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?
Smiling for the Camers — The Low Country, South Carolina
Our way of being in the world ideally flows from our intuition/psyche, and not from our will/desire. When we live in the flow of life in this moment right now–in THIS here, now–we align ourselves with our inner gifts and our outer circumstances, and miracle happens. We do what is called for with what we have to work with and bring ourselves to life as a blessing and a grace upon the time and place of our living. We do that by getting out of the way with our idea, desire, will for what needs to be done, and simply do what needs to be done. To do that, we have to learn how to stand aside as a willing, desiring human and bring ourselves forth as an intuitive, aware human. Or, we could say, we have to will, desire ourselves to be intuitive, aware. And allow everything to fall into place around, flow from, there.
If we are going to take something on faith, why not take it on faith that we all are born having what we need to find what we need to do what needs to be done?
What do the doctrines and the dogmas and the dharmas and the sutras and the catechism’s have that beats just having what we need?
Why do people scare themselves into believing nonsense? Just because someone who doesn’t know any more than they know tells them to?
This world is crazy. Where would we go to find a place that makes sense? That anybody could see makes sense? I wonder if this is the dumbest planet in the Cosmos. I would hate to live on one any dumber.
Flower Arraignment — Pike Nursery, Charlotte, North Carolina
Living at one with the Tao is knowing intuitively, spontaneously arising from our understanding of the situation at hand and responding as needed in doing what is called for at that time, in that place, in the right way. When we are tuned into the situation hand, we respond appropriately, automatically, without thinking about it. Being right about what the moment is calling for is being right in terms of the spirit, vitality and flow of the moment. The moment–the here, now–is the heart of the Tao. What is being asked for here, now? What is called for? What needs to be done in response? Those who know, know. And the source of their knowing is their intuition coming to life in the situation at hand. We live to be aligned with our intuition, and to do what needs to be done in each situation as it arises. We do that simply by getting out of the way and doing what we know needs to be done.
The Sixth Edition is up on the Kindle Store on Amazon
I hope you won’t think I wasted my time, and I hope you won’t think you wasted your money (It only will cost you $2.50. That’s less that a cup of coffee at Starbucks).
I enjoyed this re-write more than any of them, and there have been many, and I expect that I will allow this one to be it for a while. It takes a lot of focused attention even to do a re-write, probably more than a new book does, and I am older than when I started (I think my first ebook was published in 2015, but I published a couple of paperbacks in the 2005 area (Remember “The Evolution of the Idea of God”?) and there was another, maybe “A Guide Book for the Spiritual Journey). And the joy at the heart of all the writing and re-writing (I have no idea how many books that actually amounts to, but probably into the 20’s, maybe 30,s, is that I haven’t had anything at stake in, or riding on, any of them. I do it with the Attitude of, “Here’s this,” on my way to the next one. This is in the spirit of Bill Hamilton’s friend Alan Stacell, who taught architecture at Texas A&M, but he was an artist at heart, and told Bill, as he (Stacell) was throwing canvasses he had painted into the dump at A&M, “I paint like a dog wags its tail.” Well, that is the way I write. The writing is the reward. If you read it fine, if you don’t fine. If you like it fine, if you don’t, fine. I’m already thinking about the next book (Probably another re-write, “The Way of the Buddha”).
And I think we all would be better off if we forgot about success, and making a name for ourselves, and just did what we love to do, what we are here to do–not to achieve anything more than doing it, and doing it well, according to our own standards of “well.” Doing what we love to do and doing it well is all the epitaph we need to leave behind.
Black eyed Susans — Pike Nursery, Charlotte, North Carolina
I am working on the 5th edition of my eBook “The Tao of Jesus,” on Kindle, and I am using Microsoft Word’s AI, Copilot, to do my proof reading, and putting a “clickable Table of Contents” together, cleaning things u (like what I call “Free Radicals” in the form of empty spaces and page breaks scattered throughout the manuscript. The AI experience has been quiet informative, learning as I go. For instance AI remembers nothing and is good only for this conversation right now. If I want to continue the conversation I cannot end the chat, I can only close things down while I go to bed, eat lunch, get my hair cut, etc. My computer can shut down, but the conversation has to remain open in oder that I can pick back up where we left off. I have lost a wealth of work, sending bits and pieces of the manuscript in for inspection, closing down the chat, and opening it up the next day thinking we were starting where I stopped. We were starting all over. Like nothing had ever gone on before. AI is linked to all the information there is, but. I have to know what question to ask to get to what I need. The experience has been more frustrating than helpful, but the “Clickable TOC” will be very nice. My experience of creating one manually with hyperlinks placed where they need to go was grinding things out and not snapping things into place. I will be glad to have it done and look forward to being free of having to be so exact in taking the steps that need to be taken. I’ll let you know when the deed is done.
Flower Arrangement 01 — Pike Nursery, Charlotte, North Carolina
Every time we lose the way, noise is to blame. Diversion, distraction, intrusion. Every time we return to the way it is through emptiness, stillness, silence. What disturbs the still water? Noise, confusion, complexity. Drop into the silence, etc. Take refuge in the emptiness, etc. It is the way to the way, and that makes it the way as well.
The experience of intuition merging with the external reality of time and place (“The here and now) of our existence creates the felt physical sense of magic and wonder which is generally interpreted as “The work of God.” Projecting onto an Invisible Other (That which has always been called ‘God'”), and creating religions replete with theology, creeds, doctrine, rituals, holidays, and holy wars, all well beyond the scope of anything intuition is capable of imagining and intending. When the personal and private goes public and corporate, things get quickly out of hand and out of control. As the history of the world exhibits for all who care to see.
