The Direction of Intention

Gather On The Beach

Posted on July 26, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

504. 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 saw Rex Ziak build a map of the earth with post-it notes as he told the history of exploration and mapping of the world. It was an odd sensation as I was delighted to see the continents slowly take shape – I got to discover the world – but I also had a feeling of tremendous loss – as if the earth was being gobbled.

A few weeks ago the pirates landed on Alki beach like they do every year. It is a ritual invasion that marks the beginning of Sea Fair festivities. Hundreds of people packed the beach. Canons were fired. Parrots sat on shoulders, families cheered. There were vendors of every shape and size hawking pirate patches, plastic swords, t-shirts, pirate flags, lemonade, ice cream, bike rides, boat rides, airplanes pulled advertisements overhead…everything was for sale.

Last night Todd, Lora and I were walking. It was early evening and I’d just finished teaching a class; I often walk to clear my mind. As we approached Alki beach we saw several tribal canoes paddling in a line toward the shore. Each year the tribes of the northwest coast gather, a ritual remembrance and celebration of the time they would come together and trade. Before landing, each canoe glided close to shore, guided by songs of welcome and someone in the canoe ritually asked permission to land from the local elder, “We are tired and hungry and ask that you might welcome us to rest…” The elder, standing at water’s edge replied, “We welcome you to share in our bounty….” Dozens of canoes approached, each asking the blessing, each ritually welcomed. There were no vendors, no helicopters, no fanfare, nothing was being sold; it was simple. It was about people coming together to share their bounty.

The final post-it notes completing Rex Ziak’s map defined the northwest coast of the United States of America. It was the final unexplored/unmapped territory and was completed after the Corp of Discovery expedition of Lewis and Clark. The maps were complete, the trade routes were known, the resources identified, the pie cut into slices. I finally understood why Rex’s beautiful map brought such a conflicted feeling to me: the people that gathered on Alki beach for the pirate landing were there to get something, that is the ritual way of people-of-the-map. The people that came in their canoes gathered to bring something to each other, that is the ritual way of people-of- potlatch. Rex mapped in post-it notes their inevitable collision.

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

Consider Your Neighbor

Posted on July 25, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

At the beginning of class, Saul-the-chi-lantern asked a couple to speak of their recent experiences studying with the master. They’d just returned from a trip to New York. The woman (I can’t remember her name) said, “There was a quote that really struck me: What good is your chi if it does not consider your neighbor.” Given yesterday’s post, I smiled. Interconnectivity seems to be the theme this week.

Last night I watched a potent and unsettling interview Bill Moyers conducted with journalist and activist Chris Hedges. Hedges has written a new book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, about the impact of capitalism on the world. He roots his examination in 4 devastated and exhausted communities in the United States; places where the poverty is shocking and the system is wittingly or unwittingly maintaining the cycle. There is a cost in lives of our consumer economy that we shield ourselves from seeing – even within our borders. There is also an ecological cost that we pretend is not our doing.

Chris Hedges used a term, “moral fragmentation” to describe us, a society that has thoroughly confused money with morality, whose value set has eroded and been replaced with, as he named it, “Wall Street values.” He said of the financial players, they know the impact of what they do and think that being a good father is enough or absolves them (us) of their actions. This is what Joseph Campbell meant when he said, “Our mythology is dead.” In the absence of a cohesive narrative, a greater story, we eat each other; we justify the virtues of the 1% at the expense of the 99%. “We’re good people. We are justified. Our way is the right way.”

As within, so without; and the reverse I also true. When we forget that we are a community, we cannot participate as a global community; the motives are consumptive, the collapse is internal and inevitable. To off shore the jobs and expect economic recovery is madness. To put corporate wealth ahead of societal good is suicide. A society driven by bottom line motives is already bankrupt; it is only a matter of time before the exterior of the social body shows the internal rot. It is a cancer.

It is no small sentiment – and there was a good reason the quote stayed with my classmate: “What good is your chi if it does not consider your neighbor.”

Filed under: Perspective, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: interconnectivity, morality | Leave a comment »

Bring Back The Boon

Posted on July 24, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

One of the things I most appreciate about stories is this: all stories are about transformation and usually the transformation is about the change in the inner life of an individual. But, individual transformation is hollow until the boon is brought back to the community. It only seems that we live for our own betterment. None of us lives in a vacuum. All of us need to contribute or we wither. This was Scrooge’s recognition. Frodo returned the ring to the fire to save the Shire. He was changed in the journey and so the Shire was also changed.

