transformation | The Direction of Intention

Let Yourself Dance

Posted on December 8, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

'Dancing In The Front Yard' by David Robinson

My painting, ‘Dancing In The Front Yard’

It is the season of the light’s return. The Equinox is only a few days away. The dark days bode of new light. It is the literal, solar-lunar cycle-dance of rebirth, the return of the sun.

The great theatre artist, Jim Edmondson, spoke of all life as a dance of giving and receiving. To give and receive are energies similar to the tides or the intake and exhale of breath. The dance requires both giving and receiving and, in truth, they are not separate but are one action, one continuous connected cycle as is chaos and order, birth and death, winter and summer, boredom and breakthrough.

All stories lead back to this dance, this source of light’s disappearance and return. Frodo wrestles with the pull of the ring, Orpheus descends into darkness to bring Eurydice back to the light, a too-early-death affords a healthy heart and new life to a stranger, a baby is born and down the hall Hospice is called, lost love leads to new love, we wrestle with our limitations and someday transcend them (or not); we dance the dance every day because, in truth, we never know what the day brings and learn that this life sparkles when with clear intention we bring our light to the day. What else?

With all of our talk of transformation and renewal, we pretend that the dance is something new, something we must intend, when it is a dance as old as time and as ordinary and extraordinary as the sun setting and rising again. It is new when we pay attention and greet each day as a new step in a very old dance, a new opportunity to give and receive. To live fully, to transform, requires nothing more than to pay attention and let yourself dance.

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Filed under: Awakening, Emergence, Gratitude, Metaphor, Transcendence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: consciousness, giving, life, receiving, renewal, transformation | Leave a comment »

Simply Listen

Posted on September 1, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

I call this one Pieta with Paparazzi

I am standing in a lobby listening to people compare their tragedies. It is more than comparison; it is a festival of one-ups-manship. “If you think that’s bad, my niece was just diagnosed with a terrible cancer….” The first speaker, now crestfallen, reaches into her story-bag of pain as another member of the group competes, “That happened to my brother just after his daughter was hit broadside by an enormous truck!” The group coos in sympathy, each in a hurry to make their personal story of hurt the center of the conversation. I wonder at their need to outdo each other in tragedy.

I suppose it is human, this feeding frenzy of drama. I want to reject my supposition outright. Suppose it is not human? I wonder if this dis-ease is cultural, an expression of the fragmentation that comes from the too-busy, the clan that avoids internal quiet at all costs, filling every moment with television, gaming, texting, emailing, gossip-news. As Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote in Gifts From The Sea, it is impossible to know who you are without dedicated inner spaciousness and quiet. To listen to your self is the only way to really know your self. Filling the quiet space with incessant noise withers the root.

Maybe.

All stories require conflict to move forward but it is also true that the point of all storytelling is transformation. Through the conflict we are transformed. Perhaps that is what bothers me as I listen to this pain frenzy: the emphasis is on the suffering. The investment, the identity, is in the wound, not the transformation.

There is a simple Buddhist prayer that I like:

May I dwell in my heart. May I be free from suffering. May I be healed. May I be at peace.

The prayer is like a musical round that progresses from the “I” to the “You” to the “We.” The emphasis is on the transformation. It begins with dwelling in the heart.

Maybe.

What bothers me most is the absence of the capacity to listen. The first speaker needed to be heard, not outdone. I wonder what might have happened if the group had simply said, “Tell us.” I wonder what might have happened if they had been able to be present with another’s pain. To listen, simply to listen, must be a route to free each other from suffering, to heal, to create peace.

Go here to buy hard copies (and Kindle) of my latest book: The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Innovator, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator,…You.

Or, you can go here for all forms of digital options

And, you can go here for fine art prints of my paintings

Filed under: Identity, Perspective, Random, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: identity, inner peace, listening, peace, quiet, suffering, transformation | Leave a comment »

See It. Feel It.

