The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (115)

Posted on July 4, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

115.
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 am walking down California Avenue, a very busy street, one of the main thoroughfares running through my West Seattle community. Suddenly cars stop in both directions, drivers intentionally blocking traffic. Patrons come out of cafes and coffee houses, many carrying ropes, some with spare leashes. Then I see the dog, a lab mix prancing down the center line excited by the spontaneous game of chase unfolding on his behalf. He wants to play, too! So many nice people chasing him, he runs to and fro, sprinting down the yellow lines then turning back to give his pursuers a chance to catch up.

I sit to watch.

Responsible citizens run down the long line of cars backing up the avenue behind the now empty lead cars to explain the reason for the traffic stoppage. More people jump from their cars to see if they too can lend a hand and corral the playful dog.

Among the many miracles of this moment is that everyone involved is cooperating. No horns are honking. No obscenities are launching. All the hurry-up-and-get-there is put on hold; a higher purpose has presented itself and everyone wants to help. There is laughter amidst the concern. It is a self-organizing team, no meetings or debates necessary. All this generosity for the safety of a dog playing in a dangerous road.

We have this generosity in us. This is who we are. Imagine what we might create if we extended the same consideration to ourselves that we offer our dogs. Try this experiment: look around and see who in your life is playing on a dangerous road. What courtesy will you extend to them? Will you leave your café seat? Will you stop traffic? What will you do to keep them safe? What will you do to enter the game?

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Truly Powerful People (114)

Posted on July 3, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

114.
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 Nebraska this summer we named the institute, The Art of Teaching and Learning, and we meant it. It was not a fancy title, not meant to be clever; it was an intention.

Artistry is not something you do; rather, it is a way of being that is defined by the capacity to step into the unknown. That’s a good definition for learning, isn’t it? Teaching when done well is high art. If you were looking for easy answers and manufactured solutions, this was not the place for you. There was no room for transactional thinking. This institute was about the ferocity of inquiry and jumping into the exuberant uncertainty of transformation. It was a form of art called teaching and learning.

On one of final days we led an experience called The Bridge. It involves a lot of chairs and a clear intention. As this group of teachers supported each other to safely cross the chasm, they transformed into a community. Each member mattered. Their actions mattered. Their focus mattered (all false outcomes and standardized blah-blah went out the window, excellent process and relationship cleared their sight and they remembered why they’d become teachers). There was no win or lose, there was only powerful offers and potent learning. They transcended their circumstance and entered a common narrative (a single intention).

How often do we lose our intention in the tall weeds of our circumstance? A community forms when an intention is pure. There is nothing more powerful than a community with a clear intention. They can’t be derailed by circumstance or politics or experts or status because they are in service to the fulfillment of their community and that is not possible if any single member is left behind. Quality process and a focus on relationship trumps test scores and outcomes.

Transformation is never found in the answer, it is always found in how you engage with your questions. This too is a great definition for learning. Just ask the teachers at the institute that rediscovered their artistry. They are clear about what learning is and what it is not.

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Truly Powerful People (113)

Posted on July 2, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

113.
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 am flipping through old notebooks, the small kind that fit in a coat pocket. I carry them all the time because I do my best thinking when I am walking. I can struggle at the computer all day, take a break to walk a few blocks and by the time I am at the end of my street I am scribbling notes.

In a small notebook with a red cover I find a drawing. The image is horizontal on the page. On the far left I wrote the word “Hero” and scribbled a circle around it. On the far right I wrote, “Anti-Hero” and also scribbled a circle around it. Between the two there is a line. I must have been explaining this to someone, I can tell by how emphatically I scribbled the circles.

The Hero and The Anti Hero was a revelation that Harald shared with me a few years ago. Harald’s first language is German so his use of the term Anti Hero instead of villain or devil or “big dog yapping in my brain” is actually more appropriate than any term I might have used.

He told me that he’d spent much of his life trying to rid himself of his inner Anti Hero. It had consumed much of his life, this powerful inner voice of criticism and judgment. It plagued him and the more he resisted it the stronger it became. One day, exhausted by his inner turmoil he realized that the way to rid himself of this Anti Hero was to stop expecting himself to be a Hero. In fact, his expectation of being a savior, being perfect, being everything to everybody was the very thing that fueled the Anti Hero. Letting go of the Hero dissipated the Anti Hero and what was left was…human. Beautiful and flawed and funny and messy: a human no longer at war with himself.

This is a great description of the path to becoming the truly powerful. Power is not something you attain; it is something you reveal when you let go of the clever parts, release the tug-of-war, and let the human part show up full.

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Truly Powerful People (112)

Posted on July 1, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

112.
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 am walking alone in the desert. I am in Saguaro National Park, late on a February day, quiet inside myself, grateful to be away from the noise and pace of my life. I saw a trail, impulsively stopped the car, gauged how much time I had before the sun dipped beneath the mountains, and started walking. No one knows where I am. I have no phone. I feel free.

