Shifting our orientation from getting what we want, when, where and how we want it to doing what is called for and needs to be done in each situation as it arises is a personal project within a universal, cultural, bias. We are born into a welcoming environment in which the common assumption is that the meaning of life revolves around having what we want. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” comes at us from every side. Wanting and having wants satisfied is the way the world does business. No one anywhere (Except for indigenous people everywhere) ask us how the Guide, Voice, Impulse, Leader within is directing us to do.
We are not taught about the importance of emptiness, stillness, silence (One thing, not three), or told to listen within for guidance through our life. It is all about wanting and having our desires fulfilled. What an empty, paltry, inadequate way of meeting our innate need to know and serve the essential core of our being. And we are empty and unfulfilled all of the time. And are never taught, urged, or expected to probe, explore, inquire, wonder who we are or what is ours to do. If we are lost or in a funk of depression, we are encouraged to buy, spend, amass and consume. To lose ourselves in diversion, distraction, denial. The culture devours its own in this way. We are given a life style that serves the economy and dismisses our soul. Our only way out of the downward spiral from birth to death is to find the Way that is the Way by seeing, hearing, under-standing, knowing what’s what and what’s happening and what’s called for here, now, and do what needs to be done with the gifts of our original nature, innate virtues (What we do best and enjoy doing most), inherent intuition and intrinsic imagination, allowing that to reveal to us who we are and what is ours to do in the time left for living.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 