blessings | The Direction of Intention

Open [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on August 28, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.” ~ John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

Divemaster Terry’s teaching was based on a simple principle: get neutral. In neutrality, there is no struggle. There is no fear. There is surrender to the movement of the ocean. The water cradles the diver.

The point? In the absence of struggle and fear, in the surrender to the natural movement of “something bigger,” only then is it possible to see. Only then is full awareness available beyond the control-story. Only then is it possible to experience the grace in the dive. To become.

Divemaster Terry was an artist. All the world was his studio. Every moment was his canvas. He was teaching me the essential lesson in artistry: surrender to the greater movement of the ocean. Flow with it rather than fight it. To fight the ocean is folly. And dangerous.

I thought of him as we harvested our peppers. We’ve never grown peppers before so this was new territory. Anything in the garden is relatively new territory. We do not know what we are doing. Our gardening is the equivalent of listening. She was giddy when she harvested the first peppers.

I recognized it. It was the same giddiness I felt the first time I understood – and lived – Terry’s lesson, “get neutral”. My eyes opened. My heart opened. I was inside the miracle, moving as the ocean, seeing without the obstruction of a story.

She plucked the first vibrant red pepper. For a moment she held the whole living earth in her hands. Eyes open. Heart wide open. No separation.

“Take time to see the quiet miracles that seek no attention” ~ John O’Donohue

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE PEPPERS

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Filed under: Art, Awakening, Creativity, Flawed Wednesday | Tagged: artistry, awareness, being, blessings, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, flow, heart, integrity, John O"Donohue, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, miracle, ocean, open heart, peppers, presence, seeing, separation and unity, story, studio melange, surrender, the melange, unity | 1 Comment »

KS Friday

Posted on March 16, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

a musical t.g.i.f. lift from studio melange!

I’m beginning to believe that high atop the list of human fears-that-lead-to-foibles is the fear of ambiguity (I seem to be writing a lot lately about ambiguity). We want our world to be clear cut, black and white. We want the line between right and wrong to be definitive across all circumstances. We want a ‘normal’ that is one-size-fits-all. We want our word and our book and our laws and our rules and our values and our virtues and our morals to be simple and straightforward and, most important, to be defined by how I define them, not how YOU define them. We want to know what to do. We want to know where we are going. We want to know why we are here. What. Where. Why. Quinn used to call these the BIG three.

We hardly ever know what to do. We choose a path based on what we know at the moment. Choices that are based on ideals, imaginings and sometimes a gut feeling. And, where are we going? Where are you going? Do you know with certainty where this day will take you? Can you possibly know why you are here? What if there is not merely one purpose or one reason? What if that “knowledge” is something you can only see clearly when looking back on your life?

Ambiguity makes space for grace to enter. ‘Not knowing’ is the path that leads to all growth and discovery. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people because no one is all good or all bad. Isn’t it often true that the things that seemed like obstacles in our lives one day down the road began to appear as great blessings?

It’s probably comfortable to think that this messy life is only black and white. But a comfortable thought is all it is. On this melange KS Friday, take a moment and step into the ambiguity known as music. Let Kerri’s gorgeous piece, It’s Not Black & White, buoy you on a river of grace to the space between rules and lists, the subtle-spirited place where life is lived & experienced and quite simply refuses to be boxed in the fear of artificial certainty.