Story | The Direction of Intention

Make Sense

Posted on January 14, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

The Seer is built upon 9 Recognitions. Much of the book is an email conversation between the protagonist and his mysterious guide, named Virgil. Virgil coaches the protagonist through his discovery and encounters with the 9 Recognitions. Here is a small excerpt from an email exchange between the protagonist and Virgil:

Me: I realized that I think in patterns. I think the same stuff over and over. This is a puzzle: the act of looking for patterns opened my eyes. So, patterns reveal. And yet, later, when I became aware of the patterns of my thinking, I recognized that those patterns were like ruts or grooves. It’s as if I am playing the same song over and over again so no other music can come in. My thinking pattern, my rut, prevents me from seeing. So patterns also obscure. Make sense?

Virgil: Yes. It must seem like a paradox to you. Think of the song or rut as a story that you tell yourself. Your thoughts, literally, are a story that you tell yourself about yourself and the world; the more you tell this story the deeper the rut you create. So, a good question to ask is: what is the story that you want to tell? Are you creating the pattern that you desire to create? We will return to this many times. This is important: the story is not happening to you; you are telling it. The story can only control you if you are not aware that you are telling it.

Me: Can you say more?

Virgil: We literally ‘story’ ourselves. We are hard-wired for story. What we think is a narrative; this pattern (song) that rolls through your mind everyday is a story that you tell. You tell it. It defines what you see and what you do not see. What you think is literally what you see.

There was a pause. That was a lot for me to take in. When I didn’t respond, he continued:

Virgil: So, what you think is nothing more than a story; it’s an interpretation. You move through your day seeing what you think – instead of what is there. You are not seeing the world you are seeing your interpretation of the world. You are seeing from your rut and your rut is a pattern. So, your patterns of thinking, your rut, can obscure what you see. Make sense?

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

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Wake Up

Posted on January 12, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

The Elders by David Robinson

Many years ago I took a class called Art and Transformation. Over several months we studied the art of different culturals, specifically cultures that understand art as central to their health and wellbeing. It is not correct to say we studied: we made art. We drummed our way into trance and drew what came to us in the trance. We participated in a sweatlodge to find the symbols necessary to make medicine shields. We meditated and made sandpaintings. We sat still in nature, drew with our nondominant hand, gathered dream symbols, made mandalas and explored what it means to be connected through art to “something bigger.”

In the weeks following a class session, we painted work inspired by the class experience and then gathered to share our new work. It was amazing to see the change in my own work when I was rooted in the deeper rivers of life. When I was working from the actual experience of connectivity – and not a mental abstraction or a concept – my paintings startled me.

We worked for months – consciously – with transformation as the central impulse driving our visual forms. I learned through the class that “transformation” and “connection” were the same thing. Growing in consciousness is almost always a recognition of unity. As Joe said, “The universe tends toward wholeness.” Becoming more aware, opening the doors to greater consciousness, is how that tendency toward wholeness shows up. We see.

I also realized during the course that “story” was central to transformation. Art in its purest form is meant to be the keeper and transformer of the identity of a community. Identity is a story based on certain agreements a community makes about nature and time and god. Story needs context to make sense. I know this sounds like a loop and it is. Transformation is usually a movement toward wholeness (unity) and the movement is made visible through a change of story. I used to say, “Change your story, change your world,” but stopped because the phrase generally invoked wrinkled brows, protests and confusion. Most folks see their story as “reality” and will do anything to defend their reality. Initally a change of story can feel like an assault on reality.

I was once called on the carpet by a superintendent because a play I did with students challenged the reality of the teachers and parents. The superintendent shouted, “Art is supposed to entertain.” Well, yes. Art can entertain. Art is supposed to challenge, to shake the tree of assumptions, to help the community see itself. Art is supposed to help a community ask, “Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be? Is this what we believe?” I sighed and asked the red-faced superintendent, “Why are you so upset?” Her response: “The play made me uncomfortable.” Yes. Powerful art will always make us uncomfortable. Growth is always in the direction of discomfort. When the universe within us tends toward wholeness we will inevitably walk into vast fields of discomfort. It is how we wake up and see.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

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Work With The Energy

Posted on November 9, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

Sometimes I think a spiritual path is nothing more than clearing out the lies we tell ourselves. That sounds like harsh language but when I think about it, all of the illusions I’ve ever perpetuated were built upon drama-stories. Drama stories are always rooted in fear. They are steeped in an agenda that I pretend I do not know. They provide reasons why I can’t do something. They justify victimhood. They give me the illusion that I have no choices. Drama-stories are lies.

