See Through Conscious Eyes

Posted on April 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

764. 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’ve been walking across the city every morning and again each night late as I return from the studio to where I am staying. Since I know that I am projecting my view of the world on every person I pass, I decided that I’d play with my projection. I decided I would see through more conscious intentional eyes.

We assign a story to people in a nanosecond. Pass someone on the street and, if you’re paying attention, you’ll find that you’ve dropped them into a story compartment. Listen and you’ll hear the labels you assign to people, labels based on a first glance or the briefest encounter. If you are generally fearful you will see fearful or fearsome people. You’ll see a dangerous world. You’ll create a dangerous world. You’ll create fearful labels. You generate your labels based on what you believe.

This morning I was dreaming about the possibilities of my latest project and it occurred to me that each person I passed was possibly doing the same thing. I began intentionally seeing every person on the street as a dreamer. Almost immediately I noticed that instead of sticking a label on them, I began wondering what were their dreams. I became curious instead of protected. Anonymous commuters shimmered and became people with rich internal lives, hopes, struggles, and dreams. They became specific and unique. They became three dimensional and richly complex.

I wondered if they were walking toward their dreams or had given up on their hopes and silenced their possibilities. Since the projection was mine, I decided that, like me, all were moving toward their hearts desire. I believe that all people, even when they’ve dulled their senses, are striving for wholeness. The pathway to wholeness is always through dreams and desires.

Mostly what I noticed was my view of the world shifted. I was seeing hope and possibility everywhere so my hope and sense of possibility magnified. The tangible changes were within me. I felt energized and vibrant and light of spirit. I wondered what would our world look like if we saw each other as dreamers and keepers of creative fire. I wondered what would happen within each of us – and therefore what we created outwardly – if we looked through more intentional, conscious eyes.

Filed under: Seeing, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Listen To The Story

Posted on March 29, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

750. 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 found another rich tidbit in the archives and have updated it slightly:

Where is the story that unites us? Story is the gravity that holds communities together, pulling individuals into a common orbit. It is the irresistible cadence of invitation: come. Sit. It is singular and essential; it holds the space of affirmation. It reinforces the knowing of, “This is who we are. This is where we belong.”

Story is the gravity that holds us together, this we’ve forgotten. And like the musicians in an out-of-tune orchestra, when we no longer recognize our common story then the gravity reverses itself, we spin off into the void, alone in a cacophony of inner monologue. Hell is a community of individuals lost in the fog of their own story. Hell is the universe that has forgotten the existence of shared music. Hell is where you compare yourself to others and in a comparison the others will always win. In Hell you think you have to be perfect so you are never good enough. Hell is where you invest in false notions of who you should be, have to be, could have been. In Hell there is no present moment because you are too invested in the fears of the future and regrets from the past. It’s a dense fog, an inner wasteland. In hell you are alone. Staying in Hell takes a real commitment to the story that you tell!

Not only is story capable of holding us in a coordinated orbit and conversely, blinding us to each other, story also holds the power of guiding us through the wasteland and back to the garden. The old stories are like maps capable of telling us. “This is how your trials will look and feel. These are the challenges you will face. This is what you can expect.” Knowing the stories won’t save you from your trials but they will bring greater meaning to them. Stories guide.

Every human that has ever walked the face of the earth has been born, grown to adulthood, wondered what was theirs to do, loved and lost, fulfilled themselves or not, grown old, and died; their advice comes to us in the form of a story. If we listen metaphorically, the wisdom it holds will spill its guts. Stories don’t need to be tortured to reveal their secrets, they are eager to share. However, treat them as fact and they will clench their jaws and clutch their fists and hold their breath until they pass out. Their treasure lives beyond the realm of facts, beyond the superficial. Read a story as literal or as fact and you cage what is wild. Listen deeply, go beyond your chattering intellect and engage it, feel it in your body. Story desires a relationship with you.