Linvlle River Mirror –Linville Falls, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina
When Jesus said, “The Father and I are one,” he did not mean that exclusively for himself alone. Jesus also said, “The Kingdom of God is within you. Meaning all of you. Meaning everyone. He was saying, “The Father and you are one.” Now if you will do me the favor of removing everything you have ever heard that would discredit me for saying that and deny the truth of what is just said. If you will empty yourself of all the false doctrine that you have heard from the time of Jesus to right now, and if you will sit in stillness and silence free from the burden of the lies you have heard from everyone claiming to be Christians, so that you only know that Jesus said “The Father and I are one,” and “The Kingdom of God is within you,” if you will sit quietly with that, you will know that I am telling you the truth that you and God are one thing, that the Father and you are one. And I will tell you how you know that. You will know that intuitively. Your intuition knows that you and God are one. It has always been so and it will always be so. We are of God. We all are of God. And we know that is so intuitively, because our intuition is of God, and is God within us, and the power of Jesus is that he knew that, too, and said it out loud. Jesus is set apart from all other people, not because Mary became pregnant miraculously by the Spirit of God, but because Jesus was bold enough to know that he and God were one, and he knew that God is one with everyone, and he said “The Kingdom of God is within you.” His power was his being truthful. The truth was his power, and he said what needed to be said. And if you read the Gospels from this point of view everything will fall into place and you will understand what Jesus was saying and doing. Not because he died for our sins. The Garden of Eden was an old story that was not literally true. The Garden of Eden did not exist. It did not have latitude and longitude. It is a metaphor, imaginary. There was no forbidden fruit. There was no original sin. There was no fall. There was no need of redemption. There was no need for atonement. No one had to die to appease the wrath of God and save everyone from going to hell. We all are of God. We all are God. God is not separate from us. If you will sit quietly with this, you will know that it is so. You will know that you know intuitively that it is so. And we all can begin living out of the knowledge that God is one with us. And we can start living as though we are God with one another. We can be God to one another. And that will change everything. And when everything is changed The kingdom of God will be here, now. Right here, right now. Among us as it always has been–it has been spread upon the earth forever, as the Gnostic Gospels say, and no one has seen it, because no one knew they were God and no one treated each other as though they all were God, and so the Kingdom of God was concealed because no one knew they were God. We have always been God but did not know it. If you will sit with this quietly and listen to your intuition, which is God in you, in all of us, and always has been, you will know that it is so. And the Kingdom of God will come on earth when we treat one another as though we all are God, because that is true. We all are God.
Watkins Glen — Watkins Glen State Park, New York 2015
We tend to take our perspective seriously. “Hell, Jim,” he said, standing in his cotton field in Panola County, Mississippi, talking with me, his pastor at the time, about racism, “This ain’t how I SEE things! This is how things ARE!” His perspective wasn’t just his perspective–it was the TRUTH!!! “I know when it’s time to change the subject,” I said, and asked him how the current drought was impacting his cotton crop.
How do we get outside of/beyond our perspective in order to see ourselves seeing and know when to question our conclusions because we are projecting too much of ourselves into “how things are” to be able to distinguish facts from feelings about facts, and see that our seeing isn’t taking our feelings about things into account when we are talking about things we have a serious stake in?
We cannot talk about things that matter to us the way we can talk about things that don’t matter to us. We have to be able to distance ourselves from what we see in order to see what we are looking at with objectivity and accuracy. This is the way medical personnel have to see patients who are wheeled into emergency rooms everywhere. The cannot allow their feelings about the person to interfere with their ability to treat the person as an innocent human being who needs help. And how a doctor would have to excuse himself from treating an accident victim he, or she, was married to. The more we have at stake in the outcome of our interaction with what we are looking at, the less likely we are be to see objectively, impersonally.
There is much that we look at every day that we cannot see because of the stake we have in how we see certain things. Bias and prejudice skew perception by way of projection, and keep us from seeing what we look at with any reasonable degree of accuracy, because it matters to us that things ARE the way we take them to be.
And so, the need for copious amounts of emptiness, silence and solitude in which we might “just sit,” empty of all emotion, fear, anxiety, desire, interest, concern, etc., so that we might be entirely objective with nothing to gain or lose in our encounter with what arises of its own accord in the silence (etc.) to call us to action in the service of doing what is called for, when, where, how it needs to be done, as though we are a medical attendant in an emergency room tending whatever comes through the door in the right way, here, now.
Sunset Mirror — Stonington shoreline, Deer Isle, Maine
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.
Inner quiet is the solution to all of our problems today, any day, every day. Dropping into the silence and observing all things without reacting to anything, just looking, just seeing, just knowing, provides us with the perfect still point for moving in the direction of the most significant response to what is called for in every situation as it arises with right doing, right being.
Achieve silent perception and trust Intuition and Psyche to take it from there. Live relaxed in the company of Perception, Intuition and Psyche. There is nothing more to want or need. The most powerful threesome throughout history–producing right seeing, right knowing, right doing, right being–no matter what.
Dune Walker — Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley, California
The Four Pillars of Democracy are Liberty, Justice, Equality, Truth. Trump doesn’t care about, and much less stands for, any of them. And 77 million people voted for him. More than half of the people we pass by every day voted for him, and have no place in their life for the Four Pillars of Democracy. That puts Democracy in peril. More than half of us don’t care at all for Liberty, Justice, Equality, Truth. We cannot be counted on to care about the quality of life of fellow Americans nation wide. We are lost in distraction, diversion, denial, sex, drugs and alcohol. We need to sit in emptiness, stillness, silence and wait for the mud to settle and theh water to clear in order to know what’s what, what is called for and what needs to be done about it with the gifts of our Original Nature, Innate Virtues (The things we do best and enjoy most), Inherent Intuition, and Intrinsic Imagination. The future of the world and each of us depends on our knowing who we are and what we are about, and living in the service of those things every day for the rest of our life.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 