Greater self-knowledge impacts the lives of everyone in the community. Personal growth, deeper self-knowledge, sends a ripple through the society. We rarely see or understand the full impact of our lives on others because the ripple does not stop. My mentor, Tom, had a mentor, Demarcus, who had a mentor…. Understanding the impact of a single life on the world, across time, is one of the purposes of story. Who might you become if you recognized that you mattered, that fulfilling your potential serves the fulfillment of potential in others far beyond your capacity to see. Blunting yourself serves only to blunt others, too; we all lose.

When we step toward our fear and face our bear, we face it for ourselves and for everybody we know. And our stories of facing the bear serves to help others face their bear when their time comes. And their story helps others face their bear…

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

Fly Like Lucy

Posted on July 23, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

About 6 years ago I wrote and illustrated a children’s book entitled, Lucy & The Waterfox. It is about a fox with a natural capacity to fly. She keeps her flights of fancy secret because she knows her pack-mates will not understand. And she is right. When they discover her ability to fly they shame her; they convince her there is something wrong with her. She stops flying and starts withering. The rest of the story is about reclaiming her natural gifts. By the end of the book, Lucy soars without apology. She flies because she can.

Like us, Lucy has a desire to belong. As Catherine once told me, “Sometimes a talent can hold you hostage. It separates us from the pack. It conflicts with the necessity of belonging.” As creative tensions go, Catherine described the mother lode. I work with so many people who have squelched their natural gifts in exchange for acceptance. I’ve done it. And, like Lucy, it is the path of withering. Cut off your gifts, diminish your offer, and you will put a kink your life force.

Of course, Lucy’s story is universal. The tension between belonging and expressing your nature is a pull that every human being feels. W.B Yeats called this tension the right hand path and the left hand path. Do what society expects of you and you are walking the right hand path. Follow your nature, separate from the crowd and you are on the left hand path. The trick is always integration; finding the middle way. That is the grail path.

Catherine also recently sent me a reminder that the entire story depends upon where we place our focus. We can be surrounded by supporters and only see the critics. We can have one foot on the left hand path and only see the limitations. She reminded me to “Just fly! Be true to your range of gifts and abilities and just do it.” Good advice from my dear Catherine who, in this story, just became my Waterfox.

Filed under: Gratitude, Metaphor, Story, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Ache If You Dare

Posted on July 22, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Have you ever loved so much that you ached? Once, I stood atop a mountain over 12,000 feet and the expansive world before me was so beautiful that it hurt. Last week I stood before a painting, an aboriginal dreamtime and I was suddenly weeping. It took my breath away. And in the absence of breath it gave me life and dreaming. It made me ache.

Once I was in an airplane that lost most of its power. We limped into the airport. Like my fellow passengers when I was again safely on the ground I had a complete and utter love and appreciation of my life. I ached with the magnificence of it all. I wanted to dance with the joy of being alive.

Each of us will have a moment when we have only a few breaths remaining, a few moments before we shut our eyes and bodies to this life. I imagine those moments will be filled with aching, with the understanding (if it has not come before) of how immense and precious this life is. I will remember holding a hand, blue eyes, mountaintops, umbrella’s in Bali, seawalls, late night pizza and beer, an aria sung just for me.

Long ago I decided not to wait until those last few moments to realize the enormity of it all. I intend to ache everyday with the utter intensity of being alive.

Filed under: Awakening, Body, Truly Powerful People | 3 Comments »

Give Robert A Hand

Posted on July 21, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Robert is like a circus. When he comes to town I find myself following him around and doing the most unusual and extraordinary things. If you went to his house and asked for a cup of tea you could be certain that he grew the tea, made the cups and saucers, wove the table mats and probably built the table, too. If he didn’t design and build the chair in which you were sitting then he certainly restored it.

Robert reads the rulings written by the Supreme Court, the plays of the great poets, he knows more history, more literature, and more social science than any person I have known. He sews, he constructs, he plumbs, he paints and he does electrics. He is an actor by profession, a jack-of-all-trades by birth. His curiosity is insatiable and he’s consciously nurtured his capacity to follow his questions. To me, Robert is the master of possibility, the muse of “what if….” He turns over rocks to see what’s beneath, he acts before he knows; he designs projects based on what he might learn not upon what he already understands.

