The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (365)

Posted on March 9, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

365.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Ana-the-wise and I chatted today about agreements. She said, “All relationships are built upon agreements – conscious or unconscious. Harmony in a relationship is available when the agreements are conscious.” When people in any form of relationship – couples, business relationships, friendships make and honor their agreements, as Ana says, “there is conscious accord.”

Joe once told me that the universe tends toward wholeness; we want to make something better and we want to make it together. In fact, we can’t make anything better alone because “better” for us humans is a relationship aspiration. We lean in to connection. We are a pack animal. Making agreements is an attempt to make things better between people: it is a commitment to clear communication.

I’ve come to understand that we are all watching a different movie; I star in my movie and you star in yours – and although there are 7 billion different movies playing on earth on any given day we make the assumption that there is only one movie and it happens to be the one we are starring in. Thus, the need for agreements and clear communication. We can’t assume that our movies are remotely the same – even if we attend the same event or grew up in the same house; anyone who’s compared notes with their siblings will know what I mean.

Of course, the real work begins with the agreements you make with yourself. The relationship you create with yourself is the epicenter of all the others. It’s tough to make meaningful agreements with other people when there is warfare raging in your mind. When power games are rampant on the inside they are bound to show up in all the relationships outside. Stop playing power-over games with yourself and you will stop playing them with others. Ana said it this way: “First you have to learn to manage the ego.” And then, power-with is possible.

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Truly Powerful People (364)

Posted on March 8, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

364.
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 one of my favorite paradoxes. No one is powerful alone – yet stepping into true personal power is something that must be done alone. Stepping into true power has nothing – and everything – to do with other people.

As is true in story cycles, when it is time to go into the belly of the whale, no one can go there with you; the final stage in the journey to personal power must be done alone. No one is going to hold your hand, Jonah! Luke Skywalker had lots of help along the way but the moment came when he had to face the dark side and he had to do it all by himself. The young wife stood alone at the mouth of the cave all through the night as she awaited the bear. She had to face her bear all by herself.

The paradox gets rich following this moment of utter aloneness, after the bear has been confronted, the dark side defeated, when the whale spits you out and you survive; the moment after the attainment of personal power, you must turn around and make a run for home. The new-you has no purpose if you stay out in the wilderness all by yourself; the entire point of facing the bear is to bring the boon back to the community. The whole point of personal transformation is to bring better service, more power, back to the community. You ARE the boon and you are without purpose if not shared. It is a nice thing to find your center, face your bear, and realize your capacity for power and it has no real meaning if it is lorded over others or hoarded; power-with is the point.

This is what I mean when I say, “You can’t possibly serve others well until you first serve yourself.” Service that seeks fulfillment from others is not true service. First you must find your true power; only then can you orient according to what you bring to the community as opposed to living according to what you get from the community.

The amazing Megan said it best: “When you walk toward others, you walk away from yourself. When you walk toward yourself, you walk toward others.”

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Truly Powerful People (363)

Posted on March 7, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

363.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

On my drive home a few days ago I caught a bit of an interview with Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun. He was explaining an essential idea that he learned from his grandfather: passive violence is the root cause of all physical forms violence. “When we see people in poverty and do nothing,” he said, “that is a passive form of violence.”

I immediately thought of how we fund our public schools. Each school is funded according to the tax base of the property surrounding the school. The schools surrounded by wealthiest homes receive more money; the schools surrounded by modest homes receive less; the schools that receive the least amount of money are in the poorest neighborhoods. India has its caste system; the United States has its tax code. Is not this what Arun Gandhi means by passive violence? Add to this the application of a standardized test applied equally to all schools with the jaw-dropping assumption that all schools play on a level playing field. Is this passive violence or something more intentional? Certainly the children know the difference; the children feel the impact.

Here is a question I asked in one of my first posts:

What world would you embody if your desire was not a response to personal lack but an impulse toward greater wholeness for everyone?

What would be your dedication? What story would you tell?

So I change the pronoun and ask it again:

What world would we embody if our desire was not a response to personal lack but an impulse toward greater wholeness for everyone?

What would be our dedication? What story would we tell?

