The Direction of Intention

Choose Love

Posted on September 21, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

Kerri is practicing. Tomorrow she will sing for a wedding. The song she is singing is original, one of her new compositions. It takes my breath away.

“What kind of miracle had to happen for this to be…..”

Chris emailed earlier today with some big news. He will be a daddy in the spring. He will be a great father.

“Come let me love you. Let me give my life to you.” Now she is singing a song from John Denver. Isn’t this a song a daddy might sing to his child?

I slept in today. I’m doing that a lot lately, so deep is my exhaustion. Sleep feels good! The sun was streaming in the windows and warmed me. I had work to do but chose to linger in my blankets. Is there anything better than the sun on an autumn morning?

“Is it love that brings you here or is it love that brings you life
There is love…”

Skip will fly this weekend to meet his new granddaughter. Her name is Hazel and her grandpa already loves her to the stars. New life is all around! I can only imagine what it must feel like to see your granddaughter for the first time. Is it love that brings you life? Ask Skip. Yes. Oh, yes.

Now Kerri is singing a song by Dan Fogelberg. When I was younger I listened to Dan Fogelberg all the time. Today, for me, this song is both old and new. It is a kind of time capsule:

“Stronger than any mountain cathedral. Truer than any tree ever grew…”

It is a funny thing about the music we choose for weddings. The lyrics sound cliché unless you’re in love or meeting your granddaughter or standing in the river- and then the lyrics become personal. Is it love that brings you life? There is nothing cliché about that question. It should be asked every day.

In the book, The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coehlo, at the very beginning of the story, the guide Petrus says to Paulo that the path must be rooted in agape. Root your action in love. Make choices from a loving place. Orient yourself to love. That, too, can sound like a cliché until you actually find the root and begin living your life from love and not fear. There is nothing cliché about embracing power and power, true power, is always born of love. The other choice is control and control is the blossom of fear.

“Deeper than any forest primeval, I am in love with you….”

Yes. And, again, yes!

[908. 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.

Filed under: Love, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Exit The Smelter

Posted on September 20, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

Soon I will be closing down my studio of the past 3 years. A lot of life has happened while I worked from here. I made a lot of great art in this space. Some of the most significant moments of my life happened in this studio. I lost and found my soul (poetic but true), was gifted with a special shade of turquoise, received a message across time from a harper that knocked the air out of me for weeks, finished writing a book, dreamed for hours at a time while losing all of my illusions. It has been a refuge and at times a home. It is more than a space to paint!

There are over 100 studios in the building – it has a long (and dark) history. Many years ago it was the Immigration and Naturalization facility. The 2nd and 3rd floors were detention facilities for people attempting to enter the country. Dipping sticks in tar made hot from the sun, the detainees wrote their names on the walls of the courtyard. They didn’t want to disappear and scratched a record of their passage with the only tools available. The people that renovated the building were wise enough to preserve the proof of life. I like the idea that artists now occupy the building. The history isn’t being erased but explored, honored, challenged and informed.

During the era that it was the INS building, the 4th floor was actually an assay office. Citizens carried their gold nuggets to the 4th floor to be weighed and exchanged for dollar bills. They rode an elevator through the detention center to arrive at the assay office. My mind swims with metaphors.

My studio space is on the 4th floor and was, at one time, the smelter room. It was the room where the gold was melted, the impurities burned off, and the raw nuggets transformed into bars. In preparing to leave I can now look back and see that I was in the perfect space. The heat of the past year burned off more than a few layers of impurity and I barely recognize the person I was when I first rented the studio. I feel thoroughly smelted.

Viktor Frankl wrote that happiness ensues. It follows. It is a decision. It is not something you pursue but something you feel after the pursuit. Gratitude is very much the same. It follows the heat. It becomes available when the heat of transformation has fired. As I transfer my studio to another place, closing down this era, I am eternally grateful for the meaning I am now able to make from my time smelter.

[907. 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.

