The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (181)

Posted on September 8, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

181.
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 a mistake to assume that you will someday shed yourself of inner resistance. The voice of resistance is there for the long haul. It will be barking at you all the way to the dirt nap. Trying to eliminate it will only make it stronger; resisting resistance reinforces resistance (wow – say that six times fast).

Resistance is like the bully in elementary school; it says it wants your lunch money but what it really wants is to see you cower. It wants you to stay in your place because that makes it feel powerful and in control. The bully’s game is control. The bully fears who you might become if you show up in a big way.

A step toward your dream is often a step into the unknown; it requires vulnerability and a release of control. This will bring out the bully every time. The inner bully is handled in the same way as the outer bully: a bully only has power if you cower – it only has power if you listen to it. It will call you all kinds of vile things and all you need do is hang onto your lunch money and take another step into the unknown. Laugh at it or love it, but do not listen to its trash talk. Name it and keep walking. You become it if you take its threats seriously.

Resistance is a sign that you are taking a step. It jumps up because you are daring to fulfill a dream. You can cower and run back into the cave or you can step through it and see what is on the other side

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Truly Powerful People (180)

Posted on September 7, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

180.
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 driving a shiny black Cadillac this week because our little old Saturn is in the shop. Since Saturn went down the drain in the GM debacle, the closest Saturn service shop is a Cadillac dealership. This shiny black loaner car aspires to become the bat-mobile!

You’d be amazed at how my status rocketed the minute I pulled off the lot in my loaner. For the first time in my eight-year membership, the good folks at the gym called me, “sir.” Do you crave attention at the art gallery? Just pull up in a black Cadillac. My neighbors are all a’twitter thinking I hit the lotto or perhaps sold a big painting – a really, really big painting. I am feigning indifference, as if nothing has happened (because it hasn’t); oddly enough my aloofness has lifted my status even more.

Keith Johnstone writes that all people have a preferred status – high or low – and they will always try to maneuver themselves into their preferred position; status is a role you play. He writes that both high and low status are essentially defensive postures. A person playing high status is effectively saying, “Don’t come near me, I bite.” A person playing low status is saying, “Don’t bite me, I’m not worth the trouble.” Both status positions can be very powerful and everyone becomes expert at their preferred position. In the Keith Johnstone construct I am a low status player so driving a shiny black Cadillac thrusts me into the other camp; I’m not used to people treating me as if I might bite them. It amuses me to be seen as someone who could pull a wad of cash out of my pocket and buy a Picasso on a whim – so I play along.

And that’s the point: the status I’m being granted has nothing to do with me. It is how people are choosing to see me based on…what? I drove up in a status symbol. That is true with or without a shiny black Caddy. My car, the one in the shop, is also a status symbol, a different kind of status that exists entirely in the eye of the beholder. The cars hold no meaning that we don’t give them – that is how we create the world we see. It is an investment in an illusion, a story we spin that equates privilege with power (power over), the road to fulfillment is through having shiny stuff.

It is within this illusion that I ask, “What is it to be truly powerful?” Is the car giving you the feeling of status? Can it really give you that? Is the way others perceive you at the center of your self-esteem? As Patti asks, “How’s that working for you?”

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Truly Powerful People (179)

Posted on September 6, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

179.
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 takes a western mind to look upon nature and see a hierarchy: simple cells progressing up a ladder to more complex plants and critters – and isn’t it convenient that humans occupy the top of the pyramid! We gave everything its name so we get to determine its fate, or so the story goes. When you draw the pyramid you generally reserve the top spot for yourself.

Bending nature to our will, breaking her on the wheel of our superior plan, is a play that has had a long and violent run but the scenery is now tired and the lead actors are way too old for their roles – not to mention that the story is outdated and less and less relevant.
Scrambling to be on top (pretending to be on top) is likely killing us. It breeds fundamentalism (the dedication to being absolutely right, the insistence of occupying the top spot while maintaining an enthusiastic devotion to the role of “the persecuted,” the warm blanket and sharp sword of insisting that your god is THE god, your way is THE way and there is nothing left to do but fight,….); evidently there is a lot of division and disagreement in the top spot on the pyramid, a pyramid within a pyramid you might say.

Manifest destiny and survival of the fittest are great ideas if you occupy the top spot, not so much if you are a wrung or two down the ladder.

There are other stories available to us. When ecosystems break down, when any system breaks down, those believing they occupy the top spot are generally the last to know, not because there was no warning or lack of evidence, but because denial is one of the most potent human characteristics. Many kings and queens sat on their thrones insisting they were superior even to the moment that the usurper took off their head. Many kings and queens have sat on their thrones insisting that the ends justified the means as long as the ends they justified kept them securely on the throne.

There are other stories available to us. If we can draw a pyramid and call it reality, we are certainly capable of drawing something else.

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Truly Powerful People (178)

Posted on September 5, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

178.
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 I cleaned my studio. I made space for the new. There are few rituals I enjoy more and few rituals that I take as seriously. It has been months since I painted. I have been empty, in winter. The first time I experienced this emptiness I panicked! I wondered if my artist had left me. I wondered if the well of my gift had run dry.

