Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

Our experience with life is the source of our beliefs about God. Early humans explained lightening and earth quakes as having their origin with an angry God and sought to appease that God with sacrifices and worship and things took off from there to the Roman Catholic Church and the Westminster Confession of Faith, and here we are. Now what?

My recommendation is emptiness, stillness and silence, the Buddha’s “Peaceful abiding, here, now,” with mindful attention to the impulse of our nature and the drift, course and direction of our interests, curiosity and the movement of our life.

Our life is as close to the God before and beyond theology as we can get. Listening to our life is like listening to “that which has always been called God.” Attending our dreams is a way of aligning ourselves with the forces that have been thought of as the natural rhythms, the balance and harmony of Tao and Psyche at work in our life.

Tending our life’s ebbs and flows, trends and tendencies is as much guidance as humans have ever had to work with, and in so doing, we follow in the steps of our ancient ancestors in finding our way and sensing that we are not alone.

I crawled to the lip of the canyon to take this photograph, amid the laughter of other photographers gathered about. I got the picture and they got to laugh. Worked out well, I say. A little something for everyone.

We have to know what our limits are and honor them by living within them. This gets us back to the bit about the difference between trusting our luck and pushing our luck, and knowing when our body draws a line and respecting our sense of where that line lies. And living to tell the tale.

We live, in part, to offset the impact of our life upon us to this point, at every point along the way. There is a sense in which we never get over having lived up to this point. We carry our past with us all the way. And we do not know who we might have been if it hadn’t been for various aspects of our experience and how we reacted to them. We are impacted for better and/or for worse by some of the things that happened in our life, but not by all of the things that happened. There are propitious events and there are inconsequential events in all of our lives–and how we reacted to them, responded to them, what we did about them made all the difference. And some of them still impact us to this very day. How might we recognize those momentous events, revisit them and revise the impact they had on us even now, even yet, even so? We owe it to ourselves to find out.

Exploring our past can transform our future. Changing our mind about some things can impact all things. Writing about our past, talking about our past, thinking about our past can alter our present and our future. It is a potential great adventure awaiting our attention.

When it’s too much for you, call time out. Acknowledge the overwhelming nature of events and circumstances. Sit quietly, or go for a walk, or take a shower… Whatever form timeout needs to take, and just allow the moment to be as it is, and turn things over to Psyche Tao Intuition (I don’t say “God” because “God” comes with all that theology and church baggage attached, and Psyche Tao Intuition are mystery, and interesting, and much older than theology, and being present with and open to whatever those words stand for gives the force they represent an opportunity to shift the mood a bit and open things up for “peaceful abiding, here, now,” and that’s a good thing).

Psyche, Tao, Intuition have always been and always will be. Settling in with them for the long haul is all it takes to have what it takes to do what needs to be done. That’s what emptiness, stillness, silence (One thing, not three) is for. We meet up with Psyche, Tao, Intuition in emptiness, stillness, silence when we open ourselves to its presence and relax into its wisdom and grace. We feel Psyche, Tao, Intuition–we do not think them. We are one with them, like we are one with ourselves. They are who we are. The same goes with God and Jesus. When we ask theology to leave the room, there are us, God, Jesus, Psyche, Tao, Intuition–all are one. The visible and the invisible. No thinking, only knowing. No logic and reason. Just realizing, sensing, experiencing the is and the now. We are not alone and there is no one here but us, now. Knowing that is being that, is the essence of life and being. We are consciousness being aware of itself.

Donald Trump wants to transform history, and the Republican Party is all for it. This is crazy. And wrong. It’s psychotic, as in losing touch with reality. And, in this case, refusing to allow reality to be what it is by insisting that it is as they want it to be. When the President of the United States is this far removed from how things are in insisting that things are the way he wants them to be, he turns the country into a psychiatric ward and Alice in Wonderland becomes the new reality for everyone. And the Republican Party plays right along! In a “Whatever you say, Boss,” kind of way. This is outlandish in real time. This is not “play like.” This is not “Wink wink, nod, nod.” This is off the rails. Seriously. Officially. La La Land. When a large number of people agree that things are the way things absolutely ARE NOT!!! It is time for the rest of us to sit down and stop playing the game of not playing a game (R.D. Laing). How do we actually do that in real time right now? I. Do. Not. Know. But. That is what needs to happen. We need to stop going along with it. Maybe tee shirts would do it: I AM NOT WITH STUPID!!!

My new web site, Tao-Psyche-Intuition.com is open for business and is home to the best I have to offer, representing the essence of who I am. I hope you feel at home there.

I had a piece of lemon ice box pie and a cup of coffee Saturday at our weekly family lunch out with the daughters and granddaughters. The pie and the coffee is what I had for lunch. My new Saturday lunch. I intend for it to be a regular thing. It is my way out of here–doing what I love. I hope I have years to go, with a Saturday lunch every week. Celebrating weekly. I’ll ask how many pieces to a pie, probably six. We will see how many pies I have left. I see that as the way to do it. Sounds just like me.

It’s all up to us, what we do with it. What we do. I’m all for doing what is called for. The trick is knowing what that is. We know when we are imposing ourselves upon the situation, and when we are cooperating with the situation, merging with the situation, being one with the situation, living a part from the situation… How is the fit with our life most often? There is what we want and there is what we serve, assist. There is what we do and there is who we are. The closer doing and being relate to one another, the better off we tend to be in terms of spirit and vitality, the two markers of the quality of our life. The people who have it made are bluegrass musicians jamming on someone’s front porch, or in someone’s back yard.

I have never known what I am doing–and it has worked out just fine. I have always trusted my luck and never pushed it. And that doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing. It means I do not push my luck. And I would never recommend that strategy to anyone else. Each one of us has to live in sync with our own sense of what’s what and what is called for in each situation as it arises. That is our strategy and our game plan. Which means we have to know what’s what and what’s called for in our body–not in our mind. Not in our intellect. Not in our head. We have to listen to our body and know what our body is saying in the way of “peaceful abiding, here, now.” That means settling peacefully into our body and knowing how things are with us and allowing our body to take the lead in directing our action here, now. Practice that at all times. Through all places. All our life long. In so doing, we learn how to read our body’s signals. We relax into Psyche, Intuition and Tao. To the point where we might consider ourselves to be untouchable, and that is the point where we begin to push our luck. People who go there sometimes never come back. Do. Not. Go. There.

Yin-Yang is balance and harmony throughout the Cosmos. Equal and opposite forces of attraction and repulsion are bound together and make life possible. Without the bond we all fly off in different directions at once. The stupid ones among us think that if we can only get rid of what we hate, we would live happily ever-after, not realizing that our opposites balance us out and save us from exploding into the Void. The stupid ones among us hate Woke people and that prevents them from waking up to their stupidity and living life as it must be lived, at one with liberty and justice, equality and truth forever.

My cognitive decline is a little like dying with your eyes open while you are disconnecting. Here but not present. Or present but not here. And it is unpleasant however you choose to look at it. I look the other way, turn the light around, and flip the switch to “Peaceful abiding, here, now.” And the mood passes, along with everything else that is passing. I let it go and move on. It is quite the ride. I wouldn’t have missed it, and am glad to have done it, and to still be doing it, keeping company with what is keeping me company. And it is keeping me company. I see my environment as a kind and gentle place, and enjoy the opportunity to share my gratitude and appreciation with all that is with me day to day.