jimwdollar

May 12-B, 2023

Living well is about alignment, accord. Integrity, sincerity, spontaneity. One with how things need to be, inner with outer. Being aligned with your core and the flow of life/vitality day to day. Joseph Campbell like to say, “We know when we are on the beam, and when we are off it.” Being on the beamContinue reading “May 12-B, 2023”

May 12-A, 2023

How far away from who we are can we live without developing symptoms, incurring the wrath of the neglected life and being lost in the wasteland of endless discontent? And, when we are born into a cultural and social ecosystem which denies there is an Axis Mundi, or “center pole/axis,” or “essential identity,” for eachContinue reading “May 12-A, 2023”

May 11-B, 2023

What’s your point? What are you here for? Why are you here? What are you doing here? Your point is to laugh at these questions, and on on about your business without caring what your point is. What’s the point of a moose? Of a daffodil? Of a dew drop? Of a snow flake? OfContinue reading “May 11-B, 2023”

May 11-A, 2023

Every day, we seek the silence, the emptiness, the stillness, out of which awareness and clarity come. With awareness and clarity, we know what’s what and what is called for in response to it in each situation as it arises. Then, it is only a matter of doing what needs to be done, when, whereContinue reading “May 11-A, 2023”

May 10-B, 2023

Awareness and clarity are the solutions to all of our problems today and every day. Seeing is knowing is doing is being is looking is seeing is knowing… We look but don’t see because we don’t want to see, because seeing has implications for us and the way we want things to be. Those whoContinue reading “May 10-B, 2023”

May 10-A, 2023

Circumstances give rise to circumstances– an ancient Taoist principle that is the foundational law of the universe. There is no static way of being. Everything is in motion, ebbing and flowing, dancing, singing, echoing the eternal AUM of existence, whether inert or vital, just being is to be moving, away from something, toward something, carriedContinue reading “May 10-A, 2023”

May 09-B, 2023

One of my problems with theology is its readiness to refuse all questions that cannot be answered by taking every assertion on faith. “This is so because I take it on faith,” is a declaration demanding that everyone within hearing distance of the speaker walk away. Intellectual inconsistencies become “great paradoxes” that have to beContinue reading “May 09-B, 2023”

May 09-A,2023

We can’t help how we see things. How we feel about things. How we think about things. But, if we work at it, we can see that we cannot help how we see things. We think that how we see things is how things are. And the discrepancy between how we see things and howContinue reading “May 09-A,2023”

May 08-B, 2023

Meister Eckhart said, “The final leave-taking is leaving God for God.” The God we leave is the God of the doctrines and dogmas, the creeds and catechisms, the theologies and the debates, the sermons and the Sunday school lessons… The God we leave God for is the Transcendent reality beyond all discourse, logic, reason andContinue reading “May 08-B, 2023”

May 08-A, 2023

Asking the questions that beg to be asked and saying the things that cry out to be said are the foundation of realization. If we aren’t digging, digging, digging into all the assumptions, commonplaces, expectations, things taken for granted, sacred presumptions, and holy ground, within and without, we are going to serve the same oldContinue reading “May 08-A, 2023”

May 07-B, 2023

Let come what’s coming, let go what’s going, and let that be that. That is pretty much how turtles and giant sequoias do it. And moose. And opossums. Human beings, not so much. We have ideas of how things ought to be that make it difficult to accommodate ourselves to how things are. We wantContinue reading “May 07-B, 2023”

May 07-A, 2023

It is only a matter of knowing what’s what and doing what needs to be done about it in each situation as it arises. That is harder than it should be because we keep getting in the way. Remember Adam and Eve? The Garden of Eden metaphor plays out times everybody on the planet andContinue reading “May 07-A, 2023”