Moving through the illusions is largely a process of letting go of the justifications and defenses that constitute our personal dramas. The more we clear – the less we need to defend – the clearer our capacity for connectivity. It’s simple really: justification and defense are walls that we erect between life and ourselves. They create separation. Drop the defense and the walls fall. Life rushes in.

Lately, in my current cleaning phase, as I release the latest layer of lies, I’m coming to re-understand a phrase I’ve used for years: work with the energy and not the story. Everything is energy assigned to a form or purpose and that is true of every thought and story that passes through our heads. Thought is energy given articulation. Energy is constant but the forms are transitory. I can work to change the story by telling myself another story (an affirmation, for instance) or I can simply transform the energy, detach from any story. Yesterday morning I slipped into an old pattern and began telling myself a well-worn story of woe. The story felt tight, isolating, suffocating; it was spiraling down and I felt as if I was collapsing. I finally heard that still small voice inside saying, “This story is a lie,” and I wondered what would happen (thank you, Joe Shirley) if I forgot about the story and simply reversed the spiral. I detached from the lie (it was a lie, after all), felt the energy and worked with it to change directions. In a matter of moments I bobbed to the surface. I could breathe again. In a few more moments I felt restored, even energized. There was no more drama-story. There was no more reason why I couldn’t do everything that I want to do. There was one simple action, one small step. And then another. And another….

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

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Tell The Story

Posted on November 1, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

With Tom’s passing comes a renewed interest in producing The Lost Boy, a storytelling/one-man-play about Tom’s ancestors and how he discovered his role in his lineage. We made a hearty run several years ago at producing the piece. Prior to that I spent two years interviewing Tom, walking through family graveyards, unpacking old boxes, looking at photos and artifacts, visiting property that used to belong to his people. We spent many late night hours drinking wine and talking story.

We started work on the play because late one night Tom turned to me and said, “I need you to help me with something.” If you knew Tom you’d know how unusual it was for him to say something like, “I need help.” I sat down and for the next several hours listened as Tom told me an incredible story of lost-ness and found-ness driven by an obligation he felt to his great grandmother. “I have to tell this story,” he said, averting his eyes and adding, “I don’t know how to satisfy my obligation to Isabelle.”

The piece was originally to be performed by Tom. After several attempts I’d written a viable draft that he liked. A terrific band, Mom’s Chili Boys composed music for the piece. In the months before our first read through I felt something was wrong with Tom. He seemed sometimes lost, occasionally disoriented. For our first read/play through of the script we invited a few friends. We had dinner, laughed a lot, and moved into the living room where the Chili Boys had set up their instruments. The reading began well. Tom was a natural storyteller and he was present and vital in the first act. The music was heart-full. And then somewhere in the second act Tom got lost. Literally. For a moment he did not know where on the planet earth he was. I saw the panic in his eyes. His wife Marcia took his hand. After a moment he returned to us though I will never forget the look of fear in his eyes. He had no idea what had just happened to him. We stumbled through the rest of the script but I knew we were too late. Tom would never be able to personally fulfill his obligation to Isabelle. He called me the next night and asked that we stop all work.

As he slipped into dementia, The Chili Boys and I revised the piece so that I would tell the story. We attempted a few half-hearted workshop performances but a roadblock always emerged. The time wasn’t right so we left it alone.

Jim, chief Chili Boy, called the other night and we talked of Tom, his passing, and the play. Jim said, “It’s time.” I pulled out the script and read it aloud. He’s right. It’s time. I have an obligation to Tom and to a woman named Isabelle to tell this story. I have an obligation to myself and to the Chili Boys to tell this story. Ironically, for me anyway, it is a story of a man finally returning to his root and at long last coming home. After my call with Jim I realized that, after the year that I’ve just lived, finding a way to return to my root story, finding my family, I’m only now capable of telling this story.

