The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (291)

Posted on December 27, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

291.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Sammy showed up one day outside the door to my office. She was a white dog, a Samoyed. My office was in an old army barracks and my door opened to the sidewalk. I looked up from my desk and Sammy was looking at me. I knew the moment that I saw her that I was to be her steward though I didn’t know why. She knew it, too and I’m certain that she knew why but was not going to tell me.

She followed me around all that day and I took her home with me that night. The next day I put up flyers, Dog Found, all over campus. No one called. After the third day I took down the flyers; Sammy was mine to care for.

She was fully trained. She was easy to care for. She was happy and always by my side. Where did she come from? She had no collar, and no tags.

For a short time I had to hide Sammy from my landlord because I wasn’t supposed to have pets though I’d resigned my job and was moving at the end of the month so I wasn’t too concerned. My friend Roger was moving in and I didn’t want to make things difficult for him.

I moved a long way away, entered a time of deep turmoil and Sammy came with me, my constant companion, my studio dog, the steward of my transformation. She was never hooked by my story of pain, she never bought my doubts or reinforced my self-imposed limitations; she loved life regardless of the story I played and reminded me at crucial moments to step out of my story and breathe; a wagging tail, a reminder-bark, “It’s time for a walk. It’s time to get out of your head and that dark story you are telling.”

New Years eve, two years after leaving my old job and my old house to my friend Roger, I was driving through my old town on my way home. Sammy was suddenly very sick. Roger had given me his keys to the house in case I needed to stop. I needed to stop. Somehow (before the age of cell phones) I found a vet. It is uncanny to me that Sammy died in the place where I first found her. The vet told me that she had lupus and in dogs, the first episode presents as a false death. The second episode is the real death. I found her – well – she found me after the first episode. Someone had dumped her body thinking she was dead.

Her death was the straw that broke me. All that dark story and logjam of feeling came busting out. Everything that I had hidden, withheld, denied, feared, loathed, poured out of me. And then there was space for the new. Circles come back around. Loss brings found, growth is never linear, stories sometimes need catalysts to loosen our grip; sometime you hope the fall will kill you and you are grateful when it doesn’t. I thought I was her steward and she knew that she was mine. She had limited time and a big job to do. Unconditional love was the only trick in her bag and it worked like a charm. Circles come around and around and I’m still amazed at the coincidences and serendipity of my life. All I know is that letting go, as painful as it seems, will never kill you. Hanging on will slay you slowly every time.

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Truly Powerful People (290)

Posted on December 26, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

290.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Ten years ago I met Jack Yantis at the Seattle Children’s Theatre. I’d just moved to Seattle and knew almost no one in the city. I wheedled an invitation to attend a workshop for actor-teachers led by Jack. He guided us through a series of simple movement experiences that were brilliant, illuminating and fun. With minimal structure he had us moving through space with grace and abandon. Above all else, I remember how the group moved from a single impulse, many people moving as one being.

The first thing we did that night was to find stillness. “Allow your movement to come from stillness,” Jack said. “Let your movement return to stillness.” Just like life! We come from stillness and return to it. “The stillness is available to you,” he said, “you just need to find it, remember where you left it.” He laughed. Jack was filled with mischief and laughter.

“Finding stillness” is a great phrase and is harder to do than you might imagine. Busy lives and busy minds afford little stillness. Unless you have a meditation practice, stillness is probably something you avoid. In stillness you discover things about yourself; in stillness you uncover things about yourself and then you have to act on them or choose to deny them.

Stillness means more than to simply stand still. Jack guided us; we found it first in our bodies, in our limbs, in our faces, and finally in our minds. And in that lovely stillness, there was an impulse that was basic and undeniable, it was the impulse to move toward each other, to move with each other. It was not a personal impulse, not individual, it was shared, it was bigger than any single person in the room. And, when we followed the impulse, our dance amplified the space between us, as if the space were moving us instead of the other way around.

This is the impulse that the artist understands. This is the impulse behind true power. It is basic and undeniable that if you are capable of getting out of your own way, of allowing your life to come from the stillness, that life will move you toward others, toward fulfillment and the empowerment of all. As Jack taught us, “The stillness is available to you. You just need to remember where you left it.”

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Truly Powerful People (289)

Posted on December 25, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

289.
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 family had a tradition after opening gifts on Christmas morning. We’d pile together in a wrapping paper food fight and pelt each other with paper wads, tackle each other, bury each other in the tissue, ribbons, wrappings and boxes. Exhausted and exhilarated, with our bow-festooned heads poking out of the pile, we’d take a picture. We’d laugh and throw the paper again. We’d dog pile my father, my mother shouting, “Don’t hurt your father!”