Filed under: Gratitude, Metaphor, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Step Into Your Ordinary

Posted on September 19, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

Yesterday I had a moment that was truly surprising. It will not sound like much but to me it was profound. I was raking leaves and deeply appreciative of the fall and thinking of my life a year ago. The fall is a reflective time for me and the repetition of raking facilitates great mind wandering. Last year at this time my metaphoric house was ablaze from a fire that I’d lit. I was intentionally burning down everything that I knew. It was the second time in my life that I’d put a match to my life. One year ago the fire was burning hot and rather than run from it like I did the first time so many years ago, this time I stood in the flames. I’ve learned that the conflagration is total and to run only prolongs the burn. The fire will always catch the firestarter. It is better to embrace the path rather than choose it and then deny that it was a choice. So I stood still and burned.

I’ve already written too much about my months of wandering. It is enough to say that I had no map and was in a new geography. I drank deep from the cup of lost. I had great teachers, met some dragons, acted poorly, fought bravely and was blessed with an extraordinary guide and master who could only go so far with me. As is true in all great stories, the last mile I had to do alone. That’s the point of most transformational ritual: the community and guides can carry you only so far. Dying to the old form is necessarily a solo act. In the course of a single lifetime there are several cycles of dying and rebirth. The dying happens alone yet it always leads to rebirth, renewal, and a return to the community. The transformation of the community happens through the transformation of the members of the community and vice versa. It’s a cycle of renewal just as is the cycle of the seasons.

And this brings me to raking leaves. I was content. I was nowhere else and wanted to be nowhere else. I didn’t need to achieve anything or change anybody or facilitate a revelation for anyone – not even myself. There was no gap between me and my artistry or my work. I am my artistry. I am my work. My moment of profundity: I realized that I’ve stepped into my ordinary. I feel no need to defend or justify or explain or lie or glorify. I no longer need to be anything other than the raker of leaves, the painter of paintings. Peace. I understand that raking leaves and telling stories and painting paintings and dancing in the front yard and making dinner are all celebrations of life.

[906. 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.

Filed under: Emergence, Gratitude, Identity, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Let’s Play

Posted on September 18, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

It is Monday morning and I am sitting in the lobby of a Lutheran church. How I got here is a very long story and isn’t that true of any moment of your life? Recently I spent a night in Helen, Georgia. Earlier that day I’d never even heard of Helen, Georgia and Helen, Georgia was not on the way to any place I was intending to go. As I drifted off to sleep that night in a motel in Helen, I asked myself, “What had to happen in the universe to get me to this place at this time?”

Play the game of tracking backwards and you’ll find that, “How did I get here?” is not an easy question to answer. The choice–dots on the map of life connect back before the moment that you started making choices. You might as well ask, “Why did I incarnate at this time in human history?” When I attempt to track backwards I find some choice points that are more relevant than others. I also see how much of my story is a happy accident, a collision with other people’s choices, almost all of it out of my control. Years ago I knew a woman who slept in and missed her flight. Had she used a more reliable alarm clock she would have died that day in a plane crash.

This has been the year that I learned about and let go my illusion of control. The words, ”control” and “choice” mean something vastly different to me now than they did this time last year. Last year I understood them as orientations to the world. I might have asked, “Are you trying to control your circumstance?” “Are you in choice?” It’s almost as if I understood “choice” as yet another form of “control.” They are Puritan words; both are vested with end-result expectations. Today I understand them as orientations to my Self. They are words of relationship. I understand “choice” as being conscious so that when I ask myself, “What are you choosing?” what I’m really asking myself is, “Are you present? Are you conscious of your actions and what you are engaging?”

When I ask myself, “What can I control?” my new answer is “nothing.” There are too many forces in play for me to believe that I have control over anything. I think the notion of control is a form of insanity. Go outside tonight and look into the night sky and see the vastness of this universe. Then ask yourself, “What do I control?” Instead of control, I can exercise presence. I can participate. Presence is a word of joining. Presence leads me to the center of the room. It pulls me with gentle hands from the safety of my witness perch and says, “Let’s play.”

[905. 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.

