Share A Meal With Jakorda

Posted on May 30, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Jakorda Rai sat behind me. His hands on either side of my head, he read my energy just as he’d read the other students who previously sat before him. Unlike the other students he did not progress to the second phase of diagnosis. Instead, he simply tapped me on my right shoulder and through a translator told me that nothing physically ailed me. My challenge was to open my story. As if to emphasize his diagnosis he tapped me again on the right shoulder and repeated his instruction. Open your story.

Later I would return to his house compound and participate in a ritual. He initiated me into his family temple. I became one of his family line. Only now am I understanding the import of that gesture, the gift that he gave me. The high priests brought me in to his temple and then Jakorda Rai sent me back into the world to open my story. Before I left his house compound he invited me to come back back. Through the translator he said, “Someday come back and share a meal with me.” I thought I’d be back within a few years. More than a decade has passed.

What does it mean to have an open story?

Artists – and by artists I mean all people who are conscious of their actions and choices – flourish when the emphasis in life is moved from “answer seeking” and placed on “question engagement” – the capacity to explore and engage, to sit solidly in uncertainty: that is the environment (and I think it is an internal environment) necessary for humans to flourish and fulfill their creative impulse.

I’ve posted these words before and decided to post them again. My dear friend Sam asked me to describe under what conditions an artist flourishes and this is what I wrote in response:

It is perhaps too simple but this is what I know and experience: the artist in me becomes present (it is all about presence; artistry is not something you do as much as something you are) – there is no past or future, just what is before me (and in me) in that moment and we are not separate: the poem or the painting or the story and I are one fluid thing. The world (my seeing) moves from nouns to verbs, from object focused to process focused. When I am present the environment, my seeing of my environment, comes “alive;” the colors are more intense, the sounds and textures of my space richer and clearer. I guess, in my artist self, there ceases to be a separation between me and my environment, I am not moving through a day, I am in the day. All concepts of “time” disappear. I am the creator, the creating, and the created.

This is what it means to have an open story. And now that I know, now that I am an open story, I remember that I am long over due to share a meal with Jakorda Rai.

Filed under: Awakening, Body, Emergence, Power, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Take A Big Step

Posted on May 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

793. 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 dear one from my past recently wrote to me to tell me that something big clicked for her involving language, metaphor and how we tell our story. I read her email and clapped my flippers!

Her insight was so clear and simple. It is something that I’ve taken for granted in writing about story and I could not articulate it as well as she already has. So I’m sharing her thoughts with you.

She wrote that she assumed “telling my story” meant to tell it to someone else. And the assumption that there must be an other gave too much power to the other. It gave too much power to others to interpret her story and misconstrue her words. She wrote, “others were required for there to even BE a ‘my story.’” It made her mad. It made her not want to have a story because it would always be defined by others.

And then she began challenging her assumption. Instead of needing an other to have a story she realized that her story is for her. “My story for me….” And here’s the real beauty in her revelation:”…part of my story,” she wrote, “can be a ‘no story.’” No story is necessary. And when she runs a story through her head, the language she uses, the words she chooses, creates her world. And she has great choice to consciously create her world. She can choose not to assign meaning. She can choose to give meaning where it makes sense to her.

This part took my breath away. She wrote, “…the language I use creates my world, whether it’s words or even the languages of music, film, art, pictures in my head. Silently or aloud, they are the tools I play with to create my world for myself. I guess that’s what it has always been, but this realization and active decision to consciously live this way is a big step for me.”

It’s a big step for all of us. Yes. Here’s to living this way every day.

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

What Happened?

Posted on May 5, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

787. 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 was too beautiful to stay inside. My pals kidnapped me and took me to the beach. We ate chicken salad, looked at the waves roll in and talked of things past. We talked of changes in our lives, particularly the changes in the narrative we tell ourselves. The story of my life in 2013 is drastically different than the story I told in 2003 or in 1993. I have changed and the story I tell about myself has changed with me.

Personal change happens when we change our story, when we change our relationship to the story we claim as our past. Growth is not possible when we hold onto the story as we’ve always named it. Growth happens when we can open our hand and let go of the story that says, “can’t…” or “will never be….” Growth happens when we suspend the judgment and see the choices and opportunities.

Once I metaphorically lit a backfire so I might survive the forest fire that was roaring toward me. At the time I thought my actions were cowardice. Now I see them as wise. I survived.

