Spiritual practice isn’t just personal; it’s the collective heartbeat for global healing and transformation. In this episode, organization executive Jim Robinson discusses the depth of how aligning with spiritual energy can drive personal healing and global change. He talks about how the mind, body, and spirit are connected and how his visualization practices helped him get better during a health crisis. Throughout the episode, Jim and the hosts explore the crucial role of a supportive community in sustaining spiritual practices. They analyze the different aspects of willpower, highlighting the importance of having a support system and being dedicated to spiritual practice in order to achieve long-lasting change. Jim talks about the problems in society, like inequality and conflict, and believes that raising our spiritual energy is important for creating peace, justice, and prosperity for everyone. Tune in now and become a force for positive global transformation!
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Mind, Body, And Spirit: Healing And Transformation With Jim Robinson
In this episode, we have Jim Robinson. He is the Executive Director of the GW Center for Excellence in Public Leadership. He is a leader who has fought for the empowerment, liberation, potential, and promise of all people. As an educator, executive teacher, mentor, and activist, he seeks to be the most powerful catalyst for a positive social change that uplifts inspires, encourages, and provides support and resources to enable all people to become the highest versions of their best selves. Jim, we’re so excited that you’re here with us, and I know you’re going to start with a story. You have a chicken story for us, Jim?
It’s the chicken and eagle story. A farmer, he wasn’t in the South of France, but he was somewhere. The farmer had fields and all of that. He had a tree break to break the wind and he had two sides to his field. He was walking through the trees and he saw this large egg on the ground. He picked it up and was curious. It wasn’t broken or anything. He decided to take it back with him and he found one of his hens. He wanted to see what happened and the hen did sit on it.
This egg was maturing. Eventually, the egg hatched, and out came a strange-looking chicken that was big for a chicken. The chicken grew fast and the other chickens made fun of it. Some chickens pecked at it. As I said, the chicken was ugly and was so big. He found that he could get them to like him better if he would make himself appear smaller. They would accept him more.
One of the hens adopted him because he had some tendency. He had difficulty eating by pecking in the dirt. He couldn’t do that very well. His beak wasn’t set up for it and he didn’t see that well close up. By the time, he backed off so he could see what was on the ground so he couldn’t miss it. He wasn’t good at it. One day, she saw him. She saved his life. He had somehow jumped up on a dog house and he jumped up from there on a short roof of a house. He was getting ready to jump off and the hen came and said, “No. Don’t do that. We had another chicken that tried that and she died. That’s dangerous. Occasionally, we have something but don’t do that. You cannot do that. That’s very dangerous”
However, he kept having this sense that he wanted to spread his wings. He wanted to flap them. One day, he was drinking water out of a trough and he looked in and he saw there were two images of himself. He moved and one image moved, but the other image didn’t move. He moved another way and the other image didn’t move. Eventually, the other image said to him, “What are you doing down there?” He said, “I’ve been watching you. You are running around like a chicken. Scratching in the dirt. What is your problem?”
He said, “What do you mean? I am a chicken.” “You’re not a chicken. You look just like me.” “What are you?” He said, “I’m an eagle.” I’ll tell you what, “Do you ever feel like you want to flap your wings and fly?” He said, “Yeah. I feel like that all the time.” “That’s because that’s what you do. You’re not a chicken. You are an eagle. Come up here.” “I can’t go up there. Mother Hen told me not to go up there. That’s dangerous.” “Come up here. You look just like me. Watch what I do.”
“Are you trying to tell me I can do that, too?” “Yes. That’s your true identity. That is what you are. Don’t let those hens tell you that you’re something else. You are an eagle. You’re meant to soar. You’re meant to be up here with me. You’re no good at being a chicken. You are a beautiful eagle.” I say that story to say that I think the first step in our ability to empower ourselves is to have the right identity. I think if we identify ourselves as only human, then we are missing the true power of our real identity, which for me is that we are spiritual beings. We’re in a body but that’s just a container. It’s not what we are.
Oftentimes, when we think of our identity the first question we ask is, “Who are we?” I would say that’s the third question. The first question is, “What are you?” The second question is, “Why are you?” To me, those are the first two questions around identity and they influence how you look at everything else. If you are being one with GOD and with the “I am” presence and if that is the material of which you are made, then you have the same qualities and same capabilities to create. You are made to be a masterful and powerful creator in your own life. You’re meant to spread your creative wings and not dig in the dirt.
