The Direction of Intention

See It. Feel It.

Posted on August 19, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

I call this painting “Sleepers”

Tom spoke of small actions, the gift of peanut butter to a food kitchen for the poor. He asked, “Will it change the world?” and answered his own question, “I don’t know. In some small way, bringing a bit of hope to anther person, or providing food for a day, maybe it will.” Tom has been meditating on the many ways we enact love but perhaps do not see. He has been wondering if small acts of generosity serve as small acts love. Are not these small acts of generosity capable of changing the world.

For the past year, since moving from Seattle and leaving my work with entrepreneurs, I’ve been pondering this impulse toward change and the ubiquitous desire to change the world. I learned last year that, in business start-ups, the intention to change people is the great sign of folly. Changing people is impossible. If the central intention of the new business is to change people, don’t invest. It’s good rule of thumb.

People pray for a world without violence, a world free of disease and poverty. People read the paper and wonder what has become of the world. Someone recently said to me, “It’s overwhelming. What can I do?”

Tom’s meditation has brought him to this: it is not the doing that ultimately matters. It is quality of the being that matters. If your doing changes your being, you have changed the world. If some small act of generosity or compassion opens you, it changes the world. In the year prior to my move, I walked across the city of Seattle twice each day. I made it a game to count the small acts of kindness I saw each day during my crossing. There were always too many to count. People opening doors for others, making space in line, helping someone who dropped their packages, blocking traffic for an elderly person to cross the street. My walks were steeped in otherwise small invisible generosities.

The mistake we make when desiring change in the world is to think of change as a bottom line, change as an outcome or end result. Change as a forced march or dose of castor oil. Changing the world is not an arrival platform. It is within every act of kindness. It is every generous thought. It is fluid, on going, never ending.

One thing I learned from my walk with entrepreneurs is that every single start-up came about because someone saw a way to make life easier for others. What makes an idea good is how effectively it helps others. And so, in pursuing their idea, in every small action, they change themselves. They play in the field of possibilities. In changing themselves, they cannot help but change the world.

Will a donation of a jar of peanut butter to a food bank change the world? Perhaps. If it feels good. If it changes you. Small acts do not exist in isolation. To change the world you need only change yourself. People do not exist in isolation. The river flows. Each act impacts others in small ways and large.

Go here for my latest book, The Seer

Go here for fine art prints of my paintings

Filed under: Love, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: change, changes, entrepreneur, generosity, love, meditation, transformation | 2 Comments »

Use Your Key

Posted on August 18, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Photo by londonstreetart2

The other day I received an email from a long lost cousin. She spent some time on my website watching old interviews and contemplating my assertion that through our inner monologue we story ourselves. The idea was disturbing to her. How could she be the teller of her story and yet feel so powerless? So many things have happened to her! How could she possibly be responsible for the twists and turns of her life? She asked, “How exactly is one to find empowerment when the door is locked and the key wasn’t left under the mat….”

I’ve been slow in responding to her questions because my impulse to respond was so immediate. I wrote and then deleted, “If you do not have the key, who does?”

Her metaphor is perfect. There is door to life and it is locked. Someone else has the key.

And, to make matters more cruel, there is a mat, a tease, a place where the key should be. The mat is a constant reminder of the absence of the key. Her metaphor gives structure to a very specific story, does it not? It defines the actions of her life, the role in which she has cast herself. In such a story frame there is no access to life, there is no possibility of personal power.

I wonder what she might see if she held a different metaphor? I wonder what she might see if she recognized that she is the keeper of the metaphor and in that way the giver of meaning to her life and not the seeker of meaning? I wonder what she might experience if she saw herself as a locksmith or an opener of doors? I wonder what she might experience if she recognized that life is available on both sides of the door? Life knows no doors. Life needs no key.

Her confusion is also perfect. She has mistaken her circumstance for her story. None of us has control over our circumstances. Cancers come. Hurricanes happen. Empowerment comes when we recognize that we have infinite control over who we are within our circumstance. Empowerment is not given, it is chosen.

The Buddhists recommend joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. No one sails through life without difficulty and hardship. The difficulty and hardship are the very things that bring growth and illumination. Participate joyfully. Or, participate painfully. The sorrows of the world will always be there; how we participate is the story we choose to tell. If there is a key to life, if a key is necessary in your story, in her story, it is simply this choice.

Go here for my latest book, The Seer

Go here for fine art prints of my paintings.

Filed under: Story, The Direction of Intention | Tagged: choice, empowerment, story | Leave a comment »

Bring Your Boon

Posted on August 16, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

This painting is called Icarus.