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Truly Powerful People (362)

Posted on March 6, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

362.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

As I move toward the center I find a most profound stillness and a very special part of me: pure curiosity. It’s pure because it wants to experience simply for the sake of experiencing. It is at one moment the most human part of me and the most transcendent. Experiences powered by a pure curiosity need no translation. It is life as poetry.

As I occupy my center I also recognize that there are very few things I know with certainty. One of my certainties is this:

All humans are creative; it is what defines us. It is neither our opposable thumbs nor our walking legs that make us human. It is our insatiable curiosity and desire to see what will happen if…. Curiosity is the center.

Curiosity is the essential element that excites and ignites creativity. “What if…” is at the heart of every love story and every story of fear. It is at the center of every human story including the inner narrative: the story-you-tell-yourself-about-yourself. Curiosity is elemental to happiness: a curiosity satisfied, that savory sweet moment of understanding, the space between inhale and exhale, the perfect rest before the next “What if….”

It is impossible for you not to be creative but it is very possible to experience yourself as not creative. If you have labeled yourself as “not creative” it is a good bet that at some point in your life your curiosity got you into trouble: you went where you weren’t supposed to go, said what others would not say, sang for the joy of it and got slapped: it’s a good bet your curiosity got blanketed with sticky shame and you learned to put a lock on it. You developed an especially critical judge to make sure curiosity stays in the shadows.
The path to full expression and the recovery of your creative experience lies through curiosity. It is waiting for you at the center. All you need do is ask, “What if…” and follow curiosity’s lead.

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Truly Powerful People (361)

Posted on March 5, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

361.
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 met Len. We were waiting in line at coffee house and I asked about the book he had tucked under his arm. I couldn’t see the title but the subtitle had the word “mindfulness” and that always pique’s my curiosity. He was at first timid to show me. He looked me over and when I didn’t present as dangerous he pulled the book from beneath his arm and showed me the title: Peace Is Every Step: The Path Of Mindfulness In Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh. He asked if I’d read any of Thich Nhat Hahh’s books. When I said I had, he relaxed and the hunger for conversation about this new and dangerous territory called mindfulness overtook him.

Len’s father died of pancreatic cancer a few years ago and Len was his caregiver through the process. He told me it opened his eyes. His experiences navigating hospitals and doctors made him sick. Literally. “There is nothing about health in our health care system,” he said. “It’s not the people, the doctors and nurses were amazing but the idea beneath it all is to get you on a pill. There’s a pill for everything but no one ever addressed what caused the disease in the first place. I started looking at my life and my diet and stress and started asking myself ‘What are you doing?’” And then he paused and said, “That’s what started me reading books like this. If I wanted to be healthy – really BE healthy – I knew it wasn’t enough to change the food I put in my body, change the way I exercise my body, I also had to change the way I feed and exercise my spirit and my mind.” And then he allowed some of his excitement to show through and added, “I am different, now.” Like a conspirator he leaned toward me and said, “We can do this! It’s possible.”

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Truly Powerful People (360)

Posted on March 4, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

360.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Catherine wrote, “Is not your power in the conviction of who we are?”

The question wrapped inside of her question is, “Who are you?” Isn’t that one of the big three life questions? The other two are, “What is mine to do?” and, “Where am I going?” Who, what, where. Present, past, future.

I like Catherine’s word, “conviction.” It implies that “who” is not a fixed thing but a choice. It is fluid and a decision. We get into a multitude of mazes when we believe any of the big three life questions are fixed outcomes instead of fluid processes.

A friend told a story: many years ago her father was a cartographer doing some work in Canada. One of the indigenous people observing how complex and stressful the cartographer and his crew made their work and lives, said something akin to, “You have it all wrong. A person only needs three things: a person needs to know their name, tell their story, and leave the planet better than when they came into it.” It is simple. Relax.

Who are you? Know your name.

What is yours to do? Tell your story each day. It’s a story.

Where are you going? Unknowable. The best you can do is leave the planet in better shape when you leave.

It’s a kind of nest: your name anchors the story you tell. The story you tell supports a greater story: caring for how you walk through your time on this planet is, if done well, making a better planet. It comes back to Catherine’s question: “Is not your power in the conviction of who we are?”