Once I stood alone and without friends in a new city called Seattle. I had no job and no reason to move there. It was a pretty day in September so I decided to stay. “This is where I am so why not here?” I thought. At the time it seemed so arbitrary and without consideration. Now I see it as destined. It was the right choice at the time. Now I tell myself, “I was supposed to live in this city.”

Memory is a construct. It is a story that changes in the re-membering. It is not fixed in time. It is not truth. It can be contradictory. What once seemed so difficult, so painful, is now a story of potent learning. What once seemed so important is now insignificant. The smallest gesture can leave the greatest mark. The sequence of events is malleable. Memory is untrustworthy. It is unreliable. Memory is fickle. We create our past again and again and again.

We create ourselves again and again and again.

What if the story you tell yourself is neither true nor false? What if it is simply a story with multiple interpretations and you get to choose which version you claim? What would it take for you to open your hand and let go of the old story? What would it take to tell the story of thriving and fulfillment? As Megan recently reminded me, “What would your story be if you assumed the entire universe was conspiring for your good?

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

Lose The Justification

Posted on May 1, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

783. 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’m reviewing some material for a project and pulled up a chapter from the rough draft of my unpublished ebook, The Open Story. I liked this section and although I know it was expanded from a past post, after 782 posts I’m pretending that you will read this with fresh eyes as I did today:

It is my habit to look beneath behavior to the underlying “structures of the land” (from Robert Fritz, behavior like water follows the path of least resistance – behavior will change when you change the structure of the land). I’ve coached hundreds of people: the process of fulfilling potential or expanding thinking almost always entails reaching beyond the realms of visible behavior into the underlying structures.

The other day Ana Noriega, coach extraordinaire, dropped a thought-bomb on me (she always does) that went something like this: if you want to change your belief, change your justification of the belief. It had never occurred to me to think of belief in the same way I’ve come to think of behavior.

I was about to say, “What!?” but she was already filling in the idea – Ana is usually 3 steps ahead of me and said, “Think about it. If you believe you are not worthy or something like that, there is always a justification beneath the belief. You justify the belief. I’m not worthy because….” Beneath every belief there is a justification: there is a reason you hold onto the belief.”

Justification is a form of story. Most of us are attached to our stories – why we can or cannot do something; why the world is this way or that way. Usually our justifications have to do with maintaining comfort – making sure we don’t stray into lands that challenge our beliefs – and that would require a peak into our justifications – it’s a loop.

Take a look at the things you want to change or manifest in your life. What are your beliefs about it? What are you justifying?

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Wake Up

Posted on April 18, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Last night I had dinner with a dear friend. We had not seen each other for months and had lots of ground to cover, lots of stories to tell, and lots of changes to report. We talked of our losses and our discoveries. We waded into our fears and confusions. We challenged each other to reframe certain parts of the story. We laughed.

I can’t remember another six month period in my life that has been this dramatic in terms of change and growth. Certainly there have been other periods of change – relationships ending or beginning, career pivots, moving to other parts of the country – but nothing that compares to the most recent period. And it continues. It is as if I am standing in a still center and watching the universe weave a new web around me. The old fibers are falling. Space is cleared. The new web fills the emptiness almost immediately.

A few days ago I began class by leading a meditation. It was a seed meditation. It began with a focus on the breath, the breath cleansing and clearing space for a seed, the space cradling the seed (each person was the seed), there was warmth and rest and protection. Finally there was impulse, a new form, a tender shoot cracked from the seed, pressed through the soil, broke through the crust and found air and the sun. And as the tender shoot drank the rays of the sun and grew toward the warmth, the seed sent roots in the opposite direction. There was growth in two directions, root fingers reaching deeper into the earth, plant tendrils reaching higher toward the sun, both drinking from life to come alive.

In talking with my friend I realized that the meditation perfectly described this period of change. The seed, asleep for so long, has cracked open and there is growth in all directions, deep roots reaching for warmth and stability while new vibrant stems lift and reveal leaves capable of absorbing more and more light, producing more and more growth. Life feeding life. Our discussion at dinner was not really about rapid change. It was about waking up. It was about refusing to sleep through another day of this lifetime. It was about drinking from life in order to return nutrients to life. It was about following the deep natural impulse to crack open and grow.

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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.

Filed under: Creativity, Education, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

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.

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

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 »

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