Also, to stop running like a chicken. Jim, I would love to share that story with Adrian because as you were talking I kept thinking about the school system, how people are designed, or how the conditions want to produce people with a particular kind of identity. These are the requirements. These are the grades and often, it’s so hard to ask those very questions that you put out. Kids continue to stay within the chicken coop when they have so much potential to look at their identity whether they’re an eagle, a sea urchin, or whatever is that their identity calls for.
I know, Bonnie, you have you probably have something to reflect here, but I would love to build on what you shared Jim, and the questions that you brought forth and ask you, “How do you come to those questions yourself? What are you?” I want to link that with your own story and the work that you’ve been doing through the center around whole-person leadership with that vision. What brought you to it? How did you come to it? I think those questions, I would think have something to do with it.
For me, it’s out of some experiences and life challenges. I don’t know how many years ago, but when we were living in the Houston, Texas area, I was struggling career-wise, financially, and whatever. I had made a decision to start a new career when we moved there for Madeline’s position. I was in financial services and I was a stockbroker and stuff like that. I confronted the corruption of the system and had to leave it.
It was a very challenging time figuring out, “What do I do now? What’s next?” We have started going to a church and it was at Unity Church and they had a bookstore. One day, I was wandering through the bookstore and I saw this book called The Path of Least Resistance by a guy named Robert Fritz and I’ve never forgotten it. That was 1984 or something. What he said was because I had read stuff about goal setting and whatever but his big premise was the difference between problem solving and creating.
Creating is bringing something from an imagination into being. One of his big points was that you don’t have to know how. The key thing is the what. When you look at The Leadership Circle, Bob Anderson has adopted this framework when he talks about the problem-solving structure versus the creative structure. The reactive structure is the problem-solving structure. That book started me going deeper into some of the spiritual principles behind it.
I will give you a story of how it affects children. We were in Houston, Texas and I had taken a position in New England with Digital Equipment Corporation. After some travail, we were going to move. I had choices around where I would live in Western, Massachusetts or Connecticut. I went and started visiting schools because my son had established himself as a sophomore. He was a rising basketball star. He had excellent grades. He was one of the top ten students in the whole school. He was giving up a lot.
I asked him what his criteria were for a new school. I began to visit schools. Weston played basketball. I would go and visit schools and talk to them about their curriculum and that kind of thing. I had about 4 or 5 schools for him to visit. He came up and he visited the schools. He then chose which school he wanted to go to and we moved so he could go to that school.
He revealed to me halfway through his first basketball season in Connecticut that in his pocket, he had written a list of his vision for how he wanted the year to go. He had exceeded almost everything on his vision list. Kids are listening and seeing what you do. Even if it’s not cool to acknowledge what mom and dad are doing. I always think about that as well. Seeing what you do makes a difference.
There’s something interesting in these stories you’ve been telling us. What I’m hearing is there’s a pattern of what challenges can do to stimulate us beyond where we are. I think the challenge is something that so many people want to not have. They want everything to be the world’s greatest day all the time, but challenge is so critical for bringing out who we are. I wonder if you have some thoughts on it that you want to elaborate on.
I think a big shift in the last few years for me in understanding challenges is that the statement of life doesn’t happen to you. Life happens for you. Also, understanding that those challenges that appear to be challenges are opportunities for demonstration. which further solidifies your faith. To me, you have a greater feeling of authenticity and integrity. Also, you are living out and you are growing.
What I tell people a lot is many of the people that we have that come into our programs particularly, I know more of them in the District of Columbia, are achievers. They’ve been achieving. They are high achievers. They are goal-setters. They have goals. One of the things that I tell them is the difference between living in the gap and living in the gain. If you live in the gap, you’re always looking at what’s next. You’re evaluating your progress and your life against what’s next but by the nature of who they are as they get closer to what’s next, they move toward the goal.
You never reach the goal and there’s a mistaken notion that if you ever celebrate too much, you lose motivation. What I try to tell them is to look backward. Evaluate yourself backwards. Vision this way but evaluate yourself backward, realize the gain, and claim the victory. That’s what you have to build on. You say, “No matter what my experience or the results of my actions, I will always get the lesson and the blessing. I will always live in the gain.” If I acknowledge my gain, that is a platform to build on. It’s not demotivating. It is in fact motivating and reassuring.
