Choose Your Experience

Posted on April 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

It’s after 7:00pm and I just realized that it was Sunday. One of the privileges of wandering is that days of the week blend and become one. There are relatively few patterns so markers like workday and non-workday do not exist. This has been somewhat true most of my life. The line between work and play is indistinct. My play and my work have mostly been the same thing.

This afternoon Skip and I did a test run of experiences for our new start-up business. The audience is entrepreneurs. Some members of our team are young entrepreneurs so we gathered and talked through the content with them and then threw them into some experiences. Having been a data-basher most of my life it’s an interesting flip to do things to gather data and adjust my work based on audience responses. I learned a lot today!

What came clear to me was something that I’ve known for a while but did not fully grasp the magnitude until today. Human beings come into the world oriented to the unknown and strive to pretend that we are oriented to the known. We make meaning of chaos. And, what is chaos really? It’s a made up concept. It means, “I don’t know!” It has no use outside of the human need to make story and project order onto the world. It’s like the word, “wild.” Wild is only useful when there is an expectation of tame. Chaos is only meaningful relative to an expectation of order. Both are categories. One is generally comfortable because it provides the illusion of control and the other is uncomfortable because the illusion is of no control. Tame and wild follow the same general principle. I was in the Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles and as the earth threw my house off of it’s foundation and hurtled me through the air, I learned that control was not mine to assign. I learned that wild is tame and tame is wild and chaos drives order and order collapses into chaos. It’s a dance.

It’s not the nouns that matter. It’s the verbs. It is the movement. Nothing is static. Nothing is fixed. The answers are not important. The questions matter, it is the conversation and the relationship that hold the real stuff of life. Questions and relationships are fluid. They move. Orient to the unknown and you orient to the questions. The questions will open you to discovery. Orient to the known and you orient to the answers. The answers will close you to rules and righteousness. This would seem obvious but it is not. The most potent revelation of all: how you orient is a choice. Choose to open or choose to close. Orient to the unknown or orient to the known. Orient to the infinite game or to the finite. Choose your experience.

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Begin And Begin Again

Posted on April 14, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Today, one and a half years since I started my tai chi practice, we learned the 37th move of the Cheng Man Ch’ing’s 37 posture T’ai Chi Ch’uan form. It is incorrect to suggest that we finished anything. In truth, we have only just begun. This type of practice is never finished. It is like a fine art form. There is no end to the study. It is an infinite game. The actual sequence of movements is merely the armature upon which the real learning of the practice is constructed. I’ve learned the sequence and now am ready to learn.

After the session we went across the street to celebrate completing the cycle at the teahouse. Saul-The-Chi-Lantern told us his daughter scolded his choice for celebration. She thought cupcakes or chocolate cake was more appropriate for celebrating. She told Saul that tea was no way to celebrate anything! The notion of a tai chi celebration makes me laugh. It seems like a paradox or perhaps fodder for a cartoon that might be found in the New Yorker.

During our tea celebration I talked with the other David who has been a student of Saul’s for over thirteen years. David is a life long meditator and sought Saul when his meditation practice plateaued. He told me that meditation is not something that happens in your head. Meditation is embodiment, dropping into the body. It made sense to me as meditation often begins with a focus on the breath. Years ago he felt stuck in his sitting meditation and happened upon Saul. He told me that this tai chi practice has changed his life. It restored and invigorated his meditation practice (another paradox). To David, there is no separation of spiritual and the every day. “It is all a spiritual practice,” he said.

I can’t explain it and would have a hard time providing details but this practice has changed me, too. I am more grounded. I am less stressed. I am easier in the world and feel more clear about what is really important and what is not. I’m less apt to rush. I don’t keep lists anymore. I’ve stopped watching the news or any television for that matter. I don’t want to be distracted from living. Rather than fill it up with stuff I want to open it, taste it, touch it, and feel it.