Posted on August 19, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

I call this painting “Sleepers”

Tom spoke of small actions, the gift of peanut butter to a food kitchen for the poor. He asked, “Will it change the world?” and answered his own question, “I don’t know. In some small way, bringing a bit of hope to anther person, or providing food for a day, maybe it will.” Tom has been meditating on the many ways we enact love but perhaps do not see. He has been wondering if small acts of generosity serve as small acts love. Are not these small acts of generosity capable of changing the world.

For the past year, since moving from Seattle and leaving my work with entrepreneurs, I’ve been pondering this impulse toward change and the ubiquitous desire to change the world. I learned last year that, in business start-ups, the intention to change people is the great sign of folly. Changing people is impossible. If the central intention of the new business is to change people, don’t invest. It’s good rule of thumb.

People pray for a world without violence, a world free of disease and poverty. People read the paper and wonder what has become of the world. Someone recently said to me, “It’s overwhelming. What can I do?”

Tom’s meditation has brought him to this: it is not the doing that ultimately matters. It is quality of the being that matters. If your doing changes your being, you have changed the world. If some small act of generosity or compassion opens you, it changes the world. In the year prior to my move, I walked across the city of Seattle twice each day. I made it a game to count the small acts of kindness I saw each day during my crossing. There were always too many to count. People opening doors for others, making space in line, helping someone who dropped their packages, blocking traffic for an elderly person to cross the street. My walks were steeped in otherwise small invisible generosities.

The mistake we make when desiring change in the world is to think of change as a bottom line, change as an outcome or end result. Change as a forced march or dose of castor oil. Changing the world is not an arrival platform. It is within every act of kindness. It is every generous thought. It is fluid, on going, never ending.

One thing I learned from my walk with entrepreneurs is that every single start-up came about because someone saw a way to make life easier for others. What makes an idea good is how effectively it helps others. And so, in pursuing their idea, in every small action, they change themselves. They play in the field of possibilities. In changing themselves, they cannot help but change the world.

Will a donation of a jar of peanut butter to a food bank change the world? Perhaps. If it feels good. If it changes you. Small acts do not exist in isolation. To change the world you need only change yourself. People do not exist in isolation. The river flows. Each act impacts others in small ways and large.

Go here for my latest book, The Seer

Go here for fine art prints of my paintings

Filed under: Love, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: change, changes, entrepreneur, generosity, love, meditation, transformation | 2 Comments »

Bring Your Boon

Posted on August 16, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

This painting is called Icarus.

During my call with Skip I used the word, “boon.” He scribbled a note saying, “You’ve not used that word before.” The word came up because he’s been overrun by well meaning advice-givers that think he needs to know about the hero’s cycle. Skip said, (and it’s true) that he’s forgotten more about the hero’s cycle than most people will ever know. “I’m a business guy so they think I can’t possibly know about it!” he exclaimed. “If another person tells me about the hero’s cycle I’m going to explode.”

My thought for him was to pay attention to why so many people are coming up with the same response when they hear about his work. What’s evoking the common response: have you heard about the hero’s cycle? I always pay attention when a book title repeatedly drops into my world (I get the book) or when a place or a metaphor seems to pop up everywhere. What’s there that I may be overlooking? What is hammering Skip that he may not see? That’s what sparked the word, “boon.”

When the hero (and we are all heroes in our personal story) emerges from the ordeal of change, when they escape the belly of the whale, they are transformed. They know something that they didn’t before understand. This is the boon. They have a new gift or insight that will, in turn transform the community. Personal change is communal change. They are one and the same thing.

There is a small catch when dealing with boons: communities (like individuals) talk a lot about the need for change but mostly resist it. When you are the bringer of the gift, the carrier of the insight, often you are not welcome when you share it. New insights are dangerous to the status quo. History is resplendent with visionaries banished for sharing the boon of their transformation or bringing to the community the gold that they need but are incapable of recognizing.

Skip has arrived back to the world with a boon. He sailed to the edge and has returned with strange knowledge and a unique perspective. His insight contradicts common models of business. His boon describes motion, a flow, which is hard to see when the landscape is dominated by bottom lines and outcomes. His community mistakenly thinks he needs to go on a hero’s journey when, in fact, he is just returning. His hands are full of gold that they cannot see.

