01
The fascist dream is a nightmare-- for everyone, including fascists! If we rid the world of everyone not like we are, we are left with ourselves, and the realization that who we hate is us! Fascists hate themselves and blame everyone not like them for it: "It's people like you who make people like me hate people like you for carrying the projections of people like me!" That is the first part of the paradox. The second is this: To want to rid the world of fascists is fascist. And that leaves us with this: Do not kill anyone ever actually, literally, physically, really-- just work to change their mind about what is important! Here is what is essentially important: It is all useless, hopeless, pointless, meaningless and absurd, and coming to a very bad end: We all die-- and how we live in the meantime makes all the difference! If you are ever going to take anything on faith, let it be this: It matters how we live our life! It matters that we live our life like this: Doing what needs to be done, where it needs to be done, when it needs to be done, how it needs to be done, because it needs to be done, moment by moment in each situation as it arises! That is all there is to it. We don't have to want to. We don't have to fee like it. We don't have to be in the mood for it. We only have to stand up and do it-- moment by moment in each situation as it arises all our life long! Everything depends on it, and flows from it. And we must do it just like our heart is completely in it. Everything depends on it! Everything! Believe that with all your heart and mind and soul and strength-- and DO IT! And the world will be a better place to be overnight!
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02
All religions agree on the important points: Do what is right and treat each other well. And the heart of them all is confession, repentance, atonement, redemption. They disagree about the fluff. The fluff is where the theology, the doctrines, the dogma, the ways to tell who is in and who is out, who is us and who is them, come in. Religion without the fluff is what religion is all about. Doing what is right-- what needs to be done-- where it needs to be done, when it needs to be done, how it needs to be done because it needs to be done is all the religion we need. Believing it matters how we live and doing our best to be who we need to be moment by moment in each situation as it arises is all the religion we need. Living like this will include confession, repentance, atonement, redemption. Because that's how things are, and it takes grace and compassion to hold things together and keep things going.
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03
Once you know what you will go to hell for, you are free to do what needs to be done moment by moment in each situation as it arises, and no one can knock you off of that. This is who you are and this is what is yours to do here and now, and that's that. There is nothing to match clarity for peace, balance and harmony. With clarity, we are able to sit tight, stand firm, walk tall, ride it out, and do what is called for without dropping a stitch or losing our focus. One aspect of clarity is knowing what the destabilizing forces are and preparing ourselves to recognize and deal with them. How we deal with them is an aspect of knowing what needs to be done, and we do that best by seeking out the silence and watching for what emerges, arises, occurs to us and trusting ourselves to it, and knowing how to respond when we find ourselves responding. Sincerity is spontaneous in its response to its circumstances. There is no plan or agenda for being sincere. There is only responding as necessary to the situation as it develops. The way tennis players respond to what is happening during a point, or the way football players respond to what is happening during a play. We dance with the moment as only we can and let that be that-- knowing that we will get better at it over time.
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04
The on-going, unending, task of life is making our peace with life, coming to terms with life, letting life be because it is. Always the discrepancy, the discordance, between how things are and how we want things to be. Always the need, the requirement, of growing up some more again, and letting this be how it is, because it is, and nothing will change it, and there is only picking ourselves up and getting back in the game-- living as though how we live makes all the difference, because it does-- in ways we cannot begin to know or understand. Believing in doing what needs to be done the way it needs to be done when and where it needs to be done because it needs to be done is the essential act of faith. Everything flows from, revolves around, depends upon, that core belief. If you are going to take anything on faith, let it be this! And live as though it is so! Because it is!
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05
Taking the Parable of the Prodigal Son as our starting point, questions that beg to be asked are: What kind of God can be pissed off? What kind of God can be pissed off to the point of sending people to hell? What kind of parent could get to the point of being so enraged at their children they they would send them to hell? Theology has to go. Sin is not a problem. Jesus didn't need to die in order to change God's mind about us. We don't become all pure, pristine and ready for heaven because we "believe in Jesus." Jesus is one of us. Is us. We are Jesus. On our best days, we are as Jesus was on his best days. "Dying" is simply handing over how we want things to be, and doing what needs to be done, anyway, nevertheless, even so. It is what any parent worthy of the position does in relation to their children, and what any child worthy of the position does in relation to their parents. We all grow-up, adapt, adjust, acquiesce and do what needs us to do it because that is what we are here for, and the way we do it makes all the difference. No heaven, no hell, just us living to make all the difference, because that is who we are, and everything depends on it. Anybody can make things worse by the way they respond to their life. And anybody can make things better by the way they respond to their life. Why would we want to make things worse?
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06
The silence is the interface between two worlds, the visible world and the invisible world, the world of conscious, concrete, actual, tangible, apparent reality, and the world of psychic contents and processes. We walk two paths at the same time, and need to become aware of our place in integrating, balancing and harmonizing the two worlds in the way we live our life, and to become the steward of life that we are capable of being on all levels of living. The invisible world is talking to us all of the time, around the clock, throughout our life. We aren't interested, and pay no attention. If we cannot exploit it, use it to our advantage, benefit from it materially we don't have time for it, no matter what "it" is. Conscious awareness is the invention of the unconscious-- a hoped-for advance that would bring the unconscious to life in the life of individuals, enabling an exploration of the physical cosmos in sync with the interests of the unconscious. Wholeness coming to life throughout time and space-- dancing the dance of the ages, at one with the music of the spheres. The wonder of wonders, side-tracked by the idea of what's in it for us.
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07
Sit tight, stand pat, is the best advice you can get when it comes to seeking clarity and finding our way to the path through the heaving waves of the wine-dark sea. "Wait for the mud to settle and the water to clear." Stirring up more mud in searching for the way is not the way. Waiting, with the faith that everything becomes clear with time, is the preferred solution to not knowing what to do. Know that you don't know and wait to see what you do. You will likely either find yourself doing something that is a better fit than anything you could have thought up. Or, a shift will happen, and a door will open. Walk through! Poof! Like that goes the problem. In the meantime, sit tight, stand pat.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 