Each morning, in addition to doing some visualizations and some spiritual experiences, I will do maybe 3 or 4 physical postures. I’ll do the victorious posture. I’ll do a gratitude posture. I’ll do an empowerment posture. When people talk about trauma, there’s a book called The Body Keeps the Score. Also, another flip to that is the body remembers what the mind may forget. What I’ve come to think is that we teach that the subconscious mind controls the body but I believe also that the body communicates to the subconscious mind and communicates to the conscious mind.
By adopting postures and combining them with evocations or with words or affirmations, whatever you want to say that goes with that, you are speaking to, reconditioning, re-educating, and reinforcing certain principles of empowerment in your conscious mind as well. I’m trying to get better at embodiment.
Bonnie, I would love it if you could take a couple of minutes and share your story with your brother at the time when he lost a pocket knife and how he remembered through the dream.
It’s the story of my father.
That’s a great story and I think it illustrates a little bit what Jim is talking about remembering and how the body remembers and communicates with the subconscious mind.
We grew up in Texas and he grew up on a farm. He was a boy and asked his dad if he could borrow his dad’s pocket knife to whittle a piece of wood. His dad said, “Yes, but I need to have this back by dinner. Don’t lose it.” Dinner comes and they’re at the table. My dad had lost it. His dad said to him, “You have until tomorrow morning to find it or you’re going to be in trouble.” My dad panicked and ran to the barn. He was looking everywhere. He was looking out in the pasture. He couldn’t find it.
Finally, my grandmother came out and said, “You’ve looked enough. Come to bed and ask your dreams.” She put him into bed and she said, “Close your eyes and ask your dreams and they will tell you.” My grandmother and my father a great dreamers and they told me the story to teach me. Sure enough, my father dreams that he goes out to the pasture and he goes walking down the fence line. The fence posts were taller than him. He goes walking out counting them.
I don’t remember which number. It was something like 27 and he reached up way up on top and it was hidden out of his view, but it was on top of this fence post. He had climbed up there. He wakes up and he runs to the barn and goes out into the pasture. He goes, “1, 2, 3.” He counts it and it’s there. The body does know. It knows deeply and I would say that all of our intelligence is in the body. The mind sort of executes orders, but it’s the body that’s leading.
The mind executes orders, but it’s the body that’s leading.
Jim, I want to ask you because you talked about your visualization practices. I know from your story that’s been a powerful practice for you through the years, particularly in a difficult time in your life when you’re going through significant healing. I’d love it if you could share a little bit about that story.
That’s where visualization comes in. This is the story of when I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. My intention was that I would keep my rectum. All the doctors at the Johns Hopkins said, “That’s standard procedure. We have to cut and remove a part of it.” I thought I was going to put my beliefs to the test. I’m going to do this so I began to visualize and to affirm. However, I was having trouble visualizing a healthy rectum and colon.
Madeline did a colonoscopy and hers was fine but she had the picture of a healthy clean colon and rectum, so I could use that to visualize what it would look like. I began visualizing that’s what I had. I ran into a guy and we were talking about it. He had gone through a cancer experience. He said, “Maybe in addition to the visualization of the result, do a process visualization? Visualize a process. Create a process by which this healing is occurring.”
I began to visualize this process that was going on in my rectum and my colon where I have these lightworkers. These light workers would come out and the first wave that would come out would be with beams of light. They would shine on the walls of my rectum and my colon. The cancer cells they sent out advanced fighters. They are not trying to hurt me. They’re just trying to live but the light was too much. What would happen is I would do this visualization of the cancer cells would begin to fall off the walls of my colon and my rectum. The light workers would stop and then another band of light workers would come in.
They would have hoses. They would hose the walls and other stuff would fall off and then they would clean out from me the dead cancer cells. I would have this visualization each day. I would do affirmative prayer. As I was doing this, there were lots of coincidences. We were walking around our community and I ran into a woman that lived here that we’ve gotten to know. I told her a little bit what was going on. She’s like, “I almost died from cancer. I had breast cancer. It was bad and a local doctor helped me.”