The best we can do is share what we hold. How it is received is out of our hands. If it is received at all is not in our control. Vincent Van Gogh died having sold one single painting – and that to his brother. The glory of his life – and the lives of all visionaries – is that he kept painting regardless of whether the world might someday see the boon, or not. It didn’t (and doesn’t) matter. Bringing the boon home is all that is required.

Go here for my latest book, The Seer

Go here for Fine Art prints of my paintings

Filed under: Art, Business, Creativity, entrepreneur, Metaphor, Truly Powerful People, Uncategorized | Tagged: boon, change, gifts, Hero, insight, transformation | 1 Comment »

Reach Out. Peer In.

Posted on August 15, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’ve yet to title this painting but it seemed right for this post.

It’s a mid August morning with a hint of fall in the air. The breeze carries that “something” that is indescribable, more of a feeling than a chill or the changing of leaves. Never-the-less it is present. It is the signal and my body knows even as my mind debates. It is too soon for this – but even as I think the thought, I wonder what that means. Too soon based on what? Compared to what? This is my first summer in my new home. Last year I was an occasional visitor. I had glimpses into the cycle of the season so I have little with which to compare.

It has been a surprising summer all the way around. We’ve been traveling almost constantly since early June. The first few weeks of travel was planned, the rest was not. I’m not sure what the summer was like here because I was not present for it. The neighbors tell me it was a wet and cool summer. “Summer never came,” is a phrase I’ve heard more than once. After this summer of travel I will move into autumn with mere glimpses of the season.

I just had a call with Skip. He inspires me and makes me think things I would not ordinarily think. We’ve not talked for many months and our call was about catching up. Since I am writing about glimpses I was aware during our call that the best we can do is offer small windows into our lives. I said, “These past few years have been extraordinary in the changes and transformation I’ve experienced.” I was fundamentally incapable of articulating how profound my experiences have been. “It’s been like peeling off layers,” I said. A simile is the best I can do. Like or as. Glimpses. Events. Metaphor. No one can ever know the full scope of my walk just as I can never know the fullness of another person’s life.

During our call Skip told a story of walking through the woods with his wife when his cell phone rang. It was his daughter and infant granddaughter calling on Facetime. Skip’s granddaughter was taking her first steps. He and his wife peered into their phone and watched the miracle of first steps as their granddaughter, taking her first steps, looked into her mother’s phone at the excited faces of her grandma and grandpa. Glimpses into spaces.

We peer for a moment into a space. We stand in a space for just a moment. We try to share what we see. We try to share the fullness of our experience but can only approximate. Reaching out and peering in. Standing on the deck feeling that indescribable something that my body knows. My mind debates. This is life. Reaching out and peering in. What else?

Go here for my latest book, The Seer

Go here for fine art prints of my paintings.

Filed under: Metaphor, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: body, changes, glimpses, knowing, life, metaphor, moments, space, transformation | Leave a comment »

Embrace The Mess

Posted on July 8, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

circa 2011

I did not intend for this post to be a continuation of yesterday’s but when Amy climbed the stairs into the choir loft and said, “I don’t do change very well,” I laughed. It was word-for-word the same phrase that Kerri had just spoken.

For some reason, we’ve come to expect change to be comfortable and breezy. We expect ourselves to be paragons of reason in the face of imbalance. I find this ridiculous expectation of centered-off-centeredness to be suspiciously corporate. Apparently all change needs management and if it is not managed smoothly and without feeling or emotion then it is not well done.

Emotion is messy. Change is hard. The seed cracks before the tender shoot finds its way to the sun. The seed needs to crack in order for the new form to emerge. Hearts are broken, like seeds, to allow new forms to emerge. Even the “right” relationship is dynamic, messy, surprising, joyful, disappointing, filled with fear, the heights of elation, tenderness, quiet, and at the core is this volatile thing called love. Love burns hot during transformation; love is snuffed when excessively managed. Love is transformative when not unduly controlled.

