01
What is your foundational mode of operation, organizing principle, way of finding your way to the Way through the jungle? How do you go about living? Thinking or feeling? Primarily? I think (or feel) (I can't tell which most of the time) (So I don't know if I am Thinking/feeling, or Feeling/thinking) (But I think [or feel] that I am Feeling/thinking). I Feel/think that we shake out along thinking/feeling lines. There are thinking people who cannot feel, and feeling people who cannot think, and thinking/feeling or feeling/thinking people who can do both without consciously switching between the two (Or knowing which is which). For me, I tend to trust feeling more than thinking, and don't do much of anything until I know how I feel about it. Dr. Spock and I would make each other crazy. In no time. What is it time for NOW? Analytics has a hard time with that one. Instinct or intuition is already in the water, splashing around. I think/feel (feel/think), that our feeling brain knows best what to do, where to go, and our thinking brain knows best how to get there, and likes to think it knows why. I think/feel (feel/think) it doesn't matter why. If you tend toward Dr. Spock, you probably haven't made it this far in this little treatise, and if you know what I mean, you may be ahead of me, waiting for me to catch up.
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02
I tend to feel my way along, waiting to see what's what and what I do about it. I look out the window a lot, and wait for the next thing to come along. Hurry is not what I do best. These things write themselves one sentence--sometimes one word-- at a time. I don't know what I am going to say next. So, it is as much a treat for me, as it is for anybody, to see what I have to say. Which is to say, I don't have much time to waste in thinking about what I should say, or should be doing, perhaps instead of what I'm doing. I am 10 or so days away from ending my 76th year and stepping into my 77th year, so I don't have nearly as much time left as I had at the beginning. I could be frivolous then (But, I regret that I spent so much time figuring out what I do best, and too much doing things I had no business doing), and now I'm letting my interests pilot my boat on its path through the sea. My interests are narrowing down. My curiosity is taking the lead in determining what my interests are. And I am curious about fewer things, like practically nothing that is more than two hours away, because my physical ability to go there and come back is much less now than it was two years ago, and nothing like what it was seven years ago. So, there's that. I am curious about the inner world, the right way to do things, and the right things to do, which are determined/influenced by the context and circumstances of our life-- and cannot be imposed upon the context and circumstances in a "This is the Right Thing to do always, any how, no matter what!" kind of way. What is right, now depends upon what's what, now, because what's what governs what is called for, and anything might be called for, depending on what's what, and we have to be here, now, to know what that is, and being here, now, is one of the things I can do best, because that is well under two hours away.
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03
Martin Palmer said, "A path that can be discerned as a path is not a reliable path." Jesus is said to have said something similar with, "The spirit is like the wind that blows where it will." And Moses is said to have said, "It is not in heaven, that you should need to ask, ‘Who will ascend into heaven to get it for us and proclaim it, that we may obey it?’ And it is not beyond the sea, that you should need to ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to get it for us and proclaim it, that we may obey it?’ But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may do it." The path, the way of the spirit, the Taoist's "way of heaven," are not "out there" to be found the way we find a lost key, or a buried treasure, but are within, to be awakened and stirred to life when the conditions are right, and the situation/circumstances call them forth, and the time has come and "the fullness of time" is upon us for them to take their place in our life. And our place is to be ready, listening, watching, so that we may not miss the time of our awakening when it is at hand, because we do not know the day or the hour of our visitation when the door will open and the Path appears, like a white rabbit winking at us to follow it as it disappears around a corner. If we wait too long to take up the Quest, the moment passes, and the same old same old closes in upon us, because we did not know the time of our visitation. Which is the plight of those left to wail and lament in the outer darkness because they thought the wrong things were important, and missed the right things that were there (theirs) all along.
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Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 