Earlier in class Saul talked of emptying ourselves. “When you empty yourself it will be as if you catch a current of energy or air and it will carry you along,” he said. “Ride the air.” He told us that it often happens after practicing for a few hours that he thinks the world has gone mad. “I go into the world or go home and there is so much stress to get things done. There is always a list, a bulb to be changed or a hole to be dug. I feel as if I just returned from the monastery to a frantic world lost in preoccupation.”

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

Spare A Moment

Posted on April 13, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Once while in Bali I watched a rooster pick a fight with itself. The rooster saw his reflection in a big screen television and prepared for battle. I thought of that rooster today when I watched a woman screaming at her reflection in a storefront window. She was picking a fight with herself. She pointed at her reflection, shouted profanities, lunged forward and dropped back in a defensive posture when her adversary seemed to lunge at her.

It seems like a sad and lonely image unless you consider how often we wage war within ourselves. The woman at the window was simply expressing outwardly what was happening internally. If we did that, if we gave expression to the internal separations and subsequent battles, we’d be called crazy. The woman at the window lacked an editor. Her desperation was hidden no more. In a sense, she was more authentic than those of us who gave her a wide berth. Without an editor she was dangerous. None of us wanted to be mistaken for her reflection.

After help arrived for the woman I continued across town watching the many things we do for attention. Isn’t that what the woman wanted from her reflection? Wasn’t she looking for someone – internal or externally – to pay attention, to afford her a kindness? The young people raising money for the ACLU asked if I had a moment. The man carrying the large sign that read “How Do You Know Jesus” asked me if I had a moment. The woman who wanted some change started the conversation by saying, “Sir, do you have a moment?”

Everyone wants a moment. Everyone wants to be heard. In a city, with so many sounds and billboards and buses and sirens and people, people everywhere wanting, wanting, wanting change, a signature, a kindness, a bus, a convert or a clear path, it is no wonder that we have so few moments to give. I can only hope, that if I am someday staring at my reflection in a window, that I have kind words to say to myself rather than a fight to pick. I hope that I offer my reflection one of my precious few moments and ask, “What do you need to say. I’m all ears.” I’ll be okay if I’ve learned to stop and listen.

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See Through Conscious Eyes

Posted on April 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

764. 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 been walking across the city every morning and again each night late as I return from the studio to where I am staying. Since I know that I am projecting my view of the world on every person I pass, I decided that I’d play with my projection. I decided I would see through more conscious intentional eyes.

We assign a story to people in a nanosecond. Pass someone on the street and, if you’re paying attention, you’ll find that you’ve dropped them into a story compartment. Listen and you’ll hear the labels you assign to people, labels based on a first glance or the briefest encounter. If you are generally fearful you will see fearful or fearsome people. You’ll see a dangerous world. You’ll create a dangerous world. You’ll create fearful labels. You generate your labels based on what you believe.

This morning I was dreaming about the possibilities of my latest project and it occurred to me that each person I passed was possibly doing the same thing. I began intentionally seeing every person on the street as a dreamer. Almost immediately I noticed that instead of sticking a label on them, I began wondering what were their dreams. I became curious instead of protected. Anonymous commuters shimmered and became people with rich internal lives, hopes, struggles, and dreams. They became specific and unique. They became three dimensional and richly complex.

I wondered if they were walking toward their dreams or had given up on their hopes and silenced their possibilities. Since the projection was mine, I decided that, like me, all were moving toward their hearts desire. I believe that all people, even when they’ve dulled their senses, are striving for wholeness. The pathway to wholeness is always through dreams and desires.

Mostly what I noticed was my view of the world shifted. I was seeing hope and possibility everywhere so my hope and sense of possibility magnified. The tangible changes were within me. I felt energized and vibrant and light of spirit. I wondered what would our world look like if we saw each other as dreamers and keepers of creative fire. I wondered what would happen within each of us – and therefore what we created outwardly – if we looked through more intentional, conscious eyes.