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Truly Powerful People (359)

Posted on March 3, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

359.
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 last time I saw Carol her marriage was coming unraveled, her world was falling apart. That was 4 years ago. We both thought it had only been a year or so since we last met but the landmarks in time contradicted our felt sense of time. We laughed. Time might not move faster as you age but it certainly seems that way.

I asked her to give me the view from 30,000 feet: what did she learn or what had changed for her since we last met. With no hesitation she said, “Something within me is different. I don’t have words for it but something fundamental has changed.” Her gaze went deep inside of herself, reaching for a metaphor or some way to illustrate what she felt.
Carol is a fine actress. When her gaze returned from the deep she said, “Before, when I was on the stage, I was communicating something. Now, I am communicating with. And that’s true of my life on and off the stage.”

Sometimes I think growth is not a journey to someplace in a future time, rather it is a layer that drops off revealing what has been there all along. A heart cracks open, grief pours out and the mask falls away. There is one less layer of protection and that leaves us available with greater access to life.

Separation gives way to unity. This is the artist’s way; it is a mini life-and-death cycle. When we stop trying so hard to say something, to distinguish ourselves as unique, we have the opportunity to see our lives as limited and precious; it becomes less important to be clever than it is to be available. It is the moment when we stop attempting to be artists that we are able to simply live as one.

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Truly Powerful People (358)

Posted on March 2, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

358.
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 never read one book at a time. I always have a few in progress and that sometimes makes for interesting information overlap. Right now, I’m tapping my foot waiting for George R.R. Martin to release book 6 in his Song of Ice and Fire series, The Game of Thrones. It is like cocaine; once you start you need the next book. I’ve had the shakes for a few months. If you know George, please tell him to get on it.

As I was reading book 5 I was also reading Dylan Ratigan’s Greedy Bastards. It helped me resolve some questions that I’ve been pondering for a while – for instance, my question: Given what we know about learning and education, what keeps us from creating a system that supports what all the data and research (and common sense) suggests? We’ve known the problems with the current system for 40 years! Why are we so incapable of acting on what we know? He has a very specific and compelling answer. Read the book – and do not take what he says at face value; spend 10 minutes researching some of the data he presents; you will ask yourself, “How did we let this happen?”

George R.R. Martin’s done a great study of feudal life and Dylan Ratigan helped me see some practices from the medieval world that I thought were long gone but have now realized are with us still. For instance, it was common for a lord or king to raise the children of a conquered foe – or potential foe. The children were an insurance policy against an attack. They were credit default swaps. You’d think twice before making an act of aggression when your opponent had your child.

Marriages worked much in the same way. Powerful families were intentionally linked through arranged marriages. You do not want to go to war against your in-laws, especially when there are grandchildren involved. A marriage was a power alliance. Mixing a bloodline was a way to increase power and assert control.

The hostages and arranged marriages of our day have taken a slightly less visible form but are they operate according to much the same principle. Dylan Ratigan asks us to consider this: the actual author of the health care reform bill was employed by the healthcare industry; the actual author of banking reform legislation was a banker. Our representatives do not write the legislation they propose. Why? Big business is like a feudal lord who holds hostage the children of our politicians: politicians will undertake no legislation hostile to those who hold the purse strings – which means they cannot undertake legislation that serves first the needs of the people.

The marriages are also arranged. You can’t get to into higher office without an extraordinary amount of money and the money is not freely given: there are expectations in return for support. Don’t you love the term, “super-pack?” I learned that there are dozens of paid lobbyists for every single politician in Washington. That’s a lot of money in play and favor to curry.

None of this is new news – and that’s my point. A crisis of leadership is really a failure of the followers. Here’s another of my questions: I’ve done a lot of work in the private sector and I have yet to meet a company that has the nation’s best interest at heart; why do we assume that a business model should be at the center of our public decision-making processes or that the private sector produces public-minded leaders? Self-interest is not the same as public interest.

In my George R.R. Martin/Dylan Ratigan information overlap there is an image that serves as the perfect metaphor: when it does finally and inevitably come to battle, the kings sit on the hill and the well protected lords lead the common people to slaughter. The people have no say in the game of thrones but pay the price in full. My question: why do continue to follow?