During my call with Skip I used the word, “boon.” He scribbled a note saying, “You’ve not used that word before.” The word came up because he’s been overrun by well meaning advice-givers that think he needs to know about the hero’s cycle. Skip said, (and it’s true) that he’s forgotten more about the hero’s cycle than most people will ever know. “I’m a business guy so they think I can’t possibly know about it!” he exclaimed. “If another person tells me about the hero’s cycle I’m going to explode.”

My thought for him was to pay attention to why so many people are coming up with the same response when they hear about his work. What’s evoking the common response: have you heard about the hero’s cycle? I always pay attention when a book title repeatedly drops into my world (I get the book) or when a place or a metaphor seems to pop up everywhere. What’s there that I may be overlooking? What is hammering Skip that he may not see? That’s what sparked the word, “boon.”

When the hero (and we are all heroes in our personal story) emerges from the ordeal of change, when they escape the belly of the whale, they are transformed. They know something that they didn’t before understand. This is the boon. They have a new gift or insight that will, in turn transform the community. Personal change is communal change. They are one and the same thing.

There is a small catch when dealing with boons: communities (like individuals) talk a lot about the need for change but mostly resist it. When you are the bringer of the gift, the carrier of the insight, often you are not welcome when you share it. New insights are dangerous to the status quo. History is resplendent with visionaries banished for sharing the boon of their transformation or bringing to the community the gold that they need but are incapable of recognizing.

Skip has arrived back to the world with a boon. He sailed to the edge and has returned with strange knowledge and a unique perspective. His insight contradicts common models of business. His boon describes motion, a flow, which is hard to see when the landscape is dominated by bottom lines and outcomes. His community mistakenly thinks he needs to go on a hero’s journey when, in fact, he is just returning. His hands are full of gold that they cannot see.

The best we can do is share what we hold. How it is received is out of our hands. If it is received at all is not in our control. Vincent Van Gogh died having sold one single painting – and that to his brother. The glory of his life – and the lives of all visionaries – is that he kept painting regardless of whether the world might someday see the boon, or not. It didn’t (and doesn’t) matter. Bringing the boon home is all that is required.

Go here for my latest book, The Seer

Go here for Fine Art prints of my paintings

Filed under: Art, Business, Creativity, entrepreneur, Metaphor, Truly Powerful People, Uncategorized | Tagged: boon, change, gifts, Hero, insight, transformation | 1 Comment »

Reach Out. Peer In.

Posted on August 15, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’ve yet to title this painting but it seemed right for this post.

It’s a mid August morning with a hint of fall in the air. The breeze carries that “something” that is indescribable, more of a feeling than a chill or the changing of leaves. Never-the-less it is present. It is the signal and my body knows even as my mind debates. It is too soon for this – but even as I think the thought, I wonder what that means. Too soon based on what? Compared to what? This is my first summer in my new home. Last year I was an occasional visitor. I had glimpses into the cycle of the season so I have little with which to compare.

It has been a surprising summer all the way around. We’ve been traveling almost constantly since early June. The first few weeks of travel was planned, the rest was not. I’m not sure what the summer was like here because I was not present for it. The neighbors tell me it was a wet and cool summer. “Summer never came,” is a phrase I’ve heard more than once. After this summer of travel I will move into autumn with mere glimpses of the season.

I just had a call with Skip. He inspires me and makes me think things I would not ordinarily think. We’ve not talked for many months and our call was about catching up. Since I am writing about glimpses I was aware during our call that the best we can do is offer small windows into our lives. I said, “These past few years have been extraordinary in the changes and transformation I’ve experienced.” I was fundamentally incapable of articulating how profound my experiences have been. “It’s been like peeling off layers,” I said. A simile is the best I can do. Like or as. Glimpses. Events. Metaphor. No one can ever know the full scope of my walk just as I can never know the fullness of another person’s life.

During our call Skip told a story of walking through the woods with his wife when his cell phone rang. It was his daughter and infant granddaughter calling on Facetime. Skip’s granddaughter was taking her first steps. He and his wife peered into their phone and watched the miracle of first steps as their granddaughter, taking her first steps, looked into her mother’s phone at the excited faces of her grandma and grandpa. Glimpses into spaces.

We peer for a moment into a space. We stand in a space for just a moment. We try to share what we see. We try to share the fullness of our experience but can only approximate. Reaching out and peering in. Standing on the deck feeling that indescribable something that my body knows. My mind debates. This is life. Reaching out and peering in. What else?

Go here for my latest book, The Seer

Go here for fine art prints of my paintings.

