01

When Jesus said, "Don't throw your pearls
before swine,"
and, "Leave the dead to bury the dead,"
he was saying, "Many people are too far gone
to help. Pass them by.
And seek out those who can receive
what you have to offer."

Passing them by seems harsh.
Perhaps, if we threaten them
with everlasting hell
we can wake them up.
Which misses what Jesus was really saying:
"First, make sure
you have something to offer."

Jesus did not ever say,
"Be sure to tell them they have to believe in me,
that I have come to save them from their sins
by dying in their place on the cross,
and rising from the dead."

He said, "Love your neighbor
by being everyone's neighbor,
love your enemies,
love one another,
love yourself,
by living in loving ways
with all people
and with yourself."

When we transform our relationship
with ourselves,
we transform our relationships
with all people,
with life,
and with the world.

That is the "pearl" we have to offer.
Our work is to create that pearl within,
and then offer ourselves
in loving relationships
with the people who receive us well,
and let that be that.

How to live in ways that are loving
with ourselves
and the people who are capable
of being loved
is the work that is ours to do.

Anything else is a waste of time.
Particularly so is talking about theology.

Live lovingly and truthfully.
Theology misses the point,
and has nothing to do with the truth,
or with love.

–0–

02

Start with you—
your interests, 
your loves, 
your shtick, 
your qualities,
your virtues,
your specialties,
your knacks,
your thing—
develop those, 
serve those, 
devote yourself to those,
and follow that path
wherever it may take you,
doing what it requires you to do. 

Believe in that, 
and trust that it will teach you 
what you need to know 
to do what needs to be done
in each situation as it arises
all your life long,
and make all of the adjustments
and compromises necessary
to accommodate yourself 
to the conditions and circumstances
of your life all the way.

Anything else I have to say 
in the matter
is going to be an elaboration
of this core concept.

You are the center of your life.
Live out of you,
in right relationship with yourself,
the silence
and other people,
and everything will fall into place
around that.

–0–

03

Ambition,
aspiration,
incentive,
drive,
desire,
fear,
anger,
hatred,
resentment
and revenge
are all stirred together
in the same pot.

Silence helps to moderate
their influence
on our behavior,
and keeps our balance and harmony
within a normal distribution curve.

If we aren't being quiet
in a regular way,
we aren't doing ourselves 
any favors.

How long has it been 
since you sat still and quiet,
doing nothing?

How long can you sit still and quiet,
doing nothing?

What causes you to end the session
and do something?

What is it about being quiet
that you can't bear?

Jon Kabat-Zinn's YouTube videos
are excellent entrees into the silence
(the shortest ones first).

No one ever goes anywhere worth going
without going quietly. 

–0–

04

The work of the spiritual/hero's journey
is that of transforming our relationship
with ourselves--
and that is a matter of
putting first things first.

We are not first.
We are second.
Getting over this
is the heroic part 
of the hero's journey,
and it is the hell part
of the trip to the farther shore.

The sin of Adam and Eve
was putting themselves first.
The way of redemption
is the path Jesus marked
with his,
"Thy will, not mine, be done,"
with the "Thy" being the Self
directing Jesus' way.

We are not here to serve our idea
of our way,
to get what we want
and stroll through the land of milk and honey,
or the Elysian Fields forever.

We are the servant, 
not the master.
We are here to do the work
that we are directed to do-
whether want to or not,
whether we feel like it or not,
whether we are in the mood for it or not,
whether it makes any sense or not,
because that is our place.

Our dharma/duty is not to serve,
but to be served,
and to spend our life
setting others free,
to spend their life
setting others free,
to spend their life...
Get it?

Go do it!

Sin quietly in the silence
open to the other within
who meets us there,
to guide and direct.

Listen to your body,
listen to your heart,
listen to your nighttime dreams
and to your daytime fantasies.

Notice what catches your eye.
Pay attention to what resonates with you.
When you get "That feeling,"
get up and do the thing you know
needs to be done,
the way it needs to be done,
when it needs to be done,
moment by moment 
in each situation as it arises,
and don't allow anything to distract you
or stop you,
or even slow you down
in your work to be who you are,
no matter what.

01

It all starts with,
and revolves around,
wanting.

We want this, 
we don't want that.

If we don't know what we want,
we know of a lot of things
we do not want.

Wanting runs our life.
And ruins our life.

