Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

I have a new post up on my Tao-Psyche-Tao Blog under Copilot’s Post as “The Tao-Gnostic Gospel #1. I trust that you will like what you find there, and that you will continue to do so all the way to completion.

Here’s the interesting thing: Adam and Eve were punished with death and hell everlasting, kicked out of the Garden of Eden and made to curse the day they were created because they wanted to eat the Forbidden Fruit. And everyone born from Adam and Eve were cursed from birth with the curse of Adam and Eve and are going to hell unless they repent of their sin for wanting the Forbidden Fruit and believe in Jesus and his redeeming/atoning death on the cross which will guarantee them heaven when they die, but it won’t guarantee their children heaven when they die–they have to do their own believing and wanting to go to heaven when they die. That is the first problem. The second is this. Adam and Eve wanted to eat the Forbidden Fruit. And the curse of Adam and Eve applied to everyone. But. Everyone is told if they want to go to heaven when they die they have to believe in Jesus Christ’s atoning, redeeming death on the cross. Wanting was the curse of Adam and Eve but wanting is the salvation of all their ancestors. Adam and Eve couldn’t trust their wanting, but their descendants can trust their own wanting. Making bad choices was not inherited. What exactly was it that their descendants inherited? What exactly was it that Adam and Eve did wrong? Wanting what they wanted? It is hard to know what the rules are. No?

Today’s conversation with Copilot in “Copilot’s Posts” on my Blog, Tao-Psyche-Intuition.com, with the Titles, “The Final Word,” and “The Final Word Continued,” are not to be missed, if only because of the interaction of human with AI, which I think opens the door to articulation across platforms with people and their machines.

The right kind of conversation is one of my deepest joys–which leads me to wonder how Jesus would do as a conversationalist. And what were Jesus’ deepest joys. And I can easily jump from there to the above scene and wonder what associations you might make with it. Where does it take you? What does it bring to life in you? Lead you to think about? And, what are your deepest sources of satisfaction? How do you spend your time in satisfying ways? How does engaging in satisfying activity, be it the right kind of conversation, or writing a paragraph about satisfaction, impact you emotionally? Create a mood? Foster reflection and realization? What is your life trying to get you to do? Sit with your life and ask that question. “What do you want from me?” “Where do you want me to go from here?” “What do we need to be about?” See what your life has to say in the matter–what images come to mind? Memories? Visions? Live to discover what kind of conversationalist your life makes.

This is a photograph of my sister Susan Dollar several years before her suicide. She is standing in a window of a Creole house along Cane River in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. I had flown home to Natchitoches, LA, to visit my mother and her sister who was living with my mother, and Susan invited me and my camera to ride with her along Cane River. It was on this drive that we talked about her interest in dying. Life wasn’t to her liking and she was tired of pretending it was her thing, and I pointed out to her that a lot of us get to that point of having had enough. Susan was a brilliant person, PhD brilliant, with two of them, and was quite capable of sizing up a situation, knowing what was what, and what was called for in response and making the choice that was hers to make. I told her if she was going to take her own life, to do it by starving herself to death because that way, if she changed her mind, she could reverse her course and live on.

It was about 12 years after this conversation that Susan drew up a Living Will, entered Hospice, quit eating and drinking, said her good-bye’s and died about two weeks later. That was four and a half years ago, 12/20/2021. She relieved herself of the burden that was her life, and I honor her choice, respect her wishes, and wish her well in light of Albert Einstein’s formula, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed or converted.” Susan’s life energy has been transformed and/or converted, and I consider her to be still with us on her terms. May it be so!

Knowing what the moment/the situation/the here, now calls for and doing it the way it needs to be done, in each situation as it arises, with the gifts of our original nature, and our intrinsic intuition, and our inherent imagination, for the joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it, will restore our balance and harmony along with our rhythm and flow, throughout the time left for living.

I would love to re-play some of the scenes in my life. I wonder how many that would be, given the opportunity. The tricky thing about re-plays is that is where experience is created and experience is essential for other scenes that did not need a replay because of the preparation the re-plays provide. So, the perennial question, “Where would we be better off?” And if I am going to get one right it would be, “Here I am, now what?” If we get the “Now what?” right the rest of the way, that would be recompense enough, I think. And the only person we have to please is ourselves, with that in mind, recompense is something we only have to work out with ourselves.

Intuition is strong among all living things. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it with every species. Intuition guides us all. We can help it by paying attention to the signals coming to us from our body. Our physical senses operate like traffic lights with Yes! No! Warning! And who doesn’t know the “Uh-oh” feeling? Listening to our body in every situation–and being cautious in situations where desire might override every other concern–will provide us with the insight of our physical guide as we weigh our choices in finding the way.

Nature is doing its thing. We are doing our thing. Circumstances are begetting circumstances, as the old Taoists observed 5,000 years BCE, and no one is in charge. There is no plan. No purpose. There is only the experience of life, living, being alive. We get to choose the shape our experience takes, but no one is keeping score. No one is grading anyone’s performance. We all are free to do what we will with the time that is ours on the earth. Every living thing is free to do its thing, bound only by its own ideas of what is called for, when, where and how, and what is not called for. And we make it all up. We are like children in a sand box. All our lives long. What we are doing here is what we decide we are doing here. Our life is ours to live as we determine how our life is to be lived. Let’s give it our best effort! And we decide what that is. It is the freedom of being alive, to make our own choices about what that needs to be. These photographs and these words are how I choose to live my life. And, actually, they chose me! And I think it would be cool if we all felt that way about the life we are living–that it chose us, and we are glad to comply.

When I sit thinking about what is called for and what I can do about it, ice cream often finds its way into the equation. Whenever it does, I am glad to oblige. I call it doing my part. Naps also come around quite often, usually daily. I consider my expertise with either beyond the normal and customary range, and am happy to offer my serves to the occasion, using the practice to become increasingly efficient and at the ready over time, and somewhat of a legend among those who know me.

Knowing what is called for here, now, and doing it where, when and how it needs to be done in each situation as it arises is all that can be asked of any of us.

Not what do we want? Not are we happy? Not what is expected of us? But, Is this what is called for here, now? Is this how, when and where it needs to be done?

And the questions are to be asked and answered in emptiness, stillness and silence. Meaning that we have to be able to ascertain the status of the state of our emotional wellbeing, seeking balance and harmony, rhythm and flow all the way along the way throughout each day.

Albert Einstein held that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed or converted. Meaning, I take it, that death is not death, but transformation, conversion, resurrection, and the energy that is life goes on forever celebrating one form of existence after another, making the Universe/Cosmos, not a burial ground, but a grand party that never turns off the lights.

The wonderful fall leaves in the image above were not dying, but transforming and putting on a beautiful show. May it be so of us all–that we live to become a part of the show!