Filed under: Metaphor, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: body, changes, glimpses, knowing, life, metaphor, moments, space, transformation | Leave a comment »

Know Your Meditation

Posted on August 13, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Some random thoughts on consciousness:

Last night I read that, according to some traditions, all forms of separation are an illusion. Only the whole is real but to experience the whole, one must experience him or her self as separate from it. What a conundrum!

Or, is it a gift? Tonight we witnessed the most extraordinary sunset. It’s been stormy these past few days and this evening the storms finally broke. The colors of the sunset were subtle, muted, otherworldly. Breathtaking.

We witness all of creation. All of it. And, as witnesses, we experience ourselves as separate from it. A sunset stops us in our tracks because we glimpse the glory of it all. Once, I stood on top of a mountain at sunrise and cried for the sheer beauty of what I was witnessing. Or, perhaps I cried for the feeling; I was, for a brief moment, not separate.

Consciousness is like a flashlight. We point its beam. We see what we illuminate. And, we illuminate what we see. We assign meaning and value where we point our beam. Some experiences – like sunsets – we define as glorious. Some, we define as lacking. Both are forms of meditation. Every choice to aim the beam is a meditation. All assignment of what is found in the light of the beam is a meditation.

What is your meditation?

As Joe said, the entire universe tends toward wholeness. Every time I recall his words I realize a deeper truth in what he said. We tend toward wholeness because we are already whole; the illusion of separation makes us think otherwise. In fact, thinking makes us think otherwise.

The Balinese have an art form, the shadow puppet, called Wayan Kulit. The audience sees the story as shadows cast on a screen. The performance is meant to remind the community that what they see is illusion. It is meant to remind them that they (we) are all casters of shadows. Our minds are screens upon which we play our dramas. Behind the screen, when all the characters are put away, when all the conflict is resolved, when all the separate pieces unified, there is only one artist, and we are….all.

Go here for my latest book, The Seer

For hard copies, go here.

For fine art prints of my paintings, go here.

Filed under: Awakening, Language, Transcendence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: choice, conscious, consciousness, feeling, meditation, witness | 1 Comment »

Feel The Ripple

Posted on August 12, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Baby Cat settles in

“The fabric of creation ripples when people love each other,” the leader prayed. I opened my ipad to capture the phrase. I liked the image of creation as a dynamic living fabric, a weave responsive to the heart.

Yesterday, Jim said with gratitude and love in his eyes, “Life can change in an instant.” His wife was in a brutal head-on collision a few days ago. She survived and will eventually recover. “The crash was 900 feet from our driveway,” he said, adding, “You never know.”

You never know.

Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog jumped onto the bed. He brought his bone and settled at our feet. We were having the first cup of coffee of the day and talking about things to come. Baby Cat leaped up to the window sill and settled in.

Creation ripples.

Go here for my latest book, The Seer

Or, go here for fine art prints of my paintings

Eve, by David Robinson

Filed under: Gratitude, Love, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: Gratitude, heart, life, love | Leave a comment »

Ask Them To Be Kind

Posted on August 11, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

A black cloud moving in.

While driving across South Dakota, the darkest cloud I’ve ever seen rolled across the sky and consumed the light. The cloud was dense and black. It was heavy, its belly hung over the car and seemed to press us to the earth. It seemed more than cloud. It was ominous, a presence.

When we started the day we’d intended to drive through the Badlands but a prodigious rain had slowed our progress. We saw the rains marching toward us across the open land. It was both beautiful and daunting and hit us with a wave of authority. This storm meant business. We crawled through Wyoming with other back road drivers, watching the barely visible white lines to keep on the road. Motorcyclists pulled off the road and stood next to their bikes; there was no shelter to be found.

Although we lost a few hours to the storm we thought we might still make it through the Badlands before nightfall. And then the black cloud appeared and ate the last light of the day. Once many years ago I did a night dive through the wreck of a sunken ship. In the dark of night, deep in the ocean, while swimming through the bowels of the ship, it’s decks between me and the surface, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. This blackest of clouds enveloped us like the ocean at night and I felt that same sense of pressing suffocation.

The gods of nature are not to be ignored. Once, I sat with a Balinese man who told me that, according to their belief, it was with the dark forces of nature that people need alliance. There is no hell in their paradigm so dark and evil are not bedfellows. There are forces: creation and destruction in an eternal cycle of rejuvenation. Their rituals are about making peace with the black clouds, the gods of lightning and rain. “The forces of light are already with us,” he said. “We ask the dark forces to be kind.”