Everyone does change well because change is the nature of our existence. Energy is always in motion. If humans are expert at anything it is change. We do change well because we can’t avoid it. What we do not do well is afford ourselves the grace of feeling the grief, the insecurity, the frustration, the anger, the joy, the exhilaration, and the dizziness that comes with change. We limit our emotional color palate when we confuse change with control. We do not allow ourselves the mess, the unpredictability, and the loss of balance that necessarily comes with this rolling vibrant transformation called life.

Amy would have been more accurate had she said, “I don’t do control very well.” I didn’t tell her the secret: no one who experiences the fullness of life does control well. In the face of her messy, volatile, change process, she wouldn’t have appreciated my counterpoint. When someone is standing in the middle of the muck it is cold comfort to tell them that they are in the right spot. So, I simply laughed, nodded my head, and said, ‘I know….”

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Go here for fine art prints of my paintings.

Filed under: Edges, Energy, Love, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: change, control, Self Growth, self knowledge, transformation | Leave a comment »

Allow Your Wings To Dry

Posted on July 3, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

The cicada molting

This morning, very early, sipping coffee on the deck, as I was trying to decide whether Dog-Dog would make a better purse or a pair of slippers (he woke us up very early), Kerri said, “What’s that?” Clinging to the corner post of the deck was a small thumb-sized alien. It was a cool blue green monster emerging from the splitting body of a very large red-brown scarab-esque bug. Had I not been so fascinated I would have squealed like a schoolgirl and called in Sigourney Weaver or the Air Force.

A quick Google identified the alien as a molting cicada (special note: for the next two hours we watched this miracle process. “Molting” is a word that must have been concocted by engineers or science-types; it is much too dull a word to describe the magic we witnessed. Shakespeare would never have arrived at “molting”).

A molting cicada is goldmine of metaphor and symbolism. Since I am human and believe the world revolves around me, I took the metaphors/symbols as personal messages. The most potent was the process of emerging wings. They first appeared as tiny useless rolls that unraveled. Once unfurled, the wings were fragile and useless. They flapped helplessly in the morning breeze. And then they seemed to dry and take shape. They shimmered. The cicada pulled them into its body, tested them, and crawled into the sun.

It rested. That was the reinforcement of a hard-learned message for me. Between each step, the cicada rested. Transformation is exhausting. It did not rush the process. It was not in a hurry to “get there.” It moved through a phase and rested. Each step happened as it needed to happen and rest was essential to each step. It pulled itself from the exoskeleton at just the right moment. It sat still, it rested, as its wings took form and “dried.” Once it had new form, it walked to a more protected spot and sat very still. Its body still soft and needing to harden, it rested.

I do not easily rest. I am reticent to sit still and have had to learn the necessity of rest for transformation to be possible. Rest is part of the process of moving forward. Sitting still is essential to growth. Many times in my life I have argued with school boards for the necessity of daydreaming, the importance of staring out the window. Rest your mind. Relax your heart. Sit still and breathe.

Before and After

It is no small feat to exit a too-small-body. It is no small feat to step into uncertainty, to open yourself to new ways of being. Rest is necessary to inhabit your dreams.

Tom used to say, “The readiness is all.” He knew that transformation was possible only when the person was prepared to jump. “The inner work always leads the outer.” Getting ready to jump often looks a lot like doing nothing. Resting allows the wings to dry. Wings need to dry before they are useful. After the jump it is a good idea to sit still and get used to the new body. Stare out the window with new eyes. Discover the new daydream. Rest in the miracle of new space.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Or. go here (Amazon) for hard copies.

Filed under: Metaphor, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: cicada, readiness, rest, transformation | 2 Comments »

Look Up And See

Posted on May 23, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Another painting from my archive. Today I call this, “The Other Side Of Yearning.”

The fire in the fire pit was waning. The party was over and everyone had gone. We sat staring into the small flames, quiet, exhausted from the day yet exhilarated from the amazing people and conversations that filled our evening. It was a cloudless night sky and I sat back into my chair and lost myself in the stars.