Filed under: Awakening, Language, Perspective, Play, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Allow The Laughter

Posted on September 17, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

I found a mouse in the washing machine. It startled me and I jumped back, tossing my clothes into the air. When I recovered, I approached the washing machine like it held a Bengal tiger and cautiously peaked into the tub. The mouse had long ago gone to mouse heaven though I poked it with a hanger just to be sure. One cannot be too careful. After shrouding the mouse in a plastic bag and relocating it the trash bin, I laughed heartily at myself. I wondered what I would have done had the mouse been alive. I wondered how I would have liberated it.

Many years ago my dryer broke down and my pal Albert came to take a look at it. Albert is mechanical and has many times fixed things for me. He popped off the back of the dryer and a rat leapt out. Albert screamed and when the fleeing rat rounded the corner and bumped into me, I screamed and did an oh-my-god-a-rat-just-bumped-into-me dance. Luckily, the back screen door was ajar and the rat escaped without my needing to herd it, track it, or capture it. Albert screamed at me, “You could have told me that there was a rat in your dryer!” I screamed, “I didn’t know!” And then we laughed and shivered.

Rodents are not supposed to be in appliances. These two things do not go together and it’s the disjoint from expectation that makes the clothes fly and sparks the silly rat-touched-me dances. A few days ago I sat in the airport and had tons of time to watch people. Airports can be a riot of disjointed expectations. People shout silly things. They do silly this-is-not-what-I-wanted dances. The only thing missing is the laughter.

I imagine children come into this world with an expectation of love. We were all children once and have a bag full of stories of disjointed expectations. I’m learning that, if you can find the laughter, you can see that the mouse was not supposed to be in the washing machine, the parent was not supposed to turn their anger on you, the school was not supposed to stamp your curiosity, the community was supposed to support you and not shame you. And, somehow the mouse got into the machine. So we scream and throw clothes. We get scared and do silly things. It all falls into perspective when we allow the natural laughter that follows the recognition of a broken expectation.

[904. 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.

Filed under: Surprises, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Step In Front Of The Canvas

Posted on September 16, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

I used to stand in front of a blank canvas, clear my mind, and look for the painting that was waiting for me to draw it out. Mostly, but not always, there was an image waiting for me. It was like a very shy animal staring back at me. I would coax it forward and it would slowly reveal itself to me. The act of painting was the act of following the signals. If I moved too fast the image would retreat. It drew me out as I drew the image forward. As it advanced, coming into the light, the image would shapeshift. It would try to frighten me. It would test my agility and capacity to pursue it. Finally, after it had tested my respect for it and gained respect for me, the image would rest, give up the chase and open. In that moment we merged. I was the art and the art was me. Many hours would pass in a single moment. Time was no longer fixed. None of the usual rules of life applied.

This sounds like a strange and reactive process until you consider that I spent days stretching and preparing the canvas. I prepared myself, too. I opened the portal and chose the moment to step in front of the canvas, brush in hand, and issue the call. Sometimes the animal that came forward was aggressive, sometimes magical, and sometimes swift. Always it was dedicated to opening a portal in me. Art is like that. Art opens portals in people.

Today I know without doubt that the world has at last become my studio. Each day is a blank canvas that holds a unique gift and demands one from me in return. It is a portal that I open that, in turn, opens me. It calls me to the center. I’ve spent a lifetime preparing this canvas. Each morning I step forward into the day and so begins a unique relationship with this vast field of possibilities shimmering in front of me – as it teases forward the vast field of possibilities within me. Life is like that. Life opens possibilities in people.

[903. 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.

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Metaphor, Possibility, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Let Your Imagination Run

Posted on September 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’m sitting on the floor at the mouth of concourse 2, right next to a security check station at O’Hare International Airport. I’m on the floor because I found an electrical outlet and my phone was gasping its last electronic gasps. It was seriously red lining, sending me an assortment of warnings of imminent death – and I was expecting an important call. Were I a medical drama, my phone and I would have made a spectacular episode. I saved it at the last moment, leaping for the outlet, connecting the power just before its little phone-soul plunged into that sweet no-charge darkness. I suppose it might have been higher drama had I let it die and then brought it back but I have to have some place to go in future episodes.

