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?
These two paragraphs are #131 and #132 in Zen Thoughts on my Published Works Blog on WordPress:
You know the things we know without knowing how we know? Be aware of that kind of knowing when you know it. Look closer. Sit with it in the silence. See what emerges from the stillness beyond the silence. You are in the presence of intuitive awareness, which goes beyond mindful awareness to the very essence of “mind.” To the foundation of “mind.” To the boundary separating Psyche and “mind.” To the experience of Psyche informing “mind.” Serving as at the ground of “mind.” Psyche becoming “mind.” At the place where we, ourselves, become cognizant of Psyche, Mind and Self. The three that are one. The Real Holy Trinity. No?
We are talking foundation. And flow. And Psyche. And presence. Psychic foundation, flow, presence. And our awareness of ourselves being aware of, cognizant of, Psychic foundation, flow and presence–of being one with Psychic foundation, flow and presence. Which is the same thing as being at one with the Tao. Aligned with the Tao. In accord with the Tao. Which is the same thing as enlightenment and awakening. And it all comes together before our eyes, here, now. Psyche, Flow, Presence, Knowing/Knowledge, Cognizance, Tao, Enlightenment, Awakening, Me and You, Here, Now. No?
Ballantyne Gingko Park — Charlotte, North Carolina
Being and remaining mindfully open to the present moment and what is happening here, now–and what is called for in meeting the moment as the moment needs to be met–is an automatic, spontaneous, realization akin to enlightenment and awakening in each moment that comes along. Knowing what’s what here, now and what the situation is asking us to do in response is as enlightened as anyone needs to be in any place at any time. And we can manage that just by dropping into the emptiness, stillness and silence and waiting for “the mud to settle and the water to clear.” Babies do it all the time. And cats and dogs and giant sequoias. They don’t think about it. They just know it by being open to it. Without wants and wishes, desires, cravings and aspirations getting in the way.
The Woman on a Black Horse 02–On a back road near Winston-Salem, North Carolina
The Woman on a Black Horse is my metaphor for my Intuition, the Psyche-Psychic source and center of my being. What’s yours? With this statement and this question, I am reforming religion as we know it and making it more personal and more reflective, meditative, mindful, vibrant and alive than the religion I am replacing with its theology, doctrine, dogma, beliefs about heaven and hell, sin, redemption, atonement, salvation, God, Jesus, the Bible, etc. ad nauseam. I am the proponent of a new reformation. Out with the old in with the new–or as Jesus said, “The old has passed away, behold the new has come!”
The new has come for me in the form/image of The Woman on a Black Horse whom I saw first riding with my wife and Tom Phillips, the high priest of photography guides in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park near Mexican Hat, Arizona. We were driving/being driven through the desert to Tom’s favorite photography sites when I saw coming toward in the sagebrush a Native-American woman on a black horse, whom I instantly recognized as The Photograph of the journey. I wondered if Tom would point her out but he didn’t and I did not request that he stop so that I might take the picture that needed to be taken. My hesitation was grounded in my uncertainty about two things, one the decorum of a beginner photography presuming to know more about the picture that needed to be taken than the Buddha of Photography in Monument Valley, and also the etiquette of a white man disrespecting the integrity and dishonoring the sacredness of the silence surrounding the woman on her journey taking care of her own private business. I did not know where the lines might be lying and did not want to impose my will upon the decorum of the situation at hand. Looking back, I should have asked Tom about the propriety of taking the photograph that was jumping up and down before me, waving its little hands, shouting, “What About ME? What About ME?” And I drove past leaving it untaken and haunting me with regret every day of my life since that moment. The Photo untaken. The albatross around every photographer’s neck all their life long. And the Lucky Charm chanting “Never Again” in our ear every time we see the photograph that needs to be taken, daring us to fail ever again to do what is called for in each situation as it arise and honoring it with doing the right thing in the right place at the right time in the right way AND GETTING THE PICTURE NO MATTER WHAT!!!
The Woman on a Black Horse goes with me wherever I go. My lifelong Psychic companion, guide, director, instructor and friend, to whom I owe everything in my photographic career and also my life, because it spills over into everything, don’t you know? Becoming what needs to be said, what needs to be done, what needs to happen, what is called for everywhere, all of the time, beckoning me to action in the service of what needs to happen, here, now, no matter what.