I started going to this doctor as well and he was very affirming of what I was doing. He gave me some health things that I began to take some smoothies that I began to make and some other substances that I began to take as well. He had been persecuted by the medical establishment because he never claimed that he cured cancer because he knew they would arrest him if he did that, but he had helped people.
However, word got out so they came after him. There were all these kinds of coincidences. Madeline was doing a lot of looking around and researching. She found the Cancer Treatment Center of America up in Philadelphia. There are all these resources that began to come into my life. I had gone through chemo and radiation for six weeks. I was continuing my visualization, my affirmation, my vitamin regimen, and my nutritional supplementation.
I went back up to Hopkins and had another colonoscopy. He took pictures and all that. The doctor said, “There’s no evidence of a tumor.” I thought, “That’s great.” He said, “Now, we’ll do the surgery.” I said, “Why would you do the surgery if there’s no evidence?” “We’ll do another biopsy after we do the surgery.” I thought this was crazy. I said to him, “Let me think about it, but I don’t think I want to do this.”
It was upsetting for my son. He was thinking, “Dad, you’re going against conventional medicine and why are you doing this.” We went up to the Cancer Treatment Centers of America. I had another colonoscopy. They had much better ways of imaging and whatever than Hopkins because they told me the images that I got from Hopkins were craps and that they couldn’t make them out well. They don’t know how the surgeon said that.
They warned me, “The standard protocol is we have to tell you that you would have surgery, but let’s see.” There was no tumor. The doctor said, “I’m not having the surgery.” He said, “That is the standard practice. If you want to risk that, we’ll support you but it’s not what we recommend. You have to have intense surveillance.” My point is that I think the intention and the visualization led me into contact with alternative resources and ways of looking at it.
At one point as I was doing my process visualization, I had a voice tell me, “It is done. You don’t need to do that anymore.” It was shortly after that I was confirmed that the tumor was gone. That’s a long story that could be a short story. My thought to be honest with you was I really believe this. I believe in visualization. I believe in our ability to create to heal. I’m going to live by my beliefs. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll just die but I’m going to stand on this.
That’s an everything story. My same dreaming father when I was a little girl and I would get sick with a cold or something would lay me in the grass and have me imagine friendly ants coming up through the soles of my feet and taking out, like crumbs at a picnic, all the bad bacteria or the virus that was in there. There were other visualizations he would give me at certain times and moments. You said it’s a long story that could be short. I feel like that’s the everything story because when we were talking about the eagle, the chicken, and all these the things that you’ve been talking about, we have to be able to see it before we can start to build it, create it, and do it.
We also have to have the will to do it and focus on that will. You did two things. You did this imaging and seeing health in your body, but you also had a force of will to make it happen. Those two things, people get lost in their own lives of, “Where am I headed and why I haven’t?” Also, we’re thinking about troubled times in the world. We have to see what we want to build and then we put the force behind it and we can heal everything.
I think you captured it and you had to take a stand.
It gives you not only a sense of commitment and hope but it moves you. It’s like a contagious energy because right after or maybe a little bit after you are going through this, I had my own challenges. I think a lot of what you did through your own commitment to healing was inspiring for me to move in similar directions and everybody’s journey is different.
Also, not to talk about the impact that it’s been having on the work we do at the center because I think you are what you are and why you are, those two questions, I think have created the space for us to build on the whole person leadership capacity at the center. This is a great example of how the energy of one or unlocking the capacity of one can transform a system. It’s about transforming the system. I guess the one thing that I’m curious about your story Jim is the will. What kept you wanting to stay with it?
I guess it was the valuing of living in integrity and having espoused these principles that it was a little scary, but it was not as scary as it began to switch into an opportunity. It was about living in integrity. I think also the fact that one of the protocols that this other doctor recommended was that once a week, I would get vitamin C. I would get direct infusions of vitamin C and zinc. I think there was a couple of other stuff in that but mostly a lot of vitamin C.
I was in the presence of him once a week. I think that helped to be reinforcing and encouraging. Madeline wasn’t encouraging. Also, going up to Cancer Treatment Centers. I was under intense surveillance. We were up there once a month for a while. Every time we went up there, it was reinforcing. My physicals were good. All the blood tests were good. They would say to me, “You’re healthy. It’s just that you had cancer, but you’re healthy.” People would say, “You look good.” There was a lot of regular reinforcement as well.
