quiet mind | The Direction of Intention

Unroll And Tune In [on KS Friday]

Posted on March 31, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

I did a stupid thing. A few years ago I rolled several of my canvases and stacked the many heavy rolls. Stacking them was my crime. The weight crushed the bottom rolls, potentially leaving ripples in the paintings. I know better. I’m unrolling each, one roll at a time, weighting the flat canvas so any potential wave is pressed. So far there is no damage.

I have opened three rolls. I have three more rolls to go. The opened rolls remain flat on the ground with the next roll layered on top. A new type of stack. Sedimentary paintings. Each layer provides weight to help flatten the previous roll. It’s slow going. I am being careful. I am treating the canvas – my paintings – with the respect that I should have afforded them long ago.

We took a walk on the road when we were up north. It was snowing and the world became snow-quiet. As without, so within. I became snow-quiet. The gang walked ahead as Kerri took a photo of the silent woods. I turned my face to the snow and felt the sting of each flake. Sometimes, when deep in the snow-quiet, the life-canvas is blank and affords the opportunity to discover the world anew; snow on my face for the first time. This earth is heartbreakingly beautiful.

Unrolling each roll of paintings is like turning my face to the falling snow. It makes me quiet. I am seeing paintings – my paintings – that I have not seen for a few years. I am afforded the opportunity to discover my world anew. I’m finding, as I carefully weight them, hoping the ripples are not permanent, that I have new eyes and new appreciation for my life and work. Unrolling the rolls, caring for the pieces, evokes peace in me.

I painted each of these paintings for the same reason. Standing before my easel quiets my mind and tunes me into something bigger than my tiny frets and future worries. It connects me – and that is whole point of the arts. It connects us. Unites us.

With each roll revealed, just as with each new painting, I become clear, if only for a moment. Like a walk through the woods on a snowy day.

[Peace is one of my favorites of Kerri’s compositions]

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about SNOWY WOODS

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Gratitude, KS Friday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, AS IT IS, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, discovery, inner quiet, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, opportunity, peace, presence, quiet, quiet mind, snow quiet, story, studio melange, the melange, two artists | 1 Comment »

Drop In [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on March 21, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

We stopped on the boardwalk. The sentinel tree stood solitary in the field. Its presence stopped us in our tracks. It was a bone keeping watch over the marshes. It felt forgotten. Unreachable. Made beautiful in its dedication. It inspired quiet. Suddenly, we found ourselves witness to the witness. Look-at-me-look-at-you.

Perhaps it was the boardwalk but I was thrust back in time to a pier. Long Island Sound. It was early morning. The sound and vibration called me to the pier’s end. I stood for a few minutes, eyes closed, and listened. Hundreds of birds, pigeons, chattering beneath the boards, their voices amplified by the wood and soundbox of the structure. I felt them through my feet. Kneeling, I tried to catch a glimpse of the cacophony-makers. They, too inspired quiet.

“Hawk!” Kerri said, pointing and bringing me back to the boardwalk. Beyond the sentinel a hawk threaded masterfully through branches.

I used to think that these magical moments took me out of the real world. Stopping time. Now, I believe the opposite is true. These moments snap me out of my mind-chatter and drop me into the real world. Achingly beautiful. Alive. No story necessary.

pigeon pier. 46x46IN

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SENTINEL

Filed under: Awakening, Metaphor, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, beautiful, beauty, busy mind, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, meaning making, mind chatter, mindfulness, moments, pigeon pier, presence, quiet mind, sentinel, story, storying, studio melange, the melange, timeless, witness | 1 Comment »

Discover It [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on September 28, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

The mist from the falls danced with the sunlight. Waterfall aura. Waterfall halo. We stood in the bands of color and laughed. Full body color tickle.

And then, a hush of utter appreciation. We listened to the chamber music of rushing water over the edge of rock. It was so beautiful there was nothing to be done but to close our eyes. Drink it in. Mist on our faces.

And then, we continued upward. The trail was steep so our steps were slow.

Krishnamurti wrote that, “To find out what is truth there must be great love and a deep awareness of (hu)man’s relationship to all things – which means that one is not concerned for one’s progress and achievements.”