Filed under: Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Learn To Fly

Posted on March 3, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

724. 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 song in my heart and I’m not flying!” He was waving his arms up and down like a bird like all of the other children, his eyebrows knit, with a pout on his face. The other children were flying. Their eyes were closed, faces to the sky, arms riding the imaginary thermals. By the look on their faces they were flying high above the trees and soaring to the clouds.

We were having a storytelling. In our story a little girl (she’s a princess but doesn’t know it) must move from the country to the city with the kind old man and old woman she believes to be her parents. She is terribly sad because in the country she spends her days singing with the birds. In the city, she no longer sings. In the city she pines for the birds. She sits in her bedroom looking out of the window. Concerned for her, the old man and woman buy the girl a yellow bird.

The girl soon realizes that, just like her, the yellow bird never sings. She asks the bird, “Why don’t you sing?” and to her surprise, the bird answers her, “I’m not supposed to be in a cage. Why don’t you sing?” Together the little girl and the bird help each other learn to sing again. The bird finds her song when the little girl sets her free. The girl finds her song when the bird teaches her to fly with a song in her heart.

All the children in the classroom, save one, were flying like the little girl and the bird. “I have a song in my heart,” he insisted, “and I’m not flying!”

“Close your eyes!” someone suggested. “Then you’ll hear your song better. Then you’ll be flying!”

He closed his eyes, arms flapping, and a smile replaced his pout. “I can fly!” he exclaimed and swooped above the treetops and soared into the clouds. A little girl soared over to where I was sitting, perched and whispered to me, “Flying is easy with a song in your heart.”

Yes. Yes, it is.

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Live What’s Important

Posted on February 19, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

712. 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 sitting in the Seattle airport trying to remember the things I stressed about on this day ten years ago. I’m trying to remember the things that I thought were so important that I tensed over, felt frustrated about, anxious or angry. I can’t recall a single thing. If I broaden my view and ask what are the things I got worked-up about in the calendar year 2007, I remember a few events but the horror stories I told myself never came to pass. All the winning or losing in which I invested left only the slightest imprint. I suspect it took a toll on my body but in the end did it matter? Did my stress and anxiety make any difference in the arc of my life? No. Not once.

Today, as ran through the airport convinced that I was late for my flight, impatient for the train, angry with myself for not planning better, impatient with the security lines, I stopped cold in my tracks. I wondered if the story I was telling mattered. In the arc of my life, would it matter? No. What would happen if I missed my plane? It has happened before. I would figure it out. All of my stress was self-induced. I was not on a plane spinning out of control, I was not being chased by a hungry bear; stress in those cases would be welcome. My investment in my small world suddenly seemed silly. Ten years from now, when I am sitting in another airport, I will try and remember if all the things I thought were so important in February 2013 actually mattered. They won’t. I won’t even remember this race to a plane.

I’ve spent the past month writing about choice and becoming aware of the choices we have but do not see. I am, like all teachers, teaching what I most need to learn. I can report that once I stopped cold in my tracks and thought about it, I laughed at my dedication to stressing myself, and then walked very slowly to my gate. Even tempting fate I did not miss my plane.

I do not miss my stress. I certainly don’t need it. I stopped not beat myself up for my planning or lack of planning – that was nice. I took a breath. I even helped a man who lost his cell phone. I asked myself, “What’s really important?” I know I am trying to live the answer to that question.

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Lost & Found

Posted on February 18, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

…a long day of writing on the book. Since I have not another thought in my head, here’s another excerpt:

It is probably poor form to start a story in the middle, in a moment of high crisis. When a story stalks you through your lifetime you inevitably learn some things about stories; you unwittingly stalk them, too. One of the first things I learned was that the word “beginning” is arbitrary. An end is always a beginning. A beginning is always an end. What we call a beginning or the middle or an end is really a simple matter of our point of view. It depends on what we see.

