Finding our way to The Way one situation at a time. I don't know how great it will be, but I expect it will be interesting, and I look forward to it going on past all reason because wonder is just that way. Are you coming or not?
Big Creek Fall — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Waterville North Carolina Access
The relationship between the flow of life and emptiness, stillness, silence is "right there," for all of us to experience any time.
The place of silence (emptiness and stillness) in the life of the species from the beginning of consciousness until now is a topic I would like to have explored by those in position to know what they are talking about.
Silence is the ground/source of everything we know. It all comes out of the silence (etc.). Paul spent three years "in the wilderness" working out an intellectual/logical/reasonable understanding of his psychic experience on the road to Damascus, and Christianity was born there.
The Psyche is the original experience with "God." All religion, all of everything, comes out of the silence (etc.). We live best when we live knowingly "out of the silence." Which is to say, "Out of connection with the Psyche."
There is only us and our Psyche. That is all there ever has been. Exploring our connection with "our" Psyche is all we have ever had to work with throughout time.
The aborigines' "Walkabouts," the Native Americans' "Vision quests," are explorations of the Psyche.
There is no one here but us. Nothing to explore but ourselves and "our" Psyche. And it has been this way forever.
The psychological (Psyche-logical) (Psychically-logical) element of Projection is the explanation/origin of all religion everywhere. The origin of all art and all science. Of civilization. Everything is the outcome of our trying to make sense of our experience with life and being.
There is no "objective reality." It is all subjective. It is all a reflection of our reflections of ourselves and our Psyche. We are the source of everything. The "out there" and the "in here" are one thing. We do not know where the line lies between "things" and "our experience of things." All that we have been told is nothing more than someone's effort to make sense of the world they live in. And war is always a war of projections clashing with projections.
Imagination is all there is, and it is a very deadly thing.
I'm retired, and still finding my way--but now, I don't have to pretend that I know what I'm doing.
I retired after 40.5 years as a minister in the Presbyterian Church USA, serving churches in Louisiana, Mississippi and North Carolina. I graduated from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, in Austin, Texas, and Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. My wife, Judy, and I have three daughters, five granddaughters, one great granddaughter, and a great grandson on the way, within about ten minutes from where we live--and are enjoying our retirement as much as we have ever enjoyed anything.
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Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 
Exquisite picture and powerful, meaningful words.
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