In his book, Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse wrote that for every truth there exists an opposite truth. We humans are largely resistant to grasping both sides of wholeness. We like to be right so we tend to “fix” our half-truth in white-knuckled abstractions. Lost in our minds and paging through our rulebook-for-living, we miss the fullness of our relationship to all that surrounds us.

Standing by the waterfall, slowly climbing the mountain, it was easy to love our relationship to all things. The trail brought quiet to our minds. Each step, moment to moment, a full vibrant discovery of truth.

read Kerri’s blogpost about WATERFALL HALO

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Gratitude, Love | Tagged: abstraction, artistry, awareness, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, delight, Hermann Hesse, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, krishnamurti, nature, opposites, presence, quiet mind, relationship, Siddhartha, story, studio melange, the melange, truth, waterfall, wholeness | 1 Comment »

Receive The Message [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on November 30, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

We just made a pact to lighten up. It’s not the first time we’ve made this pact and it probably won’t be the last. What’s important in this particular version of our pact is that we are growing more capable of keeping it.

The week before Columbus died, my sister-in-law sent some pictures of him. He was at the very beginning of what would become a rapid decline. She sent the photos to reassure us but they had the opposite impact on me: I was shocked.

Those photos threw me into a pendulum: some days, nothing seems worth getting riled up about. This ride is short and it ends. I know my mind can whip up a fruit-smoothie of drama in a nano-second but that doesn’t mean I need to drink it. And, on the other end of the pendulum, everything seems worth getting riled up about. This ride is short and it ends. Both/And.

I know the pendulum will settle. I know equilibrium is merely a matter of not indulging in the swing but stepping back and watching. The thoughts will sway to-and-fro and I need not sway with them. To lighten up, as Don Miguel Ruiz advises, “Doubt everything that you think.” Or, as someone once told me, “What we think is the mother-lode of comedy.” Changing a mind begins with realizing that a mind, although it will tell you otherwise, is not the keeper of truth.

We hit the trail for many reasons but first and foremost a good walk serves to restore our balance. Someone has been leaving good spirits along our favorite trail and we delight in discovering them. We leave them for others to find. We’ve encountered happy messages, halloween goblins, and folks just like the red and orange googly-eyed fellow that made us laugh. He was sitting with his back to us in the middle of the path. Kerri did a photo shoot with him; he was a willing subject.

I’ve decided that he crossed our path to affirm our pact: he is the spirit of lighten-up. He is the messenger of you-are-not-all-that so enjoy the day. A trail jester to remind us that nothing we imagine or create compares or is more real or important than the step we are currently taking. “Alas, poor Yorick…” he had his time and so do we. What we decide to do with it, how we decide to live it, is not happenstance; it is completely up to us.

read Kerri’s blog post about GOOGLY EYES

Filed under: Awakening, Edges, Emergence, Identity, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, balance, change, change your mind, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, death, don miguel ruiz, drama, George Bernard Shaw, Hamlet, hike, jester, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life, lighten up, messenger, mind, mindfulness, quiet mind, receive the message, story, studio melange, the melange, thought, tow artists, trail, trail angel, Two Artists Tuesday, Yorick | Leave a comment »

Create A Comfort Ritual [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on December 15, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

Our rituals of comfort in the time of COVID are many and sweet. Coffee in bed as the boys, DogDog and BabyCat, snug tightly on either side of Kerri’s legs. At the other end of the day we sip wine at our “pandemic table” – purposefully placed in the sun room so we can watch the sunset, covered in candles, special rocks-from-our-travels, happy lights, and tiny pine saplings growing strong in small pots.

In between the coffee-in-bed-comfort-ritual and the wine-at-the-pandemic-table-ritual, we enjoy other comfort rituals meant to keep our spirits light. We write and read to each other. We visit our respective studios and sit in the silence. We let the dog in-and-out-and-in-and-out. We lace up our boots and walk a trail. We make meals together. At the end of every day, late at night, all tucked in, we watch documentaries of people through-hiking trails or climbing mountains.

Yesterday, a very difficult day, I appreciated how rooted we’ve become in our rituals of comfort. The intentional creation of ease and center amidst a whirling world of gunk.