Once, many years ago, I went to Kitt Peak Observatory outside of Tucson and spent a long evening looking into deep space. I saw stars and star clusters, asteroids, black holes and ice fields. We ended the evening looking towards Andromeda, the nearest galaxy to ours; it was so distant that its stars appeared to me as a mist, a shadow that shimmered. I was overcome with emotion that night. I’ve never felt so small and yet so undeniably connected. I was a universe within a universe within a universe. I was nothing and everything.

As I sat last night in my chair looking at the little points of light in the sky, I thought about all the things that seem so insurmountable on this earth. There are economies of exclusion, wars and markets that depend upon wars to prosper, slavery and drought and poverty, there are broken lives, broken hearts, and broken dreams. There are closed hearts and closed minds. There are people killing people over conflicting definitions of god. There are so many tug-of-wars over possessions and power and resources and boundaries that, from ground level, appear vital, real and important. But the moment you gaze into the night sky, the moment you place yourself in the context of the enormity, the moment you recognize the paradox of existence, the smallness of separation and the infinity of connection, you see how mechanical and rote most of our dramas really are. They are mostly made up. They are patterns of our creation. They are, each and every one, built upon the ultimate cop-out answer: we do it this way because we’ve always done things this way.

Once, in high school, I was at science camp in the mountains on the night of a meteor shower. We lay on blankets in a meadow oohing and aahing at the dance of stars happening in the heavens. I remember being awed. I remember thinking that the only real purpose people serve is to make up stories about the things we can’t explain. We are witnesses to miracles everyday and because we must somehow contain it, we reduce it. That night I understood that all belief systems were just that: systems. They are mechanisms to help us contain what we cannot comprehend. We need them to function, to orient ourselves in infinite space but forget that we invent them. In the face of the sheer magnitude of our existence, we reduce ourselves, too, and forget that what blinks at us in the night sky, is a force, an energy that transforms, and we are an expression of that force. We are part of it. Our role may be to witness, to appreciate, to interpret, to sense make, but mostly, gazing into the sky, I think our role is to recognize ourselves in it. If we are capable of losing ourselves in the stars we are equally capable of finding ourselves in the enormity of it all.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Or, go here for hard copies and Kindle.

Filed under: Awakening, Emergence, Energy, Pattern, Possibility, Seeing, Story, Transcendence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: enormity, heavens, possibilities, stars, transformation | Leave a comment »

Walk As One

Posted on May 16, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

From my archives. I call this painting, “Alki.”

Alan and I talked today. We are planning our upcoming Summit in Holland in June. Our conversations are always as wide-ranging as they are deep dives into sense making and soul. There seems to be no horizon that we won’t step towards, no secret passage that we won’t explore. This has been true since the moment we met. We’ve always been verdant collaborators. We joked that someday clients will hire us just to listen to how our minds spark each other. And, given our conversation today, we’d be worth every penny. We are both in the business of facilitating perceptual shifts and transformation so we do it for each other. Our planning sessions are a festival of insight upon insight, shift within shift. Together, we are innovation squared.

Recently, I shared a short TED talk by neurologist V.S. Ramachandran about mirror neurons and how deeply and concretely we are connected despite our belief/experience that we are separate. It came up again for me because during our call Alan and I discussed the waves of far-reaching impact that any simple action or word generates. Paul Barnes used to say to young actors, “Never underestimate the power you have to influence another person’s life.” Most of us are unaware of the impact that we have on lives that we never directly touch. For instance, I have had great teachers in my life and I carry their work forward in every word I write and every group I facilitate. My teachers will never know the many lives they touched and continue to touch. And, neither will I. And, neither will you. The best we can do is know that our actions matter, our thoughts matter, our intentions matter. We are more powerful than we understand.

