Unfetter Kindness

Posted on December 23, 2015 by davidrobinsoncreative
Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog on a roadtrip

Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog on a road trip

Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog has no problem communicating his needs. I know without doubt when he wants to go out. I know when he wants his belly scratched or have his ears rubbed. He lets me know where he expects to be scratched. He is abundantly clear when food is his need. He does not second-guess his needs. He does not doubt his desires or confuse himself with obsessing over his reasons why.

Love is one of his needs. To give it and to receive it, exuberantly or tenderly, he does not invest in how I receive or return his love. He is not vulnerable because he has no need to hide or color his love-need. He has no brakes on his exuberance because it is pure, innate, and without story.

One of my favorite exercises to assign during my teacher/consultant phase was the Angel exercise. The assignment was simple: For three hours be an angel to someone. The only requirement was that the recipient could not know. Be an angel with no expectation of recognition; write about what you discover. The assignment was always greeted by a flurry of protests and questions (“I don’t know how…,” or “What does it mean to be….”). Angel-ing is scary business!

Once, to experiment, I assigned the opposite: be a devil/trickster. Instead of protests there were gales of laughter and excitement! No one asked “how.” In midst of their exuberant, fearless plotting and scheming, I reversed the design. Before they went into the world to demonize, I required them to flip their plan and do the opposite to their intended target: be an angel. Their sudden fear was palpable. “Now that you know how to torture this person, do the opposite,” I said. “Be their angel.”

Regardless of how we entered the assignment, the students/clients would return the following week exultant. Their experiences of Angel-ing, of unfettered kindness had profound blowback. They talked of their pre-Angel terror and the unexpected thrill that came with unfettered secret service to another person. They talked of the clarity that came with Angel-ing. They had fun. They felt good. They felt alive. Everything became simple. The greatest surprise of all – something that in this season we see on posters, holiday advertisements, Hallmark cards and screen-savers, something that is a cliché when proffered but rarely experienced: kindness begot kindness. Kindness begets kindness. Kindness clarifies life when it comes with no expectation of reciprocity. Kindness simplifies inner debates when it is wielded without need of reward.

Dog-Dog loves unconditionally. Love may be his only need. For Dog-Dog there is, I suspect, no distinction between giving and receiving. His exuberant love is not meant to gain access to heaven or to change the world in any way. It is without agenda. Angel-ing is like that…

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Chase Your Lion

Posted on July 29, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
This is from the long ago archives. A sketch I call Persephone

This is from the long ago archives. A sketch I call Persephone

We were talking about fear. I’d suggested that some fears were actual and some imagined. For instance, if a lion were chasing me, fear would be my ally. It would be actual and useful. My fear would possibly save my life. It would make me run faster. On the other hand, if I feared pursuing my dream, of doing what I wanted to do in the world because of what others might think, my fear would be imagined. It would not be useful.

He said, “You don’t understand how afraid I am.”

“How afraid are you?” I asked.

He wrinkled his brow, “How can I answer that? No one can answer that.”

“Well, tell me how big is your fear?” I said. “Give it a size.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Sure you can,” I said.

“How do you quantify fear? How does anyone quantify fear?”

“Oh, quantifying fear is easy.” I said. “You simply count all the things you don’t do because of your fear. Those things are quantifiable. Count all the life experiences that you are willing to lose by holding onto your fear.”

He was silent for a moment. Then asked, “Like what?”

“Most people lose access to their lives. They let go of their dreams. They tell themselves that they don’t know how or that they were not meant to do what they want to do. How much life are you willing to miss by telling yourself the story that you are afraid? Count the days, the moments, that you stop yourself. Those moments are actual. Those days are quantifiable.”

He was angry, so I added, “Dreams are not lions.”

 

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Be A Hypocrite

Posted on March 21, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Apparently, I am a hypocrite. I do not always practice what I preach. Most days I believe that I am my brother’s keeper. Yet some days I walk passed someone in need; I turn my head and pretend not to see them, saying to myself, “This is not mine to do.”

I believe in anchoring my life in love and yet sometimes I enshroud myself in a wet blanket of fear. I say things I do not mean. I judge and run back to my safe place.

I believe in the power of possibility and yet there are days that I fill my cup to overflowing with “I can’t.” I invest with gusto in my disbelief and hide my gifts beneath a mound of doubt.

I preach the virtues of going slow. I believe in being present and yet at times I find myself racing to get somewhere. I tailgate other drivers wanting to “get there.”

I believe in the power of language and yet I have said hurtful things and am often unaware of what I am actually saying.

I believe intuition trumps intellect every time and yet I regularly justify and reason myself out of following my gut instinct. I spend an inordinate amount of time in my head (I call it my office) and talk on and on about being more in my body or in nature. Empty words.

I believe in loyalty and trust and yet at crucial moments in my life have chosen self-preservation; I did not throw myself under the bus to save the other.

