Truly Powerful People | The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (134)

Posted on July 23, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

134.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Within the “story-I-tell-myself-about-myself” school of thought, I like the idea from Don Miguel Ruiz that all people grow through 3 primary roles in their journey through life. The roles are Victim, Warrior, and Seer. A role is nothing more than a commitment to a point of view. This progression is not linear; you don’t leave one role behind and move into the other (until the Seer is realized). They are fluid with one role serving as the primary mask.

The Victim is the role played in stories of “I can’t” or stories fueled by comparison or expectations of perfection. Playing the role of Victim is not unlike being an alcoholic: it is addictive, a dis-ease that requires a truckload of self-denial and self-abuse to maintain. There is gravity to the Victim role, a powerful orbit around the planet blame; to a Victim, things happen to you. For a Victim, the answer and the power are in other hands. The Victim does not generate; reaction to circumstance becomes the path of least resistance.

The Victim is dedicated to the point of view (belief) that they have no control over their life or their thoughts. Accompanying their dedication is an abdication of responsibility, an investment in circumstance. This is the drug. It feels good to be free of actual personal responsibility. It feels good to have someone to blame; the past or the boss or the other political party. There is a unique high in telling a tale of woe and injustice. Go to any public place; listen to the gossip, the stories of “what they did to me.” Watch the body language and you’ll see the need for more of the drug.

Most people say they want power until offered the responsibility for creating their own happiness. Empowered people empower others because they’ve discovered their commitment to the Victim and made a new commitment not sip from the cup of “look what they did to me.” They’ve decided to own their thoughts, change their language, their point of view and their actions. One thought at a time, one day at a time, they gain enough rocket power to break free of the gravity of their blame story.

And, some people go cold turkey. Their shift is quantum. They drop the Victim like an old suit of clothes.

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Truly Powerful People (133)

Posted on July 22, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

133.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

If I can tell myself the story of not good enough, I am capable of telling myself the story of good enough.

If I am capable of holding myself hostage to a standard of “perfect,” I am capable of freeing myself to live in a world where everything is perfect just as it is.

If I am capable of imagining the worst, of assuming ill intent in others, I am also capable of imagining the best, of assuming positive intent.

If I am capable of judging myself and judging others, I am capable of forgiving myself and others, I am capable of offering compassion, of living in the center of my generous spirit.

If I am capable of seeing through the eyes of fear, I am capable of seeing through the eyes of love.

If I am capable of believing that I can’t, I am equally capable of believing that I can.

Stories of can’t, of not good enough, of hard-edged perfection, stories built on fear and assumptions of ill-intent, commitments to self-judgment, investments in self-loathing were most likely useful at some point in your past. You wouldn’t have created them if they weren’t useful. They are certainly stories of protection against feeling something, stories meant to keep you from wandering into the minefields of shame or punishment. They are story grooves cut by repetition, they became patterns of thinking; paths of least resistance for a stream of inner monologue meant to keep you quiet, still, and afraid to move.

You are equally capable of wearing a new path through the meadow. You are equally capable of creating a story of self-love as you are of maintaining as story of self-limitation.

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Truly Powerful People (132)

Posted on July 21, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

132.
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 131]

Horatio,
Van Gogh lived his entire life painting paintings that no one wanted to buy. William Blake was nearly a pauper at his death. Mahler’s work was rarely played until 50 years after his death. Imagine the doubts that filled their hearts! If you can imagine their doubts you can also imagine the opposite: what if their hearts were filled with curiosity? A writer writes, a painter paints; the artist’s job is to make the offer, not to determine how it is received. What if the idea of success or failure, acceptance or rejection never factored into their equations? What if, like you, they were following deeper imperative, a yearning that couldn’t be denied? What if, like you, they had a burning desire to explore the depth and breadth of their being?

Beneath the phrase, “I can’t do it,” is an opportunity. Replace the word “can’t” with the words “choose not to” and the opportunity will show itself. Also, when I fill myself with fear, when I convince myself that I can’t do “it,” I am always amused when I recognize that I don’t know what “it” is that I’ve decided I cannot do. What is “it?” Make a call? Ask a question? Try again? Pick up a pencil? Learn something? Live? Love? Share? “It” is an elusive bugger and that is its purpose exactly: to make you chase a phantom (can’t) rather than act on your dream. Or, to be more precise, to deflect you from seeing that you are, in fact, already pursuing your dream.

