The Direction of Intention

372.
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I am writing the workbook for my next class – a class I’m calling the Open Story. It is the sequel to the first class: The Ground Truth. Together they constitute what I’m calling the Bring Power To Life series. The Ground Truth is concerned with drawing distinctions within six relationships – for instance learning to draw a line between what you can control and what you can’t control defines your relationship with Control. The relationship with control is a baseline to relationships with things like Choice and Intention. There are six relationships and six distinctions to draw. If the Ground Truth is about inner gazing and pattern breaking, the Open Story is about outer looking and pattern making; it is an invitation to six related aspects like Creativity, Opportunity and Ease. Today I’m noodling through the chapter on Flow. Here’s the beginning:

What is the quality of movement in your life? Many years ago I trained to be a massage therapist and I learned that health in the body’s systems was the result of unimpeded flow: anywhere there is blockage there is disease. When I began doing organizational work I learned the same lesson: a healthy corporate body is the result of unimpeded flow of communication; where there is blockage there is dis-ease. Working with artists was where I first encountered the lesson: dynamic art in all its forms is the unimpeded flow of expression; where there is blockage there is disconnect and dis-ease. Kink the garden hose and pressure builds. Block the artery and heart will seize. Stilt the communication and dysfunction and power games will bloom. Inhibit your expression and you become just like the garden hose: pressure builds and your inner life jams. Vitality in life is unimpeded flow.

The phrase “Open Story” comes from a Balian, a man many years ago who told me there was nothing physically wrong with me. What ailed me was, in his words, my story was closed. He tapped me on the right shoulder and said, “Open your story.” He didn’t offer any hints as to how I was to open my story but I understood that I already had within me the capacity to figure it out. I also understood that there was no end to the process of opening a story. It can always open more. And, of course, an open story is a story of flow; the long body, a story both distinct and universal, intimately connected to the flow of life.

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358.
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I never read one book at a time. I always have a few in progress and that sometimes makes for interesting information overlap. Right now, I’m tapping my foot waiting for George R.R. Martin to release book 6 in his Song of Ice and Fire series, The Game of Thrones. It is like cocaine; once you start you need the next book. I’ve had the shakes for a few months. If you know George, please tell him to get on it.

As I was reading book 5 I was also reading Dylan Ratigan’s Greedy Bastards. It helped me resolve some questions that I’ve been pondering for a while – for instance, my question: Given what we know about learning and education, what keeps us from creating a system that supports what all the data and research (and common sense) suggests? We’ve known the problems with the current system for 40 years! Why are we so incapable of acting on what we know? He has a very specific and compelling answer. Read the book – and do not take what he says at face value; spend 10 minutes researching some of the data he presents; you will ask yourself, “How did we let this happen?”

George R.R. Martin’s done a great study of feudal life and Dylan Ratigan helped me see some practices from the medieval world that I thought were long gone but have now realized are with us still. For instance, it was common for a lord or king to raise the children of a conquered foe – or potential foe. The children were an insurance policy against an attack. They were credit default swaps. You’d think twice before making an act of aggression when your opponent had your child.

Marriages worked much in the same way. Powerful families were intentionally linked through arranged marriages. You do not want to go to war against your in-laws, especially when there are grandchildren involved. A marriage was a power alliance. Mixing a bloodline was a way to increase power and assert control.

The hostages and arranged marriages of our day have taken a slightly less visible form but are they operate according to much the same principle. Dylan Ratigan asks us to consider this: the actual author of the health care reform bill was employed by the healthcare industry; the actual author of banking reform legislation was a banker. Our representatives do not write the legislation they propose. Why? Big business is like a feudal lord who holds hostage the children of our politicians: politicians will undertake no legislation hostile to those who hold the purse strings – which means they cannot undertake legislation that serves first the needs of the people.

The marriages are also arranged. You can’t get to into higher office without an extraordinary amount of money and the money is not freely given: there are expectations in return for support. Don’t you love the term, “super-pack?” I learned that there are dozens of paid lobbyists for every single politician in Washington. That’s a lot of money in play and favor to curry.

None of this is new news – and that’s my point. A crisis of leadership is really a failure of the followers. Here’s another of my questions: I’ve done a lot of work in the private sector and I have yet to meet a company that has the nation’s best interest at heart; why do we assume that a business model should be at the center of our public decision-making processes or that the private sector produces public-minded leaders? Self-interest is not the same as public interest.

In my George R.R. Martin/Dylan Ratigan information overlap there is an image that serves as the perfect metaphor: when it does finally and inevitably come to battle, the kings sit on the hill and the well protected lords lead the common people to slaughter. The people have no say in the game of thrones but pay the price in full. My question: why do continue to follow?

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277.
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Control is not power. Power is not control.

Power is misunderstood as control because most of our associations are with power-over-others. We are literally confusing Power with Control. As Peter Block writes, our businesses, schools and departments of government are structured on models control and compliance. He asks a relevant question: how can a people that so identified with democracy and freedom model all of their institutions on compliance and control? How can all of our leadership ideals be based in models of power-over? Beyond the rhetoric, cultures always betray their real values in the institutions they create.

True power is the release of control: it is focused action in service to the greater good.

As a friend recently said, “I’m afraid of becoming powerful because of what I might do to other people.” Her fears, our fears, have nothing to do with power. To hammer the point: power-over-others has nothing at all to do with Power and everything to do with Control. Her fears are not about what she will do to others; her fears are about what she will become if she ceases to control her power and unleashes her potential.

True power is ever present. It is amplified in relationship. It is not a possession or the dominion of a few. It is not something to be wielded like a sword by a single person. True power is a force that is intensified through a relationship of intention. A strong offer is power with a focus. True power cannot diminish or be exclusive; if anyone is diminished it is not power at work, it is control. If anyone is excluded it is not power at work, it is control.