The violence of the storm has washed us overboard more than once but we’ve been wise to create so many safety rings. Even submerged with my mouth full of water, I know I need not struggle or panic. I need only relax. I need only reach and comfort and safety will be there. We’ve made it so.

There is, in every moment, a hand reaching, a place calling, a walk impending, a dog wagging, a cat purring, that will restore me to center, refocus my eyes and quiet my mind.

read Kerri’s blog post about SNUGGED

prints of May You Be Peace available at Society6.com

Filed under: Family, Gratitude, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: balance, center, comfort, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, intention, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, quiet mind, ritual, rituals, safety | Leave a comment »

Pause And Listen [on KS Friday]

Posted on November 20, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

A pause. Unspecified length. Fermata. It reads like poetry. I, a consummate non-musician, am learning and loving new musical terms.

We live in a world of noise. Too much noise. Too much talking. Too many screamers competing for our shrinking attention spans.

So much noise blocks access to the still small voice, the soul voice. That whisper-voice of inner truth never shouts. It is very hard to hear things-of-depth in a world so enamored with the superficial, so consumed by the marketing-moment. The breaking news. The voguish sale. The hip. The hop. The latest tweet. The newest outrage. Tik-Tok, Facebook, Instagram, spin-your-noggin-round-and-round.

This morning I’ve heard and read a thought surfing atop all the noise-feeds: we have to find a shared truth. Without it, we will enter the ranks of the failed states, if we are not there already.

Standing on the streets shouting at each other is guaranteed to further gape-our-void. Running deeper into fact-less-“news”-bubbles that spit blather 24/7 will send us deeper and deeper into banana-republic-status.

Our hope of unity lies in the fermata. The pause of unspecified length. Quiet.

It is from the silence that we might recognize that shared truth never pops out of its hole in the middle of a street fight. Truth stays clear of cacophony. It is in the silence that we have a slight prayer of hearing some truth.* We’ll know when we’re ready to share truth again when, out of the shared silence, we begin our conversation with some form of this simple question: “What did you hear?”

[*this highly idealistic and slightly naive thought assumes the restoration of respect for facts & science in all parties, a shared baseline for all inner-listeners]

read Kerri’s blog post on FERMATA

find all of Kerri’s albums on iTunes

Filed under: KS Friday, Language, Perspective | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fermata, inner quiet, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, listen, listening, quiet, quiet mind, quiet space | Leave a comment »

Have Wings [on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 12, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

This painting jumped to the canvas fully formed. It announced itself and I simply opened the door. It was not what I’d intended to paint when I entered the studio. I had a wholly different idea In Mind. I’ve learned that the best work has very little to do with what I have In Mind. The best work comes from the other place, the place available when Mind steps out of the way.

Meditation, prayer, inner reaching….is a theme I loop back to again and again. Lately, I’ve been pondering what happens when we cease searching for peace and instead simply bring it. What if prayer/meditation was not a quest for center, a search for inner peace or quiet mind? What if there was no separation? What if prayer/meditation was a bringing to the surface of the peace that already exists? What if you need not search for it because it is already here? What if, like this painting, that place is available when we stop listening to a Mind that tells us the center is lost, that peace is somewhere over there?

I suspect my pondering produced this painting. Kerri calls it Winged.

Winged, 27 x 20 IN acrylic on canvas

read Kerri’s blog post on WINGED

www.kerrianddavid.com

winged ©️ david robinson & kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, balance, center, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, inner peace, intuition, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, meditation, mind, peace, prayer, quiet mind, society6.com/davidrobinson, studio melange, the melange, wings | Leave a comment »

Paint The Sun [on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 31, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

My sketchbooks are peppered with landscapes. I call them my meditation drawings because I do them as a form of meditation – to quiet my mind. I am kinesthetic so quiet comes to me through movement. Drawing is one of my favorite forms of dance.

One day, a few years ago, I decided to experiment and paint one of my meditation drawings. I like it but have no idea what to do with it. I’m not a landscape painter so it exists as the ‘something-different’ in my studio archive. Someday, maybe, I’ll do a few more of them and mount a show of meditation-drawing-inspired-paintings. Until then, it lives as a morsel for this weeks melange. Kerri calls it White Sun.

