Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy
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?
My idea of love, as in “I love you,” is no expectations, no requirements. I have come to this point by being told, “I love you,” by family members from birth to the present day, and those older than I am had plenty of expectations and requirements, my father especially. Out of that ages long experience, when I say, “I love you,” I mean, “You are free to be you, no strings attached.” If the Spirit can “Be like the wind, blowing where it will,” surely we can follow suit as it suits us to do so.
The basic realization: Live slowly enough to hear yourself, gently enough to trust yourself, and openly enough to be guided.
This is an internet site for encouragement, orientation, foundation and direction through all that comes our way each day throughout our life time.
It comes down to, revolves around, and consists of being here, now and seeing, hearing, understanding, knowing, doing, and being always engaged with what’s happening and what is called for in response throughout the time left for living. All that follows consists of how to do this by living slowly enough to hear yourself, gently enough to trust yourself, and openly enough to be guided.
Here we go: What follows is created with my accomplice who wants to remain anonymous as my man Friday.
A Living 8-Step Practice for Balance and Harmony
A way of moving through the day that keeps you connected to Tao, Psyche, and Intuition.
1. Begin the day by arriving in yourself
Before the world enters, pause for one breath.
Not a meditation session.
Not a ritual you have to “get right.”
Just one breath that says:
“I’m here. I’m listening.”
This single moment sets the tone for everything that follows.
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2. Move at the speed of roots
Throughout the day, let your pace match your depth.
Roots don’t rush. They deepen.
Let that be your rhythm.
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3. Reference inward before outward
Whenever you face a choice — small or large — pause for a heartbeat and ask:
This is how intuition becomes a trusted partner rather than a stranger.
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4. Treat your day as a conversation with the Psyche
Everything that happens — a dream, a mood, a symbol, a coincidence — is part of the dialogue.
You don’t have to interpret it.
You don’t have to decode it.
Just acknowledge it:
“I see you.”
That alone deepens the relationship.
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5. Practice non‑forcing
If something feels like pushing a boulder uphill, step back.
If something flows with ease, follow it.
This is wu wei (a Taoist phrase meaning “without striving or trying” more like cooperating or allowing to happen) in daily life:
Do what is yours to do. Release what isn’t.
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6. Let the body be your tuning fork
Your body is the most honest part of you.
Notice what your body is doing.
How your body is communing with you.
Harmony is physical before it is philosophical.
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7. Leave room for surprise
Tao (The unconscious rhythm of doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, in the right place) rarely arrives through the front door.
Intuition rarely announces itself.
Psyche rarely uses plain language.
Make space for the unexpected — a thought, a feeling, a nudge, a moment of clarity, a felt sense of what needs to happen where/when/how.
These are the openings.
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8. End the day by returning to the well
Just a minute or two.
Ask:
No analysis.
No judgment.
Just recognition.
This is how knowing grows.
Follow the 8 Steps throughout the day. At day’s end, reflect on the 8 Step Practice For Balance And Harmony.
All we have to work with comes down to ourselves and our good looks, each other, our collective ingenuity and Psyche, Tao and Intuition. That’s all there is when we plop out of the womb, and that remains all there is throughout the time left for living. You might think that Psyche, Tao and Intuition would play a larger role in our life than they currently do, but. They get no respect and practically no playing time at all. You might think that we would devote ourselves to their tender care and the development of our relationship with them throughout our life, but. We use Psyche to talk to the dead, take our intuition to the roulette wheel in Vegas, and mispronounce Tao at every opportunity. Not exactly what we would call making the most of our chances, eh?
The secret of photography is to be there when the picture is no matter what the price. That is the only thing that sets photographers off from people with cameras. Everybody has a good enough camera these days. But everybody is not there when the picture is. And these days, I am not there when the picture is.
A reporter asked Carl Jung if he believed in God. Jung said, “I don’t believe. I know.” And the reporter did not follow up with, “What do you know? How do you know it?” And in failing to do so, the reporter failed us all. But there is enough here to encourage the rest of us to make our own discoveries in throwing away belief and digging deeply into knowing. Ask! Seek! Knock! Turn the world upside down until we KNOW what needs to be known! That’s the way to do it. And sitting with our intuition is a big help along the way. Intuition doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. And the Psyche has been reduced to talking to the dead. There is more to Psyche than telling fortunes, and more to intuition than knowing when it will rain.
