The Direction of Intention

138.
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I am a master of writing myself notes. I fill multiple notebooks every year. They are choked full of excited scribbles, enthusiastic lines and arrows, doodles and stars: all attempts to catch my thoughts before I lose them. Thoughts are slippery devils that jump into my path and then disappear while I look for a pencil.

I have a variety of strategies to capture them. I track them through the dense forest of my mind. Sometimes I set traps for them. I dig tiger pits. I have sexy decoys and have learned mating calls: an evasive thought like “the default story” will come out of hiding when I tempt it with the amorous cry of “the necessary action.” Easy prey!

Of course, there is a serious flaw in my thought-hunting prowess. Open any notebook in my stack, flip to a random page, point to any note and ask me what it means. I will stare at the excited scribble – often a terrific phrase, perhaps useful for a line of poetry, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was supposed to cue. What was the revelation, the connection, the greater ah-ha?

Even when captured those trickster thoughts only leave an alphabetic footprint and somehow the greater meaning slips away.

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136.
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Several years ago I wrote these notes to myself:

It is a necessary movement, when you cease looking for answers in other people you will step into the present (living with the question). Let go of the idea that there is an answer! Life lived in pursuit of an outcome will set up a false expectation; try to contain life and you will kill it.

In the movement from answer-seeking to embracing the questions, there are stages or levels:

1. The slowing down. When you stop seeking answers in other people, you begin finding your answers within yourself. You have to slow down to hear what’s in there.

2. Change the self-talk. You start to doubt the validity of the chatter; instead of confusing your self with the chatter you separate from it and develop the capacity to witness it. You are not the chatter. You are not at the mercy of the chatter. You can work with it. You begin to understand that your language has power and you have the capacity to change your language and change your self-talk. This is the warrior phase, you will necessarily be at war with yourself while you learn to separate yourself from the blather.

3.Recover seeing, sensing, feeling. Living in choice, you will have the opportunity to cease fighting within yourself. You will no longer need to turn off your feelings, disconnect from your impulses, or deny your self.

4. Reorient and align with your nature. Enough said.

5. Stillness is possible. Action in stillness (action without story) is available.

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135.
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 dear friend was a preacher, son of a preacher. We’ve been friends for a long time. A few weeks after his first child was born we took a walk and I asked him about becoming a father; I do not have children and I wanted to know how he felt and what he thought about as his identity now included “father.”

He told me that as he held his little baby for the first time, looked at the miracle of his child, he wondered how this little being could be filled with sin as his doctrine demanded. It was hard for him to accept yet his faith required him to believe in the notion that nature is fundamentally corrupt, especially human nature.

I do not mean to step on any person’s faith. I have an honest relationship with my friend and we treasure our capacity to see the world through different eyes and dialogue about the differences; it was not an assault on his faith when I told him that I thought this notion (original sin) was misunderstood and a great example of crap thinking; it provided a brilliant recipe for cooking up a culture of self-loathers.

If you assume that you are born corrupt, your thoughts, your impulses, your feelings,… your SELF, is never to be trusted. You must literally divorce yourself from your self; inner wisdom is nearly impossible when you are obligated to seek your answers from someone else (and, to compound the disaster, you have to interpret the answers you receive and since you are interpreting from a place of corruption, you will corrupt any answers you receive. Aiyeeee! Talk about your vicious circles!).

You can never be the resource that you need. Being held accountable for your actions is a measure of how well you deny yourself. All horrors are easily explained and justified when corruption is the ground zero of your thinking. Fear yourself and see how much love you generate.

Assume corruption and you will see corruption and you will create corruption. Fear will be your driver. You might experience power over others but you will never know power with others or power within your self.

We hold miracles in our hands every day and we miss it (corrupt it); it is hard to see even the brightest light through a lens the self-doubt, self-denial, and self-judgment.