And she has become the source and ground/foundation of the New Religion that I am espousing here, now, urging you to join me in worshipping and working for The Woman on the Black Horse as she calls us to wake up, see, hear, understand what’s what and what is happening, what is going on, and what is called for here, now in every moment of every situation from now until our death, begging us to respond to what is called for with the right action in the right way and the right time and the right place which, I am here, now, to tell you that is all Jesus was doing when he walked among the people doing his thing in ways that it needed to be done and woke them up and transformed their lives, even though the Church of Rome and all churches ever since have shamefully applied their own spin to in a way that pays the churches way through the world with tithes and offerings and wealth and privilege being as they now are the only path to heaven there is and who wouldn’t to whatever they are told to do with their personal salvation on the line?
The new reformation is about just you and me and our Psyche–The Woman on a Black Horse, who knows what we need to know about what’s what and what needs to be done here, now with the gifts that are ours to give, like the gift of seeing what needs to be done with the gifts of our original nature, our innate virtues–what we do best and enjoy doing most (Which we often do not do, like I did not say, “Can we stop so I can take that picture?”), our intrinsic intuition, our inherent imagination, etc. amounting to all we need to meed the situation as it arises and do there what needs to be done, where, when and how it needs to be done, always and forever–for the sheer joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it, no matter what. As Flip Wilson might want me to say: WELCOME TO THE CHURCH OF WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW! Amen! May It Be So!
Lake Chicot Mirror — Lake Chicot State Park, Ville Platte, Louisiana
You know Jesus’ instructions to “Pray always”? He was talking about creating a regular, on-going, uninterrupted conscious presence with our Psyche. Psyche is that which has always been called “God,”–especially before theology, doctrine, heaven and hell, etc. Which is to say, before the Church of Rome invented theology, doctrine, heaven and hell, etc. in the four hundred years between Jesus’ death and the closing of the canon of scriptures we call “the Bible,” when the Church of Rome declared it to be all the Bible we would ever need in 392 CE.
Before then it was always Psyche that we experienced which the Church of Rome would call “God.” Psyche is the foundational source of our spiritual knowledge, which is to say knowledge beyond our physical senses.
I wrote this as the 114th entry in “Zen Thoughts” over in my Published Works Blog:
Carl Jung put Psyche forth as the guiding force in our life, whose purpose with us is to assist in our aligning ourselves with the Tao, with the swings and flow of our life as we develop into the self we are built/called/ment to be. Jung’s ideas about “individuation” is about us becoming who we are, the person we are born to be, “the antithetical self,” as opposed to “the Primary Self, or as he calls them, the Antithetical Mask,” with “the Primary Mask” with the “Primary Mask” being who we are supposed to be/expected to be by parents and society, and “the Antithetical Self/Mask,” being the person we authentically are called/ment to be. Our place is to know and be who we are. Jung’s idea of enlightenment/awakening would be knowing and being who we are, and his word, “individuation” was his idea of our task in being alive, that is to say, becoming who we are. And Psyche is with us to assist us in the work to live out of our true identity in our life. And I am interested in knowing how best we might do that in the time left for living. Jung would say we do that by attending our dreams and our symptoms and the swings and flow of our life in light of doors opening and shutting and events happening and opportunities coming our way, and where we are lucky and where we are not lucky with the trends and tendencies of our life over time.
The work to recover/develop/tend our relationship with Psyche, or God without the theology and doctrines, will be a renewal of our spiritual life requiring us to work out a partnership with Psyche in knowing what is called for and doing what needs to be done, when, where, and how it needs to be done, or as the Taoists would put it, “Doing the right thing at the right time in the right place and right way.” Without doctrines and theology to tell us what that is to be.
If you could be you for the rest of your life, what would you do?
If I could be me for the rest of my life I would live for things like this:
Today checking out at the grocery store, the young woman at the cash register (And with me that’s between 18 and 30) asked me if I was ready for Thanksgiving. I laughed and said, “I just go where they tell me to go and do what they tell me to do.” We laughed together and I asked her if she were ready for Thanksgiving and she said, “I just go where they tell me to go and do what they tell me to do.” More laughter, and I said, “We have the plan for making it through the holidays.” I live for this kind of interchange.