With wanting at the center,
everything waits to serve
what we want,
and don't want,
now.

When we override our wanting
based on what we want more,
wanting is still running the show.

What is a better guide
on our way through our life,
and why would we choose it
without wanting to?

How could we choose it
without wanting to?

Wanting is in charge of our life.
All of our choices 
are determined by
what we want/don't want.

How do we know what to want?
What does wanting know?
We can want what 
we have no business having.
What then?

We are at the mercy of wants
that are generated by what?
What grounds and directs our wants?
What would it be like
to have nothing left to want?
Dead.
It would be like being dead.

The aesthetics who abstain from everything,
want to be free of wanting.
They want to not-want,
and are as bound to what they want
as anyone/everyone else. 

What is the primary want?
The base want?
The want around which everything else serves?
The God Want?
What is the God Want?
To be God?
Not even God is happy with being God!
Even God wants what God cannot have!
God wants complete and total obedience
from all of God's subjects,
or else.
"Else" being God sends them to hell.

To be God is to be as bound to, 
and constrained by, wanting
as much as anyone else.

So, what does wanting want?
What does wanting serve?
What is more important than 
having what we want,
if it is not having
something else we want?

What drives wanting?
When is wanting satisfied?
How do we determine what to want
and what to not want?
How do we know we are right about that?

What do you want that drives your life?
How do you know that it is worth wanting?
That it is worth having?

Since we can't help wanting,
can we help what we want?
And don't want?

Where do we fit into the wanting,
not wanting,
cycle of living and dying?

–0–

02

My world is colored with sadness,
not that I cannot be joyful and glad,
but because the predominant theme of life
these days is sadness.

There is sadness everywhere.
We are creating reasons to be sad
with every rotation of the world.
We need a Wailing Wall on every corner.

How do we carry this sadness?
The weight of our sorrow
increases with time.
There is no relief for our remorse,
no end to our grief.

Justice should be a given.
We should never have reason to wonder
what has become of Justice,
or why Truth is belittled and ridiculed,
vilified and condemned.

Who are these people who denounce the Good
and honor Evil?
Who berate Kindness and revere Ruthlessness
and Greed?

Why the Rage and the Hatred?
What have the victims of Anger 
done to deserve their treatment?
They are innocent of any wrongdoing.
The wrong is being done
by those guilty of Crimes Against Humanity,
and there are none to bring charges
and then to trial.

We are left with the emptiness
of wrongs without redress,
and sadness without end.

–0–

03

We create our identity
by saying who we are
and doing what it required
to be who we are.

I'm a writer and a photographer
in the service of saying what's what,
of articulating/expressing/exhibiting
the truth that calls for
articulation/expression/exhibition.

I take for myself as Muse,
Hermes, The Messenger of the Gods,
in his Greek form,
and Mercury, the slippery, elusive,
impossible to pin down,
or pen up,
or nail in place,
in his Roman guise.

That is the work of hermeneutics,
saying what cannot be said,
and yet, cries out to be said,
to a world dying to be told
what it cannot hear. 
Make sense of that if you can.
That's what I do everyday.

I started out writing and photoing
and stayed with it,
trusting myself to figure it out
over time.

I'm still figuring it out,
even though I'm running out of time.

The turning points were many,
each one a quitting place,
where I did not quit,
but pushed on, 
pushed through,
the fear
and the discouragement.

What the hell?
It's only fear and discouragement.
Am I a writer and a photographer, or not?

I kept at it.
Writing and photographing,
and saying, saying, saying
what needed to be said--
what I needed to hear/see/know/understand.

I became my own teacher
in search of other teachers,
being led along all the way,
still searching,
still following,
still saying what I need to hear.
Looking for what I need to see.

The program is a process of unfolding 
ourselves slowly over time.
Jung called it "individuation,"
the "circumambulation of the self,"
ourselves,
over the course of our life,
using the tools of our work,
in my case, 
a keyboard and a camera,
to discover who we are
by being who we are,
with the determination 
of those who will not quit
until it's done.

01

There are no shortcuts on the spiritual journey.
Growing up is hard to do.
And that's all it comes down to.
Growing up.

Coming to terms with the way things are.
Making our peace with not having our way.
Doing what needs to be done.
When it needs to be done.
Where it needs to be done.
How it needs to be done.
Every time it needs to be done.
Moment by moment.
Forever.