He was in town this week preparing for The British American Youth Theatre Festival, an organization he founded and has run for over 20 years. This year, they will perform with giant puppets and he needed help constructing the hands. “How about giving me a hand with puppet hands?” he said when I answered the phone. “Of course!” I said. Robert knows I jump at every chance to play in his field of projects.

“Do you know anything about making puppet hands?” he sang.

“No. Nothing.” I replied.

“Perfect! I’ll see you at 10!” he said, hanging up the phone.

Robert reminds me that this upside-down, fear-crazed, you-have-to-know-before-you-act world is unnatural. The most extraordinary thing about Robert is that he is ordinary. He simply does not invest in the idea of limitations.

Filed under: Art, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: possibility | 4 Comments »

Nurture Spirits To Fullness

Posted on July 20, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

498. 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 relationship with the crows grows stranger every day. This morning as I was leaving the apartment for my morning walk the crows went bonkers. They swarmed to a telephone post at the end of my street and, as I approached, in chorus they insulted my entire ancestry. And then one particularly snide crow swooped me. I knew it had no intention of hitting my head (I’ve learned the signs after so many assaults). Their offensive was so pronounced that Margery stopped and stared. She said, “There must be a fledgling close by. It unnerves me when they get like that.”

I said, “Do they swoop at you, too?” I thought I’d found an ally in crow abuse!

She shook her head, “no.” “Only once,” she replied, “A few years ago. It was unnerving.”

I didn’t tell her that this was a daily occurrence for me. I didn’t tell her that, in fact, it would be odd if the crows actually ignored me. Margery stepped closer to inspect the crows and we struck up a conversation. The crows flew away. I can only imagine that the crows knew I needed to meet Margery. You might say that the crows introduced me to Margery.

She is a retired teacher. She if filled with good humor and hope. She told me about the school she helped start in the 1960’s so that her children might learn and not simply be prepared to man the factory floor. I loved her clarity. She’d spent her life working as an advocate for children, a muse of curiosity. Her enthusiasm was infectious.

She told me of a time that her grandson was struggling. He was 6 years old, his family was falling apart, he was angry and scared and striking out at the world. Margery said, “ He had the good fortune to have an extraordinary teacher; she knew what was happening in his life and so she just loved him. No matter what he did – and he was difficult – she heaped love on him everyday. Now, my grandson is 13 years old and he’s stable and rooted and knows that he is okay. That’s what his teacher did for him. That’s what teaching is about and that’s what we’ve lost in this madhouse we now call education.” She told me that teachers were never meant to deliver content; she said, “Teachers are supposed to nurture spirits into fullness.” I would have applauded but I was afraid it might scare her.

Before we parted ways she told me one final story. This one was about her son. She said, “He was always clear about what he needed and wanted.” Once, while he was in college, she asked him about his course work and a particular class that he loved. The semester had just ended and she wanted to know how he did in the class. He said, “I don’t know.”

She was surprised and responded, “Well, how’d you do on the final?”

He replied, “I didn’t take it.”

“What? Why not?” she asked. She told me he smiled and said, “Mom, I went to school to learn not to prove that I was learning.”

Margery smiled at the memory and said, “That’s the day I knew he was going to be okay. That’s the day I knew he’d do well in the world no matter what.”

She winked and said, “It’s not about passing a test, is it.” I smiled and said, “No, it is most certainly not.”

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

Tickle Dr. Freud

Posted on July 19, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

497. 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 blue ribbon for word slippage goes to Lora. Doctor Freud would be most proud of her today. Not long ago Lora was telling Megan-the-brilliant that I am sometimes useful as her repository of knowledge. Though, instead of using the word repository she inadvertently substituted the word “suppository.” Doctor Freud spit out his pipe with the force of his delight. I am now and will be forever known as the suppository of knowledge. The phrase stuck. It’s what I get for tossing around expressions like “crap thinking” these many years. Megan’s brilliant ice-hot blue eyes were on fire with the torture possibilities. I could see her imagining speaking at my funeral, a eulogy that she’d waited years to share, “He was many things but above all….” She will never introduce me at a conference if I can help it.