It is terrifying to fledge, to take that first step into space and rely on wings that have yet to know flight. A step from the nest is necessarily a step into uncertainty and I suspect that, if that step were into something you already knew, you would not be interested in taking it in the first place. It is the terror that you seek. It is the unknown that you crave. There is a fine line between exhilaration and terror. They feel the same but are wrapped in different stories.

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Truly Powerul People (131)

Posted on July 20, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

131.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Dear Horatio,
There are many, many ways to suffer in this world. There is starvation and cold. There is war and the brutality that befalls people living in the way of a resource like oil, rubber or water. These are the obvious and are easy to see.

Many forms of suffering live only in our heads but are no less real because of it. They are spawned in pools of false expectations like trying to be perfect (whatever that means) or when false comparisons obscure your unique offer to the world. They come from false investments in a story that says you can or can’t do something or that you are not valid until…. These forms of suffering are insidious and pervasive; I see them everywhere. Almost every person I meet is suffering because they are hiding their investment in the idea that they are not good enough or that they can’t realize their dreams. They discount the road already traveled; they judge themselves for every decision. Hiding compounds the suffering and is exhausting.

I have read mountains of material on the fear of success and I doubt that it is success that we fear. It is being seen. It is vulnerable to show up 100% and make your strong offer to the world without investment in what others might think; without investment in how your offer (you) will be received.

When I am afraid I check in with what I am doing (am I making art or trying to please?). If I am trying to please I stop and throw away what I am doing because it has no merit. If I am making art I make a list of the actions I need to take. The actions are rarely difficult; the story I wrap around them is where the challenge arises. How can you take the actions without investing in the story? I break the actions into small steps. I take the first step and actively doubt the story I try to tell myself. The purpose of the story is to keep me from moving, to keep me from showing up. How can you invest in the actions and not the story?

[to be continued]

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Truly Powerful People (130)

Posted on July 19, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

130.
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’ve learned that where life lessons are concerned, learning comes in circles. I’ve had revelations and 10 years later I’m having re-revelations; same lesson, new level. Here’s the new/old learning I’m having today: I’ve been angry and frustrated these past several months and in all the things and people that I invest my discontent, in all the things that I think needs to change, the movement that isn’t (from my perspective) happening, I am the only one who is suffering. The anger and frustration do not exist outside of me. The expectation does not exist anywhere outside of me.

Lately I have been creating anger and frustration. I have been determined to suffer in a cloud of discontent. I am choosing it. Why?

I’m looking around me, all around me, and I see people walking on the beach. I see joy. There is sun. What is it that I do not have that I think I need? What am I trying to control that I cannot control. Or, perhaps a better question is this: what am I afraid to do that I am not doing?

What false expectation have I set that allows me stay angry and frustrated? I know enough to recognize that any investment in a victim role is an abdication of responsibility in disguise. What do I want others to do for me that I need to do for myself? The anger and frustration serve as blinders; what I can’t see I can’t address.

The old-new learning: I am the only person in this equation that is suffering. Perhaps answering the question, “why?” is not an important question to answer (or ask); any answer is equal – it is an explanation of victimhood – and so it doesn’t matter.

All that is required is to make a different choice. I am the only person making the choice. I can choose something other than suffering.

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Truly Powerful People (129)

Posted on July 18, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

129.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Inside the Volunteer Park Conservatory in the room just beyond the orchids there is magical piece of art called the Over Lyre. It is the work of Portland, Oregon artist Dan Senn. Suspended just above your head, small wooden dowels and metal disks are suspended from lines of piano wire. A gentle vibration sent through the wires tips the dowels tapping the disks; it is a chime that soothes and inspires inner quiet.

Lora, Megan and I watched as a young boy, maybe 5 years old came into the conservatory chamber. He was following the sound to discover its source. He was enrapt the moment he stepped into the chamber and saw for the first time the Over Lyre. His stillness (presence) was so…full, that we were enrapt by him. His quiet became our quiet. His parents entering a moment behind their son were literally stopped in their tracks by the power of his presence. His presence swept us into the present.

We were, all of us adults, moved to tears.

This capacity for awe, this is what makes us human. This desire to follow the sound to the source, to give yourself over to it, to marvel and be-come the delight, this is the purest form of creating; it unifies. How long has it been since you followed the sound and gave yourself over to delight?