You think that's easy?
Could ever be easy?
You want it to be easy?
You don't have what it takes.
Go back to your soft fantasies
and the consolations
of your comforting illusions.

Growing up asks hard things of us all the way.

Jesus handing us heavenly bliss
for the low, low price
of believing he will
if we believe he will,
smoothly skirts the bit about
bearing our cross daily,
dying again and again
on the hill of doing what needs to be done
whether we want to or not
all our life long.

The Sisyphean task is the true way 
to the land of promise,
to the farther shore,
to nirvana
and happy at last.

It is called paying the price
to ride the ride,
and is not what we want to hear.

"No pain! No Pain!"
"Smooth and Easy! Smooth Easy!"
"Soft and warm! Soft and warm!"
Is more like our brand.

We have our standards,
and our way is the only way
to the land of lemonade brooks,
lollypop trees,
and big rock candy mountain--
where shortcuts abound,
and pleasant is all around,
and nothing drowns the sound
of good times coming down
on big rock candy mountain.

–0–

02

We live from one situation to another.
How we live in this situation
sets up the next situation,
so that we are the common link
among all of the situations
that comprise our life.

We set the tone,
compose the theme,
shape the contour,
form the pattern
that becomes the life we live,
one situation at a time.

How we perform here
is a reflection 
of how we performed there,
and a precursor 
of how we will perform
in all the situations
that flow from this one.

We would do well to be aware
of what we are doing
and how we are doing it,
evaluating that in light 
of how we want to be known,
remembered, thought of--
of what we want our body of work
to say about us,
now and forever.

Are we proud to be who we are?
Is this the best we can do?
We make the adjustments commensurate
with our ideal of who and how
we want to be
one situation at a time.

Is this how we want to do it?
Is this the way we want to be?
Does this represent the us
we are glad to exhibit and express?
If not, then what do we need to do
to be more like we want to be
than we are
in the next situation that comes along?

–0–

03

Growing up is the solution
to all of our problems today.
And every day.

This is the way things are,
and this is what we can do about it,
and that's that.

Letting that be that
is the key to everything that follows.
The ease with which we go about doing that
in each situation as it arises
tells the tale.

And that is all that needs to be said
about what needs to be done
in getting us together with our life.

Letting things be what they are
means letting our decisions/choices 
be what they are,
and letting our outcomes be what they are,
and doing what can be done
with all that comes our way,
and letting that be that.

–0–

04

It's all mind.
There is no ego that is not mind.
There is no awareness/illumination
that is not mind.

When you take into account
that the observer cannot be separated 
from the observed
(Or the observed from the observer),
there is no external reality 
that is not also mind.

Mind is all,
connecting all,
making all things one.
There is no duality
that is not mind.
Mind is one.

"So What?" you say?
So stop acting as though
you are separate from
all other people and things.
As though there is an I and a Thou,
a We and a Them!

Start acting as though Thou Art That,
and That, and That, and That...

Sit down and be quiet with all of this.
Let it sink in.
Let it marinate.
Let it ferment.
Let it mature.
Let it bring a shift in perspective,
and make all things new.

Do that.
And see what happens then.

01

Getting it right
is crucial for NASA
to fly a helicopter on Mars.

A lot of things 
have to happen precisely
at the right time
in the right way
for that to happen.

Compare that to, say,
going to the grocery store
and coming back with everything
you needed when you left.

Our life is hit-or-miss
and make-do-or-do-without
most of the time.

It is a wonder we are able
to recognize where we are
and function in a reasonably
coherent manner.

We are pinballs being flipped
and ricocheted around the table
by forces we do not comprehend,
complaining about our lack 
of freedom,
thinking we know what we are doing.

And yet, there is breathing.
Breathing and the Bell of Mindfulness
and the AUM at the bottom of it all
bring us back to the here-and-now,
where we can recall
"the most famous reindeer of them all."

That would be us, not Rudolph,
unless your name is Rudolph.
We are here to remember who we are
and what we are about,
in the midst of the context
and circumstances of our life
which are geared to creating levels
of complexity and complication
that make it impossible for us
to know Who's On First,
or even what game is being played,
here and now.

Breathe! Ding! AUM! Recall!