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Truly Powerful People (357)

Posted on March 1, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

357.
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 a friend told me that I have the greatest job in the world. My eyebrows shot to the top of my forehead – “It’s a good thing,” I thought to myself, “that I still have a full head of hair or else my eyebrows would have kept on going.” I am fairly phobic when it comes to the word “job.” I’ve never understood it. Actually, that’s not quite true. I understand it as an abstraction; to me a job is akin to a root canal: I’ve never had a root canal and will be most grateful if I never have one. I feel the same way about a “job.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve waited tables, thrown bales of hay, dug foundations, painted houses, sold office products, unloaded semi-trucks filled with mattresses, cleaned chicken coops; I consider those things experiences, not jobs. There’s never been a separation between who I am and what I do. I am an artist. That is not an occupation, it is not something I leave at 5:00; it is a way of being in the world and I can’t remember being in the world any other way. I’m not sure what a day-off means. My dad used to say that he worked for his weekends; I used to wonder what that would feel like: working 5 days for 2.

My friend was referring to my work as a coach. She said, “You have the greatest job in the world. It must be so much fun to help people step into the fullness of their lives.” What a great phrase – and a terrific aspiration: step into the fullness of your life. She is right; coaching is great fun. And, I can’t help it; my coach-ness and artist-ness are one-and-the same thing: artistry is about the fullness of living, isn’t it? Coaches, like artists, help people see what was there all along: the fullness of life. I see it because I’ve had to find it for myself. Art was my Virgil.

Her follow-up statement brought gravity back to my eyebrows. She said, “You do it so well so why do you suck so badly at telling people what you do?” She laughed as my face bobbed from the force of my eyebrows descent. I stammered, which is what I usually do when people ask me what I do. This is what I know: if you are smart you will avoid me at the party because I’m the guy that will have you revealing your deepest desires 3 minutes after meeting me; you will have made a mistake in asking me, “What do you do?” I will say “artist” or “coach” and both will be equally ethereal. I will have no satisfactory answer. We will talk, your mask will come down, the evening will pass and you will leave the party wondering what hit you; you will feel better, fuller, more alive – or sad that you missed the dancing. Either way, you will hope that I didn’t record our conversation. I will leave the party thinking, “What a fantastic story!”

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Truly Powerful People (356)

Posted on February 29, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

356.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Last night I watched Werner Herzog’s film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, about the incredible paintings found in the Chauvet caves in southern France. Over 30,000 years ago, for reasons about which we can only speculate, people painted images of horses, bears, lions, and rhinoceros; they left hand prints and other markings. These are the oldest known images created by humankind. They are shocking in precision, shape, and delicacy of line. They are contemporary – in some of the shots as the camera panned across the images, I could swear that Picasso had spent some time in the cave working out his chiaroscuro. Many of the images overlap and carbon dating tells us that there was 5,000 years between the earlier and later images yet they live as one cohesive intention as if drawn by a single hand.

In the film, Herzog made a statement that seems especially appropriate to ponder on this day. He said, “These people did not live in history.” They did not have clocks or calendars. They did not take classes in the history of the ice age or tribal war in the year 37,000b.c.e; they would never think to distinguish between before and after the contemporary era; the concept of an era would be meaningless, the word “contemporary” would be lost on them. They did not locate themselves in their lives in the same way we do.

It is a leap year and we think we have an extra day. I’ve read the same question in multiple places over the past few days, “What will you do with your extra day?” Having just seen the film I ask myself, “Isn’t every day of life an extra day?” If I lived “out of history” would I note this day as somehow special? I hope so, but not because I consider it a bonus gift in the cereal box of my life. This leap year notion is made possible by how we count, a small hiccup necessary to keep our numbers in line with the cycles of the moon. If I count this day as special, how do I count the other 365 days? Ordinary? I guess a better question is, “What am I counting?”

What if, like today, you went out tomorrow and did something special to mark the extra day of life that you have. And the next day, too. And the next. What if you woke up every morning and asked yourself, “What will I do with my extra day?”

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