The answer to both questions was, of course, yes. I’m not sure if other artists experience what I do, but I have seasons. I go fallow, dark, underground. The first cycle I panicked and pushed and became more empty and dark. It was the magic Karola who told me that my cup could not refill unless I allowed it to drain completely. So I stopped chasing. I sat still, lost in the woods of my self-pity and without faith. One day, months later, I felt a stirring; the seeds buried deep within me began to crack open, tender shoots (impulses to draw) reached the surface and I found myself again with a pencil in my hand.

Now, I know enough to sit still, to be quiet and enjoy being alive without purpose or direction. I’ve even learned to rest (my inner puritan always grouses but I’ve learned to love that voice, too – like a cranky old neighbor who wants attention I listen to the unforgiving work ethic and smile. “More lemonade?” I ask). When I feel the seeds stirring, I set a full day aside. I go into the studio, close out the world, put on some “welcome home” music, and do some spring-cleaning.

Faith is no longer an issue. I’ve learned that faith, like trust, follows experience, not the other way around.

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Truly Powerful People (177)

Posted on September 4, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

177.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

25 years ago, standing on Pismo Beach staring into the quiet morning surf, Jim E. told me that people come to the ocean to touch eternity; the rhythm of the waves carried the beat of life before you were here and will carry it far into the future beyond your life. Just for a moment, you glimpse the enormity of it all. You glimpse the belonging of it all.

This morning a dense fog blanketed Puget Sound, the foghorn moaned into the soup. The islands, the mountains, the shipping lanes were swallowed – it was as if I was standing on the edge of the world and somewhere beyond the fog was the end of all that is known. The birds were unusually quiet. As I stood at the water’s edge I remembered Jim’s words and realized that I am always standing on the edge of what is known; the gift of the ocean is available all the time when I stop assuming I know what is coming down the road, when I remember that time is a construct. When I recognize that I don’t know, when I stop assuming, then I can see.

Try it: stand in any spot, anywhere in the world and recognize that you do not really know what is coming down the road; take a gander into eternity, glimpse the enormity of it all.

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Truly Powerful People (176)

Posted on September 3, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

176.
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 ran a theatre company embedded within a school district. I also founded and ran an alternative school program. They had many things in common but this little aspect was critical: little or no janitorial services – partly because of district budgets and mostly by design. Early on I recognized that ownership of the space in which we worked had a direct impact on the quality of our work; if it’s our space it is ours to care for, to clean, to shape, to decorate, to cultivate the culture of what happens in it. It mattered because we mattered. Initially it was a bloody battle to implant the idea: how you treat your space is a reflection of how you treat yourself. When you believe the work you do is important, when you believe that you are important in the work, then your care for the space. When you care for the space you care for yourself. After the first generation it became a tradition. The older students taught the newcomers: it matters how you embody the space, it matters how you embody your life. It was not uncommon to see students sweeping the parking lot prior to a performance: these kids believed that the audience’s experience of their art began when the car pulled into the parking lot. It mattered. It was theirs to do.

Ownership and mattering are easy words to say – it is easy to say values and ethics and generosity. They are more difficult notions to live.

Each morning I walk down the beach. It is littered with the remnants of last night’s party: old pizza boxes (the birds love that), broken bottles and cans litter the walkways. There is always a clean up crew paid for by the city – apparently it is the city’s job to pick up after the citizens.

We are a people who believe it is someone elses job to clean up our mess. There is scant ownership, no sense of mattering in how we treat our spaces and I can’t help but think it is a reflection of how we think of ourselves. Do you matter? Do your actions matter?

Whose job is it to clean up after our party? How would we live life if we knew that our actions mattered – all of them! When you know you have impact you are conscious of your actions and how they effect other people and the places of your life. You are connected. You own it because you own yourself.

I can’t help thinking about those kids sweeping the parking lot. It is an odd image of powerful people but think of it this way: those kids had no doubt that they mattered and they were bringing it 100%. When was the last time you were that powerful?

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Truly Powerful People (175)

Posted on September 2, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

175.
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 continue to sift through old journals and notes and today between a filing cabinet and the wall I found a small black and red notebook – small enough to fit in a pocket. I like finding these little notebooks because my handwriting is atrocious; it is difficult to decipher when I have full sized paper and nearly impossible in small notebooks. The gift is in the decryption: if I can actually figure out what I wrote it is like having the thought all over again!

I opened the black and red to a page with diagrams and words in circles; notes from a conversation with Joe. This is what I deciphered: circled in the center of the page is the phrase, “Feeling is the arbiter of reality (definitely a Joe phrase – I am not nearly so elegant).” Running vertically up the right side of the page I wrote, “Is the reference inside of you or outside of you?” And then, at the bottom of the page, “The word as reference point versus feeling as the reference point.” Finally, beneath this phrase in impossible-to-read scribbles I wrote either “Two deadly wars” or “Two deadly ways” with an arrow pointing to, “Attachment to outcome” and “Response to circumstances.”

