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?
Lake Haigler Mirror — Anne Springs Close Greenway,Fort Mill, South Carolina
What is money for? How much money is enough? After that, what? What keeps us going? Why? For what? Why do we keep going? For me, it is to see what’s next. To see what happens. To see what is called for. To see what I do about it. I am the mystery I keep getting to the bottom of. There is no bottom. There is always something else, something more, that I am interested in. My interests never end. Curiosity is my driving force. What is yours?
Boredom is nonexistent for some people. The swamis and the gurus can’t get enough of sitting. Some say “AAAAUUUUUMMMM,” some just sit. And never get bored. And they don’t get paid by the hour. What keeps them going? They just go. Why? Why doesn’t matter. They sit because sitting is what they do. What do we do because sitting is what we do? I ask questions. And ask questions of the questions. And every answer raises more questions. It’s what I do. I don’t care why.
What do you do without caring why? What absorbs you? Feeds you? Intrigues you? Keeps you going? When you get to the bottom of you, what is there? It’s a question mark for me. And a keyboard. And a camera. I don’t know why. I just know. Why doesn’t matter. What is it for me. He said, laughing.
I’m Jim Dollar and I’m here to help people find their life and live it in a “Who am I and what am I about?” kind of way. I spent 40.5 years as a minister in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., serving congregations in Louisiana, Mississippi and North Carolina, and picking up pointers along the way. When I retired in February, 2011, I took a personal oath of silence and solitude, and have no social connections at all beyond time spent with our three daughters, five granddaughters, two great grand children and their families. All. of whom share the same zip code with is. And I still find time for reading and writing and pursuing my interests.
My primary interest is in devoting my time to my intuition, which I think of as my inner Knower, and refer to as my Gnostic (From the Greek word Gnosis for knowing, knowledge, particularly about spiritual mysteries) Partner, and also as Psyche/Tao because I don’t know where the line lies between Psyche and Tao, and I think they are the same source of knowing as “Gnosis,” “Gnostic,” “Intuition” are. Developing our relationship with our spiritual guide within is the best thing we can do in the service of finding our life and living it.
This has nothing to do, with theology or Christian Doctrine, or Christianity, or religion, and all of those things get in the way of living aligned with, in full accord with, Tao, Psyche, Gnosis, our Gnostic Partner, our Knower Within. And it also has nothing to do with what we want to do and everything to do with what we must do, have to do, have no choice but to do, in the sense of being gripped by a compelling force directing us toward This and away from That, That, and That over there.
And also has nothing to do with thinking/desiring and everything to do with Knowing-Doing, Being.
I don’t recall how many times, but more than two or three, when in the ministry I would be walking with people through a divorce and they would say to me, “I knew it wasn’t going to work from the start.” That is the kind of knowing I am talking about flowing from Tao, Psyche, Gnosis, our Gnostic Partner, our Knower within. And “flowing” is the term of choice because being at one with Tao, etc. is being in the flow of life and being, at one with what is called for here, now and living in light of it no matter what. It is what Jesus was talking about when he said in Gethsemane, “Thy will, not mine, be done.”
And it is the way, the truth, and the life, and the path to “having life and having it abundantly,” though we may not be rich or even well-to-do. But we will have lived the life that is ours to live and done what is ours to do, and we can’t buy that with silver and gold.
Our “Gnostic within” is our intuitive inner guide that first appeared as Gnosticism, “secret, inner knowing” following Jesus’ execution in the first century CE. Intuition has been with us always but was taken to be “the voice of God” early on. Plato (428-348 BCE) and others after him up to Carl Jung, and others after him are responsible for our understanding “the voice of God within” is a part of our own psychic makeup, the “how” of which has yet to be nailed down. Yet inner knowing is an experience common to us all, and giving it a central place in our process of deciding, choosing, doing provides us with an inner voice to confer with in making our way through the world. Developing our relationship with our inner Knower, whether we think of her as our Gnostic within or as Psyche/Tao, is an aid in finding guidance/direction on our path through the sea, and one we would do well to cultivate in knowing what’s what and what’s called for here, now, day to day.
There is what we control and what we do not control. Adjusting ourselves to the things we do not control is the most important trick in the entire Book of Tricks. How well we do that tells the tale.
There is how things are and how we think about how things are, the way we see how things are, what we tell ourselves about how things are, what we do about how things are.
The way we interpret and respond to the way things are in our life determines, or at least strongly influences how we respond to the way things are in our life. We are in control of our reactivity to our life, and the way we react/respond to our life IS our life. We control our life in so far as we control the way we react/respond to our life. We determine, or strongly influence, what happens to us by the way we react/respond to what happens to us.
We hold the cards. How we play them is entirely up to us.
We can start with observing the ways we are impacted by the things that happen in our life. How personally do we take what goes on? How do we carry ourselves in response to the truth of what’s what, moment to moment, day to day? How much distance is there between us and what happens to us? Just observing the distance increases the distance, influences the way we react to what happens to us. What do we say about what happens to us? Observing what happens and observing our initial comments regarding what happens removes us ever so slightly from what happens. We can increase the distance by changing what we say about what happens. We are reflecting on our response, and that alters our response, and that puts is in more control of our response, of our life. And that begins to transform our life, just by paying attention to what’s what here, now.