It was not an easy task to find an outlet in an airport. You’d think with all of the power that it takes to illuminate the concourses and juice up the ubiquitous Hudson News stands that there’d be more visible outlets. Because of my proximity to a security check station I am now being eyed by the folks in blue shirts. It’s true that my outlet is oddly placed and I am clearly on the boarder of their comfort zone. There is a metal strip on the floor marking the boundary and I am one cheek on either side. Six more inches to the left and I’d be in a walkway AND in the red zone. Now, of course, my inner drama shifts to a political thriller. It doesn’t help that I have my computer out and am tap-tapping away. I might be hacking into the security database, changing all sorts of codes, looping security cameras with pre-recorded nothingness so my colleagues in black spandex might drop into the vault and swipe state secrets. The folks in blue will be disappointed when they discover that I am merely letting my imagination run wild instead of necessitating their presence.

Commercial break: These are the t-shirt messages that just rode bodies passed me: “Originality is dead.” “Woo-Woo.” “I Am The Man” and “Batman” My t-shirt report does not include the myriad of product labels I saw riding on bodies while I was scouting messages. Once, while bored in an airport, I imagined that angels communicate with people through t-shirt messages and I spent a solid hour trying to decipher the angelic messages. Their meaning was confusing at best and I tipped back and forth between terror (there are lots of apocalyptic t-shirts riding around!) and hysterical laughter. Oh. Those whacky angels! Now I think they communicate through Paulo Coehlo but that’s a post for another day.

Here’s the real question that has been plaguing me, today. Just what is the difference between a storyteller and a story maker? Actually, I lied. I’m making it up because it is excellent torture to ponder these things publically. Makers and tellers both require some serious imagination – either on the front end or the back end of the action. My subversive intention is to inspire some nice comments regarding the question. Imagine that!

I am not lying to say that the folks in blue shirts just closed their post and dropped a metal gate. I had to quick like a bunny scootch forward or be crushed. Okay, the part about being crushed was made up. I might have been cut in half and I can only imagine how difficult it would be to arrest me were I in two pieces. I’m glad I moved! It shifted my inner drama….

[902. 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.

Filed under: Play, Random, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Take One More Step

Posted on September 14, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

Horatio once told me that if I could write 10 posts I could write 1000. One day at a time, one step at a time, nothing is overwhelming when taken one step at a time. It turns out that he knew what he was talking about – even though I was highly skeptical on day number 1. The theory follows: if I can write 1000 posts, I can write 10,000. And, by then, I will be very old, indeed and perhaps further out of my mind so hopefully I’ll be more entertaining. I intend to wear bright mismatching colors and cuss a lot.

Seaton Gras from Surf Incubator told the story today of a start up company that had been “flat-lined” for more than three years. They’d been trying to get funding or some form of significant traction for a long, long time. Through a series of events that I can only assume were random, a boatload of funding came and the company is now on a rocket trajectory to viability. This is not a story of success as much as a story of perseverance. They kept walking. Three years is a long time when measured in single steps. The funding organization asked, “Where have you been? We’ve been looking for you!” The three-year old hearty start-up responded, “Where have you been? We’ve been looking for you!” You never know what slow walker might be looking for what you bring.

I imagined that if you asked the hearty start-up a year ago if all the seeking was worthwhile, they might have shrugged. Ask them today and I know they’d enthusiastically say, “Yes!” The difference is a single step.

Recently, Rand Fishkin of Moz gave a great speech at the 9 Mile Labs Accelerator. He talked about how too many people give up their dreams a moment too soon. He said that most folks get 80% of the way to their fulfillment and then give up. They can’t see that they are one blind corner away from success. And that’s the point. We can’t see what’s coming. Ever. We never know. Regardless of what we pretend, each step is a step into the unknown, so why pretend otherwise. Why not just keep on walking toward your ideal?

[901. 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.

