jimwdollar

January 30-A, 2023

If we keep asking the same questions, we will keep getting the same answers. Pay attention to the questions you ask, noting how many remain the same over time. Things are the way they are because we are only allowed to ask the same questions. Every institution/structure limits the questions that can be asked aboutContinue reading “January 30-A, 2023”

January 29-B, 2023

The worst thing that ever happened to you can be the best thing that ever happened to you. The best thing that ever happened to you can be the worst thing that ever happened to you. Depending, of course, upon how you respond to what happens to you. How we respond to what happens toContinue reading “January 29-B, 2023”

January 29-A, 2023

What is the difference between having faith in something, and having an opinion about something? Between having strong faith, and having a strong opinion? Knowing in your heart you are right would apply to both. Having deep conviction would apply to both. Hearing it from someone else (including the Bible) would apply to faith, butContinue reading “January 29-A, 2023”

January 28-C, 2023

I ditched theology five years into the ministry, on the occasion of Ruth Sample’s death, and spent the next 35.5 years making sense of things without theology. The de-theologizing of religion was/is incredibly simple. Start with the basics: Your fingerprints. Your fingerprints, and your iris cones, and your original nature and your innate virtues/traits/characteristics (HereContinue reading “January 28-C, 2023”

January 28-B, 2023

There is mindlessness everywhere I look! Our only hope is being attentive to what is going on, and to what is called for, where, when and how! Clarity combined with courage and consciousness form a union unparalleled in the field of time. The world is a wasteland waiting for, as Joseph Campbell would say, “individualsContinue reading “January 28-B, 2023”

January 28-A, 2023

Our work can be an expression of our original nature and innate virtues/traits/character, and it can be what we do to pay the bills in order to serve/express/exhibit our original nature and innate virtues “in the background,” “on the side,” “in our spare time.” Too often, we have to “walk two paths at the sameContinue reading “January 28-A, 2023”

January 27-B, 2023

The older I get, the more sensitive to, aware of, impatient with, I become regarding intrusions, encroachments, incursions into my life and my preferred ways of doing things. For instance, commercial advertisements. And non-stop talkers. Non-stop talkers are at least accessible and I can break into their monologue with clarifying questions that give them pauseContinue reading “January 27-B, 2023”

January 27-A, 2023

Joseph Campbell said the path of maturity is that of “breaking out of the psychological bondage to the culture into a self-responsible authority with the courage to accept and express one’s own thoughts about one’s own life.” We are to become self-directed, self-propelled, self-sustaining human beings in our own right. How, here’s the thing aboutContinue reading “January 27-A, 2023”

January 26-B, 2023

All we need is a sounding board. We all need a sounding board. Someone with nothing at stake in us or what becomes of us, who can simply listen us to the truth of what’s what with us enabling clarity, bringing forth realization, being, for us, the vehicle of enlightenment, satori, awakening, knowing who weContinue reading “January 26-B, 2023”

January 26-A, 2023

We live best in the service of something that is greater than we are. We live best when we are dedicated to something, owned by something, belonging to something, possessed by something, with fealty to something, with liege loyalty and filial devotion to something… Truth, perhaps. Justice, Beauty, Balance and Harmony, Integrity and Sincerity, AContinue reading “January 26-A, 2023”

January 25-B, 2023

The easiest thing in the world is thinking it is about one thing when it is about another. Clarity is the foundation of a life worth living. And fooling ourselves, no–telling ourselves what we want to hear, which amounts to the same thing– is what we do best. Truth and clarity interfere with having ourContinue reading “January 25-B, 2023”

January 25-A, 2023

Being true to ourselves is living out of our original nature, expressing/exhibiting/serving our innate virtues/traits/characteristics, in rising to every occasion and meeting each situation as it arises as it needs/deserves to be met, doing in all the here/now’s what is called for then/there, when/where/how it is called for, and being ready to do it allContinue reading “January 25-A, 2023”