Recall your Original Nature!
Recall your Balance and Harmony!
Recall your Peace and Contentment!
Recall your Thing,
your Specialty,
your Shtick.
Your interests,
your talents,
your preferences,
your art,
your genius,
your gifts,
your Daemon (sounds like "diamond"),
your center,
your core,
your rock...

And focus on ordering your life
in light of those things,
building your life based on those things,
letting your life fall out around those things.

You know who you are.
Or, at least you know who you are NOT.
Start, here and now,
living in light of who you are
and who you are NOT!

It is that simple,
and that difficult.
It is like NASA remembering
how to fly a helicopter on Mars.
It takes focus to recall who you are.
And who you are NOT.
And live in ways that honor those things.

The keys are
Breathing!
Ding!
AUM!
Recall!
At various points
in each day,
bringing you back into focus,
doing the work of being you,
here and now,
forever.  

–0–

02

Every photograph is a threshold to wonder.
A doorway to eternity.
A moment in time.

Every moment is a threshold to wonder.
A doorway to eternity.
Here and now expands indefinitely
to encompass all things
great and small.

Yet, we walk through each one,
unseeing,
unknowing,
oblivious
to miracles everywhere.

What we are missing
could fill the cosmos.

Why miss anything.
Why not see everything?
Or, at least,
see that we are not seeing,
if not what we are not seeing?

Why not 
Stop?
Look?
Listen?

What are we afraid 
we will miss
if we open ourselves
to what all is there?
Here?
Now?

What is our hurry?
Where do we think we are going?
What do we think we are doing?
Who are we kidding?

–0–

03

Let's say you are a pitcher
in a baseball/softball game.

Baseball/softball is a situationally
determined game.

What is called for here and now,
is dependent upon the situation,
which changes with every pitch.

If you can make the right pitch,
in the right location,
at the right time,
in the right way,
over time,
things are going to work out
to your good
and the good of your team.

If you can't, 
they won't.

Your life is that way,
whether you have ever pitched,
or even attended,
or even watched
a baseball/softball game.

Your life is situationally determined,
moment by moment,
day by day.

What you do depends on what's what
here and now.

The better you are able 
to access the situation,
see what is happening,
know what needs to happen from you in response,
and respond as needed,
the better things are going to go
for you and your life over time.

Can you believe that
and devote yourself to it?

Can you assess each situation as it arises
and determine what is happening,
and what needs to happen in response,
and do it with the gifts/resources
you have to work with,
doing the right thing,
in the right way,
at the right time,
moment by moment,
day by day,
your entire life long?

Or, are you concerned only with
doing what you want to do,
when you feel like doing it,
the way you feel like doing it,
and whining, moaning, and complaining
that things are as they are
and not the way you want them to be
your entire life long?  

–0–

04

What's the problem?
What is it that you don't like?
Let's get some clarity here.

Why don't you have it made,
just as you are?

What would make your little heart sing
and your little toes dance?

What is standing in your way,
keeping you from balance and harmony,
energy, spirit, vitality, life?

Except for what, things are just fine
as they are?

And, if you can't get it out of the way
and will never have things as you 
want them to be,
what is keeping you from coming to terms
with that,
and being completely fine with things
just as they are?

–0–

05

Who's the boss, the golfer or the ball?

Who is the most important,
the one who speaks
or the one who hears?

As long as we believe 
there is a program,
does it matter 
if there is one?

To whom does it need to matter
for it to matter?

Doing the right thing
may have nothing to do 
with morality or ethics,
and everything to do
with pace and timing.

Get pace and timing down,
and let everything fall into place
around that.

If you don't know what to do
in a situation,
wait and watch
for a door to open.
When it does, walk through.

Trying to force an outcome
presumes that you know what you are doing.
It could be that you only know what you want.
What does wanting know?

01

It is difficult to find places
where we are free to 
ask the questions 
that beg to be asked,
where it is safe to say
what needs to be said,
where we are encouraged
to step beyond
the normal and customary,
where we are allowed 
to be who we are.

AA and Quaker Meetings
are the two places
in my experience
that come closest
to being Communities of Innocence,
but even they have
standards of acceptability
that inhibit or prohibit
free expression and exploration
of topics that demand/require
the freedom of expression and exploration.

In both of those places,
we know what we can say and not say,
do and do not,
and have to fit in
in order to belong.

