The New Dark Ages are at the gates. Jesus was helpless against those who would not see. Helplessness remains remains the case with willful blindness and self-righteous stupidity. There is nothing denial cannot deny. Idiocy has to play itself out, sometimes, over generations. It is not going to disappear just because it would be convenient if it did. Here to stay is more like it, at least through our lifetime. Changing the way we do business, and make our way through the world. Mindful awareness is an excellent practice for managing every circumstance of life. Take it up. Perfect it. Jon Kabat-Zinn's YouTube videos are not to be missed in this regard. Developing our relationship with the unknown Other within is crucial-- Carl Jung said, "There is in each of us, another, whom we do not know." Who, I might add, knows more than we do, and will be a helpful aid in developing our intuitive/instinctive side. We can improve our relationship with The Other by exploring our nighttime dreams, and understanding them to be a mirror of our current daytime world, saying, in effect, "This is how it is with you, what are you going to do about it?" Metaphor is The Other's language, so dying, for instance, in a dream isn't about our actual death, but about our need to "die" to some side of ourselves that is preventing/hampering our development as well-rounded, fully-functioning, human beings. This kind of "dying" is a call to grow up. We don't make any progress without growing up-- and progress is to be understood as balance and harmony, confidence and security, integrity and sincerity, laughter and well-being... To be connected with ourselves is to be firmly established in solidarity with our original nature and the innate virtues that are ours at birth. That is the Anchor Stone from which nothing can budge us. In tough with what is deepest, truest and best about us, we are more than a match for the ignorance and absurdities of these times, and find colleagues where we did not expect to find colleagues, and oases where we thought was only an empty and parched wasteland. It is always a help to discover we are not as alone as we thought we were. Lights in dark places point the way. May it always be so, throughout the New Dark Ages.
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Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 