Looking through the windshield at the ominous pressing cloud I whispered, “Be kind.” It was. It let us go. We heeded the warnings and left the Badlands for another day. Later that night, sipping wine from plastic hotel cups, safe in our room, we sighed and laughed at how utterly small we felt on the open plain amidst the power of the storms. With that smallness came the gift of alertness. We were fully awake, alive with moment, stripped of the illusion that humans have dominion over anything. We savored our moment, temporary, passing, and perfect.

Go here for my latest book, The Seer.

Or here for all digital downloads of The Seer.

And, here you will find fine art prints of my paintings

Canopy by David Robinson

Filed under: Power, Random, Story | Tagged: black cloud, gods, nature, power | 1 Comment »

Revisit And Revise

Posted on August 9, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Pidgeon Pier (Alan and David on the Sound) by David Robinson

I used this painting as the cover image for The Ground Truth. I call this painting Pigeon Pier.

With the success of my book, The Seer, I’ve been revisiting some previous manuscripts and ebooks. I have a lot of them, mostly unpublished and unseen. One of my favorites, and one that I am considering revising and releasing, is called the Ground Truth. The ground truth is a military term and denotes the difference between the truth as seen by the generals in the war room (an abstraction) and those actually doing the fighting on the ground (actuality). I gave the book the subtitle: Six Dynamic Relationships That Will Change Your Life. Marketing claims are usually brazen. The book is really about how to orient to personal truth.

As I’ve been revisiting the book, I’ve also been revisiting several of the concepts in it. One concept that has been much on my mind lately is the Hero and the Anti Hero. Here’s an excerpt from The Ground Truth defining the concept:

In a small notebook with a red cover I found a drawing. The image is horizontal on the page. On the far left I wrote the word “Hero” and scribbled a circle around it. On the far right I wrote, “Anti-Hero” and also scribbled a circle around it. The circle with the Hero and the other with the Anti-Hero are connected with a line. The drawing looks like a cartoon barbell. I must have been explaining this to someone; I can tell by how emphatically I scribbled the circles.

The Hero and The Anti Hero was a revelation that Harald shared with me a few years ago. Harald’s first language is German so he used the term Anti-Hero instead of villain or devil or “big dog yapping in my brain.” I like Anti-Hero because it is actually more appropriate than any term I might have used.

He told me that he’d spent much of his life trying to rid himself of his inner Anti-Hero. It had consumed much of his life, this powerful inner voice of self-criticism and judgment. It plagued him and the more he resisted the Anti-Hero the stronger it became. One day, exhausted by his inner turmoil he had an epiphany. He realized that the way to rid himself of this Anti-Hero was to stop expecting to be a Hero. In fact, his expectation of being a savior, being perfect, being everything to everybody was the very thing that fueled the Anti-Hero. Letting go of the Hero dissipated the power of the Anti-Hero and what was left was…human. Beautiful, flawed, funny and messy, Harald was a human no longer at war with himself.

Internal warfare causes split intentions, split intentions create internal warfare. It’s a feedback loop. As Harald discovered, trying to be the Hero in the eyes of everyone else split him into two pieces: the unreal expectation (Hero) and an ever-vigilant judge (Anti-Hero). Harald was attempting to control what he could not control: the expectations and responses of other people. His happiness was contingent upon the responses of others so he was constantly measuring his worth against others responses: The actor (Hero) and the measurer (Anti-Hero). The internal warfare was inevitable.

In the next few days I’ll write more on The Hero and the Anti Hero, and what a few years and new eyes have brought.

Go here for my latest book

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Filed under: Power, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: Hero, intention, personal truth, power, truth | Leave a comment »

Welcome The Bump

Posted on August 8, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

With Kerri on the top of a mountain in Colorado.

Just beyond Vail, Colorado there is a tiny two street town called Minturn. It began as a mining town when people were rushing for gold but these days it survives as a place for tourists. It is radically different than its founding fathers intended. We stayed there for a few days of rest and recuperation after our two-week double loop through Middle America.

The double loop through America was nowhere in the plan a month ago. Things just seemed to pop up. A death. Kerri’s daughter stumbled into a new job that necessitated an immediate move. Plans changed. Our intentions for the month went out the window. All of the artistry went on hold. We quickly packed the car and hit the road.

Just as plans change it is also true that change is rarely planned. I’ve yet to meet a person who doesn’t resist change (despite their rhetoric). Change requires a step into the unknown and that’s precisely the point: real change comes when we simply don’t know. Most of us like to know where we are going before we step. Change finds its way through the cracks that happen when patterns are disrupted, when things just seem to pop up, when we have no idea what the next step is. Change happens when we are making it up as we go. Change is a creative act, a tap dance on the event horizon.

