Step Into Your Sanctuary

Posted on September 12, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
An oldie simply called ANGEL

An oldie simply called ANGEL

It is night and I am hanging out in the sanctuary while Kerri attends a meeting. I never in my life thought I’d hang out in a sanctuary but I quite like it. It is quiet and I am by myself. It is a good place to meditate or just get still. I am sitting with my stain glass window wondering if there is a conversation in the offing. I’ve spent many nights in my life sitting alone in dark empty theatres and always felt the same sense of peace that I feel at this moment.

I like the word “sanctuary.” It implies a safe place, a resting place. If all the world is my studio then it is also my aspiration to live as if all the world is my sanctuary. I’ve always understood my studio to be a holy place, a place of creation and presence. Going to my studio has always been a step into a safe space. It is where I rejuvenate. Tonight, sitting here, it occurs to me that “studio” and “sanctuary” are very similar words. They are very similar places just as “theatre” and “church” have, for me, been mostly interchangeable: where we go to affirm the stories that identify and transform us; where we go to find our community. My sister finds her community in a church. I have, until lately, found mine in the theatre.

This rambling path begs the question, “What is sacred and what is not?” Yesterday Diane told me that she is a spiritual teacher and I believe that is true. This morning while walking I remembered her words and wondered if we are all spiritual teachers to each other. Some of my greatest teachers had no idea that they were teaching me.They had no intention of teaching me. One great teacher was sweeping a floor and had no idea that I was watching him. He was one of the happiest people I have ever seen. He was shining. He was doing a job that most people would deplore. Everyone who saw him smiled, myself included. He was not his job. He was not his body. He was…connected and alive in his moment. He was living in his sanctuary and helped me know that all the world can be a holy place. He helped crack my understanding of what is possible.

These lines we draw between the sacred and profane are mostly imagined. They are convenient and sometimes useful but they are illusions that I am beginning to understand as destructive. Us and them. A divided house begins in a belief of divisions – a need for division. I’ve often told the story of the executive, red in the face, pounding the table with his fist, shouting, “I know how to compartmentalize my reason from my emotions!” I remember thinking, why would any one want to cut off their emotions from their reason? A better question might have been, who, in their right mind, willingly cleaves themselves into pieces? What delusion is necessary to entertain the notion that reason and emotions are distinct and separate? Separations are generally an indication of not-right-mindedness and a dedication to controlling the uncontrollable.

The angry executive was also a great spiritual teacher for me, too. He taught me to check my assumptions and step over the lines of false distinction that I draw. I can connect the dots directly from his table pounding exclamation to my desire to define my studio as all the world; to live consciously in my sanctuary all of my days.

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Walk As One

Posted on May 16, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
From my archives. I call this painting, "Alki."

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?

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Step Into The Dot

Posted on March 26, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
Kerri and I are bringing our work together in a new form: Be A Ray! More on this tomorrow

Kerri and I are bringing our work together in a new form: Be A Ray! More on this tomorrow

Raquel and I had an extraordinary conversation yesterday. We always have extraordinary conversations that serve to shake loose the penny in my mind that needs to drop. Yesterday’s penny was about the question of a universe by design versus a universe of utter chaos.

So much of this past year seems by design. There have been too many serendipities, too many perfect circumstances, too many uncanny seeming coincidences. Last year I told her I was in a fast moving river racing toward my destiny. I could feel it. I can feel it. Raquel asked if perhaps that has always been true and that I was simply seeing it now.

My response to her question surprised me. I told her that all of my life I’ve had one foot in each universe. When the tides seemed against me or things were uncomfortable, then I was convinced that I was a bobber in a chaotic ocean. When I had one of the mystic/profound experiences that have become the hallmark of my life, when the tides seemed to go my way, I found it convenient to believe in a universe of a perfect design. I told Raquel that this year I’ve finally understood that I can’t have it both ways. I am either a bobber in a vast ocean or I’m here by design. Or, more to the point, I understand that the chaos I experience is my response to the design. Both feet are in one idea. The universe-by-design (a universe of participation and co-creation) must be true in the uncomfortable moments as well as the profound. It has to be true in the ordinary as well as the extraordinary. There is only one tide. It is a game to pretend otherwise.

In the past few years, the theme of my growth has been to finally see where I have been living with one foot in and one foot out – and to at last put both feet in. If you are driving to work waiting for retirement, you are one foot in. If you have a backdoor plan in your relationship, you are one foot in. If you are seeking proof of your faith, you are one foot in. You’d be amazed at what becomes visible, what you see, when you cease dividing your intention, splitting your presence, and stand with both feet in. Kerri and I call this, “stepping into the dot.”

[to be continued]

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Look For The Crossroads

Posted on July 25, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

855. 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 having an ongoing email conversation with Rafael. We are discussing educational change but more specifically asking how to change a culture of exclusion. I won’t go on a rant so let it suffice to say that the idea that we have equal access is just that: a nice idea but is nowhere apparent in the national fabric or the lived narrative of our nation. Our tax codes are created to keep the poorest poor and the wealthiest wealthy. Revolutionizing education is to revolutionize the economy and that is why it has become such a wicked problem. The forces in play do not favor the many. The voices in power represent the few.

I’ve spent a great deal of my life pushing against the public school system. And despite my capacity to fling around phrases like, “You can’t solve a problem at the level of the problem,” I’m only now seeing beyond the level of the problem. Inequity is institutionalized and deeply embedded in the national narrative so it is a fool’s errand to push on the institutions. As Buckminster Fuller advises, move toward what you want to create. This requires a new narrative. It requires to look at something other than what currently exists.

We go where we look. Where are we looking? We can hit division every time if we insist on seeing division. What’s good for business is not always what’s good for community and I often think that business wins the contest every time because we have a fleeting sense of community. We define our national health by the stock exchange. We are up or we are down. When I listen to the news or read the papers I am filled with the narrative of division. It is Us and Them on every page. This is not a new narrative. It is as old as our nation. Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness refers to land ownership and at the time those words were penned those privileges were extended to a few white males with resources and no others. A system does what a system was designed to do.

A new narrative would be one of unity. A new narrative is one of inclusion. A new narrative would consider the health of the system – in fact it would demand a healthy system and that is impossible to realize if any segment of the system is impoverished. A healthy plant cannot grow in exhausted soil. This is not an abstraction. Grow a garden in polluted soil and tell me what you discover.

It feels as if we are standing at the crossroads of “Every man for himself,” and “I am my brother’s keeper.” Both of these phrases are philosophies of an economy. The great thing about a crossroads is that the roads cross. They come together and are neither this nor that. They are a meeting ground and places of commerce accessible to all. Meeting grounds are also the place where new narratives are created. They are places of possibility. We know that our political climate is averse to seeing crossroads. We do not have to go where they are looking. We are capable of telling a different story if we are courageous enough to look where the roads cross and decide to stand in the place of an economy that includes instead of an economy that excludes.

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