Truly Powerful People | The Direction of Intention

Answer The Call

Posted on July 24, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Tonight, for the first time this year, for the first time since I started my wandering, I stretched a new canvas. Actually, to be more specific, I stapled it on the wall. I don’t know what possessed me. It was after midnight and I was closing up shop and suddenly I found myself unfurling a large piece of canvas, covering the wall and the surrounding furniture with plastic, and stretching and stapling the canvas to the wall. It’s a big piece!

Preparing a new canvas is a ritual. It is a commitment to the unknown. It is a dance with the gods of possibility. Preparing the canvas is calling the muses. It is to walk to the leaping off place and call into the void, “I am ready for you,” and to expect an answer. It is an act of surrender, an invitation to battle, a flirtation with a lover, a cry of anticipation, a step into silence. Preparing the canvas is to step through the threshold.

The first coat of gesso tightens the fibers and pulls the canvas tight. I relish this process because it is messy and furious and fast and that was especially true tonight. I was splashing gesso and water onto the newly stretched canvas as if I had no control. I needed to do it. I needed to call into that void. I needed to issue a challenge, “I’m here. Take me.” It had been a long, long time since the last ritual passage.

I recognize this frenzy. In the past it has come when the doors that have been locked tight for months suddenly open and the universe like the light of a full moon pours in. The frenzy is a kind of madness, a response to the moonlight and there are few satisfactions greater than dropping the brush into a bucket after the madness passes and asking myself, “What’s this?”

It is potential. It is the universe standing on the edge of the leaping place calling to me and saying, “I’m ready for you.” And this journey, like all great journeys into art, begins with a smile of recognition and a leap into the unknown.

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Learn Through Osmosis

Posted on July 23, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

853. 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 reasons I cannot identify, the word “osmosis” became the word of the day. I heard it everywhere I went. I can’t remember the last time I heard the word osmosis but today it was everywhere, lurking on the lips of even the most casual passerby.

It began with the woman sitting at the front desk of print services place. I was taking the next 30 cartoons in to be scanned, opened the door to the shop and heard her say, “It’s like I was supposed learn it through osmosis or something!” I asked the obvious question, “What were you supposed to learn?” I was consciously intruding on a conversation with someone I’d never met and she winked and said, “Wouldn’t you like to know!” I double pumped my eyebrows and she laughed and told me I was bad and asked how she could help me. When people open a mischief door like that I usually jump through but we were already on the innuendo edge so I let it go. I guess I’ll have to learn through osmosis what she was supposed to learn through osmosis because she wouldn’t tell me.

Next, osmosis came to me in the Salvation Army store. I went in looking for a small refrigerator and heard a shopper say, “I guess I’ll just have to osmos the price.” There is no verb form of osmosis so I especially appreciated the new word creation. I use the word “story” as a verb and it drives Horatio nuts. I will add “osmos” to my collection of verbs-not-verbs just to see if I get a ticket from the word police.

Later I was with Pete at Starbucks and we were talking about art and the trouble we’ve caused the women in our lives. I’m not sure why those two topics collided but we seemed to weave in to trouble and out to art and back again. A guy standing in line was in a heated conversation and exclaimed, “Doesn’t he know that I learn everything by osmosis!” Clearly, he was being sarcastic but I began to wonder why this word was following me. I’m given to seeing life as a series of metaphors and serendipities so when a word keeps popping up I think I’m supposed to pay attention. What do I need to osmos (see, I’m practicing!).

Pete saw the look on my face and asked if I was okay. I replied, “I have a lot to learn, apparently.” He thought I was talking about the trouble we’ve caused our women and said, “Don’t we all!”

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Feel The Music

Posted on July 22, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

852. 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 stood with my face to the sun on the patio outside of the training room. Barney came up to me and asked, “Why did you choose to stand here?” It felt good. There was sun and quiet. He called my attention to the tree behind me. It was ancient and I was standing just on the boundary – at the circumference of the tree’s limbs. He said, “This is about right, the perfect spot. This is how you address something sacred – never face to it but open the chakras in your back and feel it. You are feeling it.” And I was…and I could.