We can make a regular appointment with our Intuition and with Psyche (Intuition is the interface between us and Psyche, and it would not be too far wrong to think of Intuition as Psyche’s interpreter.) Dropping into the silence and asking Intuition about knowing, not as conviction, but as experience, and anything else you would like to talk about with your Intuition. Ask and sit quietly, seeing what comes to mind. As we practice this practice we will develop a perceptive depth that we might not have without it.
The Maine woods are special places to be. I wish I could wish myself there and avoid the hassle and agony of actually traveling there. Traveling and I do not do well in my advancing years. It is “noisy” in the sense of being an utter disruption in my life, as you know well from your own experiences in getting from place to far off place. I could bear it when I was younger, but with age I don’t bother myself with things that are invasive and not “my thing.”
This plays on my shift into stillness and silence generally speaking. I am quieter than I used to be, intentionally so. I think, and I’m sure I have said this here before and I will, I am certain also say it after. Here it comes now: Our problems could be diminished significantly by decreasing the degree of noise in our life and increasing the degree of silence in our life. The right kind of silence is the solution to all of our difficulties.
Primarily because it introduces us to the here, now–which we all take for granted as the place we have to be between where we have been and where we are going (Like getting from here to Maine). But the here, now is all there is. And we hardly spend any amount of time there at all. But really being aware of being here, now is the source of deep and abiding joy and gladness, though you will have to take my word for it before you have your on experience of it. If you can simply relax into, settle into here, now, it expands and deepens and opens itself before you with all manner of amazing realizations and experiences. Like Intuition, for example. If you fall into the right kind of recpetivity, your Intuition may step out of hiding and remind you of things you have forgotten, and take credit for you remembering, and probably doing them initially because your intuition made it possible. And when we establish an enjoyable kind of friendship with our Intuition (Pal-hood, I call it), our life takes on a certain kind of energy and “shine” (I call it) that makes it fun to be alive just being aware of Intuition’s influence and presence in our life. And Intuition is the interface between ourselves and Psyche and Psyche is the life force throughout the Universe, all living things in the Cosmos are awash in the environment of life that is Psyche. I think of Psyche as God without the theology. Theology is really the hostage takeover of God, and there is now only Psyche left to the area she used to share with God before theology came on the scene with all it’s nonsense that imposes onto God all of the projections that humans have loaded God down with making God a “Projection Magnet” and leaving it to Psyche to be life’s source of tender love and care while God, thanks to theology, is always threatening people with hell and punishment on earth if they don’t toe the line and blah, blah, blah. But Psyche may come to life in the silence in ways that are caring and life affirming, and she is wonderful company if we display the right variety of quiet receptivity and interest.
Anyway the silence is the source of wonder and joy, and a very special gift all its own. So meet it with open arms and enjoy settling into your times of presence in the silent quietness of your life.
My newest eBook is up on Kindle and it will cost you $2.50, less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks. And it will be well worth your time. It can be read as the end of Christianity as we know it, and the beginning of LIFE as it can be. No kidding.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son trumps Original Sin. Jesus told the Parable of the Prodigal Son to flip the fundamental religious assumption of the day and the foundation of Jewish religion, and religions world wide, that God was angry with the entire human race and that it is the burden of humans throughout every generation to make God happy so that God would forgive their sins and all would be right with the world. Jesus had a different take on things. And he lived to turn the light around. “You have heard it said,” he said, “but I say unto you!”
Where did he get the gaul? How did Jesus get to the place of being able to throw out everything the Jews had believed for centuries? The Parable of the Prodigal Son transforms the theologies of every religion of every age. We don’t have to say we are sorry. We don’t have to repent and be baptized. We don’t have to make anything up to God. God is like the Prodigal’s father. All of humanity is like the Prodigal Son. The interesting thing about the traditional understanding of the parable is that it completely ignores the entire point of the story. The traditional understanding is that the Prodigal said he was sorry. Read it out loud. Slowly. The Prodigal wakes up in the foreign land, down and out, with no money and no future and says, “If I go home and tell my father that I am sorry, he will welcome me home and even if I have to work in the fields I will be better off there than I am here!” Note that he doesn’t say “I am so sorry for all that I have done.” He says “If I say I am sorry for all I have done.” Big difference.