I’m 15 minutes down the path when I hear the coyotes. Not one, many. Many. They howl, not the kind of howl they might aim at the moon, this is a different sort, the kind that lets me know that I am a possible selection on the dinner menu. They are near, I can hear them but I cannot see them.

How quickly the illusion drops away, this idea that man is on the top of a pyramid. Once, when preparing for my first trip to Alaska, a friend told me, “You will love it there because you are no longer exempt from the food chain.” In this moment, I know that I am no longer exempt so I pick up a large stick, stand very still for a moment, and then carefully, quietly, and with surprising reverence retrace the path back to my car. I do not hurry, I do not run, I don’t know why. My invisible escort is with me most of the way.

Once back in the car I recognize this feeling that I have not felt deeply since I was a child: respect – and not the superficial respect that comes in pop songs or appears on lists of expectations – the kind that is born of veneration. I begin to shake, not from the adrenaline of being escorted to my car by coyotes but the recognition of how rarely I am in relationship with anything real, experiences that are not constructed, values that are not abstractions, problems of any true significance. I wonder if anything in my day-to-day life is real or has any worth beyond the value I assign it. When was the last time I saw beyond the labels or gave myself over to the enormity of the stars?

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Truly Powerful People (111)

Posted on June 30, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

111.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Eric is a conductor. He has loved music his entire life and dedicated his long and prosperous career to his love. I have known him superficially for a few years; we crossed paths at dinner parties but have never talked beyond the trivial. Last weekend our paths crossed again, at an engagement party, only this time we sat in a corner and went on a pilgrimage. I forgot we were at a party, I lost track of time, as Eric told me the story of his quest to find the writing shacks where Gustav Mahler composed his symphonies.

Mahler died young. His career was primarily as a conductor and off-season he built shacks away from all other demands and interruptions and did what he most wanted to do: he wrote music. Eric told me that Mahler predicted that his music would not find its audience until 50 years after his death. Some of his music was celebrated in his lifetime; most was not. He has since become one of the most frequently performed and recorded composers of the last century.

Eric wept when he described finding the shack where Mahler’s final works were written. I wept, too because I was standing with him in the Czech mountains as he came upon a clearing and saw the shack for the first time. Thus is the power of story, two men blubbering in the corner of an engagement party, having just discovered a cabin in the woods.

At the end of our pilgrimage Eric quietly told me that one of his compositions would premiere the next day. Had I not been listening carefully I would have missed it; he whispered it so softly, tossed it off so nonchalantly. I asked him to repeat what he just said. In his retirement he was returning to the real heart, the soul of his love for music: he was writing compositions and one of his pieces was to be performed for the first time the next day. He beamed and averted his eyes, so vulnerable and tender was his offering. I cried for the second time so grateful was I to accompany Eric on this part of his pilgrimage.

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Truly Powerful People (110)

Posted on June 29, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

110.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

While driving downtown yesterday I listened to This American Life on NPR. It was a story about the seeming sudden ugly division in politics in Wisconsin, a rift in a state that used to identify itself as friendly in all things political. And, what’s worse, the division seems scripted.

Centuries ago Machiavelli taught rulers a simple strategy to keep the power: divide the people.

The story was startling because every person interviewed asked the same question: “What happened to us? Where is the Wisconsin that I know?”

There is a term coined in the early history of the United States for the divide-and-rule strategy: it’s called The Giddy Masses. Divide the people by making two different sets of rules: one side assumes the identity of the privileged while the other side assumes the identity of the suppressed. Both sides live in fear. The privileged will fight to hold onto their privilege while the suppressed will fight for equal treatment. Both lose. Once, in a fit of frustration, a financial advisor that I was coaching in story processes swore that social engineering was the only reason for so complex a tax code. He gave voice to the thought and then swallowed his voice for the rest of our consultation, as if he was afraid someone might be listening in.

Ultimately, it is a strategy that diminishes both sides because the story common to all sides is one of division and disempowerment. It is necessarily based in fear and righteousness. Common narrative, the thing that binds a community, negates itself when the common narrative is one of division.

Disempowered people cannot see the sacred in others because they cannot see the sacred in themselves. Disempowered people diminish others in an attempt to elevate themselves (or keep themselves elevated). Either way, disempowered people see their power as something separate, something that can be given or taken away.

What Machiavelli forgot to tell his readers was that the strategy of division is good for the maintenance of power in the short term but it erodes the society in the long term. What good is power if what you control is not worth controlling?

The folks in Wisconsin (as in all of America) are asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, “where did it go?” we need to ask ourselves, “Why are we participating in this game?” As in all divided nations throughout history, this culture of division is not happening to us we are actively participating in it.

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Truly Powerful People (109)

Posted on June 28, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

109.
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 Sunday morning, a hot day in the early 1990’s in Los Angeles. I walk to a corner gas station convenience store to buy a newspaper and milk. When I enter the store a customer is at the counter. He is angry and having a heated conversation with the owner. There are five other people in the store and I notice many have their items but are pretending to look for other things to buy. They are staying away from the counter until the angry man leaves.