Another valuable thing I learned about stories is that they unfold according to established patterns. Beginning, middle, and end is a simple pattern. Within this simple pattern is a more complex pattern structure. For instance, in order to grow, the main character has to leave behind everything they know and go on a journey. That journey can be literal or an inner, metaphoric journey. To leave behind what you know is part of the pattern that leads to trials, confrontations, and catharsis. It’s a pattern and since each of us is the protagonist in our own story, the pattern is alive and at work in our lives. The trick is to become aware of where you are in the story cycle. What part of the pattern are you currently living?

Stories never begin with being found. We hear a call. We pursue it blindly and discover that we are lost in the woods. Stories begin when someone, the main character, you, gets lost or is knocked off balance. In this sense, being lost is always a step toward being found.

Filed under: Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Die To The Past

Posted on January 21, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Today, Diane and I talked at length about dying to our pasts. She shared a potent meditation image – looking from her grave and in death no longer being invested in the limitations and attachments that previously confined her life. Her fears no longer mattered. She let go of her past and in so doing opened the way for growth and a new relationship with her future.

In story cycles, a character must leave behind all that they know in order to step into unknown territories. It is the movement away from the known, the comfortable, and the safe that is the metaphoric threshold to adventure and transformation. Leaving behind what you know is “story language” for dying to your past. Frodo will always return to the Shire but he will be a greatly changed. The Frodo that leaves on the adventure is not the same Frodo that returns. He knows too much about middle earth and himself to resume his former identity.

The caterpillar’s body does heroic battle resisting the cell replication that will eventually bring re-formation to a new way of being called butterfly. The caterpillar’s body reads the sweeping tide of change as cancer and fights back. This classic struggle within the caterpillar’s body of change meeting the conservative impulse ends when the resistance ends; the caterpillar can fight no more and surrenders the struggle. The imperative for change overwhelms the old identity; the caterpillar’s body releases the known and collapses into mush. Only then can the new form materialize and the new form is beyond the caterpillars capacity to imagine.

Diane’s meditation, Frodo’s journey, and the caterpillar’s process of transformation are the same metaphoric image. Each had to die to the past to step into the possible. The lesson over and over again, whether in story cycles, nature or human transformation, is that the new identity will always be greater than our wildest dreams. The only requirement is that we surrender the struggle, leave behind all that we know, experience the little death, and take a step.

Filed under: Metaphor, Transcendence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Take One Step

Posted on January 9, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

671. 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 watched the sun come up this morning. I was sitting in Alan’s sun room sipping coffee, marveling at the winter colors of the sky: salmon pinks, lavender, and ice blue. And then, beneath the tree line, in a specific spot, the branches began to shimmer. I expected Merlin to materialize. And then the shimmer warmed, became orange and round and instead of Merlin, the sun lifted above the horizon, streamed through the trees, and washed me with the warmth of a new day. Were I a plant my leaves would have opened and I would have taken a might drink of the light of the new day. As a human, I had coffee on the inside, sun on the outside – I was warmed through and through.

I do not know what this day brings. Alan and I will teach a class, that much I know. Then, I will dash to catch a plane and then if the timing is right I will catch a train. If not, there will be an entire day between the plane and the train. Planes and trains are sometimes on schedule and sometimes off schedule depending on Mother Nature and the nature of machines. Tonight I could be in one of 5 different cities. I recognized as the sun rose that I am in presence training. I am learning to trust. For the next several months there will be no daily pattern that repeats itself. I will be mostly on the move; my suitcase is my home. Sometimes I will be with loved ones, sometimes I will be in isolation, sometimes with new friends, sometimes in another country. I am throwing my work away, tossing the patterns of my life as I knew them and re-imagining things. I couldn’t be more alive and present to my moment. My inner gypsy stubbed out his cigarette and hissing smoke through his nose said, “It’s about time.”