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Truly Powerful People (128)

Posted on July 17, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

128.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

We see what we believe. Then, we search the world for the data (proof) that supports our belief. In this sense, truth is relative. What is true for you is not necessarily true for others. Like you, others are scouring the world for proof that what they believe is the truth. Everyone is telling themselves a story. Each story is beautiful, relevant, and unique to the teller and so they assume it is truth. What binds us is not a single truth but our capacity to story ourselves.

The difficulty is not in multiple truths, multiple stories; the challenge arises when there is the expectation of one truth. When I believe that your truth must match my truth, that my truth is the way and yours is inferior, that I must convert you to my truth, then we are on an untenable path.

We step into the dark woods and get lost with idea that there is one truth and it exists outside of us and we must find it out there somewhere. This notion separates us from our capacity for transformation; it requires us to doubt our inner truth while spending our days searching for something that is with us all along.

There are many ways. There are many truths. If there is a single story it is something we create together in our active search for proof that supports what we believe.

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Truly Powerful People (127)

Posted on July 16, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

127.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Last night Michael told me that he used to run because of the head-space that he entered. He said, “I haven’t found that kind of meditative place in any other form of exercise or sport. It’s like the crap just fell off and I was clear and present and alive.” That’s why I used to run, too. The exercise was great but the presence was holy.

On the radio this morning I heard a surfer say that presence was the reason people surfed. He said, “Surfing requires a relationship with the present moment.” He added, “On the board is when you are most alive.”

It is in the present that you are most alive. I think this experience of presence (aliveness) is the meaning behind every religious symbol. It is the place beyond the-story-that-you-tell-yourself or as Michael said, the place where “the crap falls off.” It is the middle place, the middle way. It is the space between the pair of opposites like male/female, good/bad, right/wrong, heaven/hell: story is only possible when dualities (separations) are known. Presence is a kind of unity; it is the middle way, not past or future, not this or that, it is the place beyond story.

Parcival attains the grail (presence) when he sets aside his role and sees what is in front of him instead of what he thinks should be there. He is no longer striving to become, he is no longer invested in the past.

Many religious symbols are made of the intersection of two elements: the Star of David is the meeting place of two triangles, the cross is the intersection of a horizontal and vertical axis: at the place where striving meets becoming is a sweet spot called now. The bodhi tree has branches that reach to the heavens and roots that stretch to touch the center of the earth; the sitting place of illumination (presence) is between the two.

In the Garden of Eden there is a second tree, the tree of everlasting life (unity, presence). The first tree is, as we know, the tree of knowledge (duality, separation) and having been booted from the garden (birth) we spend our lives trying to find our way back to that place that knows no separation: life is what we do between this pair of opposites.

There are many paths to this state called presence. No amount of doctrine will get you there (doctrine requires separation). It is available to all people, all of the time. It is not a place of arrival. It is your natural state and is available when the crap falls off. Some people catch glimpses of it on a surfboard. Michael caught sight of it while running. Where do you find your middle way?

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Truly Powerful People (126)

Posted on July 15, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

126.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Every year for the past three years I have been privileged to co-teach a class with Alan Seale. It is for coaches who desire mastery. There is a potent exercise from the class that I periodically do for myself because I never fail to gain an important insight or uncover something that I need to reconsider or let go.

The exercise goes like this: look around your life and imagine that you created all of it. What if you and only you create your love relationships, your friendships, and your casual relationships? What if you create your work situation? What if you create your physical health? What if you create your spiritual wellness? What if you create your financial situation? Your angst, your dissatisfaction, your fear,…what if you create it all? What do you see as a creator? You might even go so far as to imagine that you create the political situation in the country; that you participate in happenings in the world.

As creator, what are you happy about creating? What are you unhappy about creating? What would you like to change – assume that you have the capacity to create and the capacity make changes to your creation; what prevents you from changing what you dislike? What insights are available when you entertain the notion that you are creating your world?

Of course, the kicker is that you are creating your world through the story you tell yourself. What possibilities blossom when you accept that the story is in you, you are not in the story?

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Truly Powerful People (125)

Posted on July 14, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

125.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Truly powerful people empower others. They empower others because doing so empowers them. It is an infinite game: a game that is played to be better and better at playing. There is no win/lose in an infinite game; there is mastery. It is a game of power with others. Play to empower others and you will empower your self.

The shadow of that statement is also true: play to limit others and you will limit your self. Win/lose games are finite games; they are played to win so the game ends. All play stops and someone must lose. It is a game of power over others. It is possible to become better at winning when playing finite games but mastery will be out of your reach.

(for more read James Carse’s excellent book, Finite and Infinite Games)

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