String it all together and this is what you have:

Feeling is the arbiter of reality. Is your reference point inside or outside (are you seeking someone else’s answer or your own, trusting someone else’s feelings/opinions or your own?)? Words are abstractions, feelings are direct: which do you reference or which takes precedence when you locate yourself within your experience? Attachment to outcome and response to circumstance (as your identifiers) are both externally referenced and “deadly” as they start internal “wars” or lead to chaotic “ways.”

Scribbles to make Newton vomit and Siddhartha smile!

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Truly Powerful People (174)

Posted on September 1, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

174.
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 1982 and I am in Santa Fe. I’m touring the enchanted state with my college’s touring theatre company, leaving the campus for 2-3 day performance runs before returning for a day to rest and repair the truck. We perform our plays from the back of an ancient farm truck that breaks down on every leg of the tour. The bed of the truck opens to create a stage so you might say that our stage regularly falls apart, scattering parts and props across the highways of New Mexico. So goes the show! Two rudimentary light trees stand at the downstage corners when the bed is open and we open it often to wait for the tow trucks and mechanics that come to our rescue; we cut an odd picture for passing tourists.

It is the night before we are to leave again and the cast is exhausted and doesn’t want to go. The last breakdown took its toll and the upcoming performance is far away – which means we have no faith that the truck will make it to the performance.

Albert listens to our complaints, rolls his eyes, says something about namby-pamby actors and motions me to follow him. We walk through the high-desert summer night to the maintenance yard. The gate is locked so we hop the fence. We are suddenly laughing ninjas – trying not to attract attention but laughing too hard for stealth. Albert tells me to get into the truck and pop the hood. I hear him tinkering with something and then he closes the hood, smiling. “Tour’s cancelled tomorrow,” he says as we climb out of the maintenance yard.

Safely away from the yard he stops and says, “No one is making you guys go. Damn! Either do it – go and be grateful – or stop complaining and do something about it. At the very least, act on what you want.” Albert was always good for dope slaps. And then he said, “That was fun, wasn’t it.”

Sage advice from my laughing ninja friend: Either do it and be grateful or stop complaining. At the very least, act on what you want.”

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Truly Powerful People (173)

Posted on August 31, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

173.
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 spent the last week on the ranch of my great teacher, mentor and friend, Tom. He is very old now, a fragile little bird. Several weeks ago he was taking his daily walk and fell and broke his hip. His hip is on the mend but his mind has escaped the game and the world that he now creates has a new and restricted access code. He can see out (sometimes) but no one can see in. I love him and held his hand and adjusted to this new phase of our relationship as he told me stories that I already know but was delighted to hear as if for the first time.

Several years ago when my grandfather passed away, my father said, “Well, I’m on the front line, now.” Life looks different from the front line. Your priorities shift. Your investments become clear. You are less in a hurry to get through your days. The people in your life become more important than the status you might acquire or the stuff you might attain.

Martin Prechtel writes beautifully of the initiation of the boys into manhood in his Mayan community of Santiago Atitlan. Through his writing I understood for the first time that the initiation is meant to confront the young men with the reality of their own death; people cannot truly serve their community until they realize that they are mortal. Service to something bigger makes sense and becomes a priority when “something bigger” extends beyond your lifetime. What is it to work on the cathedral all of your days and know that you will never worship there?

Common story, community, only makes sense (or is accessible) when you are in service to the seventh generation, when it is more important to build it beautifully than to see the finished form. This, I think, is where we are off the rails. Our immediacy is our Achilles heel and makes our politics ugly, our communities fractured and our debates/concerns inane. Would we pay our teachers better than our athletes if we were looking farther down the road?

I am not yet on the front line but I can see it from here. Would that I’d had these eyes when I was 20! What might you see, what choices might you make, if you understood that you are always on the front of the ancestral line?

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Truly Powerful People (172)

Posted on August 30, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

172.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

All of us walk a path defined by our assumptions. We see what we expect to see, we see what we believe and when we believe we are not creative or not good enough, that is what we reinforce. That is what we create.

Assumptions are tricky because they are hard to see – they are the rules for the game you play. “That’s just the way things are!” is a statement steeped in assumptions. I once had dinner with a man that lashed out, saying. “That’s just who I am and I’m never going to change!” Now, that’s the statement of a man married to his assumptions! Assumptions can be scary to challenge especially if you need to be right (oily shame thrives in the dark space between right and wrong).

Growth happens when you can see and step beyond your assumptions.

Leaving the path of your assumption set is sometimes called divergence. It is sometimes called insight. It is necessary for this thing we call innovation. Divergence, insight, revelation, inspiration, ah-ha, transformation… is nothing more than seeing and then challenging assumptions. Maybe you are good enough! Maybe you won’t die if you show up and give voice to your thoughts! Maybe no one is trying to put you down. Maybe experience comes before trust.
In the same way, creativity is nothing more than your capacity to step into uncertainty. Try it. Do something without regard to the outcome. Stepping into uncertainty requires releasing control – as does challenging your assumptions. What are you trying to control? Needing “to know” before taking a step is highly over rated – as is being right all of the time – and guaranteed to keep you on a very narrow path. What assumptions are you ready to let go?

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