Filed under: Seeing, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Learn The Space Between

Posted on April 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

763. 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 just read this phrase in an old notebook. I’m not sure who to attribute it to though it sounds as if it came from Ana-The-Wise: Between the inhale and the exhale there is an empty state. It is from this empty place that we create.

The “space between” has emerged as the theme this week.

A few days ago I had a conversation with a class about the space between actors on a stage. The play is never about the actors or the characters, the play happens in the space between them. It is the space of relationship. It is the place where the verbs express. If the actors are honest, the space between them opens and the audience joins the story. The audience participates. If the actors are pretending, if they are dishonest, the door closes and the audience can only witness the lie.

In Transformational Presence coaching class we also worked with the space between. In this case, it was the gap between what we know and how we live. Alan calls this praxis and has defined praxis as integrating belief and behavior. He writes, “Praxis is closing the gap.” In exploring the gap we worked with the relationship between what we know and how we live. They are not separate concepts but a living relationship. The gap is a dynamic space. It is the space where you will find your fears and stories of limitation. Close your gap and you will discover and transform all the reasons you believed you couldn’t walk your talk. And, just as actors on a stage discover, bringing an honest intention to the space between (relationship) creates movement, openness and flow. Bring dishonesty to the space between and the door closes. Fear takes over. Limits flourish.

The space between is always a relationship. It is never and empty space in the sense that is a void. In meditation it is the door to stillness. Learn the space between your inhale and exhale and you will find a quiet mind; it turns out that your thoughts and breath are as integrated as the rhythms of your heart and lungs. Place your focus outside of yourself, put it on the space between you and the world, and you will find a fertile, vibrant, creative realm ripe with possibilities.

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Taste. Test.

Posted on April 10, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

762. 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 I spent most of my time in the studio. I spent hours each day alone with my paintings and my thoughts. I’d go out at noon to get food. Later in the evening my friend Albert would meet me for coffee. He knew I would twist and fall into my self if I wasn’t forced to emerge and speak to other humans. He was right. The life of a painter is a lonely existence. In addition to my gypsy tendencies I used to tend toward the hermit and it was wise and loving friends like Albert that saved me from myself. Now my inner gadfly has the keys to my personality; I just can’t leave people alone.

I had occasion to go through old journals this afternoon. It is a quirk of mine that my personal and work journals are one-and-the-same. I’ve never understood the separation between working and not working, playing and not playing. I’ve tried to explain that to the IRS to no avail. Apparently one must separate oneself to be in compliance with the regulations. My life is my work. Megan told me that I am purpose driven and she is right. So sorting through old journals is a funny affair because I’ve collaged dream imagery with workshop notes with thoughts about paintings with personal insights with notes from calls. And, since I’ve never learned what the lines on the paper are used for, my notes go in multiple directions. Ask me which came first and I will squint and turn the journal upside down. I also noticed that I sometimes start an entry on the right hand page and then move to the left hand page – essentially moving one step back before taking two steps forward. I refuse to entertain this journal practice as a life metaphor. I intend to lie to the IRS if they ever ask me about my journaling. I am linear, linear, linear.

I opened a journal from 2009 and found this thought from Ana-The-Wise: For every child everything is new and unknown. They see with the eyes of the new and that is okay. For the child, it is all unknown and so it all must be tasted and tested.

We dull our palates. Last night in class a man asked me what is the point of courting chaos once you’ve made order of your world. He liked order. Arriving at order was his goal. I’d just finished telling the class that chaos is where innovation lives: if you are playing in the fields of the known you are not innovating. I edited my reply and stayed in the context of business and entrepreneurship. What I wanted to say was that, just as innovation, vitality and life are found in the unknown. Order is not a fixed state. It is fluid and flows toward chaos. Life is motion. Try and stop the movement and you will one day look up and wonder why your life has no meaning. You’ll wonder where you lost your passion.

Ana-The-Wise spoke truly: it is all unknown and so it must be tasted and tested. I’ve not yet lived tomorrow and I will miss it if I think I know what’s coming. There is so much to be tasted, so much that begs to be tested.

