Leave Yourself Behind

Posted on November 26, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

627. 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 grandfather is 103 years old. Last time I saw him he said, “Heaven don’t want me and hell won’t have me.” He feels as if he is ready to go yet remains in an earthly limbo. He eats. He sleeps. He waits. He has outlived two of his four children, his wife and all of his peers. He still flirts with the ladies in the lunchroom though it is more out of habit than from ambition.

In every story cycle there is a place where “what once was” no longer exists and “what will be” is not yet come. It is in this in-between place where the old identity dissipates: you are no longer a child though not yet an adult; it is the time of first pregnancy, you are no longer singular and not yet a parent. In a story, the in-between is usually told through the metaphor of a journey; you must leave behind everything that you know to find what has always been within you. Frodo leaves the Shire as one being; he returns to the Shire as another being, having discovered his darkness and his capacity to persevere. Journeys are bitter sweet.

Rumi said, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” It is ironic, isn’t it, to leave yourself behind so that you might find yourself? To think we will find love in another person only to discover that it is the love within ourselves that we seek.

I am not yet half of my grandfather’s age and yet I already know that heaven and hell are both here – not some other place – and we choose which we occupy. We are both the seeker and the gatekeeper. I am perfectly capable of dividing myself against myself and, therefore, occupying hell. I am also capable of knowing myself as whole, regardless of my circumstance, and that is the door to heaven. And, there is a third “place” that is neither heaven nor hell but the space of the journey; all life is movement after all. There are no arrivals; heaven and hell are rest stops, the occasional oasis along the way.

Filed under: Awakening, Identity, Metaphor, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Know Your Oral From Your Aural

Posted on November 25, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

626. 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 I was hired as an artist in residence at a school. Prior to starting I had an interview with the principal to discuss his vision for my residency. He proudly told me that the school’s focus was “aural language.” When I asked him what that meant to him and how they were currently executing the theme he stared at me; he had no idea. For ease, I asked the first part of the question again, “What does aural language mean to you?” He stuttered and began to sweat. Finally, he said, “You know, the spoken word.” Ah. I was gob smacked on two counts: first, he was champion of a school wide theme and hadn’t yet sorted his oral from his aural. Second, it was late in the school year and I can only imagine given his response that I was the first person to ask if he knew what he was championing. That month during my residency every single teacher told me the school’s theme and none had the vaguest idea why it was the theme or what they were supposed to do with it. It became our joke. They’d ask, “What are we doing today?” and I’d look very serious and respond, “Why, aural language, of course.”

I think about this man and those teachers every time I walk into a school and see how invested and driven we’ve become by “the standards.” My-Favorite-Beth showed me a photo of a white board chocked full of numbers that looked like complex equations for string theory but were in fact the scrawls made by teachers trying to identify which standard they were going to teach (note-that-should-raise-your-red-flag: despite the best efforts of My-Favorite-Beth, they were not capable of discussing teaching children, they were only capable of discussing teaching standards. I imagine the standards will soon exit the school well informed but the children will certainly yawn and ask again, “So, why did we do that?”). As Sir Ken Robinson said, “No one wants standards to drop but we need to ask, ‘Standards of what?’” Is it oral or aural, rural or laurel, clap-clap-shimmy-shimmy-shake, if-it-was-good-enough-for-me-it-is-good-enough-for-you, why are we doing it? No body knows but at least we’re all on the same page.

This is what I’ve decided. I want to bag the word “school” entirely – and that includes all of the synonyms as well. Maybe if we called it something else we might jiggle loose our dreams and move beyond our current educational energy eddy. Melissa, my nominee for teacher of the year, said, “It should all be about engagement. Everything else follows from there.” Yes. Here’s my short hand: we’ll know we’re on the right track when we are more interested in problem creation than we are with problem solving. This thing formerly known as school should be more pursuit than regurgitation, more question than answer, more alive than dead. And, we’ll know how to distinguish between those things when we start asking ourselves the question the kids have been asking for years, “Why are we doing this?”