Truly powerful people have no use of control over others because they are too engaged in the creation of power with other people.

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265.
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I think one of the reasons we have so much trash associated with the word “power” is that it has been for centuries confused with material interest (control of resources). The confusion in shorthand reads like this: Power is control. To make matters stickier, when power and control are switched in their cribs, a more insidious confusion follows: the person that controls the resource is understood to have a divine mandate or is somehow more blessed than the rest. In shorthand it reads like this: morality is money.

In such confusion, what is one to believe? What values are we to hold when no values can stand in the wasteland of such confusion? When power is mistaken for control of resource and control will do whatever is necessary to control the resource – no matter the cost to the community or other communities, and the only explanation available is moral authority… we’re all losers. Only the most pathological among us will knowingly seek power in this form. I think the proof is all around us.

It is the mistake the OWS movement is making: it knows what it is against but can’t articulate what it is for – so it is engaging control with tactics of control – and missing the point entirely.

Power is not control. Control is control, money is money, and morality has nothing to do with either control or money. Power is neither good nor bad, it is a force to be used and can limit or amplify. Alan writes that the limiting kind (power-over) is an immature use of power; power-with becomes available when we mature; he calls it power-to-be.

Power-with, power-to-be, either way it is the same thing, it’s time for us to grow up in our understanding and practice of power of how we are in the world.

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264.
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Here’s my favorite phrase from class today (it didn’t come out of my mouth but I wish it had). It is a thought from the amazing Alan Seale:

“No one owns power. Power is energy; it is everywhere. It is everything. How you relate to it determines whether it serves you and others or whether it gets in the way and depletes you and everyone else. Using power as power-over-others is an immature form. The mature form of power is power-to-be.”

The phrase that I most appreciate, the part that is most important to pay attention to, is “How you relate to it.” In listening to the class participants today I realized how much trash we have around this word, “power.” Most of us have had it wielded over us or we have used it over others. We resist it. To imagine amplifying power WITH others is…unimaginable. Yet, it is just as possible as using power to control.

We think power is something we have or do not have – it is our experience. The growth comes when we learn how to relate to power in a different way because we learn to relate to ourselves in a different way. Power is energy and it is everywhere.

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263.
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I learned a long time ago that I do my best thinking with a big drawing pad in front of me. My doodles become maps. What initially looks like and awful mess of scribbles emerges as a circular form of coherence.

For the past few hours I’ve been mapping the class I will teach in January: Bring Power to Life. Sometimes the maps come easily! All the scribbles fit on the first pass. If I were Joe looking at these scribbles, I’d use the word “elegant.” This map, this thought-path, is elegant (get ready Joe!). It looks like a well-constructed play – clear actions feed a spine that scribes an arc of inevitable transformation.

The spine of the six weeks course is “to create power-with-others” which I maintain is our natural impulse; needing power-over-others is only necessary once you’ve given your power away (you have no need to take power from others when you ARE the source of your power). I suppose the subtitle would be: Return AS the source of your power.

The course is constructed around six relationships; each relationship requires a movement that is easily described by a shorthand phrase and made tangible in a single action. So, for instance, the first relationship is with Control; the shorthand is Stop Enabling and Start Empowering; the action is to draw a line between what you can control and what you can’t control. Drawing the line (boundary) changes your relationship with control and creates movement toward empowerment. Empowerment activates Choice, which is the second relationship we’ll engage in the course; the shorthand for Choice is Stop Blaming and Start Choosing; the action is to draw another line making a distinction between “things happen to me” and “I make things happen.” This new boundary creates movement toward Choice and Choice activates Intention, which is the third relationship to explore. The remaining relationships are Motivation, Seeing, and Ownership.

The relationships are linear in the individual pieces but together create a cycle: Ownership is Control transformed. Empowerment, creating power-with-others, is not a mystery; the path is well worn and available when you decide to walk it.

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262.
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 261]

Horatio,
You’ve been teaching me about the art of filmmaking and recently you told me that all movies are about pain; when the pain is relieved the movie is over. I have a similar definition for stories (regardless of the medium): a story begins when the main character is knocked off balance and ends when balance is restored.

Everyone is starring in their own movie. Everyone is telling their own story.

My years of leaping were years of resisting what I didn’t want and grasping for what I believed I didn’t have. The dance of resisting and grasping is a dance of pain that leaves you dizzy and off balance. It is a box dance with people pretending to follow but deeply invested in manipulating the lead – or the opposite: pretending to lead by manipulating the followers. I have been guilty of both and learned that either way it is dance of seeking wholeness in the responses of others.

T ran a small company. He was constantly frustrated and couldn’t understand why no one would take even the smallest action without first coming to him. He wanted people to take responsibility for their work! One day he saw to his chagrin that everyone came to him because, if they didn’t, he’d find fault with something and make them do the work again according to how he thought it should be done. He told me, “I was blind to what I was doing. I was telling people I wanted them to be responsible and then punishing them for making choices. I was the problem.” He thought for a moment and added, “I was really trying to control them. I hated it when I realized that putting down my employees made me feel powerful. They were fine; I was upside-down.”

J said it best when she told me, “I have been seeking liberation from others, from my boss, from my work, from systems and from society – I was looking for permission when what I really wanted was liberation from myself! Liberation is something I give myself! No one has my liberation! No one has the key to my chains. I have it! No one else knows who I am or what I want so why am I seeking approval from others so I can be who I am?”

These are tales of pain or disequilibrium. And the threshold to a better story happened for both J and T when they realized that they were seeking their power from other people. Both are deeply interested in service. Both are learning that they are incapable of service as long as they are drinking power from others; true service comes with true power and true power is in what you bring to a relationship, not what you get from it.

[there may be more…]

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