I wasn’t doing it consciously. The grand old tree was humming and I was drinking it in. It felt like a good back massage. I stood in that spot because it felt good. A few times in my life I have performed – telling a story with a symphony – and stood facing the audience with my back to the orchestra. The sound from the symphony vibrated my bones. It warmed me. It was a musical massage. Standing with my back to the tree was similar. The vibration was as potent but not as explosive as the symphony. It was even, deep base. It quieted my mind.

Over the next few days Barney called my attention to how I orient myself to and feel power places. This is not a trick or magic or voodoo. It is not a special skill. Anyone can feel the music of the world. It requires standing still. It requires paying attention – not with your mind but with your body. It requires openness to joining rather than the dedicated separation that we practice in our very busy urban world. It requires being in life rather than moving through it.

Stand in the river. Close your eyes. Stop listening to the “hurry up” story running through your mind. Beyond the story you just might feel the exchange, the dance of giving and receiving. As Barney said, ”Nature balances. It is all a matter of polarities and you have to know what poles you are working with.” Balance is not a state of achievement but a constant dance of giving and receiving. It is movement, pulse and vibration. It is the tide.

Filed under: Energy, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: energy, health, slow, vibration | Leave a comment »

Be An Idealist

Posted on July 21, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

851. 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 rolled down the windows even though it was still hot. The sun was almost down and we just began the climb out of the central valley. Skip said, “Do you think it’s cool enough to turn off the air-conditioner?” Neither one of us liked air-conditioning and only used it when absolutely necessary.

“Of course!” I chirped. We rolled down the windows and the hot air blasted us. I put my hands out of the car window and said, “See! Nice and cool!” Skip smirked and called me an idealist. Truer words were never spoken. I am an idealist.

I’m told (often) that the best thing about me is that I tell a good story. I will put a good spin on every experience. I’m also told that the worst thing about me is that I tell a good story. Is it denial or optimism? Am I detaching, dealing, not dealing or dancing? Am I telling myself a lie or loving to live? Maybe it is all of the above.

Like everyone I know I’ve walked a broken road. No ones’ path is pretty. Earlier in my life I invested in the tragedy and wrestled with every angel. I made up lots of demons to fight. My gifts scared me so I pretended they were not there and served the gifts of others. I dialed down my life-force. I lived in resistance. I took on everyone’s pain and made others problems and priorities my own. I created limits and then moaned about my confinement. I did all of those things, made messes and looked to the heavens and asked for a break.

The heavens looked back at me and said, “It’s not happening to you. You are creating it. If you want a break then make a break, break something, or take a break. Either way, stop pretending that it is someone elses job to make it pretty for you.”

What I broke (am breaking) was my idea of myself. Carol recently told me that she was breaking up with her relationship with the world. She wanted a new relationship. She was tired of waiting for the world to change her story so she decided to change her story of the world. I was tired of telling a broken story. I was tired of telling a story of being broken. I was tired of making my focus other peoples’ stuff. So, I broke up with my story. Call me an idealist or tell me that I’m in denial but this life is mine to interpret and I much prefer joy stories to frustration. As someone once said to me, “I’m the only one who feels my anger so getting angry all the time is only hurting me.” That rule works in reverse, too.

An hour after the sun set we were off the valley floor and the air finally cooled. I looked at Skip and said, “See! I told you it was cool!” He laughed and wrinkled his brow. I said, “This is the strategy of an idealist. Claim that it is cool and then wait long enough for reality to match the ideal.” It always does.

Filed under: Perspective, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: broken, idealist, narrative, story | Leave a comment »

Release The Following Wake

Posted on July 20, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

“Have you ever noticed how the ferries in Seattle never come directly into the dock?” Skip asked. We were riding the ferry from Larkspur to San Francisco and it was moving along at a fast clip. “Pay attention to this ferry. It will slow and nearly stop and then make a turn before it docks.” Skip watched me watch the ferry. He was right. It nearly stopped and made a turn before docking.

I looked at Skip and he laughed at my confusion. “The water displaced by the ferry would smash the ferry into the dock if it went straight for a landing. They have to slow and turn to release the energy of the wave. It’s called a ‘following wake,’” he said. In other words, the displaced water, the wake, has such force that it would push the ferry into and smash the dock. In order to dock, the ferry first needs to attend to its momentum. It need to deal with what it has created. Now there’s a metaphor!