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

Take A Walk With Me

Posted on November 24, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

625. 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 is late and I am in my studio. There is a train blowing its whistle somewhere in the distance. The building is quiet at this hour. Mark, the building caretaker, tells me there is a ghost and that he wouldn’t be caught dead in the building this late at night. I’ve been here deep into the night on several occasions and I have yet to encounter the ghost. I want to meet it – her, so Mark tells me. She usually hangs out in the attic but will wander the halls if she gets restless. I suppose a restless ghost is less appealing to meet than a non-restless ghost. In my mind, however, every ghost is restless; being a ghost implies that you are stuck in an “in-between” state, a limbo, like being perpetually in an airport and even the most even-tempered ghost must get tired of the long flight delay. When I am a ghost I will tap my foot and ask, “Where’s my plane?”

I have been in a limbo the past few years and, consequently, a kind of ghost. I think this evening I was compelled to come late to the studio to seek advice. Do you know you are wandering the halls or is there a world of illusion that we, the living, cannot see? Assuming that you see it, is there an obvious way out or do you simply step into the sun? And, if you step into the sun, do you disappear? Is that what keeps you in the attic, the fear of disappearing? Is limbo really better than commitment to action?

I am not a very good ghost. Restlessness is fun for a while but sooner or later every ghost must ask, “I wonder what is out there?” I’m not good at wandering halls though I seem to have lots of practice at it. I need the sun. The sun needs me.

As I sit here waiting for my ghost to appear I’ve decided that I no longer need her advice. If she came in the door, instead of saying, “I have a few questions for you,” I’d hold out my hand and say, “Take a walk with me. Don’t you think it is time?”

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Move Toward It

Posted on November 23, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

624. 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 laughed out loud and then, upon reflection, was overcome by sadness when Lora told me this story: she was listening to a travel show and the host was discussing with his guests how travel inherently opened your mind. Experiencing other ways of thinking, seeing and believing affords the opportunity to challenge and inform ones own thoughts and beliefs. The host used the word “liberal,” meaning broad minded. His first caller was a young woman who told the host and his guests that she’d been planning her first trip abroad but after listening to their conversation said she was going to cancel; if there were a danger of her becoming more liberal she’d rather stay at home.

When Wade Davis defines the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism (my apologies to my Buddhist friend for my general translation: we suffer, suffering is caused by ignorance, ignorance/suffering can be transcended, there is a way to transcend suffering), he is careful to define ignorance, not in terms of a negative, but as the notion or need to believe that anything in this universe is static or “fixed.” In other words, attach to the notion that your way is the right way and you will suffer because you are ignorant of the universe as it is: ever fluid, ever changing, ever in motion, completely interconnected, fundamentally and profoundly alive. Suffering is fixed mind; illumination is fluid mind. Suffering is blocked movement (engagement); illumination is movement (engagement) unhindered.

In a series on the brain produced by Charlie Rose, Daniel Wolpert from the University of Cambridge said that there is only one reason and one reason only that we have a brain (plenty of species on the planet do not have nor need brains) and that is to produce adaptable and complex movement. Cognition and sense processing are made meaningful only if they drive current action or future action. Movement (engagement) is the purpose of the brain.

Motion. Movement towards new forms, stepping toward questions not investing in answers, releasing any notion of an absolute; to flow, to move, to change, to process through the full arc of this long body, birth to death to birth. It is all motion and unknown, new and surprising. And, to step toward life, to move from narrow mind to broad mind is the only reason we have brains. And, oddly enough, it is the same path to illumination.

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Build An Altar of Gratitude

Posted on November 22, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Each year on the day before Thanksgiving, I secretly build an altar of gratitude. Sometimes it is in a single location, a collection of cards and objects that remind me of the generosity of those who populate my life and the abundance I enjoy. Sometimes I scatter the altar across many locations. The day before this day of thanks giving, I leave tokens of appreciation and marks of gratitude all across the city. I think it is my attempt to create a sacred geography for myself; I want to see the world as a living, dynamic, holy place and since that was not my original orientation, I have to tend my vision. I cultivate a new relationship with this magic place because I want to; like working a muscle, I intend to grow strong in my reverence. I make offerings to something beyond my knowing but well recognized by my feelings. This earth is an old friend and my days here are nothing short of astonishing.

In my first systems class, the professor gave us an exercise useful for recognizing the immensity of our interdependence and, therefore, our opportunity for gratitude: imagine a goldfish in a goldfish bowl. Follow to the end the support system necessary to keep the goldfish healthy. I’ll give you a clue: you could spend days on this and never come to an end. Separations disappear. It has taken the entire planet and the history of human kind to sprinkle those few flakes of goldfish food into that bowl. Any end line you draw will be false, a construct.