I believe in self-love yet have given the farm away more times than I can count. I hurt my self regularly with my unwarranted self-judgments and unrealistic expectations. I hold myself to standards that I would never expect from others.

There are gaps everywhere. I am flawed, flawed, flawed. Accuse me of almost any hypocrisy and I will look you in the eye and admit my imperfection. I am human and by definition that means I am messy and riddled with contradictions. Hold me to a standard of perfection and I will utterly disappoint you. Ask me why I say one thing and do another and I will get angry and defend my belief even as I know that I have betrayed it with service to yet another belief.

What I do not believe is that the world is black and white. I do not believe in absolutes. For me, truth is found in the paradox. Life is lived in the contradictions. I grant my life the same principles that make color vibrant: there’s nothing like a touch of red to make the greens pop. If you really want to see the orange, surround it with something blue. As Quinn once told me, all religious traditions have one thing in common: they instruct us to find the middle way, seek the path between the pair of opposites. It is impossible to find the middle way by eliminating the contradictions; one must test the boundaries to know where they are. As Dan Pink writes, “Clarity depends on contrast.” Given my massive contradictions, I expect someday to be utterly clear for at least one brief moment. In case you expect my clarity to last be forewarned that I will most certainly follow my moment of clarity with wholehearted dedication to some new spectacular confusion.

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Take A Peak Beyond Appearances

Posted on July 5, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Pal is a taxi driver. He was the driver at the head of the cue so he gave Lora and me a lift from the airport to our apartment. It’s a twenty-minute ride, no time at all yet enough for the story of a life. In 20 minutes we learned that Pal is from the Pujab region in India. He has lived and worked in the US for 25 years. With the exception of his father, his family now lives in the United States. He was mugged during one of his graveyard shifts at the 7-Eleven because he would not buy stolen property from a man who wandered in one night. He is a Sikh though he no longer wears his turban; he’s cut his hair and his beard. To a Sikh, cutting the hair and the beard are not done without good reason. Pal’s reason is safety. In the United States he has been beaten for his appearance. It’s better to fit in than to be beaten.

Central to the Sikh’s belief are radical notions like the equality of humankind and universal brotherhood. In my twenty minutes with Pal I learned that he was generous, gentle, bright, present, and open-hearted. He was not in a hurry. He loved his family. He worked hard. We unloaded our bags from the taxi and stood with Pal to continue our conversation. He showed us a picture of what he looked like before he went into hiding by cutting his hair and beard.

When Pal drove away I was awash with conflicting feelings. I was so grateful for our magic taxi conversation and his generosity – and equally saddened that in a country that prides itself on individualism, this man, this good man, does not feel safe being an individual. He was not beaten for his actions; he was beaten for his looks.

Once, someone I love but do not understand told me that, “not all Americans want this diversity thing;” an odd sentiment in a country comprised of immigrants. Evidently the diversity in his neighborhood made him uncomfortable and rather than walk toward it and meet his neighbors he chose to close his front door and fear. I wonder if he would have recognized Pal’s kindness or held him suspect because he looked different.

Of this I am certain: those who do not want this “diversity thing” are missing out. This “diversity thing” is a human thing and there are extraordinary treasures (human beings who do not look like you) all around. It only takes a moment to peak beyond the appearance, ask a question, and find the riches.

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Truly Powerful People (443)

Posted on May 26, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

443.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Brain science tells us that memory is not the recall of an event; memory is the configuration or reconfiguration of sense elements. It is a story, perhaps familiar, but a story that we assemble according to the meaning we assign to the assembly. That’s why, over time, we reassign meaning to our memories. Old wounds become current strengths.

Because we like to believe that memory is fact, an actual event that happened just as we re-member it, we are also given to the notion that a memory is a fixed point in time. Lately I’ve been thinking about single points in time – particularly times that I was afraid or steeped in a story of betrayal or injustice. I stand in that point and for the fun of it, I take one step backwards in time. And then a step forwards. And, for a real kick, I take a step to the left or to the right. Here’s what I’ve learned: the initial point, the fear or injustice, makes no sense. From the initial single fixed point of view, the fear seemed meaningful. From any other angle, there is no sense to be made. Move past any moment and the story changes, the investment falls apart.

Deep in the woods at night when I was a boy, my brothers, father and I spent half the night stoking a large fire because a very large creature was circling our campsite. Trees rustling, branches snapping; we were terrified. Take one step forward in time. The large creature circling our camp…moo-ed. It was a wayward cow, a bovine escapee from a nearby ranch. We laughed at our assumption and told ourselves it was better to be safe than sorry.

Our fear made sense from a single point. Take a step forward and it is now a great family story. Mahatma Gandhi tells us that fear has its uses and I think that must be true. It can be fuel for action. It is certainly an opportunity for transformation when we are capable of taking a step to the left or the right. Mark Twain wrote, “Do the thing you fear the most and the death of fear is certain.” Now, when I am particularly dark or afraid, I think, “Why wait until later! Step left. Step right. What do you see now?”

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