In the past six months I have displaced a lot of metaphoric water. I did not know about a following wake and have splintered plenty of docks. I tried to go straight into my landing and found myself being carried further than I intended. No amount of brakes will help when being pushed by a following wake. Good intentions will do nothing to mitigate the damage to the dock. The wave doesn’t care. It is energy in motion and does what energy is supposed to do when released. It transforms. It changes shape. It is equally destructive as it is creative and the energy does not make that distinction. Destruction and creation are false separations necessary only to we storying humans.

A few days ago Barney told me that water carries the memory. He told me that water brings up the memory from the deep. “Air is changeable. Water carries the memory,” he said. I couldn’t help but combine the notion of a following wake with the idea that water carries the memory. Memory is a powerful wave, a following wake and if it is not attended to, if it is not dealt with, its force will smash you into the dock. Take a moment. Slow down. Turn ever so slightly so the memory wake can release, and then you can move slowly into rest.

During this week Skip, Barney, and Daphne gave me a lifetime of incredible gifts. And without my “knowing,” they showed me how to put my hands in the earth, to slow down enough to feel it, and while I was sitting in the present moment my following wake released its energy. I turned ever so slightly as the powerful wave passed me by. Now I can safely go home.

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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.

Filed under: Awakening, Power, Transcendence, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Enter The Cathedral

Posted on July 18, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

848. 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 stood and watched the dragonflies at the pond. One came to visit me and I remembered a dragonfly a year ago that rested on my shoulder and stayed with me for nearly an hour. It was a harbinger of change. It comforted me and I knew that everything would ultimately be okay. That dragonfly was purple. The dragonfly today was vibrant orange and reminded me of a dragonfly statue that decorated the sill in a room that will always be sacred to me. Dragonflies have been with me all year.

Daphne caught up to me and gave me a large piece of obsidian. Barney looked at it and said, “The native people wouldn’t have use for this. They only used the pieces that were harder, blacker. They used the pieces that could hold an edge.” I thought it was beautiful: sienna, grey and speckled white. It was radiating the heat of the sun and also vibrant with the energy of the volcano that produced it. Elementally, it was fire and I didn’t want to let it go. I held it to my solar plexus and the dragonfly hovered with me. “I am in the most beautiful place on earth,” I thought as I looked up the hill at the vine terraces. I was standing at the bottom of a basin that forms the Benziger winery. It is a biodynamic farm. It is an energy vortex; a very powerful place and you can feel it pulse in you if you stand quiet and feel it. As Barney said, “This place is the cathedral.”

One of the Hermetic Principles is, “As above, so below.” Here, at the winery, it is not an abstract concept but a concrete, living dynamic. The roots of the vine are equal in weight to the parts that we see above ground. Unless of course the ground around the plant is subjected to weed killer or other additive chemicals, then, the plant protects itself. It cuts itself off from its deeper root. It cuts itself off from the capacity to thrive and cannot pull the nourishment from the earth. “The metaphors are everywhere,” Barney said. I was grateful; for once, it was not me seeing the metaphors. “People are like the vines,” he said, “Try to kill the weeds or cheat the natural process and they cut themselves off from deeper nourishment. Survival is the best they can do.”

Earlier I stood in a natural ring of redwoods. I stepped into the ring and it took my breath away. Daphne sat down. Barney smiled and said, “I knew you would love this place. This is your place. People call this the faery ring. It’s for air spirits.”

I am air and water and today I held obsidian (fire and earth). The dragonfly, vibrant orange and yellow, the color of flame, flicked around my shoulder and the past month of my life suddenly made sense. I held the obsidian closer and was quiet for the first time in months.

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Can You Hear Them?

Posted on July 16, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Two simple images: as we descended from the vineyard, walking the path between the properties, Skip asked, “Can you hear the stories?” Earlier in the day he said that five stories where shared when drinking a single bottle of wine. That means that vineyards are full of stories. “Yes,” I said, “I can hear them.” And I could.

Barney walked with me up the hill to the insectory. He is teaching and practicing biodynamic winemaking. He said, “We’re not in the business of growing grapes. We’re in the business of making great soil. It all begins with the soil.” He clarified that by saying, “We’re in the business of getting out of the way and letting Mother Nature do what she does, which is make great soil.” He jumped up and down and asked, “Can you feel it?” I jumped up and down. Yes. I could feel it.

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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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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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