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Step Away

Posted on April 9, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

The actions necessary to create change are often counterintuitive. For instance, increased efficiency comes from moving slower, not from speeding up. Great love stories are filled with examples of the counterintuitive. For instance, the time and space between Odysseus and Penelope made their love powerful. Yearning creates closeness. Missing heightens appreciation. Being away from home is the best way to fully appreciate home. Perspective is gained by stepping away.

The point of a pilgrimage is to find the essential, to inhabit the center. You must journey to be still. Not to hammer too hard on a cliché but life is a pilgrimage of sorts. We walk a path that is both well known and well trod by previous generations – we know the end of the story – and yet the path we walk is unique, completely individual and surprising. I will live the metaphors in my way, experience the cycles of death and rebirth, know order because I have experienced chaos, and only live fully if I know that my time here is limited. Boredom is only available to those who have forgotten that they will someday die.

I have been wandering for months. Each day I recognize how little in this life I actually control. My wandering has brought into crystal clarity what is important and what is not. Wandering is a great way to become found. Tonight I taught a class for entrepreneurs and did the opposite of what I know to be useful; I strayed far from experience and kept them locked in analyzing and abstractions so although the discussion was interesting, it was not very useful. I stepped away and affirmed what I know in my heart to be true. Talking about life is not living, talking about learning is not learning, and talking about love is not loving. The experience must come first in order for the talking to be useful.

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Listen To Horatio

Posted on April 8, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

My dear Horatio wrote this to me in response to my recent post, Look Beyond The Word, post 758. I asked if I could share his thoughts with you (he calls me G):

Artistry, like entrepreneurship, defines a way of being not something achieved.

G,

Yes, indeed. Nice post.

But, that need to achieve something is the yin to the yang you describe. The entrepreneur and the artist have to really, really want the finished product, whatever it is. The painting which they love and caress and curse and despair, the movie that comes to life or doesn’t come to life (omigod… how could I have missed that!?), the business that needs adjusting and many many 24 hour days to flourish. While in the process, they have to love and need their product, too.

You’re right, I think. I agree. It’s a way of being, of seeing, of taking action. But it’s got a goal, it requires organization and commitment, because it’s in the world, part of our mortal span, and want to finish it in time. Before we die. We think it makes life worth it, redeemable. Without that, the way of being would be frivolous. I think that’s the risk, that’s the terror, and the juice. The redeem-ability of life by some accomplishment may very well be an illusion, a fallacy. But we do it anyway. We try. That’s the process. To try. “This painting will connect me to the eternal if I just get it right….”

The adage that “we learn by doing” comes to mind and opens a whole other set of ideas about how and why we draw, paint, sculpt, write, shoot movies, and so on, and then do it AGAIN. But we’ll talk about that later.

A way of being is defined, yes, but I think it also must be in the context of casting your bread on the water, taking that risk of accomplishing something, the risk of achievement. If not, it’s play and fun, seems to me. That’s a worthwhile endeavor, certainly, but it’s not the same thing, in my opinion.

H,
Yes, indeed. Thank you.

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Map or Map

Posted on April 7, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Beth came to visit after working with teachers on a curriculum map. She was understandably frustrated. If you want to understand how far awry we’ve gone in education you need look no further than the curriculum map. The idea behind the map is to ensure that all teachers in each grade level are relatively on the same lesson all the time. The map determines the path of content delivery. The map is at the center. The actual needs of the students are nowhere on the map. In fact the actual student (as opposed to the abstraction of a student) is nowhere to be found. The student is actively not considered. It is a recipe for dulling minds not opening them.

Consider that it has been decades since we understood that grouping children according to age creates an educational disaster. In other words, age is one of the least effective ways of identifying and working with stages of development. Kids develop at different rates and according to a myriad of circumstantial factors so to squeeze them into an age-box called “grade” and pre-map their curriculum path before they walk in the door is obscene.