And then, this very afternoon my dear Robert, ally in all adventures, friend for life, keeper of secrets, he-who-can-play-the-bagpipes-with-no-bagpipe told me that he’s always seen me as a horse of knowledge – but was never quite sure from which end of the horse I was speaking. I told him I was a knowledge suppository and he said, “Everyone knows that!” What I thought was the emergence of a weekly theme was suddenly much more comprehensive!

Like everyone I, too, have searched long and hard for my true purpose. I had imagined something more lofty or profound, something Gandhi-like or maybe Picasso-esque. Apparently I have been looking in the wrong… direction. Now that I have finally discovered what no person should ever know – namely, their true purpose (as Mr. Spock would say, “Having is not so great a thing as wanting.”), I will dedicate myself to honing my craft, aligning my message, polishing my skills – maybe a new website is in order. Please do not imagine the logo possibilities. I intend to have more fun at cocktail parties; now that I know definitively what I do, I at last have an answer to that irritating introductory query, “So, what do you do?” You’ll forgive me if I am evasive by replying, “Oh! Are you certain you want to know? My work can be alarmingly cathartic.”

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

Think Twice Before Parking

Posted on July 18, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Years ago I consulted with some financial guys. They wanted to know about story. They wanted to know how to tell a better story. Before I could teach them about story I needed to know the story they were currently telling. My friends call me a “circular” thinker so I imagine outside eyes would have seen a brilliant comedy routine: several “linear” financial thinkers trying to squeeze my circular mind through their two-dimensional picture. I knit my brows so many times they were bruised. When I am older I will have deep furrows cut in the field of my forehead from that difficult day.
Although I had to squeeze my thoughts across the chasm I was able to finally grasp their story. Here’s what I learned: Money needs to move to grow. Our entire system is designed to entice the average Joe to “park” their money in a bank or a 401k or an insurance product. Most of us still imagine that our money goes into an impenetrable vault; the money goes into the vault and is safe, secure and the nice banker/broker will pay us a tiny percentage to keep our money parked in their vault. That image is a carefully crafted illusion to make us feel secure and grateful for the return on our parking job.

Their job is to make the money move. And they make it move a lot. There isn’t a vault, there is no parking lot; there’s a racetrack. They make the money make lots and lots of money because it never sits still. They will make your money grow 7 to 10 times larger than the amount you parked in their lot-illusion. But wait, there’s more: even it they lose the money they have a fail-safe built into the program; it’s not their money being lost, it’s yours. They were very serious when they said to me, “You never work with your own money.”

Here’s the core of their story, the story beneath the story. It is finance 101: their job is to keep you and me on one side of the debt line (we pay the interest) with them on the other side of the debt line (they receive the interest). They need to create debt for us to pay (think credit card, mortgage, student loan). As they said, “Debt is not a bad thing, it just depends upon which side of the debt you are standing.” That’s why crashes like the 2008 disaster made money, lots and lots of money for some well positioned financial guys: They created lots of good debt and it wasn’t their life savings that they gambled away. They play a game in which they win either way and, in the story they told me, are careful not to consider the consequences for others.

I was not much help that day. I couldn’t get over the notion that it was not a better story that they needed but a better intention, perhaps a bigger conscience, or maybe even a better understanding of the word community.

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

See Like Merlin

Posted on July 17, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Every morning for the past five days, the blue-grey heron has fished in the same spot. It is as if he watches for me, too. I imagine him thinking, “That guy walks the same path every morning.” The foghorn is the sound track behind our mutual spying. The fog gives the heron the mystique of appearing from nowhere. “Magic,” I think as he emerges from Avalon. “Merlin in a heron shape.”

And, indeed, each day that the heron served as my portal guardian I have experienced enchantment. One day I called to visit Aboriginal art that brought tears to my eyes and a new vision to my heart. I learned what it truly means to dream. One day I entered the nether world of Chihuly and the museum designed to honor his imagination; it took my breath away with whimsy and color. On another day I met a hundred new people who left the comfortable patterns of their lives to wander the studios of artists. Brave hearts.

On a day I will never forget, I rolled up my pants and walked into the Sound to a sandbar 50 feet from the shore. “So, this is what Merlin sees!” My feet were cold, the fish were safe. “Yes, silly! This is what it feels like.” I heard a voice whisper on the wind and I understood what it is to see like a magician.

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

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