I grab my paper and am opening the refrigerator door when the angry man escalates his violent diatribe. I get my milk and am closing the door when the sound, the BANG, drops me to the floor. It was an automatic response; I hit the deck and look around me; the other patrons have done the same thing. We are on the ground, arms over our heads. Eggs are broken. There is a puddle of juice and broken glass.

No shots were fired. The angry man slapped the counter with his hand before storming out of the store.

I hear it on the news every night: people killing other people for their shoes or because they are angry at the price of gas. What I didn’t realize is how deeply we carry that news in our bodies. It is always there. All of us hit the floor. We expect the violence. We are on guard all of the time. There is nothing on the spectrum between angry and murder on this day in Los Angeles – or on any other day, apparently.

I hear that it is human nature but I don’t buy it. That is a story. It is human nature to tell stories not kill for shoes. We have an infinite capacity to tell the story that we want to tell. But, we must first want to tell a different story. We have to believe that a different story is possible; we have to notice that the story does not happen to us. We author it and we enact it. Together we choose it.

When I left the store that morning I left Los Angeles (literally and metaphorically). I decided to carry a different story in my body. This other story I see daily (yet rarely on the news): it is the story of empowered people empowering others.

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Truly Powerful People (108)

Posted on June 27, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

108.
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 understood stillness was in Bali. It was a very hot day. I’d been in the country for almost 5 weeks, long enough to leave behind my very American need to be someplace other than where I was. For the previous few weeks I’d been playing a game that morphed into a kind of practice: walk behind a Balinese man or woman and imitate their gait, their rhythm of walking. I started this practice because it seemed to me that the Balinese were never in a hurry to get anywhere. Walking was not primarily about getting from point A to point B. Walking was not about arriving. Walking was about walking. Walking was process, not outcome.

At first my game was hard to play. I found it nearly impossible to sustain, my body tensed and ached as if I was detoxing my hurry-up-and-get-there addiction. After a while, time began to change, it slowed and sometimes disappeared. I acquired the capacity to walk more on my heels than on my toes. And the real benefit: my thinking also went back on its heels. The pace of my thought slowed.

On that very hot day I no longer needed to follow a Balinese man or woman, the practice was incorporated in me. I walked a path that led through fields and occasional clusters of house compounds. Somewhere on that path, I recognized that I was no longer in a story; the story was in me. I could turn it on if necessary and it was rarely necessary.

Stillness is not the absence of action. Stillness can be very active.
Stillness is to act without story and is immediately available when you recognize that you are telling the story, the story is not telling you.

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Truly Powerful People (107)

Posted on June 26, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

107.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Change is a process, not a product. Change happens in the little choices you make each day. It is not in the big things you seek, it is in the little practices that you practice each day. If you are practicing resistance and attempting to control, you are creating resistance and frustration. If you practice being too busy or not having enough time, you are creating busy and lack. If you want to create something else, practice something else.

It seems so simple and that is probably why it is so difficult to embrace. Seeking is too often focused on finding an answer – seeking something that will provide the answer. It is not until we surrender the need for an answer that we can taste the life that we are living now.

What small steps (choices) are available to you in this moment? What small practices will you change? How can you reframe what you are doing so that life is not a lock to be picked, a mystery to be revealed, but something you create in small ways each minute of every day?

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Truly Powerful People (106)

Posted on June 25, 2011 by davidrobinsoncreative

106.
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 have a special relationship with crows. If Beowulf had bees, I have crows.
In the epic story, Beowulf as a young man is attacked by a swarm of bees and stung so viciously that his eyesight is compromised. He has to develop senses other than sight. It is his heightened senses that enable him to defeat Grendel and Grendel’s mother. The wound becomes the gift. In his old age he becomes a bee-keeper and in his final battle the bees serve him and help him rid his kingdom of a fierce dragon. The bees become his allies.

I am told that crows have facial recognition. For years I have searched for my double, the man that wears my face and did something bad to the crows. At first, their attacks, though vicious and confusing to me, were not personal (I thought). When they began picking me out of crowds, bombing me and not my companions, I grew suspicious. Now, I know it is personal and I listen. The crows teach me where I can go and where I cannot go. They have very clear boundaries!

Once, in my studio, several crows circled the building, smacking the windows when I moved from one end of the studio to another. Their chicks were on the ground outside of my studio door. I was being put on notice. There is a crow that patrols near the beach and I’m convinced it wants to kill me. It chases me and I run. There is nothing so chilling as the sound of a crow swooping in to hit your head! The eagles don’t seem to care but I am not as sturdy as those majestic birds.

I used to loathe the crows. I feared them. Now, I love them. I respect them. I listen to them. I know what is happening in the neighborhood by the sounds that they make. They are magic.

Though I am still on the black list I hold great hope that someday when I face my Grendel the crow’s lessons will come in handy. And, how amazing will it be when I am an old man to hang out with crows. When my dragon rises to take me, it will be the crows that I call.

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