The moon over Benziger Winery

White Sun. 18 x 48 IN. mixed media on two panels. It’s not listed on the gallery site so contact us if you are interested in purchasing it.

WHITE SUN [morsel] gifts and products

throw pillows!

read Kerri’s blog post about WHITE SUN

www.kerrianddavid.com

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Uncategorized | Tagged: art process, dance, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, drawing, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mediation, morsel, movement, painting, painting morsel, quiet mind, sketchbook, society6.com/davidrobinson, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Chicken Marsala Monday

Posted on March 12, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

Chicken Marsala thoughts from the melange to help you start your week:

Almost every spiritual tradition offers a form of this thought: make no assumptions. Sometimes it is called ‘detachment.’ Sometimes it is called ‘the middle way.’ Often, it is referred to as ‘presence.’

It sounds so simple. Be where you are. Be here now. Aspirations always sound easy but are never easy to realize.

In my past life as a consultant/facilitator I regularly issued two “caveats” prior to beginning the work of the day. The first was, “Have the experience first, make meaning of the experience second.” The idea of opening to an experience, that they might actually be capable of stepping out of their roiling story of assumptions, was a revelation to my clients.

And, that’s the point. The revelation, the insight, the heaven-that-you-seek is just on the other side of the story-fog that obscures your experience of life. That is why it shows up so often in all-practices-spiritual. Quiet your mind. Make no assumptions. Open to what is there beyond what you think is there.

However, we are human. That fast running inner monologue, that incessant storying of experiences, pre-and-post occurrence, is what we do. So, a good first step toward the quiet mind, toward the suspension of assumptions, is to make life-giving assumptions. Our runaway minds chug down a track so why not put that train on a generative track: assume awe.

ASSUME AWE merchandise

metal wall art

read Kerri’s thoughts about Assuming Awe on Chicken Marsala Monday

kerrianddavid.com

Filed under: Awakening, Chicken Marsala Monday, Uncategorized | Tagged: assume awe, assumptions, awe, chicken marsala, Chicken Marsala Monday, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, detachment, inner monologue, inner peace, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, presence, quiet mind, society6.com/chickenmarsala, spiritual, spirituality, story, storying, the melange, the middle way | Leave a comment »

Sit Down

Posted on September 30, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

google "Chicken Little" and this one will come up. www.homesforsaleinlascruces.com

Google “Chicken Little” and this one will come up. http://www.homesforsaleinlascruces.com

Many years ago I was feeling disoriented in my life. I told my friend Rob that I was lost in the woods and looking for my way out. He replied, “Sometimes when you are lost in the woods the best thing to do is nothing. Just sit down.” His message was clear: no one gets oriented or reoriented by spinning. Running in circles, although it might feel useful, will only make you dizzy. Sit down. Get quiet. Listen. It was great advice and at the time nearly impossible.

Orientation to life comes from getting quiet. In one of his books, Deepak Chopra wrote that an important practice on the path to success is a half hour of meditation in the morning and another half hour at the end of the day. Make a practice of getting quiet. Exercise the muscle of stillness. Listen. Clarity will ensue. That way, when the inner compass goes awry, the right tool for the job will be more readily available.

Sitting down can be hard. Stillness and disorientation are not natural bedfellows. The impulse is to action, any action. I was once in a car on a remote mountain dirt road. The road collapsed and the car slowly rolled into a gully. My friend and I spent two days trying unsuccessfully to build a road out. It was only after we gave up and sat down that we were capable of thinking things through. Disorientation generally inspires panic. Panic-driven actions, like running in circles or hauling stones to build a road, are generally comical and make for great stories after orientation is restored. We’ve all turned the wrong way down a one-way street when lost and panicked. Pulling over would have been better but much harder to do when dedicated to forcing an outcome.

Beneath Rob’s message to me was a more important lesson: let go. Let go of the need to do. Let go of the need to solve, fix, or find. The path to orientation always leads through a necessary disorientation and the disorientation comes from hanging on to old ideas, old roles, old baggage, old heroics. The cycle is perfect as hanging on necessitates letting go and letting go often means to sit down, surrender, and breathe. To sit down always affords the opportunity to see where you are as distinct from where you think you should be. To surrender is to open. To breathe is to invite in the new. No one is lost when they stop trying to be some other place.

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