Mapping the curriculum to make sure every child is on the same lesson on the same page on the same day is yet another extension of the national standardization madness. Gather some actual data and take a small road trip. Visit some schools. You will find that the schools are not standardized. The schools in rural North Dakota don’t resemble the schools in urban Chicago and bear no resemblance to the schools in Beverly Hills, CA. They are not funded in a standardized manner. In fact, the inequity in funding is apparent within single school districts; you need not travel far to gather your data. It will not surprise you to find that the students attending the schools are not standardized. Take a moment and reflect on our national identity. We are the most individualistic nation on the planet, celebrating our cowboy spirit and diversity and yet somehow have been anesthetized into embracing an abstraction like standardization in our public schools. Learning and standardization are antithetical.

A map can be a noun or a verb. We’ve chosen the noun to our own peril. I can give you a map to Boston and you will be able to find your way around. It is useful in locating landmarks but not in learning. If I give you a map and load you on a tour bus and give you the standard tour, you might say you visited Boston but you learned relatively little. The learning was eliminated when you got on the bus. Exposure is not learning. When teachers map a curriculum with no regard to the relationship with their students, the students become incidental. The exercise of mapping the curriculum for the sake of consistency of delivery has everything to do with control and nothing to do with educating. It is exposure. We are kidding ourselves if we think it has anything to do with learning.

The verb, to map, is actually a great metaphor for true learning. Lewis and Clarks Corp of Discovery explored the western territory of the United States. It was unmapped and therefore considered unknown. They stepped into this unknown land with inadequate supplies and engaged with what they encountered. They made big mistakes. They challenged their assumptions. They chanced upon new ways of seeing and would not have survived without alternative perspectives. They made their map as they went. To map is to have a relationship. This is learning.

If learning is the goal then it is impossible to map a curriculum without the students in the room. The true curriculum map can only be created as students explore and discover. The map is created after the fact, not months before the experiences.

Filed under: Education, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Look Beyond The Word

Posted on April 6, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

According to my dictionary, an entrepreneur is a risk taking businessperson. This is not much of a definition. The word is French in origin and it meant to undertake. It was a verb. To get out of bed and undertake the tasks of the day makes us all entrepreneurs. Especially these days when risk, according to the dictionary, means that there is a chance something might go wrong. I’ve yet to live a day when everything went right. For instance, last night I opened a jar of curry powder with too much enthusiasm and curry exploded everywhere. I think there is a more appropriate definition of an entrepreneur: someone whose not invested in things going right. In fact, entrepreneurs look for things going wrong because that provides the opportunity necessary for new creation. Entrepreneurs see the world beyond right and wrong. They see opportunity. Risk has nothing to do with it.

An artist, as defined by the dictionary, is a creator of art, a performer, a person with skills or a cunning person. The origin of this word is either French or Latin. We are cautioned in the dictionary not to confuse artist with artisan. An artisan is engaged in a craft. An artist is engaged in a fine art though I can’t find any mention of what distinguishes a craft from a fine art. From the definition of artist, the phrase “cunning person” shouted to me so following the word chain I learned that cunning means crafty and deceitful, clever or cute. So, artisans, unlike artists, must not be deceitful, clever or cute though they are, by definition crafty. In the Venn diagram of artist and artisan, craftiness is the crossover. So, to sum up: artists are cute, crafty, clever and deceitful while creating something fine. Artisans are rough, dull and honest while also crafty. Can one be crafty and dull at the same time? I have a more appropriate definition for artist: someone who lives beyond the abstractions of thought. They engage with what is there, not what they think is there. In other words, someone who has made presence a priority in his or her life is an artist. Artists guide their community to presence.

Words like “risk” or “fine” blind us. They distance us from our potential because we think we need to take risks to be entrepreneurial; we think we need to do something fine to be and artist. Artists and entrepreneurs explore. They engage. They discover. They act first and then make meaning of their experiences. They master their “doing” because they are not invested in win/lose games. They step into the unknown without reservation. Artistry, like entrepreneurship, defines a way of being not something achieved.

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