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

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Create Flow

Posted on October 22, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

[Continued from Begin With Yourself]

Continuing with Skip’s reflections from last week’s post about bringing your unedited best to the world, Step Onto The Field, his next question came from this section of my post:

Showing up is not passive and has nothing to do with information delivery. Showing up means to share the quest, to bring others along on the pursuit of a dream. Showing up is being present with others.

Skip reminded me that over the past year we’ve talked much about “presence” and reflected that my statement was similar to ideas found in Paulo Coehlo’s, The Pilgrimage, and other stories from the Camino. In other words, “Showing up is being present,” is the same as inviting others on the journey with you. In reference to entrepreneurs he wrote, “…this is not about presenting (one way), but more about inviting….” What a fantastic reflection!

He is exploring presence as a matter of the direction or flow of energy. Presence is circular and ripples out. It is inclusive. In other words, “to be present” is two-way communication. It is relationship. When one is present, one joins. One connects. Separations disappear. I used to do an exercise in workshops with young actors to show them that the honest pursuit of an intention was the very thing that facilitated an audience’s capacity to join the story journey. The exercise is basically a game and the more honest the game is played the more magnetic the action is to the “observers” of the game. In fact, the “observers” are like sports fans, cheering and contorting and embodying the action on the field. In contrast, pretending to pursue the action of the game blocked the audience/observers from entering the story. Pretending dams the flow. It is an equation: honest pursuit = energy exchange. Honest pursuit creates flow.

Pretending is one-way communication. It is broadcasting. The energy is directed outward, broadcasting to the audience. There is no expectation of dialogue and no capacity for participation. Broadcasting is protected. Experts are broadcasters in that they present what they know and are not necessarily interested in other points of view.

For actors and entrepreneurs, the idea is to create flow. It is to include, not to broadcast. It is to create an energy exchange and provide entry into the story. It is to open to possibility so that possibility can open for them.

[to be continued]

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

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Meet At “We.”

Posted on September 8, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

Many years ago I was watching Johnny direct a play. It was one of Shakespeare’s though I can’t remember which play. Suddenly, in the middle of the rehearsal, he was overcome with the recognition that he and his actors where carrying forward a tradition. They were engaged in an artistic tradition that stretches back centuries. They were carrying the torch in this lifetime so that they might pass the flame to the next generation. Johnny’s passion and recognition was infectious and his cast dawned to the reality that they were in service to something greater than their small parts in a singular production of the play. They became priests and priestesses enacting the ritual story for all ages.

They found deeper meaning to their work. It mattered. They found connection to both the past (the tradition) and the future (the legacy). Their work rippled in time and came alive in the present moment because they suddenly understood who they were relative to the past and the future. They located themselves. This play was theirs to do. Their service to the play and the tradition defined their purpose. Their art was their gift to the community and the community the served transcended time: it reached into the past and stretched into the future.

This is the purpose of the arts: to locate us in time relative to our traditions and our legacy. The arts orient us to the question, “Who are we?” The arts do not answer the question, there is no single answer, but they facilitate an ongoing conversation and exploration of what it is to be alive as a member of a community.

Artists are the keepers of the communal narrative. When the artists no longer occupy the center, the narrative dissipates and so does the society. Rules and laws can hold the pieces together for a while but disparity and self-interest are inevitable. They are harbingers of communal collapse. A common narrative is the beating heart of a healthy community.

No plant can live without it root and neither can a community. No person can prosper alone. The purpose is never the “I.” Purpose requires a target so it is by definition the “We.” Greater purpose extends to the past and the future, just as the roots of a plant reach deep into the earth while the branches and leaves reach to meet the sun. This reaching, this connection to past and future that meets and grows in the present moment defines us. It is the two directions of mattering that meets in the moment of “We.”

(895. 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 a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

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Live The Metaphor

Posted on August 25, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

884. 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’s 3am and I am wide awake.

I have been goading Horatio for years to write a screenplay called 3am Man. It’s about a man who can’t sleep. He is troubled about the events of his life and his insomnia drives him to the streets and he makes a pass through the culture of the night. After months of walking through the underbelly of the world he finds peace and sleep. I think the story is Greek in scope. It’s Orpheus descending into the underworld. He’s torn to bits and resurrected (put back together again). It is Osiris, the same story from an earlier mythology. It’s a universal cycle of life.

