The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (188)

Posted on September 15, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

188.
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 first time I stepped over a person sleeping on the street I was horrified. I grew up in the burbs; if someone was collapsed on the street it meant they needed help. It was early in the morning, my first day in San Francisco. I was 22 years old. I rushed to the man laying on the cement and my friend Roger grabbed my arm, “Keep walking,’ he said, “There’s nothing you can do.” I stepped over the man and kept walking. It was unnatural. I didn’t believe that there was nothing to be done. And, I kept walking. Roger was quick to point out the people asleep in doorways, on benches, beneath cardboard,…; once my eyes were opened I saw people scattered all over the city, hundreds of people asleep on the street. It was as if an earthquake hit the city and its residents were afraid to go back into their homes. “What happened?” I asked. “Reagan cut funding for the shelters,” Roger said. “The economy sucks.” Even then those answers seemed too simplistic, completely void of responsibility. This is how we learn the rules of community.

That was 1983. Today I walked by the courthouse in downtown Seattle. The park next to the courthouse was like a refugee camp. Every park bench served to support makeshift cardboard shelters. People slept beneath every tree and formed a line adjacent to the fences. Sleeping in the day is necessary if you have no home to return to at night. For a moment I thought it was a performance art piece, the actors having placed themselves on the ground in an orderly composition. They were so still. I felt no horror and had no impulse to help. Instead, I was more concerned with looking at them for too long; I am supposed to not notice. I am a man of my times and have internalized the rules of community.

Earlier in the day I’d read a passage about Marshal McLuhan and how he often wrote of the human tendency to dismiss an idea or experience by naming it. Neil Postman called it “label-libel.” Attach the right label to it and you needn’t think about it any more.

“Homeless,” I said, feeling nothing. “The economy sucks,” I intoned. “Nothing to be done,” I whispered, wishing for the days when I had access to my horror.

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Truly Powerful People (187)

Posted on September 14, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

187.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

He asked me, with eyes downcast, “Yes, but when will I believe that I am whole?” We were sitting on the stage of an outdoor theatre. It was a hot summer night after a not-particularly-good-rehearsal. This young man, an actor, came dangerously close to being fully present, alive and available in his scene; he came very close to actually being seen without his armor. It scared him and he fled. I was secretly proud because he was brave and daring to come so close to his power. Now he was fully invested in pummeling himself. Had I a whip, a hair shirt, and a wee bit of salt to offer him he would have gladly added the torture to his self-abuse.

“You will believe that you are whole when you stop investing in the idea that you are broken.” Not a very useful response, but there it is.

A wise old mentor once told me that you can only give an actor one significant note a day. Give them too many things to incorporate and nothing will move forward. Give them the note to chew on and leave them alone to chew. So these are the things I did not say: When you deem that it is alright to be afraid, when you consider it useful to feel what you feel without a need to alter it to service the opinions of others, when you stop beating yourself for trying, when you stop abusing yourself for making strong offers and reward yourself instead, then you might feel whole. Wholeness is not something you attain. It is something you are. Feel it. Broken is a learned behavior, it is the hallmark of a people that reject nature, particularly their own nature; it is a story guaranteed to keep you hiding (and, that is the point of the, “I am broken and need fixing” story – it is a central story, necessary in the maintenance of a culture of control). And, above all, I did not tell him that it is a useful thing to struggle with; finding yourself is the whole point of being alive – or perhaps better said: finding yourself whole is the point of being alive. Wrestling with it makes for a good story and great life.

Belief is never the issue. Chew, baby, chew.

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Truly Powerful People (186)

Posted on September 13, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

186.
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 an old theme revisited. The word of the day is “belief.” For the past few days I have been with Lora at her class reunion in Tucson and I’ve listened to many conversations about belief: belief in self, belief in fate, belief in fortune, belief in friendship, belief in future, belief in love. We give this word, “belief” a lot of power!

Like all words, “belief” is an abstraction. Just as the word “tree” is not a tree (the word is an abstraction of something outside of you), the word “belief” is also an abstraction; it points to something that you decide/create with in you.

We play as if we need belief before we act. The notion that belief precedes committed action is a misunderstanding, an inversion. This misunderstanding is used as a reason to keep both feet on the brakes, “I can’t act before I believe….” Just watch a toddler explore the world! Curiosity is the name of the game, no belief required.

Belief in your self has nothing to do with fulfilling your dreams or bringing 100% of your self to your life. Curiosity is all that is required and the good news is that curiosity is natural to all human beings. Explore to explore. Act to see what happens. Color outside of the lines. The only thing necessary is to take your feet off the brakes.

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Truly Powerful People (185)

Posted on September 12, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

185.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Standing on the balcony, Diane described her journey to becoming a musician. She told me there were three phases – and she physicalized each as she told me. The first was, “I’m not a musician!” She hunched over and protected her heart. The second was to entertain the idea, “Well, maybe I am a musician.” Still protecting her heart she raised her head and looked around. The third was beautiful. She said, “One day I said, ‘I AM A MUSICIAN!’” She flung her arms wide, open heart, bold stance, and far-seeing eyes. She said, “I found my voice when I decided that I was a musician.”