Filed under: Perspective, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Take Off Your Shoes

Posted on September 13, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

Today I participated on a call with an extraordinary community. They are trying to identify next steps and set some new growth intentions. They are in the business of transformation and isn’t it lovely that they themselves are in the process of transforming? There’s nothing like first hand experience going through a passage to inform how you will help others move through their passage.

Each member of this community is dedicated to transforming their lives and, in that way, also transforming the world in which they work and live and love. During the call my imagination was flooded with images of bare feet in the grass, feet digging into the sand. I saw patterns and routines. I saw shovels with dirt and lives passing one after the other. I wanted to shout, “Get dirty!” Transformation is not meant to be clean. It is not abstract. It is happening every day in a million small ways. A man got off the bus and took a deep breath of air and was glad that he was alive. A mother packed lunch for her child for the umpteenth time. I saw a homeless man use the curb as his pillow. It was a place in the sun and he sighed and smiled when his body settled. Transformation is happening every moment of every day in every life. When we ignored the homeless man, we too were transformed. The door swings both ways. Think on this: when is transformation not happening?

The better questions are, “Are you conscious of your transforming self? Are you present with it and grateful for it?” Last night as I walked home I passed beneath a tree alive with bird chatter. There must have been hundreds of them. I could not see them in the dark but their gossip stopped me in my tracks and snapped me into my moment. In that moment I was transformed. I was part of the conversation.

I wanted to whisper to my fellow callers, we have it backwards. The divine is ordinary. It is everyday stuff. Take your shoes off and feel it through the soles of your feet.

[900. 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.

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

Serve Your Gift

Posted on September 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

Each night for the past 6 nights, k.dot has read to me a chapter from Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. I was moved last night when she read in the final chapter, the law of Dharma, guidance and advice that he’d given to his children. He taught them to meditate at four years old. He asked them not to concern themselves with making money but instead to identify what was their unique gift and how could they might best give it in service to the world.

I keep telling myself to give up educational rants. I’ve banged the drum of hope and change for years. I watched the hopeful, the dreamers, and the revolutionaries get creamed by a machine that cared more for dollars than for children. I watched Lisa slowly get pulled into the machinery and get crushed; she was brilliant. She cared for children over politics so, of course, she had to go. I might as well have led her to slaughter. We talked about it years ago, this possibility of systemic rejection. Never-the-less, I am culpable and no longer capable of looking at an educator and saying, “believe.”

Last night I found myself wanting this man, Deepak, to lead the education reform movement in these United States of America. What is the use of testing the pants off our children if the adults meant to guide them are clueless to the things that matter? Don’t you just want to scream, “Your soul is worth infinitely more than the job your will trade it for.” A score on a test means nothing if you can’t put your feet in the river and know that you are unique and divine. Owning a BMW is just as empty if you don’t know your unique gift and understand how to give it with gusto. Don’t just get through life. Live it!

If you can’t answer this question, “What is mine to do?” then the education system has failed you. If you are oriented to taking instead of giving your community is crumbling. Period.

Technology has wrought a whole new ball game and the only people who don’t know it are the policy makers pulling the levers of education. The kids know. They tolerate the system and then go pursue something meaningful.

Isn’t it a great educational north star to ask these two questions: 1) What is your unique gift? 2) How can you use it to serve the world? If these simple questions were the drivers of your education you’d spend almost no time in your life asking yourself if you mattered or if your work had meaning. You’d know. The people guiding you would value your self-direction and support you in the giving of your gift. They’d be invested in guiding you to personal power instead of controlling you.

Giving completely your gift is the path to fulfilling yourself and what is the point of education if not that? And, wouldn’t it be helpful to learn how to cultivate inner quiet while you are young? Navigating this noise world, operating from a solid center, is easy if you’ve developed the skill of deep listening. Self-direction and self-regulation are qualities of powerful people and come from listening. They are qualities that we are born with. They are ordinary. Power is ordinary. Divinity is ordinary. Losing it to the little stuff is…tragic.

[899. 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.

Filed under: Education, Rants, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: education | 6 Comments »

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