Mythologies are not dusty old stories. They are metaphors of our personal stories, the stories of our lives. If you know how to read them they can be enormously helpful during times of being lost or alone. They can help orient you when life is spinning you around. In this lifetime we will all be torn to bits and put back together again, more aware, and usually with a new assignment. This is the story of the year past for me. I’m like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. I lost my stuffing. Now, having been torn to bits and in the process of reassembly, I can help Horatio write his screenplay because I understand.

I used to work at this time of night. I found it peaceful to paint while the world slept. It’s almost as if the frenetic psychic energy of the daylight hours scrambled me. I found peace, clarity and an open channel in the quiet. Tonight, in this quiet, I am sitting in a house that is being pulled apart, the possessions of a lifetime pulled apart, put into boxes and divided among relatives. If I understand my mythology correctly, even this process of a life torn to bits will ultimately lead to reassembly somewhere down the road. New life will come of it. Energy will take another form.

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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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Share The Quilt

Posted on August 20, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Linda led me around her house and told me stories of her quilts. She has a large atrium with dozens of quilts draped over the balcony. There are quilts on every bed in the house. “This one my grandmother made for me on my 5th birthday,” she said. “Grandma died shortly after that so I never really knew her. That’s why I cherish this quilt.”

She explained to me that many people are shocked to see her family quilts in use or displayed. “They tell me that they’ll get ruined or the colors will fade.” She paused for a moment and added, “But I think these were made to be used and seen, not to be tucked away in some closet. Life is meant to be lived, not preserved.”

This has been one of the lessons of this past year: Life is meant to be lived, not preserved or maintained or suffered or controlled or endured. It sounds like a cliché. You will find the phrase on greeting cards everywhere. But ask yourself, “Why do we have to remind ourselves that life is meant to be lived?”

I’m learning that living life fully is impossible if you have cut yourself off from your root. Living life fully requires a deep and solid root system that supports your arms as they reach to the sky and drink in the sun. Linda is surrounded by her legacy. She cannot tell me about the quilts without telling me of the people who made them and the moment she received them. Her roots are alive and well. She lives fully. You can tell by the sparkle in her eyes.

“The one on the bed where you are sleeping was made by mother. She loved to quilt and so do I,” Linda smiled. “Here’s the thing,” she said, “quilting takes time and attention, something most people don’t have enough of these days.”

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Know Your Root

Posted on August 18, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

With Tom’s death yesterday I’ve been thinking about legacy. So many people called me today to make sure that I knew of his passing. I’ve had many wonderful and brief conversations with people who knew what Tom meant to me. All of them said, “His passing has left a hole….”

Tom taught me more about the theatre and teaching and story than any other person. He was my great mentor and later my friend. The irony is that I never saw him direct a play (I caught a rehearsal or two) or teach a class. I did, however, spend hours and hours listening to him tell stories. Tom was an amazing storyteller. I spent hours asking him questions. I carry forward his philosophy of working. All of my work in education is sourced in Tom. Every time I stand in front of an audience and tell a story I carry him forward.

He liked to tell this story: When he was a little boy the 90-year old Countess Valencia would visit the ranch each Sunday to have a chat with his grandmother. The Countess was a local girl who’d married a count. They lived on a vast ranch nearby and the count was long dead. Because the Countess was too old to get out of the car, Tom’s grandmother would sit with her in the backseat. They’d have tea and talk. One Sunday, the Countess opened the car door and called Tom over. She asked him to sit in her lap. Tom said she was a little bird and brittle and he was afraid that she would break but he crawled into her lap never-the-less. She said to him, “I want you always to remember what I am about to tell you. This might not seem important to you now but it will later when you are old enough to understand.” She paused and said, “Thomas, you are sitting in the lap of someone who sat in the lap of Abraham Lincoln. He smelled of lilac water and saddle soap.”

He had a lifelong fascination for Abraham Lincoln. He read every book. He even looked a bit like Mr. Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln is not so far in the past. Two long lives stand between him and me.

Tom impacted more people than any other person I’ve since met. If I ever have or will tell you a story, I’ll be introducing you to Tom.

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