I asked, “What happened to move you from phase two to full ownership?” Her reply was beautiful. She said, “I decided what I thought of myself was more important than what others thought. I decided I was a musician and what other people thought was none of my business.”

When you meet Diane, you will meet someone in full ownership of her path. No toes in the water to test the temperature, she is diving in head first.

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Truly Powerful People (184)

Posted on September 11, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

184.
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 friend Arnie and I had a great debate today. He is conservative and I am liberal. I appreciate my debates with Arnie because neither of us feels the need to negate the other. I try to see things his way and he mine. We explore ideas, check realities, and ask questions. We discuss and debate – we rarely justify and defend.

It is amazing to me how much conflicting data we bring to our debates. Of course, his sources are different from my sources and that is the point: we are talking about the same sequence of events and his sources report the exact opposite of what my sources report – and both sources call themselves “news.”

How can “news” have opinions about who is culpable in the actions of government or why did this or that happened? News, to be effective, does not ask the question, “why.” News, to be useful, has to divorce itself of opinion.

I might point to deregulation while Arnie points to too much regulation – it is what we heard on the news. Our histories do not line up at all. I suspect the truth is, neither of us really knows what we are talking about – our opinions are reinforced by news sources and pundits that are biased at best. We are too quick to pull data and statistics from our holsters but if you made me bet my life on the substance of my data I’d pause – I know my news source is more vested in entertaining me than informing me – but I use their data anyway! I want to be right! I am left with a feeling that neither of us (none of us) really knows the truth of anything. We defend our point of view because… it is ours and we heard it on the “news.”

Todd, my Canadian friend, told me that Americans are too quick to claim territory; we are too quick to defend because we skip over the dialogue phase. Today, what Arnie and I did, according to Todd’s observation, was definitely un-American . We listened to each other.

There is one thing to which we both agree – and are absolute in our facts: this country is off the rails.

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Truly Powerful People (183)

Posted on September 10, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

183.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Random thoughts on a morning walk: Without my eyes translating it into a story, the earth (the universe) is action, pure fluid motion without distinction. It is energy in motion.

The birds chase. The waves roll. The fog lifts. The sun breaks through. The jogger waves at me. The cop sits in his car, the engine idling, he reads the morning news. A break? Hooky? The osprey hunts. The gulls complain.

This is what the old masters and gurus mean when they say, “we create the world.” Without my eyes translating, there is no bird chasing, wave rolling, or fog lifting. There is a single motion. There is no bird separate from wave as distinct from fog. I give it coherence. I give it separation and story.

How does this help me? I am certain that I will continue to story everything I see. It happens in a nanosecond. I believe it is what makes us human: a story telling animal. It helps when I see the extent to which I tell my own story – and have infinite choice in the story I tell.

The man can walk in gratitude. He can walk with anxiety. He can lose himself in thought and miss the day entirely. He can be mindful. Mindless. He can be late or just be taking his time. He can try to please or simply do his best. He can try to change the world or recognize that world is motion, pure fluid energy.

Maybe, just maybe, the world is fine without my story. Maybe what needs changing is how I see.

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Truly Powerful People (182)

Posted on September 9, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

182.
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 image is vivid. I am perhaps 12 years old. I am running through a mountain meadow with my cousin. We are like puppies in a game of chase, laughing, tagging, and changing in an instant the pursuer and the pursued. The grass is waste high and wet with morning dew.

Suddenly my cousin screams, “STOP!” and I freeze in my tracks. He is not given to dramatics and I can hear the fear in his voice. He back-pedals and sits in the grass, shaking. I step toward him and then I see the mineshaft; this used to be gold country and there are shafts everywhere. We thought we knew where they all were but this was a surprise. “I almost went in,” he says, “I wasn’t looking and then there it was.” We pick up a stone and drop it in. Several seconds pass before we hear a distant splash; there is a bottom.

The fear is gone with the splash. We are young and fear is easily translated into curiosity. We throw many stones into the shaft. A game evolves – first throwing a stone so that it bounces against the walls of the shaft: who can get the most bounces. Then, dropping a rock so that it falls all the way to the bottom without touching the sides – this task is harder to do and we become experts. We mark the spot of this new discovery with broken limb thrust into the ground. We build a makeshift barrier to protect other frolicking travellers. We pull the grass around our barrier so it can be more easily seen and then throw handfuls of grass into the sky.

We do not carry a story of fear home with us; we carry a story of discovery. We carry a story of play. We are not afraid to run through the grass after our discovery of the shaft. We do not assume there are dangers lurking in every field; in fact, the discovery of the shaft unleashes our inner Indiana Jones. We carry a curiosity, a love of the unknown, a spirit of adventure. We do not assume we know what is coming down the road; the point is to run down the road.

We are powerful because we do not invest in our fear. We are powerful and alive because we still know how to dance with uncertainty.

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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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