It is about time. We count our days, our minutes, we measure our lives, check our lists, stay on our schedules. We count ourselves into desperation when we forget what we are counting. Each breath is life giving. Each breath is unique and never to happen again. I watched the sun rise again and it was no less a miracle today than it was yesterday. It was not the same. Another year just turned over (if you recognize the same calendar that I do) and I can look to the past and think, “This and this happened.” At least that is the story that I tell, none of it is true for anyone but me. I realized an amazing thing about personal edges and story this week. The scary edges are only visible if you are oriented to the past; anchored into and trying to maintain the known. Orient to the unknown, anchor into present and there are no edges, only experiences. I think that is what I mean by learning to trust – I am learning to orient according to what is with me right now as opposed to what has been, what should be, or what might have been. Those things are mental abstracts – as are scary edges….the edges certainly exist, the “scary” is a story I can tell. Here is presence school, I am taking one step at a time, something I have done since first learning to walk only now, as an experienced walker, I am paying attention to the steps as I take them.

Filed under: Awakening, Gratitude, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

See The Elegance

Posted on December 28, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Bryan and I talked tonight about the elegance of design. He told me that many years ago he became interested in the Golden Mean, which led him to research the Fibonacci sequence, which led to an interest in eclipses. He became fascinated by the simple elegance and paradox of astronomer’s capacity to precisely determine when an eclipse would happen and the impossibility (due to weather) of predicting if we would be able to see it. The Golden Mean and the Fibonacci sequence are simple equations that, when replicated, maintain the integrity of design throughout very complex structures and calculations. They are fractals. Much of classic architecture is based solely on the Golden Mean. Much of what you will learn in contemporary art school about composition is based on the Golden Mean.

Our physical bodies are complex structures based on a simple cell design. We are at the same time miracles of complexity and simplicity; more space than solid, more water than mineral, reducible to a small pile of dust and yet expansive beyond all imagining. We are elegant in our design, as nature only designs elegant forms from the same simple notion and very simple (yet complex) building blocks.

Our thoughts run according to the same principle. I once read a statistic that showed that we think mostly the same thoughts each day, day after day (don’t ask me how you measure such a thing….). We build our thought on a few replicable principles and then go holographic with them. A few simple assumptions will lock you in prison or set you free. Check out the pattern of the story you tell yourself each day. Are you locking yourself in or opening the cage? I realized years ago that the epicenter of my coaching work – or any other form my whacky work takes – was really about story change. I often say this to groups: change your story and you will change your world. They mostly respond, “It can’t be that easy!” or “Pie in the sky!” I didn’t say it would be easy – we are after all deeply invested in our stories; we are great fighters for our limitations. The wrong assumption is that it need be complex. We are elegant in our design, even down to our repetitive thoughts. Change the simplicity and you will some day be capable of manifesting an entirely new soaring cathedral of thought.

Filed under: Awakening, Body, Possibility, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Change Your Story

Posted on December 22, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

653. 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 just finished reading Thom Hartmann’s book, The Last Hours Of Ancient Sunlight. It’s now on the top of my, “If you want to understand the forces that are shaping our world and thought, you have to read this book” list. Turn off the television and get this book. It’s that relevant; it’s that important. I’ve been diddling around these past few years with my observations and beliefs about power-over and power-with cultures and his book has slapped me into immediacy.

On the front page of my website is the banner, “Change yourself, change the world.” I work with people to change their personal story and it follows that they will then inhabit and create a different world. In reading Thom Hartmann’s book, my words are coming back at me with a force that takes my breath away. It’s not just a good idea to change your story and change your world; it is a necessity. It’s the second time in as many weeks that I’ve been smacked with a call to urgency. Kevin Honeycutt said, “Our kids are dying in our schools. What are we waiting for?” His call to action was a few days before New Town. He meant it metaphorically and the literal horror happened yet again. It is not that we do not know what to do; it is that we do not believe that we have the power to do it. The wall between our political will and the corporate dollar, something our forefathers warned us to keep distinct and well maintained, has disappeared. Is anyone truly in doubt about what force drives our national debate?

