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"There is nothing to it but to do it" (Maya Angelou). And that's the hardest thing to do. Nothing. Try to do nothing. Try being empty in the right kind of way. How long can you sit in the stillness and the silence? How long can you wait? How long before "This isn't getting it done!" and on to something else? How long can you wait out having to do something, anything, but nothing? DON'T JUST DO SOMETHING! SIT THERE! You and Nothing. Here and Now. You and the awareness of nothing, here and now. "There's nothing to it but to do it." For as long as it takes to be good at it. The Jon Kabat-Zinn YouTube videos (The shortest ones first) will take your mind off needing to do something.
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If you can buy it with money, it isn’t worth having, and it won’t last long. Invest in the things money can’t buy. That is the way! Live your life in the service of things worth having! A life grounded in, and centered on, the things money can't buy is a life worth living. How many of those things do you have in your life? Live to have more, and to give them away! We can't have too much, too many, of the things money can't buy! Invest in them! Give them away! Relish and rejoice in them all every day!
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03
Dreams are projective devices useful for "reading" what's what with us and our life, and what we need to do about it. Carl Jung said, "There is within each of us another whom we do not know." Dreams are a way of communing with The Other Within. Think of The Other as our Original Nature, who we are naturally, as we would be before the world of normal, concrete, apparent reality inserts itself into our private personal world of the womb and the other side of the womb, shortly after birth. We are separated at birth from the world of inner truth and forced to find our way in the world of external truth. A tree doesn't have to be educated to live in the environment the tree is born into. It lives its entire life true to itself. A tree is always "thus come," "just as it is," in the world of external reality. It is much the same with lions and lambs, whales and gophers. They are individuals apart from their kind, but do not not experience (so far as we know) shame for being who they are, barring extrinsic physical deformities. Their intrinsic differences do not set them apart. We can't be left-handed in some cultures. We can't be female in some cultures. We have to learn to fit in in all cultures, denying who we are in favor of who we are supposed to be. Makes us crazy. All the while we are learning to wear the social mask, we are also carrying within "the face that was ours before we were born." When do we get to "wear" that face in public? It's a problem. Always we struggle with two identities, with not fitting in the world of normal, apparent reality. We have parents and culture to teach us how to live in the external world. No one says anything to us about being aligned with, in sync with, the internal world. We have to figure that out on our own. We have to meet and develop a proper relationship with The Other who lives within. Projective devices assist us in listening to The Other. The Other Within doesn't have language the way we have language. Symbols, intuition, instinct, hunches, nudges and realization are the operative forms of communication there. We have to learn the language of The Other Within. Dreams and symbols are projective devices that elicit/evoke chains/trains of association. This reminds us of that, connects us with that, leads us from here to there, bringing insight, connection and realization to life in transforming our world through the influence of The Other World, the natural world, the spiritual world that is our home, where we come from and to which we return as mind being welcomed by mind, as the moved being received by the mover. And the more of that world we can access in this world, the more resources we have to work with in maintaining our balance and harmony, our integrity and sincerity, our spirit, energy and vitality, and enjoying the wonder and radiance of that world within this world. And the better things are for all of us. World without end (That's The Other World I'm talking about). Amen.
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Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 