This many years later I barely remember the gifts I was given or the stuff that I thought was so important to give, but I remember in vivid detail the paper throwing bacchanalia, the play and abandon in the celebration of our love for each other, the joy of having parents and brothers and a sister. Now, I like to think that the gift-giving part of the process was necessary only to generate the paper to throw.

Once, while spending the holiday at my sister’s home, I heard her shouting to her children as they piled onto my brother-in-law, “Don’t hurt your father!” All grown up now, my nieces and nephews carry on the tradition with their children.

Our rituals reveal the truth of us. I hope your rituals leave you laughing and yearning for more time with the people you love.

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Truly Powerful People (288)

Posted on December 24, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

288.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

You make sense of the world from a specific point of view. In this sense, a judgment is like an anchor. It is where you decide to harbor your ship and from this position you will then tell yourself the story of yourself and the world. The story you tell is spun from where you have decided to drop your anchor, not the other way around. To change your story you have to become aware of the anchors you drop.

Where have you dropped anchor?

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Truly Powerful People (287)

Posted on December 23, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

287.
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 talked this morning about the return of the light. Literally and metaphorically. The return of the light used to be the meaning-of-the-season! The sun’s march into the darkest day, the winter solstice, was a sacred time. The disappearance of the sun, the life-giver; what could be more profound? And then, instead of disappearing, the sun returns! What could be more worthy of celebrating?

In archetypal terms the return of the sun is understood as the birth of the inner child. In metaphor, the birth of the child is the birth of your consciousness. I suppose, technically, it is the rebirth of the consciousness since it happens in a cycle, again and again and again. Each year we have the opportunity to celebrate the expansion of consciousness – the return of the sun, the birth of the inner child – and in some places on the planet the expansion of consciousness is still understood as having a spiritual life. Everyone is living a spiritual life.

The return of the sun happens outside of you; the return of the sun happens inside of you. Imagine what you might be doing if you still felt a deep connection to the sun, as if what you did actually had some influence over the sun’s return! And then consider this: people worship the literal return of the sun because it mirrors the inner return; they feel connected: no separation. With no separation between inner sun and outer sun it is the birth of the inner child, the expansion of consciousness that they see in the sun’s return.

It turns out that what you do and what you think actually does matter! It turns out that you have an enormous impact on the return of the sun (whether you know it or not…and isn’t the point for you to recognize it).

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Truly Powerful People (286)

Posted on December 22, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

286.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Here are snippets of thoughts, notes from the margins of my notebooks. They are thought fragments (I call them thought-frags. “What’s this scribbled in the corner? Oh, it’s a thought-frag.”). Thought-frags are seeds. Most I forget but some are planted and turn into full-blown ideas or become connective tissue for bigger frags. Some are quotes I hear (I used to hide my scribbles when I heard a great quote. Now, I announce it. I say, “That was great, can I borrow a pen?”). Here’s a frag sampler; some of these have shown up in posts already:

“I have been seeking liberation from others, from systems and from society, when what I really wanted was liberation from myself.” anonymous

Ask yourself these questions: are you entering the relationship in order to get something? Are you entering the relationship in order to bring something? Or, asked another way, Are you bringing energy to the relationship or are you taking energy from it?

To control is to hide (advice to an actor).

Controlling requires you to constantly pour your energy into negotiating shifting boundaries instead of pursuing your intentions. This is as true in business as it is in an individual life.

Where are you pouring your energy: into what you want to create or into boundary negotiations? (a question to myself that made me mad. Guess what I discovered?).

Power-over-others has nothing do with Power and everything to do with Control. We’ve confused Control of others with Power.

Catch your thought-frags. It is infinitely worth it to be scribble-ready at a moments notice. And don’t be afraid to ask for a pen.

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Truly Powerful People (285)

Posted on December 21, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

285.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

In your story, the-story-that-you-tell-yourself-about-yourself, your have an underlying force or impulse that drives you. I call this your Root Story. Alan Seale calls it your Soul Mission. Many traditions identify it as a Calling. You might understand it as your Role-in-Life. Have you given a name to what is yours to do?

Everyone has a Root Story, a Soul Mission. Everyone has a Calling, a Role to play in the health of their society and the greater world. It is common to be confused about what it is and even more common to know it but to fear it, hide it, or deny it. Sometimes we know it and want it to be something else.