And so it is with you and me. As you sit down to your traditional meal with your family and friends, take a moment and try to track the system of support necessary for you to enjoy your meal in your goldfish bowl. If you take it to heart what you find will astound you. Separations disappear and you might just find yourself in a sacred geography instead of living on the pile of rocks you thought you inhabited. Gratitude is potent thing when directed to a vibrant living relationship and not merely a world of consumables. The real question of this day is this: to what do we give our thanks?

Filed under: Awakening, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | 5 Comments »

Step Into The Dark Night

Posted on November 21, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

622. 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 quotes collided right in front of me and there resonance took my breath away. First, from a television series on culture, the amazing Wade Davis met with Gretel Ehrlich in Greenland. In the interview she said, “Despair is a sin against imagination.”

Saul Bellow wrote, “I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos – a stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.”

I am never so quiet as when I paint. I am never so present as when I create. And I am certain that my culture no longer understands the power and role of its arts. It has confused art with distraction; it has relegated its primary mechanism for transformation to the basement of entertainment. Only the artists still recognize the door to the quiet holy.

Despair is noisy. It is urban and abstract. It is the chaos of an untethered mind, the heart gone dry. It is what happens when electric light blinds us to the stars.

Imagination is stillness. It is our most natural state, cousin to curiosity. My friend Carol once told me that, when going to Alaska, you reenter the food chain. If you think you suffer from a lack of imagination, step into the dark night and walk into woods. You will learn that it is not imagination that you lack but contact with anything that is real.

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

Understand My Confusion

Posted on November 20, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

621. 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’m not getting you anything for Christmas. It’s not that I don’t want to give you a gift. I do. It’s just that I’m having a crisis of value; I’m not sure what is valuable anymore.

For instance, I was unplugged from the news last week so I missed the disappearance of the Twinkie. Honestly, I probably would have missed it had I not been unplugged from the news. What I didn’t miss was the profiteers that raked clean the Twinkies from store shelves only to sell them on eBay to panicking Twinkie fans for a hundred times the market price. And they are selling, thus establishing a new market price. I recognize the rules of supply and demand, the demand-fever produced by a limited supply and all of that; I can even entertain the appeal of Americana, the passing of the Twinkie era and the emotional crisis that might evoke. But, truth be told, I am shaking my head in disbelief.

Just for kicks I googled the list of endangered species and wondered where is the frenzy over the limited supply of Assam Roofed Turtles or Australian Sea Lion’s? If we have the energy to horde and save Twinkies, where is our verve to protect the Bactrian Camels? I understand there is a very limited supply. Of course, it is a rhetorical question; according to the law of supply and demand they have no value. No demand. No market. Best to just let the supply disappear. You can understand my confusion. For kicks, google the list, read it, and see how long it takes you to get to the bottom. You might want to sit. You’ll certainly want to brew some coffee; it will take you a while.

And then there is the day we set aside each year to give thanks. We gather with our families. We make a big meal to demonstrate and celebrate our abundance. Given enough time we might even sit around and tell stories of the people who came before us that lived hard lives so that we might enjoy our abundance. But, this year the stores open at 8:00. I hadn’t recognized the shortage of stuff – or perhaps it is a shortage of time to get stuff; either way, somehow we’ve managed to turn our ritual of Thanksgiving into a festival of lack. I’d ask you to explain it to me but I think that might only serve to depress me.

Given the clear value message displayed by my community, I have learned that the best gift I can give to you this year is a Twinkie. And, I can’t do it. I value you more than that. You can understand my confusion.

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

Do As Lexi Does

Posted on November 19, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

620. 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 don’t eat sticks, David,” she said to me. And, with a shake of her head added, “Ick!” Her 2 year-old eyes, brown and deep as a well to the center of the earth, looked into me to make sure I got the seriousness of the message. I did, so we went on to the next, “We don’t eat stop signs, David. They are no good!” I shook my head and said, “Ick.” She shook her head with me. “Ick,” we said together and made faces of distaste and disdain.