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132.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

[continued from 131]

Horatio,
Van Gogh lived his entire life painting paintings that no one wanted to buy. William Blake was nearly a pauper at his death. Mahler’s work was rarely played until 50 years after his death. Imagine the doubts that filled their hearts! If you can imagine their doubts you can also imagine the opposite: what if their hearts were filled with curiosity? A writer writes, a painter paints; the artist’s job is to make the offer, not to determine how it is received. What if the idea of success or failure, acceptance or rejection never factored into their equations? What if, like you, they were following deeper imperative, a yearning that couldn’t be denied? What if, like you, they had a burning desire to explore the depth and breadth of their being?

Beneath the phrase, “I can’t do it,” is an opportunity. Replace the word “can’t” with the words “choose not to” and the opportunity will show itself. Also, when I fill myself with fear, when I convince myself that I can’t do “it,” I am always amused when I recognize that I don’t know what “it” is that I’ve decided I cannot do. What is “it?” Make a call? Ask a question? Try again? Pick up a pencil? Learn something? Live? Love? Share? “It” is an elusive bugger and that is its purpose exactly: to make you chase a phantom (can’t) rather than act on your dream. Or, to be more precise, to deflect you from seeing that you are, in fact, already pursuing your dream.

It is terrifying to fledge, to take that first step into space and rely on wings that have yet to know flight. A step from the nest is necessarily a step into uncertainty and I suspect that, if that step were into something you already knew, you would not be interested in taking it in the first place. It is the terror that you seek. It is the unknown that you crave. There is a fine line between exhilaration and terror. They feel the same but are wrapped in different stories.

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130.
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I’ve learned that where life lessons are concerned, learning comes in circles. I’ve had revelations and 10 years later I’m having re-revelations; same lesson, new level. Here’s the new/old learning I’m having today: I’ve been angry and frustrated these past several months and in all the things and people that I invest my discontent, in all the things that I think needs to change, the movement that isn’t (from my perspective) happening, I am the only one who is suffering. The anger and frustration do not exist outside of me. The expectation does not exist anywhere outside of me.

Lately I have been creating anger and frustration. I have been determined to suffer in a cloud of discontent. I am choosing it. Why?

I’m looking around me, all around me, and I see people walking on the beach. I see joy. There is sun. What is it that I do not have that I think I need? What am I trying to control that I cannot control. Or, perhaps a better question is this: what am I afraid to do that I am not doing?

What false expectation have I set that allows me stay angry and frustrated? I know enough to recognize that any investment in a victim role is an abdication of responsibility in disguise. What do I want others to do for me that I need to do for myself? The anger and frustration serve as blinders; what I can’t see I can’t address.

The old-new learning: I am the only person in this equation that is suffering. Perhaps answering the question, “why?” is not an important question to answer (or ask); any answer is equal – it is an explanation of victimhood – and so it doesn’t matter.

All that is required is to make a different choice. I am the only person making the choice. I can choose something other than suffering.

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129.
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Inside the Volunteer Park Conservatory in the room just beyond the orchids there is magical piece of art called the Over Lyre. It is the work of Portland, Oregon artist Dan Senn. Suspended just above your head, small wooden dowels and metal disks are suspended from lines of piano wire. A gentle vibration sent through the wires tips the dowels tapping the disks; it is a chime that soothes and inspires inner quiet.

Lora, Megan and I watched as a young boy, maybe 5 years old came into the conservatory chamber. He was following the sound to discover its source. He was enrapt the moment he stepped into the chamber and saw for the first time the Over Lyre. His stillness (presence) was so…full, that we were enrapt by him. His quiet became our quiet. His parents entering a moment behind their son were literally stopped in their tracks by the power of his presence. His presence swept us into the present.

We were, all of us adults, moved to tears.

This capacity for awe, this is what makes us human. This desire to follow the sound to the source, to give yourself over to it, to marvel and be-come the delight, this is the purest form of creating; it unifies. How long has it been since you followed the sound and gave yourself over to delight?

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