I realized this morning that my previous two posts have been about bullying. In a power-over culture like ours there are predictable and horrible impacts on the community. These things, bullies, school shootings, gun violence, disenfranchisement, gang warfare, stupidly high teen suicide rates, etc., are expressions of a power-over culture not anomalies of that culture. Manifest Destiny is a story of violence visited upon others. The narrative of a chosen people is a story of violence perpetrated against others. Power-over cultures wreak havoc on others but ultimately the sword cuts both ways: it is a cancer that eats the communal body from the inside out. Haves must have have-nots. It will always create a resource gap and separation that collapses the center, luxuries are confused as values, money with morality, and resources are exhausted in the insane pursuit of perpetual growth (consumption). Historians will surely write of us that yet another power-over culture relegated itself to the trash heap. We are playing the story perfectly.

I used to teach that there was a radical difference between self-help and self-knowledge: the difference, of course, is where you seek your answers. In a self-help world we look for our answers in other people; we want to be saved (savior stories are big in dominator cultures). In the pursuit of self-knowledge the answer is sought and found within your self. You don’t need saving because you are not broken or separate from the nature that surrounds you. In a power-with culture, your nature is not corrupt so there is nothing to tame or suppress or deny or control. These stories are fundamentally different; they are fundamentally different orientations into life. Cultures of power-over breed stories of self-help as a power-over culture is comprised of people who seek power from others. A power-with culture necessitates seekers of self-knowledge and is comprised of people who know that power is something that is created with others; all are powerful or no one is.

Our challenge is not about guns or violent video games or Hollywood movies; these are expressions of the story we tell and nothing will change, no matter the laws we pass or fingers we point until we decide to tell a different story. It begins with you and me. No one is going to save us. Change your story, change our world.

Filed under: Perspective, Power, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Truly Powerful People (452)

Posted on June 4, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

452.
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 mid-form today, Saul-the-Chi-Lantern swirled from the practice and into a tale. We were midway through class and midway through the form and apparently being on the midway inspired a story in him that reminded me of old masters and why our ideas of learning are so far off the rails.

His tale was of a certain school of thought in Tai Chi in which a newcomer will practice the form for 2 years before being allowed to do exercises with another person (he called them circle exercises). After practicing circle exercises for 13 years a student might advance to the status of beginner and be allowed to actually touch another person in the practice; to work with the energy of another. 15 years of continual practice to consider yourself a beginner. That’s akin to a college senior saying, “Now, I am ready to begin.” Imagine a diploma, not as a completion, a marker for arrival, but as an acknowledgment of readiness to begin.

When I was young the only thing I wanted to do was paint. I used to dream about being shipped off the to the master, to learn by apprenticeship. I’d sleep under the bench, I’d spend the first few years learning to clean the brushes and mix the paint and watch. I might, at age 9 be allowed to hold a brush, to do exercises on used canvas. I might at 12 be allowed to gesso the canvas, to prepare the ground and glue and perhaps paint the under-layer. I’d be drawing all along and learning color and technique and perhaps at 15 I’d be allowed to paint the sky or the clouds in the master’s paintings. And, if I started at 7 years old I might, by the time I was 25, be accepted into the guild. I might be ready to begin. And if I continued to grow, to paint everyday, when I was 50 I could take students of my own. This was my little kid ideal. Learning by doing has always made more sense to me than incarceration in a desk and abstractions. I’ve always understood mastery was so much more interesting and rewarding than arrival.

At the end of his tale Saul-the-Chi-Lantern stepped back into the form as if he’d never left it. He is a master. He was a beginner 40 years ago after 15 years of practice. He is poetry and power and humor and lighthearted. At 70 he could throw me across a room using my own aggression. He assumes nothing. He reminds me each week what a human being can be when they give up the idea that the wealth is in the acquisition; Saul knows the wealth is in having a story to tell.

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