05
We can expect/demand too much of our life. Lowering our standards can improve things immensely. Giving life a break, cutting life some slack, giving life a fresh start, with fewer shoulds-oughts-musts to deal with would be a good move. Life has a hard job. Seeing that a world full of people are pleased with their context and circumstances would wear anyone down. "It's not fair!" How many times does life hear that in a day? and "Why ME?" Life could use a holiday. A day with no moaning, complaining, whining, remonstrating, sighing, pouting, slamming doors or throwing the car keys... Maybe we could take life to lunch and talk about all the things we like about the way things are. A little compassion for life, isn't asking too much, given the amount of heat life takes on an average day.
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04
Our life is a compromise among competing, contrary, contradictory, opposing, forces/interests-- and we have to work things out moment-by-moment. It is our place in our life. Our role to fill. Our part to act. We integrate the polarities and maintain the tension among those that cannot be integrated. We make it work as well as it can work, within the givens and the needs converging and clashing in each here and now, choosing from among our choices and determining where we go from here, now. How well we do that tells the tale. It helps if we have no interests of our own to serve, but only the true good of the whole, with all things taken into account from all sides on every dimension, and everything riding on the outcome.
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03
Trust yourself to your life! Do not strive to force it to be what it has no business being! All of our problems are brought on by willing what cannot be willed. By trying to have what doesn't belong in our life. By trying to get rid of what does belong. By having no idea of the destiny that is ours to live, and no interest in fulfilling a destiny that isn't what we wish it were. We cannot dial up "Happy." We cannot arrange "Meaningful." We cannot produce "Perfection." The harder we work to arrange the life of our dreams, the further we drift from the life that is our life to live. We get back to the beam by stopping, looking, listening, seeing, hearing, knowing, understanding, realizing, perceiving, awakening, and changing our relationship with our life. We are not the director. The choreographer. The conductor. The One In Charge. We are a liege servant pledging filial loyalty and allegiance to The One Who Knows within. How do we know what The One Who Knows knows is the question that defines, forms and shapes our life from this time forth and forevermore. We start by trusting ourselves to our life, and allowing instinct and intuition to lead the way moment-by-moment, sensing what is called for and doing what needs to be done with sincerity and spontaneity-- and without contrivance-- and seeing where it goes. Like the wind that blows where it will, we do not know what we will be doing next. Ours is but to live with the wind in our hair, enjoying the ride!
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02
Is this the best we can do? If not, why not? If so, who are we kidding? What would it mean to do better? Be better? Get better? What would constitute improvement? What is keeping us from improving? What is our idea of who we need to be? What do we need? I think we have no idea of who we need to be. No idea of what we need. And, we get in our way of our getting better by having ideas of what better would be. If we only sit down and shut up, our life will do the rest, delivering us into the next thing we need at exactly the right time, shocking us with its precision and its idea of what we need to do to be who we need to be. We are on a journey that can be completed by realizing we don't know where we are going and it is never going to end-- which relieves us of all responsibility except that of looking and listening, and and being right about what is being called for, and doing it in each situation as it arises, without worrying about where it is going. Show up moment-by-moment-by-moment. Pay attention to what has heart and meaning. Speak the truth with compassion, and without judgment. Do what needs to be done with no attachment to the outcome, and nothing at stake, nothing to gain and nothing to lose. And don't take anything more seriously than it deserves. These are things anybody can do at any stage of life, regardless of conditions, context or circumstances, allowing their life to take it from there.
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01
My idea of the Anima has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with life. I am to be the best woman I am capable of being, and must be in order to be fully alive. I cannot be the best man I am capable of being until I can be the best woman I am capable of being. I bring the two together-- Animus and Anima-- merging, blending, uniting, integrating the two into one, and giving birth to the miracle of life, "pouring over, spilling out," in the process, as a by-product, a second-thought, an accident of, well, birth. The same goes for you, and you, and you... I do not know a woman who is being the best woman she is capable of being-- much less a man. I do not know a man who is being the best man he is capable of being-- much less a woman. And, consequently, I don't know of a woman who is being the best man she is capable of being, or a man who is being the best woman he is capable of being. We all settling for being much less than we are capable of being-- and that is the Original Sin. Which is also the Unforgivable Sin, the Unpardonable Sin, and creates a little bit of hell wherever we go. The way out is clearly the way of becoming who we are, androgynous human beings, male and female, united within, as the best male and best female we can be. It will take some work, but I am confident that we can pull it off. It will take shedding ourselves of the "hard values," and bringing forth/immersing ourselves in the "soft values" (With values becoming virtues/characteristics in the process). The things we shed are things like domination, power, privilege, profit/gain/advantage/contrivance at any price... The things we bring forth are things like life, instinct, intuition, integrity, sincerity, compassion, good faith, awareness, kindness, gentleness, peace, and the kind of presence that makes all things good... Get the idea? Get to work!
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 