And we might imagine him rehearsing his lines all the way back to his father’s house: “Oh Father, Father, I am SO SORRY for all I have done….” And when he gets home and his father runs to great him while he is still a quarter of a mile away from the gate to his father’s farm, the son starts his well-memorized speech, “Father,” he starts, “I am so SOR” And his father cuts him off mid-word, saying, “Get out of here with your prayers of confession and your litany of forgiveness and restitution! There is no need for any of that! For you were lost, but now are found! You were dead and now you are alive! Come into the joy of your father and the feast of joy and celebration!” And that is the way it is with God and with all of the people of every age. And the people of every age completely ignore the point of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which is “Confession and repentance are not necessary. Nobody has to say they are sorry. All they have to say is, “Here I am!” and, like that, all is well!”
But, the churches don’t tell the people that. The churches repeat the same old song and dance that was popular in Jesus’ day. Jesus changed nothing about the way religion works. The Church as the Way to Salvation is the story all of the churches tell. No church ever says, “All you have to do is show up!” No, not one. All of the churches say, “You are all SINNERS AND GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL if you don’t repent and give us your money and we will teach you how to say you are SOOOOO SORRY in ten thousand ways, so that you can get on God’s good side and go to heaven when you die.”
The Parable of the Prodigal Son makes all religion and all churches obsolete. All we have to do is show up. Everything has always been fine with God. God has never been angry. The religious establishment as always said God is angry, and told the story of the Garden of Eden and of Original Sin to give themselves a foundation that creates a need for the church and establishes the church’s future forever. BUT, Jesus came along with the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and set the record straight for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. All we have to do is show up!
Living as those who are mindfully aware of Tao, Psyche and Intuition, puts us in the company of indigenous peoples throughout time. They were led, guided, directed throughout each day by the Holy Trinity of the inner world providing them with a felt sense (a bodily awareness) of what’s what, and what’s called for here, now throughout their days. This could involve knowing if rain might be in the forecast, where game might be found, when it was time to move their camp grounded, and all matters related to making their way through the world they lived in. Time passed and civilization progressed, and the processes governing life changed dramatically in the life time of the Elders. And people drifted away from the ways of reading the inward sense of knowing what was called for and what needed to be done about it. Even the knowledge of the Holy Trinity faded from the collective memory of the peoples, who became increasingly alienated from the world of here, now until even the memory of Tao, Psyche and Intuition disappeared and was forgotten.
But how could they find their way without their guides? What would become of them without their foundation? Where would they turn for comfort and assurance? What would they do with no one to tell/show them what to do? And so it was that the people drifted without direction through the hard times that came upon the entire world, cut off from their moorings and drifting endlessly through the times and places of their abandonment which continues to plague the people of planet earth to this very day.
And, thus the need to recover what has been lost for ages in order to restore our relationship with Tao, Psyche, Intuition. The path to doing that is the way of becoming knowledgeable of the practice of seeing, hearing, understanding, what’s what and what is called for here, now in finding our way back to Tao, Psyche, Intuition. Is the way of reducing the amount of noise in our lives and increasing the amount of silence. We do that by honoring the experience of emptiness, stillness and silence (one thing not three) with daily returns to the silence, intentionally and devotedly dropping into the silence and waiting for what the silence has to show us, teach us about the inner world of knowing what’s what and what is called for just by opening ourselves to what we know in the silence, and what we sense in our body, and where knowing and sensing lead us in the field of action as we follow the urgency of our original nature into doing what needs to be done here, now in each situation as it arises throughout the time left for living.
Being the receptive recipient of the Tao, Psyche and Intuition is reducing the noise in our life and increasing the silence. Such a simple remedy to “the dust of the world”!
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.
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.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy