Seeing | The Direction of Intention

Seek The Small Moments

Posted on August 24, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

883. 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 one wall of the room where I am staying are dozens of photographs that stretch back 5 or more generations. There are so many photographs of couples posing on their wedding day. Those same couples are in photos taken many years later – they are parents standing with their children who are posing for their wedding photograph. I look at the wall and I see people who had hopes and dreams, people who worked and triumphed and fell. I see the stuff of life: relationship. As I looked at each photograph, scrutinized the faces of lives gone by, to wonder what these people did for a living. I asked questions about the faces and names and heard many stories of these lives-gone-by. Not once did I hear about work or a job. I heard about relationship. I heard stories of foibles and forgiveness. I heard about dreams gone awry and dreams fulfilled. I heard about personal triumph and happiness that came late in life. I heard lots of stories about love lost and found. I heard many stories of small moments.

Skip and I are working on software that will help sustain and maintain family story. All summer I’ve been asking questions of families about what would be useful to capture. What would help, not only to archive but to make a dynamic personal and family story? Beyond a photo album or a genealogy of static dates, what would you like to know of your ancestors? What would you like your children’s children to know about you beyond your birth and death dates?

In this past week I lost Tom and with him a lifetime of wisdom and story. I have some of it. In this past month I attended a family gathering celebrating my father’s 80th birthday; we spent 5 days telling stories and sharing pictures, 5 days passing the stories to the next generation. This week I am helping pack Beaky’s home. She is 92 and in a rehabilitation facility. She’ll never return to her home and her children and grandchildren are sorting through her possessions but more importantly they are telling stories of her life. Each pot and pan carries a memory and is an opportunity for, “Do your remember when…?” It’s the small stuff, the little things that make a life full and the meaning is carried through the relationships we mostly take for granted.

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Have Faith

Posted on August 22, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

882. 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 the past two days I’ve journeyed from Indianapolis to Tampa. With the exception of Kentucky I’ve traveled a corridor of this country that I had not before seen.

In Tennessee there was a rainstorm so intense that every car on the freeway pulled over. It was impossible to see. The storm came and left within fifteen minutes and when it was gone I thought I’d dreamed it. I saw a sunset in Georgia that included colors I’d never before seen. I gasped. Literally. I have no way of describing the shades of pink, purple and orange that melted through the sky. If I made up names for paint colors they’d be something like lavender explosion, sensational salmon pink (I’m laughing in disgust, too), and crisp aspen orange.

There’s nothing like a long road trip to pull you out of the everyday numbness and re-excite presence. If you put away your gadgets and look out the window you’ll see an endless number of adventures beckoning. Every little side road is a temptation. Every roadside attraction or vegetable stand begs you to stop and have a conversation. Every community is an opportunity to explore or merely linger. Although there are Cracker Barrel restaurants everywhere in this part of the country – and I religiously avoid the mass-produced – I’d never been in one so we stopped, ran inside, and played with every toy. We laughed at the candy I’d not seen since I was a kid (there was a huge box of double bubble bubble gum!). We ate BLT’s and chatted with the women stocking the shelves. There was no hurry to get going. There was no place else to be.

I read a phrase recently in Brida, a novel by Paulo Coehlo, that every moment of our lives is an act of faith. We never know what the next moment will bring – even though we like to believe that we do. Even though we convince ourselves that we’ve done this before and that we are bored, in truth, we never know what the next moment holds and we step into it anyway. I think road trips bring us closer to that truth. Each step every day is a step into the unknown. Every day is packed full of the new when we stop pretending that we’ve been here before. I’ve never lived this day. I will never have this day again. I have no idea what it will bring. I will step into it anyway.

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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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See The Color

Posted on July 27, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Occasionally, for reasons I can’t explain, I become fixated on the words people use to describe their experiences. Language is powerful and we are rarely aware that in using specific language to describe particular experiences we are, in fact, defining ourselves.

Today I was struck by the predominance of phrase polarity I heard in my conversations and travels. People were “effective” or “ineffective.” Experiences were “good” or “bad.” We “liked” or “didn’t like” an idea. I heard, “Are you in or out?” A frustrated pedestrian shouted at a young woman who’d stopped to adjust her ear buds, “Walk or Don’t Walk!”
This or that. Up or Down. Black or white. More or less. Main Street or Wall Street.

It is comfortable to pretend that things are simple and easily defined. It is probably efficient to pretend that there are only two available options. We are, after all, a society of laws and in a legal preset there must always exist a clear line though we learn again and again that the line is never clear. Who honestly believes that Justice is blind? Context complicates even the smallest decision.

Dogma is not spirituality. Data is not knowledge and is miles from approaching wisdom. Wisdom is complex. Data sorts to the simple. There are an infinite number of points between those two poles. The question remains: how is your language defining you. Do you define yourself as data with two points or do you allow for more complexity? Listen to how you story yourself and your world.

The challenge with phrase polarity is that the points are often pitted against each other. It’s as if data and wisdom are two distinct paths so you can have one or the other but not both. The phrase “effective or ineffective” recognizes no middle ground. It eliminates any common ground. The same holds true if you define yourself as either good or bad. Do you have worth or are you worthless? Are you identified with a red state or a blue state? Can business have heart? Can data support wisdom? Can wisdom translate data?

Isn’t life sweet with only two choices! In such a paradigm it is easy to be the good guy and so by default the “others” are bad. In such a paradigm, when rushing to your very important meeting, all the “others” are in your way. My way or the highway is a bleak and immature paradigm.

The important questions do not live at the poles but are in constant movement in search of a balance point. Balance is available in the center and the center moves all of the time. Do you love your children? Do you want to make a better world? Do you want your life to have meaning? Is it possible that people in the other color states also want the same things?

Coloring outside of the lines requires crossing lines. It requires a desire to work with color, lots and lots of color, which opens the capacity to see a multitude of options. Everyday I work with people searching for the greater meaning in their lives. The first thing they come to realize is that they have choices. Not one or two but many, many choices. They have a full palette of choices. And they can only see the multitude of choices when they stop telling themselves that the world is black or white. They can only see the rainbow of possibilities when they get off the pole of rightness or wrongness and step toward the middle. Living a rich and varied story begins when you start telling a rich and varied story. Language is the building block of story. It matters.

Filed under: Language, Seeing, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: complexity, mattering, poles, simplicity, story | Leave a comment »

Know Where You Are Looking

Posted on July 14, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

845. 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 Saul said, “The chi will go where your focus is.” I’ve heard variations on this theme: where you place your focus grows. Or, another: what you think is what you create. Mo was a world-class cyclist and she would say, “Don’t look at the pothole because you will go where you are looking.”

I’ve been thinking about my thinking – or more specifically, paying attention to my thoughts. This has been an unparalleled time of transition for me so all of the old thinking patterns are laid bare. They’re easy to see. Yesterday I wrote this sentence as commentary for my comic (www.flipcomic.net): Most significant limits to success are self-imposed so it follows that all paths to success are also self-imposed. I place the limits. I am the only one who can remove them.

I look at the limit or I look at the horizon. It is my choice. I want to go to the horizon and not into the pothole. I’ve spent significant time in potholes and would like to explore something else. This morning on the break, Craig told me of a blog he’d recently read. The blogger wrote about the two sides of practice. We think of a practice as a movement toward what we want to create but a practice can also be destructive, like discomfort avoidance. The inner monologue that says, “I can’t” is, in fact, a form of practice. The inner monologue that says, “I can” is also a practice. The difference is focus. And, as Saul taught me today, the chi will go where you place your focus. Practice “I can’t” and you surely can’t. Practice “Try and find out,” and you surely will.

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Step Beyond The Woe

Posted on July 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Somehow, somewhere, I lost my debit card. I used it last night in the grocery store when I sprinted across the street to get some food before the store closed. I didn’t discover the missing card(s) until this morning. In retrospect I wish I’d had a camera trained on my panicked search-and-rescue response. Although the missing card could only have fallen from the wallet resting on the shelf, I opened drawers, dug through pockets, lifted papers (evidently those pesky cards can crawl), opened drawers again, looked inside coffee cups, crawled on the floor, dug through the garbage, opened and closed the door three times (I can’t explain it so don’t ask), and am certain I performed a perfect triple flip and stuck the landing (unassisted).

During my panic I told myself a horror story and had myself convinced that my survival depended on those cards. It was the zealousness of the story that brought me back into my body and my senses. When I heard the narrative I was whipping up in my mind I came to a full stop and started to laugh. Our thoughts are indeed the mother lode of comedy.

I crawled out of my drama hole and took care of it. The cards were gone. No one had attempted to buy a yacht with my vast holdings. I went across the street to the store, inquired with the lost and found, and then went into the branch of my bank that was conveniently attached to the store. It was simple. The people at the bank were pleasant, funny, and very helpful. They laughed at my panic reenactment (I didn’t attempt the triple flip but reenacted it with full body gesture), and in a few moments the old cards were cancelled and the new cards were on the way.

My survival was never at risk. There was no tragedy. Even if someone had taken every dime from my accounts, my survival was never at risk and there would have been no tragedy. The necessary actions are never hard; it is the story that we attach to our experiences that make life a struggle. There are legitimate struggles in this world and I’ve very rarely actually encountered them though you’d never know it by my inner monologue. How hard is your life really? Really? What would the day look like if you dropped the story of woe and simply took the necessary actions? And, what might your story become if you looked at your tale of woe from the lens of the ridiculous? I was a Keystone Cop this morning. I had the people at the bank looking under their coffee cups in mock search for my debit card. We had a great time.

This week I have been prone to telling myself a story of difficulty. After leaving the bank I crossed the street and was, for a moment, grateful that I lost my card(s). It was just the dope slap I needed to see beyond the story of woe and step again into a quiet center.

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Look Both Ways

Posted on July 7, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

838. 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 poet and the engineer look at things through much different eyes,” said Saul-the-Chi-Lantern. “When you say, ‘One moves, all move’ the poet understands immediately. Not so with the engineer!” He laughed. “The engineer will challenge the statement and require proof beyond the visual. The engineer will hear the statement as literal. The poet will accept without question that all things move when one thing moves because the poet lives with metaphor. The engineer does not.”

“The engineer will see the body as a structure. The poet will see something divine. Stand still and take a breath and notice how much of your body moves with a simple inhalation. It all moves! It never stops moving. The engineer will see the breath as mechanism. The poet will see breath as inspiration.”

Saul returned to the beginning position of the tai chi form and prepared to lead us through a round. Another thought occurred to him so before beginning the form he turned back to us saying, “One is not better than the other. An engineer sees what is most interesting to her. A poet sees what is most interesting to him. Different lenses. Different purposes. Different passions. Both are responding according to their need.”

Many years ago in a movement class the professor asked us to stand very still and pay attention to the way our body maintains balance. What became immediately apparent is that balance is not an achievement. One is never balanced. One is always balancing. Balance is a constant adjustment and readjustment. Balance is a dynamic physical, mental and spiritual relationship with the movement of the planet, the pull of gravity, the workings of the inner ear, and the tug of the moon creating our inner tides. One moves, all move. Follow that ripple and you’ll get lost in space; every star cluster dances with you.

I thought of Saul’s words as I walked home after class. All are responding according to their need. All are responding according to their purpose. These are statements of individual necessity. One moves, all move is a statement of interconnectivity; individual necessity is a move that moves all and is moved by all. Both/and. Engineer mind perceives separation. Poet mind seeks unity. Neither is right or wrong; they dance.

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See The Poetry

Posted on June 29, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

832. 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 rained all afternoon so when the breeze jostled the branches, water cascaded down on us. Josh said, “When the wind blows, the tree rains.” I loved the image. It made us see a tree that rains. Poetry!

It reminded me that we are not merely the passive receivers of visual information. We are the interpreters of what we see. We are the givers of meaning to everything we perceive. Everything. We are the givers of meaning to everything that we experience. The meaning is not outside of us waiting to be found, we give it, enjoy it, reject it, run from it, embrace it, dance with the meaning or deny it.

Recently I was reminded (again) that the meaning of every symbol I see and sign that I seek is already within me. I assign the meaning. I am the magic. I can believe that “things were meant to be,” or that the shooting star is a sign that I need to follow my bliss. I want to believe that the universe converses with me, leaves me a trail of breadcrumbs that I can follow to fulfillment or some greater meaning. And all the while I know that the meaning is not outside of me. I create it. In this way I am the universe or at least and expression of it.