At two years old, Lexi already has a vocabulary that matches mine. She will soon outpace me and I will need to look down at the 3 year-old version of her and ask, “What does that mean?” She will sigh, choose to have patience with me, and slow down long enough to explain. At dinner the other night I attempted to secure my superior word status and set a trap for her: I used the word “pterodactyl” and she looked at me (again with those eyes that look into my soul), spotted my trap, all but yawned and said perfectly, “pterodactyl.” Then, as if to torture me, she said, “hanguber (hamburger).” It is refreshing to be with a little Buddha that has yet to learn the word “can’t.” Everything is possible and trying is everything. It is infectious; I have seen otherwise constipated adults giggle and scribble outside of the lines in the presence of a 2 year-old. With Lexi, I make faces and outrageous bear sounds (do you know the sound a bear makes when it laughs?); hang out with us and you are certain to hear it.

Picasso famously said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” He is also said, “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” With two quotes he states the problem for living a good life and solves for it. Problem: how to remain an artist once we grow up. Solution: always do what you cannot do in order that you may learn how to do it. Hint: do as Lexi does and eliminate the word “can’t” from your vocabulary. Try with gusto! Mispronounce everything! Do what you have never done because you have never done it! Turn to the person nearest you and declare with awe and enthusiasm, “I kicked the ball, David!” (keep the “David” part even if the person closest to you is otherwise named; it tickles me to think that I will be the universal recipient of your unbridled enthusiasm. Note: that is not a trap).

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

Story Yourself Vast

Posted on November 18, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Horatio lovingly takes me to task on my use of the word story. I use it as a verb. I write, “You story yourself,” and Horatio rolls his eyes, telling me, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.” I can’t help it. I believe the story you tell yourself about yourself is a creative act; it is something that you do. It is an action, not a thing. I believe we story ourselves every moment of every day. It is one of the fundamental actions of our lives and whether we recognize it our not, it is an act of creation. We are fundamentally creative, creating ourselves with every story we tell, every experience we interpret, every yearning we assume, and every memory we re-play. At the inception of every action we take is the story we tell ourselves.

We cast ourselves in this story that we tell; we play many roles in the course of a day. Some of the roles we like to play, some we do not. Whether we like them or not we agree to play all of the roles. We have great choice in how we play our roles; we have the capacity to bring life to every circumstance in our play. We can play roles of resistance to life; we can play roles of investment in generating life. It all depends upon how we decide to story our moments, the narrative we choose to weave.

A month ago I was sitting on a pier watching the sunrise and I realized that the narrative dominating most of my life was a story of “figuring it out.” So much of the story I tell-myself-about-myself is driven by a narrative of “needing to know.” Knowing provides safety. Knowing provides location. I asked myself the question that has always lurked behind the curtain, a much better question for me: what if I never figure it out? What if I allow that it can’t be figured out; what if it is a mystery? What if I am a mystery not to be contained or figured out, but a vastness to be experienced? What if I accept that I am a mystery and instead of telling a story of “figuring it out,” tell the story that I know to be more true: I am as fluid and unknowable as is the rest of the universe. Why don’t I treat myself as a dynamic question instead of a static answer?

Why would I tell such a small story in such an immense experience?

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

Ask A Better Question

Posted on November 17, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

618. 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’m revisiting old themes. As a coach it is a constant fascination for me to witness again and again: the way we ask our questions determines the possibilities we see or do not see. Too often the thing we seek remains invisible to us simply because of the way we’ve asked the question.

A great cultural example is the question currently dominating education: we are asking how we might raise standards. We want a system that supports great learning in a 21st century world and it remains invisible to us because we are asking a 19th century question. What might we see if we asked questions about creating a system of great learning instead of questions about raising standards?

If you ask yourself the question, “What is missing in my life?” you will begin a search for what you do not have. The assumption beneath the question is that “it” is out there somewhere and must be found. So, the only option is to seek something that you currently do not possess. The question necessitates separation; your fulfillment is elsewhere. The question reinforces separation because the question assumes separation.

Ask the question another way: “What do I want to create in my life?” Instead of a treasure hunt you will begin to generate from within. As a rule, fulfillment is rarely something we find outside of ourselves, it is something you live; fulfillment is not an outcome, it is something that follows. The question reinforces wholeness because the question assumes wholeness.

What are the questions you ask? What do your questions reveal about your assumptions? Is there a better question?

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

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