It sounds like it’s important to have the right team and support.
That was actually what happened. I later found out there was some research. I saw it. It said that when you do the vitamin C infusions that I was doing, what it does is it makes the chemotherapy more potent because the vitamin C opens up the cells and enables the chemotherapy to penetrate. It was a coming together of resources and a support team. That was very reinforcing.
A question that keeps me up at night and there’s not many but this one does is what we’ve been talking about the will and what kept you with it because I work with so many people. I can give so many practices, imagery exercises, and things that I know are transformative. However, injecting someone with will and getting someone to stick with something is like this X Factor. Some people have it in abundance and some people don’t have it. That is the elusive thing for me and how to help people and stimulate them to go even farther in their own lives and personal transformation. I’m curious about what thoughts you have on that.
I think Ina touched on part of it. It is having a support team. Whether they call themselves a support team or not, they’re a team of people who know you and support you in the vision that you have versus a team of people who are caught up in the awfulness of the as-is. That makes a big difference because I think it’s challenging. The other thing for me is part of my prayers and not my will but, “God your will be done in and through me.” Also, ask for direction and sometimes I don’t know if I do it correctly. I’ll do some muscle testing of some choices to see what happens, but my willpower is very poor. It is very difficult to sustain.
Willpower is, of itself, very poor. It is very difficult to sustain.
Having that support team that they don’t know they’re part of your team, but they are all affirming. The other thing that helped me was that when I would go to this doctor’s office, there were other patients there. Many of them had their own stories of how they’ve been healed and working with this doctor. I was hearing reinforcing messages of possibility throughout the whole process.
Jim, I want to close with a question for you. Where is your energy at this point in your life that’s driving you?
There are a couple of places. I still have the energy to see people’s possibilities and life expand. Also, sense of possibility, self-empowerment, and self-agency, and seeing people grow with that. Trying to create conditions where they can experience that a bit and support each other in that. When Madeline and I are praying, one of the affirmations we have is a new Earth in which all people feel secure, that they have clean air to breathe, abundant clean water to use, abundant nutritious food to eat, and also have wonderful shelter in which to live and gather, and in which all people feel loved and valued. They have robust opportunities to learn, grow, serve, contribute, and thrive throughout their lifetimes. Also, to flip the switch that there is enough and there’s only one of us in the universe. That’s a vision and affirmation that we share. It’s another long answer to your question, but that’s what drives and motivates me.
I love the practice and you sharing your own practice, which is quite a commitment.
Jim, thank you so much for spending a little time.
I always love talking to you, guys. Bonnie, it was a great ceremony. I told Ina that the testimonies of the students are what spoke for the program because they were able to articulate. Bonnie, you talked about something too. One of the things I picked up was that they all went into the program knowing that they didn’t know or at least they knew they didn’t know what to expect. They didn’t have the illusion that they knew what to expect and they proceeded anyway.
You attracted the right people who are willing to make that leap at this time in their lives but also, Ina you gave them some sense of comfort that we’re not just going to throw you to the wolves. You’re going to have support on this journey. We’re not going to make the journey any easier but we will give you support to grow through this journey.
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Jim, it has been such a great joy to have you with us in this episode. Thank you very much for being here.
Important Links
- GW Center for Excellence in Public Leadership
- Jim Robinson
- The Path of Least Resistance
- The Body Keeps the Score
About Jim Robinson
Jim Robinson has a deep commitment to discovering, supporting, and enabling the development of all people. The continuous thread through all of his work is enabling the fullest development of group, organization, and community potential so that individuals are empowered to actualize their gifts for benefit of themselves and their families in service of a broader community. As an organization executive, he championed the development of work systems that supported high-performance teams and growth in organization performance. As a coach and mentor, he continues to support the development of leaders at all points in their careers. As an educator, he creates learning systems that address the development of the whole person in the context of the challenges of organization performance in volatile and challenging environments. As an advisor to policy think tanks, grassroots movements, and social change organizations, he works for the creation of robust opportunities for socially disadvantaged citizens to realize much more of their God-given potential and contribute to the development of our country and our world.