I mirror the world and the world mirrors me. Joe once told me that we can only know ourselves by what comes back at us from others. We offer. We share. We project. And a response comes back to us. We interpret the response and adjust our offer, refine what we believe about ourselves and the world.

“The wind jostles the branches and the tree rains.” Josh sees the poetry in this world. I see the first star of the night and make a wish. A snake slithers across my path and then another and I know it is time to act on what I already know. I have a hunch and I follow it. I collect data and interpret it. I form a hypothesis and test it until I think I know. I sit still in awe and am certain that I do not know anything.

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Step Down

Posted on June 27, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Megan-the-brilliant sent me a link to a very concise blog post that she wrote a long time ago. She and I recently had a conversation about grounding and centering and in sharing the link she asked what I would add or say differently. Her post was sparked by some event or experience that she cannot recall so the post lives as a universal statement of truth. Here is her post:

To be authentic is to live according to your truth
To be brave is to speak your truth
To be centered is to know your truth
To be grounded is to believe in your truth
To be free is to release the illusion of control over the truths of others.

It is an especially interesting question to me because lately I doubt my truth. To be more specific, the intuition, impulse, and knowing that I have always identified as truth and followed without question (often to my ruin) I now distrust. I wonder if I have inverted the inner guide with the inner used car salesman. I may have the only guide in the history of inner guides that wears a plaid polyester sports coat and sells truth in the guise of a jalopy. I’ve ignored this voice and listened to the very sincere, baritone inner opinion-giver who never panics, never gets excited and tells me it’s okay to sell the farm for a song. It turns out that I am an easy mark!

So, given my doubt of anything that sounds like truth, here are my additions to Megan’s post (for today. These may change according to the jalopy I purchase tomorrow):

To be authentic is to question your truth and live according to the question.
To be brave is to stand solidly in “I don’t know” and refuse to pretend that there is an answer.
To be centered is to step off the pedestal and stand without shame in the muck of life.
To be grounded is recognize that you are ordinary and cease any attempts to be separate from or better than the herd or the animals or the plants or the sky or the stars.
To be free is to realize that the sacred is in the ordinary, the muck, the not-knowing, and the questions. To stand above anything or anyone is an illusion and can only distance you from the sacred because the sacred is always in the direction of unity and never in the direction of distinction.

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Want The Sunrise

Posted on June 23, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

826. 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 I watched the sun rise from the top deck of the ferry. It was a clear calm summer morning, warm even before the sun peaked over the mountains. I was alone on the deck to witness the dawn and wondered why the other passengers weren’t up there with me.

The ferry was packed which was unusual for an early Saturday morning but there was a marathon in the city and most of my fellow commuters were runners and their families. As I boarded I passed groups stretching, others were applying icy hot patches, most were checking their gear and making sure they had what they needed for the run. They were too busy preparing to pay attention to the sun. The main deck was frenetic with carbo-loading and pre-run anticipation!

As chaotic as it was below, the upper deck was equally as quiet. The sky was electric with velvet blues and hot oranges morphing to pink and purple as the sun rolled into view. It made me quiet inside. There was nothing more important to me in that moment than being present for the start of another day. I wanted to know what it is to sing the sun up, to welcome it back, to live within the consciousness that pays attention. It was utterly magical to be on the water, standing at the bow of the ferry, crossing the Sound, the summer morning air rushing through me as the heat of the morning sun reached and washed over me. I drank deeply and knew that this morning would be one of the moments I would remember on that future day when my life flashed before my eyes.

I realized as I left the ferry amidst a throng of runners that I am running a different kind of race. Many years ago I was a runner. I ran to feel alive. I ran to find my limits. I ran to stay ahead of the pain. I ran as a meditation. Now, I am alive and my life is a meditation. I no longer need to find my limits because I’m fairly certain I create them. With great intention and even greater dedication I walk slowly so I can see. I have raced through too much of my life trying to get to starting lines and finish lines. I no longer care about starts or finishes, I want to be in it and not merely move through it. I want the sunrise, the feel of the breeze off the water and the new sun on my face.

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