No one lives in a vacuum. No one creates without influences. No one has a purely original thought. In fact, if you grasp what V.S. Ramachandran is addressing, no one thinks or feels independently of others. We are not as isolated or as separate as we believe ourselves to be. We have to work at separation. We are, each of us, continually co-creating (to use Alan’s term) our world in every moment of every day. What might you see if you stopped and pondered the implications of co-creation, if you took a moment and considered that you are not merely a bobber in an ocean but, in fact, are the ocean? How might you read the news of the day or address your dreams if you understood that you were a participant, a dynamic part, a burning point for the ancestors, a sender of ripples through space and time, and not simply walking this path all alone?

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Or, go here for a hard copy.

Filed under: Awakening, Body, Edges, Language, Perspective, Possibility, Seeing, Story, Transcendence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: connectivity, consciousness, innovation, insight, interconnectivity, transformation, unity | Leave a comment »

Serve Life

Posted on March 12, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Untitled by David Robinson

I’m writing language for a website. In the past my website reinventions felt like an exercise of the same old cereal in a new marketing box. This time it’s different. I am a new cereal and I’m not certain that I want a box. It makes a difficult task of telling people what I do when I’m fully invested in container resistance. As I wrangled deep into the night with clever but remarkably meaningless marketing language, I had two mini-epiphanies:

1) Last year, unlike the captain of the Titanic, I sailed my ship directly at an iceberg so that it would sink. I sank the ship with all of the fine china, the gold bars and diamonds in the safe, the furniture, the clothes and fine food. It all went to the bottom of the ocean. I wanted off the ship so why would I now build for myself a new ship? I didn’t bob around in my raft in the vast ocean spearing tuna and catching rainwater so that I might someday step back on to the bridge and do it all over again. What, exactly, am I building?

2) I have tried my whole life to squeeze myself into too small of a box (as, I suspect, all of you have, too). I have worn the jacket of coach, of facilitator, of teacher, of director, of actor and waiter and painter. I am none of these and all of these. I have made websites complete with testimonials and classes, nice pictures and e-books, workshops and retreats. The process of building a site is a two-agenda process: first, locate yourself in space and time for other people so that they might find you and, second, orient yourself toward other people’s concern so they might know why they should seek you. In other words, 1) this is where I am and, 2) this is what I provide. The pronoun is “I.”

What, exactly, do I provide? I am not a plumber or a pizza maker. Every marketing person I’ve ever known has advised me to brand myself. Brand myself as what? Brands are made up. A year ago on New Year’s eve, tarot woman told me that she didn’t see a career for me. Rather, she saw lots of expression. “Brand that!” I thought to myself. Last night I reasoned, “I am not a brand.” Neither can I reduce what I do to a pithy phrase or clever visual. That’s precisely why I sought an iceberg and sank the ship!

I’m an artist (a painter and performer) and I write. I like to write a lot. At the center of all that I do is…disruption or change or spirituality or transformation, words that sound great but what do they mean on the concrete, day-to-day experience of living. I deal in heart, intuition, and soul. Great. I hold people’s hands and walk with them into their dreams. I dive with them into their past so they might let go of their story and sit solidly in their present. I help them unbuckle the weight belt of their story so they might surface for air. Brand that.

To ask, “What do I provide?” is to ask the wrong question. This question will always lead to too tight boxes.

Joe sent me some links: short films of Stephen Jenkinson (The Meaning of Death and Making Humans). Stephen Jenkinson says that humans are made, not born. He speaks eloquently about the necessity of dying to our childhood – which means recognizing that our short lives are limited. That’s the recognition necessary to grow up. We can only really fulfill our gifts when we understand the necessity to serve life, not our life. We end. Life continues. Martin Prechtel writes of his community’s male passage rituals; young men learn that they can only serve their community when they recognize their mortality. The passage ritual is meant to bring them to the realization that they are finite. Only then can they understand the imperative to serve something greater than themselves: life. Tonight in the Taize service, Pastor Tom read a passage about losing yourself to find yourself. It is the same concept wrapped in biblical clothes.

Here’s what I want to say on my site: when you are willing to stop trying to save your life and ready to start giving it, call me. No box necessary.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Go here for hard copies (amazon)

Filed under: Emergence, Identity, Random, Seeing, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: brands, passages, ritual, spiritual, transformation | 2 Comments »