back into her body. Once she felt safe and stepped in front of the wall, we talked. She told me that she wanted to be powerful and I asked her what that meant to her. She used phrases like “owning the room” and “captivating my audience,” phrases that she picked up along the way but had no real meaning for her. When I asked her what she meant by “owning the room” she blinked and stammered. She blinked again when I asked, “Instead of owning the room, why not own your self?” Owning the room is an abstraction. Owning yourself is doable. It is concrete.

It is common to give away the power when standing in front of other people. It is common to believe that “they” are judges and grant “them” all of the power. As judges, their opinion matters more than your opinion. It is common to step in front of others oriented according to what you might get from them. Approval, being liked, funding, applause,…, the list of what you might get is endless and ultimately a commitment to a power-give-away.

K. and I talked about reorienting according to what she might bring to the world. The investors have no power over her dream. The investors are one route among many routes. I asked if she believed in her business and she was enthusiastic. “Yes!” she smiled. Why then, I asked, would she believe that the investors had the power to make or break her business? It was her idea. It was her passion. It was her work. Was she dedicated to bringing her dream to life? She was. I could see it in her eyes. So I asked her to own the dream and give up the illusion that investors (or anyone else, for that matter) have the capacity to make or break her business. Bring it with all of the love and passion and commitment that she feels for her dream. I asked her what she would have to change to orient according to what she brings and bring it with all her heart.

There is no room for judges when you orient according to what you bring. There is no need for a wall of words or a cave in which to retreat.

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Posted on June 9, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

[continued from 811]

Bali Journal Excerpt #2:
During the group’s visit to Jero Manchu [Jero was a Balian or shaman], I took pictures for Lora as she worked with the Balian. As I was aiming the camera, about ready to snap a photo, I heard my inner voice scream, “Ask the Balian what is missing!” Missing? And then again, “You need to know what is missing!” The voice railed at me for the duration of our visit to Jero’s compound. “Just ask!” my inner voice implored. I didn’t ask. I was too embarrassed and more than a little unhinged at the battle raging inside of me. I didn’t want to look stupid or display my vulnerabilities. I knew that, in fact, something was missing. I told myself that I didn’t want to impose my needs upon the group. I left the compound stuffing the question inside.

Reading this journal entry thirteen years later made me smile for 2 reasons: 1) I’ve since learned to listen and act immediately when my inner voice calls. I used to treat my inner voice as if it was an “other.” Now, it is not separate. It is my voice. It no longer needs to scream. 2) I assumed that speaking to my needs was an imposition on others. I had no evidence for that assumption. In truth, it was purely my justification for not showing up. It was my way of hiding.

I’m particularly fond of the timing of this excerpt. A few weeks ago my inner voice roared an imperative and I acted immediately. My world will never be the same because I listened and responded. There was no gap between the call and my action. There is no need for inner warfare. Additionally, today was the official launch party for my comic strip, FL!P (Skip has done an amazing job building this site – check it out). Lots of people came, drank wine, ate food, laughed, drew pictures, voted for their favorite strip and character. I loved every minute of it because I showed up. I recognized that I spent the entire day doing exactly what I wanted with no assumption about the impact on others. It is no longer my job to decide what other people need or think. There is so much in my life to celebrate!

Filed under: Awakening, Emergence, Gratitude, Power, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: Bali | 5 Comments »

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