And this: At lunch this past week I saw a woman with her, probably two year old daughter in her arms waiting for a table, and the joy those two women were having with each other was delightful. They had it right and I hope they keep it up for the rest of their lives, and I’m confident that they will.
And this: Coming out of a different restaurant at lunch I watched a, say 6 year old boy holding hands with his, say, 4 year old sister, skipping from the restaurant to their car.
My days have enough of these kinds of experiences tucked away in them for me to be conscious of looking for them somewhere in each one. It is a wonderful way of inserting expectant wonder into the days that are left to me.
Carl Jung would tell us that our role in life is not to be the Buddha, and it is not to be the Christ, but that it is to be simply who we are. Jung’s complete focus was what he called “Individuation,” being who we are to be. He talked about “”The Primary Mask,” which is the identity, the role we are told to play by parents and culture, who we ought to be, who we are ‘spozed to be according to the authorities, which are whomever we recognize as having authority over us and who we live to please. And The Antithetical Mask, who we are when no one is looking, the authentic self whom we are born to be.
Here are some Jungian quotes along these lines:
“It is the individual’s task to differentiate themselves from all the others and stand on their own feet.”
“The development of personality means fidelity to the law of one’s own being” — Carl Jung (“Fidelity to the law of one’s own being” is being true to our Original Nature and living that truth out within the context and circumstances of our life. – jd) (Buddha nature is our original nature, but we each are one with ourselves, just as Buddha was one with himself—but not one with all selves in an indistinguishable mass of humanity, or being. “We are one but not the same one,” —author unknown
“Particular care and attention must be given to that delicate plant ‘individuality’ if it is to grow and develop.”
“At bottom, there is only one striving, namely the striving after your own being.” — Carl Gustav Jung (All living things seek to become who/what they are—to bring ourselves into existence within the time and place of our living. – jd
Jung’s view of the Psyche is that side (or the foundation) of ourselves whose place is to call us to wake up and be who we are throughout our lives, coming to us in the way of dreams, visions, symptoms, events and circumstances, trends and experiences, coincidences, chance occurrences, the drift and flow of life throughout our life, and things that happen causing us to wonder if someone is trying to tell us something (Someone probably is: Our Psyche, Jung would say).
We have the rest of our life to workout who we are going to be in the time left to us, and what we are going to do, how we are going to live in the service of what we take to be our authentic self, whom our Psyche would be proud of us for being. I cannot think of a better way to spend our remaining days upon the earth. Good luck to us all in that undertaking!
It is up to us to do what we can with what we have to work with. I say, “Take it to the silence, no, take it to the stillness beyond the silence. And wait for some compelling urgency to rise up as the mud settles and the water clears, and call you to enter the field of action with a mission in hand to do what needs to be done there, when, where and how it needs to be done, with the gifts of your original nature, inherent intuition, intrinsic virtues–the things you do best and enjoy doing most–and innate imagination, here, now, to atone for and redeem all that has gone before to the extent that is possible, and make things more like they ought to be than they are, in each situation as it arises, throughout the time left for living.”
If that seems too much for you, just maintain your relationship with what resides in the stillness beyond the silence, and you will be just fine through all of the circumstances that come your way, doing what can be done with what you have to work with, knowing that no one can do better than that. Not Jesus. Not Buddha. Not nobody. Not no how.
Ballantyne Ginkgo Park — Charlotte, North Carolina
The power of perspective cannot be overstated. How we see what we look at makes all the difference. And how we see when we look at our seeing–at what we see and how we evaluate it, so that we evaluate our evaluations–is the most important place to examine our perspective regarding how we are seeing what we look at.
No one sees independently of all we have seen up to now. What we see tends to depend on what we have seen, and is validated by how we have seen what we have seen. It is not often that what we see here, now invalidates or calls into question how we have seen what we have seen in the past. We tend to see today how we saw yesterday, so we are seeing the same things in the same ways all our life. This is like have, say, one day of experience repeated every day from that day forward. This is particularly so if where we are living does not change over time. We see everything as we have always seen it and do not grow one bit in our ability to evaluate our seeing over time. So that having fifty years of experience is not at all the same as having one year of experience repeated fifty times–which is the way it is in so many places around the world.