When we embrace our Root Story, take off the reins and let it run, we step into our power. Actually, it is more appropriate to say that power steps into us. Power is available to us all the time but like a river we place dams on it and interrupt its flow. We tell ourselves that the dams are there for power generation but in truth the dams are not about power at all; they are mechanisms for control. The dams are the things we try to control but can’t – like other people’s perceptions The dams are the fear stories we whip up, “What will happen to me if I am seen, heard, or not understood?” The dams are there when you find yourself playing small so as not to draw too much attention.

This world needs less dams and more powerful people. Name your Root Story, own what is yours to do. And then enjoy blowing up all those dams!

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Truly Powerful People (284)

Posted on December 20, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

284.
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 look forward to my conversations with Joe. He thinks about interesting things. He wrestles with titanic questions. Today we were talking about how I intend to best serve people through this meditation on power and he asked me this question:

If truly powerful people are dedicated to inspiring true power in others, if empowered people empower others, what is power used for? Is it to create a better world, to create personal fulfillment, what is power for?

Earlier this weekend I had a conversation with Duncan. He is a composer and is wrestling with all the questions that come with being an artist in a consumer society. He asked a question not unlike Joe’s question: what is art for?

It is the holidays and I’m reconnecting with some people that I’ve not talked with since this time last year. We’re condensing a year’s worth of life into a phone call. We’re catching up. This has been a year with many deaths; death of a parent, a spouse, a friend. Twice in these conversations I’ve heard this phrase: “It makes me wonder what my life is about.” What is life for?

I have many different responses to these questions about power and art and life and my responses depend upon the circumstances and my intentions. There is not one answer. One of my lessons from Bali was that the way a question is asked reveals the consciousness of the asker: I saw things there that I will never be able to explain and repeatedly asked my guide, “What was that for?” or “Why?” He would always smile; a Balinese rarely asks “why” in the face of a mystery, they dance with the mystery because they know they are part of the mystery. Budi would say, “There is no why. There is no what for.” And then he would laugh.

The question, “What is if for?” reveals the belief of separation: power, art, and life are resources to be used, love is something you find instead of something you are.

Power, art, life, and love are for helping you realize that alone we are meaning seekers; together we are power, art, life and love.

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Truly Powerful People (283)

Posted on December 19, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

283.
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 seem to be having significant experiences in coffee houses these days. Today I was at the Uptown in West Seattle writing about Seeing and Focus Placement. Nearby sat a group of elderly woman having a serious yet laughter-filled conversation about their experiences of the divine. They were talking about what they worship and what they’ve learned about the focus of their worship (it was the word “focus” that caught my attention). One of the women said this phrase and I lurched for my pen to catch it word for word. She said, “The more you try to describe God the smaller you make God. I find it less and less important to even try. Why would I try to squeeze God into a box?”

I loved that question. Why would I squeeze God into a box?” I quickly did a Meister Eckhart Google search for a quote. I didn’t find the quote that I was looking for but this one serves the turn just as well: he said, “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”

Your eyes are the eyes of the divine. So, the question is equally apt when I ask it this way: “Why would you squeeze your self into a box?” The more you try to label yourself, the smaller you will make yourself. You are infinitely complex. You are infinitely creative. You will only fit into a box that you create for yourself.

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Truly Powerful People (282)

Posted on December 18, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

282.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

This is my favorite revelation of the week. It comes from a friend who has for the past several years been doing big work on herself. Like all big shifts of perception it sounds so simple but is hard to embody. I’m beginning to understand that most revelations do not come with fireworks and a brass band; they are subtle. They are simple because they’ve been there all along and we just did not see them. They slip in with little fanfare, like removing your sunglasses.

This is how she said it: I’ve learned to be in the chaos without buying into the chaos. See, no fanfare. And, if you are truly underwhelmed, ask yourself when was the last time you resisted, defended, justified, needed to be right, fought for others to see what you see, needed approval, bought into the notion of perfection, or any of a thousand other ways you buy into the chaos. Are you anxious, afraid, motivated by what you fear or do not want, in survival mode, or certain that the universe is throwing obstacles in your way? Chaos, chaos, chaos.

Can you imagine what it might mean in your life to be able to stand solidly in the chaos without needing to control it, contain it, or deny it? Can you be present without needing to manipulate or force anything or anyone yet say without inhibition exactly what you need (it’s not the need that matters, it is how you fill it that defines you).

Reread the first part of her statement: I’ve learned to be. Her focus shifted. The earth did not shake, the clouds did not part, no ascension or angels or twenty-one gun salute. Her focus shifted, she realized choices are creative acts and instead of being caught in the whirlpool, it swirls around her.

What could you buy if you stopped investing in chaos?

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