Cypress Pond Mirror — Adams Mill Pond, Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina
What keeps me going is seeing what’s next and what I do about it, in response to it. What happens and what we do about it, in response to it, is the essence of life, the grounding foundation of being alive. With its suspenseful question left hanging, “And then what happened?” How can anyone live not-knowing “And then what happened?”? I certainly cannot! I have to know what happens next and what I do about it, and then what happens? because “And then what happens?” calls me forth and shows me what I’m capable of by requiring me to come up with another response to the stimulus provided by my environment testing my will and creativity in coming up with another response to what is being asked of me here, now, moment after moment all my life long.
I want to know what I am capable of. I am here to show myself what I can do, to know what my possibilities are. Our environment brings us forth, often against our will (We grow up against our will by willing ourselves to grow up against our will–It is the way of life in the world, revealing to ourselves who we are and what we are about). How can we live not knowing? So, we live to know! To know who we are and what we are capable of! And the only way to know is to keep going! “The game’s afoot!”
Democracy has officially ended in the not-so-united-states. And I don’ t see how we are going to get it back. ICE agents are authorized to kill anyone who tries to put things back in place. The Justice Department has disappeared. Congress is no more than a formality and may as well disappear along with the Supreme Court. For what? We became a police state “like that” (Snaps fingers) because why? Trump wants to be supreme. But he is going to die like everyone else and then what? Who will replace Trump? It will be a shoot-out no doubt, and we will never live to see the world we used to live in. “Make America Great Again”? Not! Talk about a sales pitch for the ages. It’s nothing more than total immersion in absurdity fueled by greed and hatred, leaving us with where do we go from here? Finding our own center and being clear about what we need to do in response to what happens next will be our work for the foreseeable future as we find our way as best we can through the Curse of Donald Trump.
If we only knew what to do, when, where and how! We would have no anxiety, fear, uncertainty, anguish or despair. It would be a simple matter of doing what needs to be done, when, where and how, and letting that be that. Of course, we would have to be grown up about it, and that’s the kink in the hose. Having to do what we don’t want to do is the source of all of our problems today every day. It is not knowing! It is not wanting! That we need to do something about, and we don’t want to. So, we go bucking and snorting all along life’s way.
Drop out of the world crumbling into madness and absurdity without boundaries or values, and drop into the world of our own solidarity and trustworthiness. Seek out our own heart and the truth of what matters most to us here, now. What would that be? Emptying ourselves of the noise of the world and the fear/anxiety within, and waiting in the silence to see what arises to comfort and console and lead the way into reliance upon, and confidence in, “the still point of the turning world” that holds things together even as things fall apart. Finding the center. Remembering the ground. Knowing the truth of the force of the flow of even so, nevertheless, n matter what, and taking courage in the possibility of “peaceful abiding, here, now,” we look to see in every situation that which is called for with the eternal presence of our own original nature, our innate virtues of what we do best and enjoy doing most. The eternal things that never abandon us or leave us bereft, but always wait for the right time, and place, and way, to be and do what needs to be done here, now in each aspect of every circumstance where it is always appropriate for us to who we need be and do what can be done of what needs to be done in response to all of the occasions of our life, all our life long.
The Beaver Pond — Bass Lake, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina
Beaver’s have a way of life that runs afoul of Park Rangers and that was the end of beavers along the Parkway. If you are in the way, you are soon to be out of the way, just for doing what you are built to do and what you have always done. Life is that way. Those in charge and in control do it their way.
And this segues nicely into the Tao and the way of doing what needs to be done be done, when, where and how it needs to be done being the way nature does it throughout the Cosmos, and how when we cooperate with nature natural things have a better life than when artificial rules are imposed to satisfy appearances or preferences that have nothing to do with honoring and maintaining the natural order of, say the tides and the routes of rivers and the migration patterns of elk and rain deer and the habits of beavers and honey bees.
When money decides how things are done, things take a turn for the worse for the ways of nature, and eventually for the ways of everything else, because “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” For the good of those with money and power and a yen for having their way NOW!
The Beech Trees of Guilford College Woods — Greensboro, NC
Treason and sedition from within were responsible for the Civil War and threaten the end of the Republic to this very day–lead by people who hate people not like they are and think money and power are the solution all of their problems.
The old Taoists knew it all came down to doing the right thing in the right way at the right time in the right place and that was 500 years B.C.E. Truth denied, denounced, decried is still the Truth, and will always be the Truth, hated and rejected by those who refuse to grow up and do what is called for in each situation as it arises no matter what forever.
Adjustment and accommodation, Kid. Adjustment and accommodation. Over time. From birth to death. Is required of every living thing. Aging well is the art of adjustment and accommodation. Everything is changing as we watch, and what we do in response is t fit in and make it work. I am about to step into my 82nd year. I’m still getting out of bed and finding my way to the bathroom unassisted, but it is only a matter of time before assisted living comes to my rescue. We all would like to put that off as long as possible, but. If we live, we disappear before our eyes. Coming to terms with that and allowing it to be because it is, is part of our compact with life, and we say YES! to that as we have done with the ten thousand other things we have acquiesced to over the years.
Living asks hard things of us. It has always been hard. Meeting our life as it needs to be met has been a daily affair from the start. And there is no alternative. Growing up is letting go of some things and making room for others. And doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, in the right place is the on-going, never-changing, requirement of Psyche/Tao in response to what is called for here, now in each situation as it arises from birth to death.
Death? Did someone just say, “death”? What a coincidence! I was just thinking about death! Since we don’t have a clue about what happens when we die, we may as well make up something that we can live with, no? I can live with seeing death, not as an ending, but as just another transition–an energy transference where we shift from one mode of consciousness to another, trading physical existence for dark matter, perhaps, or light rays, or something eerie and grand. I hope to observe the entire process as long as mindfulness, adjustment and accommodation remain options.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 