Last week we drove to Colorado from Wisconsin through Iowa and Nebraska to attend my grandfather’s funeral. After the service we drove to Columbia, Missouri, crossing the full expanse of Kansas, to deliver some treasures from Beaky (Kerri’s mom) to Wendy (Kerri’s niece). Since we were driving to Denver, why not go home via Missouri? We returned home long enough to wash our clothes, pet the dog, and repack the car and head to Minneapolis. We packed up Kerri’s daughter and moved her to Vail via South Dakota with a sharp turn through Nebraska before arriving again in Colorado. After a rest in Minturn, a few hikes, some time with wine sitting on a porch, and a few precious nights with my parents, yesterday we returned to Wisconsin through Wyoming, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

It was a tap dance. Change found its way in as our patterns disappeared in the spontaneity of the double loop. We arrived home exhausted and exhilarated, with renewed eyes, a riches of profound and varied experiences, and much clearer intentions. What seemed initially like an interruption in our path was, in fact, a crack in the pattern, a necessary bump into the unknown.

Go here for my latest book

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Edges, Family, Gratitude, Pattern, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: artistry, change, creativity, family, spontenaity, travel | Leave a comment »

Look At All The Stories

Posted on July 30, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

My stuff.

It is ironic to me that I spent the previous two years divesting myself of stuff. When I moved to Kenosha last October, the truck was filled mostly with paintings, art supplies, and books. If I excluded those things, I could carry my worldly possessions on my back. And, I did for months. I now know without doubt what is essential and what is luxury. Mostly, my story is no longer entangled with my stuff. Well, in truth, there are still a few things that are sacred: the box that held DeMarcus’ brushes, a treasure or two from Bali, grandpa’s nutcracker, Bob’s tools. I gave away many useful things because of the story they held!

Since moving I’ve been helping Kerri clean out her house. Each week we take stuff to the Goodwill or place bags on the curb. She has been twenty-five years in her house and raised two children. The things we sort through have layers and layers of story. Children’s toys and books, sporting equipment, old electronics, and clothes; everything comes with a memory. More than once Kerri has held tightly to a box or shirt, saying, “I can’t get rid of this! Craig used this when….” We’ve saved many things, not for usefulness, but for story.

Several times we’ve made the trip to Florida to sort, box and store the contents of her mother’s house. Kerri spends hours each week on the phone with her mom, Beaky, as she pours over an enormous list of her possessions. Beaky is now in assisted living and will never return to her home. She wants to make sure that each item goes to the right person and that the story held in the item goes with it. In fact, the designation of recipient often has more to do with the story than the item. She is reaching into the future attempting to build a story link with the past.

A few weeks ago we walked by an open house. It was an estate sale. People were lined up out the door to go in and buy stuff cheap. The people in line were anxious and jockeying for position; they wanted to get in before all the good stuff was gone. The stories associated with the stuff died with the homeowner. The new story begins with a bargain found at an estate sale.

Last week while in Denver for my grandfather’s funeral, I crawled under Ruby’s house to pull out the boxes that Bob had stored there, mostly things they hadn’t used in years. Ruby said, “I didn’t even know that was down there!” Forgotten stories resurface.

My parents’ house is filled with the accumulated possessions of a lifetime. Their sedimentary layer of stories includes children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. They’ve added no small amount of my grandfather’s possessions now that he has passed. The layers of story sediment compounded. “What are we going to do with all this stuff?” my dad asked. “Someone must have use for it!” He might just as well have asked, “What are we going to do with all of these stories. Someone must have use for them?”

It’s the question Tom asked when he found a trunk plastered into the walls of the family’s ranch house. The trunk contained the worldly possessions of an ancestor, a young boy named Johnny who died a century earlier. Little slips of paper written by his mother accompanied the layers of clothes and toys. “She wanted to keep his story alive,” Tom said. “What am I going to do with it?” he asked when he knew his life was on the glide path to the finish.

Someone once said to me, “You are not your stuff.” No. But we are people of commerce. We are people who identify ourselves through our stuff. We place great value in what we accumulate and what we accumulate becomes the vessel for passing on our value and our story. Look around you. Look at all the stories that surround you! Stand in your home, close your eyes, and spin around. Open your eyes and look at any object, any thing. What’s the story? What is essential? What is luxury?

Go here for my latest book

Canopy by David Robinson

Go here for fine art prints of my paintings

Filed under: Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: history, memory, stories, stuff | 1 Comment »

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