Where do we learn to question what we assume to be so? What we take for granted? What we believe to be the case? When do we ever see differently? How can we be sure that we are seeing at all? Or 1 tenth of what is available to be seen? Particularly if we label what we look at the same way over time we never develop our capacity to see the people and things that are with us. That being the case, there is no way that the world we live in could ever be much different-in-a-good-way than it is.
Glade Creek Mill — Babcock State Park, Clifftop, West Virginia
Wanting, desiring, fearing, buying, spending, amassing, consuming, having to have, acquiring, striving, pushing, wanting… When does it stop? When do we sit quietly, take stock, see what we are doing? Know what’s what and what’s happening and what is called for in each situation as it arises and do that when, where and how it needs to be done no matter what, using the gifts of our original nature, our inherent intuition, our inherent virtues (The things we do best and enjoy doing most) and our intrinsic imagination? Wanting, etc, takes up all our time, consumes our energy, commandeers our thoughts, robs us of our life and leaves us in the company of the wrong kind of emptiness with the likes of Adam and Eve. No?
Beech Tree Spring — New Garden Friends Woods, Greensboro, North Carolina
When I threw out theology all those years ago, I had to replace it with something that could serve as the core ground of existence, the “rock solid foundation” of who we are and what we are about, the Source of Life and Being. Initially, I referred to the bedrock of all that is “That Which Has Always Been Called God,” which I thought of as being “before and beyond the God of theology.” I have narrowed this over time and now think of the Source and Sustaining Force of Life and Being as the Psyche, or the Psychic Source of Life and Being.
“Psyche” and “Psychic” are terms that Carl Jung used exclusively to refer to “That which can be experienced but not understood, and that which can be understood but not explained” (R. D. Laing’s term), and which increasingly are terms used to refer to the unconscious, or that area of our experience which we are not conscious of directly but “see” evidence of in our dreams, premonitions, extrasensory perceptions, etc. The trend popularized by Alan Watts of thinking of consciousness as the root cause of physical existence at work throughout the universe, or cosmos, is a companion theory along with Psyche as alternative ways of comprehending the origin of life in ways that supplant the God of theology (Which was invented by the Church of Rome, now the Roman Catholic Church) during the 400 years between Jesus’ execution and the closing of the bible to any additional scriptures in 392 CE).
However we choose to think about the origin of existence, simply sitting quietly, empty of thoughts, emotions, memories, etc., and opening ourselves to the experience of silence and what may be stirring to life itself in the stillness beyond the silence, the adventure of being alive takes on a powerful new meaning as we imagine the possibilities and the paths that open themselves to us free from the burdens and restraints of theology and all of the things we must not allow ourselves to think, or say, or ask and step into new opportunities for thinking and being.
I have posted a work in progress on my WordPress Blog, “Jim Dollar’s Published Works,” with the title, “Zen Thoughts.” An internet search should bring it up. It will sound a lot like you have heard from me already.
We are on our own when it comes to living a life worth the effort, and the older I get, the greater the effort on all levels. The compromises and trade-offs make walking to the mail box more of a chore than it once was, and just sitting in this scene and those like it becomes preferable to walking through them taking pictures.
Absorbing the wonders. Relishing the joys. Becoming one with the beauty here, now, and being in no hurry to move on, move on, make the moment more of a treasure than they ever have been. I sit enjoying the breeze beneath a Carolina blue sky, and see no reason to move on, move on.
I slow every day down to my speed in this way. Taking my time to see what I’m looking at, and hear what I’m listening to, and taste what I’m eating (The amazing apple cobbler I made yesterday with lactose-free ice cream qualified for the highlight reel) are the kind of things I’m talking about when I say we are on our own when it comes to living a life worth the effort.
Looking closer, feeling deeply, absorbing the value of each moment, not allowing life to slip through our hands without intense delight at the experience of being alive to this here, this now throughout the day every day. And there is always the wonder of the music I’m in the mood for coming through my ear buds thanks to YouTube at any point in the day.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 