That leaves us with Jungian analysis
and psychotherapy 
as the only places I know of
where we can say what needs to be said
and ask what begs to be asked--
in order to see what needs to be seen
and know what needs to be known--
and how many people can afford
the luxury of that kind of acceptance,
for how long?

Which means we can only be so awake,
only so aware,
only so honest,
only so alive...
Because we can be only so safe.

We can't even be safe alone with ourselves!

We need the counter-balance
of another perspective,
of other human beings,
to listen us to the truth of who we are,
and also are,
and enable us to bear the pain 
of that truth,
of the truth of full realization.

We need a community of innocence 
within which to do the work
of seeing, hearing, understanding,
knowing, doing, being, becoming. 

And our best chance of finding
what we need
is to create it ourselves--
to build around us a community
of three-to-five people
who are safe places to be,
with nothing to gain or lose
by listening each other
to balance and harmony,
realization and illumination,
beyond what we all have to gain and lose,
namely balance and harmony,
realization and illumination.

–0–

02

We do not know what we have to say
until we start talking.
And then, 
we are afraid of what we might say,
so we stop talking.

This is the Dilemma of Truth.

We are dying to know and be known,
and terrified of what that may mean.
So we die unknowing and unknown.

We have to summon the courage
to bear the pain
of facing the truth
of who we are and also are.

This is the Buddha under the Bo Tree,
and Jesus in the wilderness,
and everyone who has walked into
an analyst's, or a therapist's, office
and remained there for the duration. 

Carl Jung said a couple of things
pertinent to my point:

1) "There is in each of us another,
whom we do not know."

2) "We are who we have always been,
and who we will be."

What we fear is right there all the time.
It only takes acknowledging 
what we already know.
And acting in light of that knowledge
in transforming our relationship
with ourselves, our life and other people.

Here, Rumi's poem, "The Guest House,"
points the way.
Googleit.

The healing process flows from and leads to
self-realization and self-acceptance.
Nothing happens without that.
We grow up against our will all the way.

Whose side are we on, anyway?

–0–

03

The thing we keep forgetting
is that we have to walk two paths
at the same time.
All of the time.

For instance,
we have to live truthfully,
and the truth is forbidden
where we live.

So we have to sneak around.
Saying/doing what is true
when and where we can,
and not saying/doing what is true
when and where we cannot--
but knowingly knowing what we are doing
all of the time.

We play the game
of being truthfully duplicit
when necessary.

Always the rule:
Do what is necessary.
Do what is called for.
In each situation as it arises.

It is necessary to not be truthful
in situations where truthfulness 
is not permitted
and puts us in danger.

We walk two paths at the same time
in a thousand ways.

We do it by keeping one eye on
the other path
and one eye on this path,
always aware of what we are doing,
and doing what is called for,
embracing duplicity,
for instance,
where we must,
as the price we have to pay
to be true to ourselves
in situations where truth
is not permitted. 

–0–

04

Friedrich Nietzsche thought of maturity
as "a wheel rolling out of its own center."

That thought works best for me
if I modify it to a gyroscope turning
out of its own center,
relentlessly and constantly
maintaining its own balance and harmony
through all conditions and circumstances
of life
in each situation as it arises.

A mature individual remains consistently 
on even keel no matter what is going on
in their life--
because of their being grounded in
their sense of balance and harmony
and anchored to the rock
of what is deepest, truest and best
about them and their life.

They know what matters most
and will not be knocked off that foundation
by anything that arises in a day
to challenge their equilibrium
and their focus on being true to themselves
and their orientation to their axis mundi.

They do what is needed,
when it is needed,
where it is needed,
the way it is needed,
because it is needed,
moment-by-moment,
situation-by-situation,
all their life long,
no matter what.

That's maturity for you.

May it be so with us all
throughout what remains
of the time left for living!

01

Shel Silverstein nailed it
with his,
"Some kind of help 
is the kind of help
that help is all about--
and some kind of help
is the kind of help
we all could do without!"

I miss Shel Silverstein.
He was the kind of help
we need in our life.

What we don't need
is the kind of help
that flows from 
Those Who Know Best
(That is a Truman Capote term
that never got enough press--
from his book,
"A Christmas Memory,"
which you should look up
and read right now
because I know best about 
things like this).

But, I'm going to get out of your way,
and leave it up to you,
which is something those who really
know best never do.

And it is up to us to hang out with them
or give them a wide berth.
We help ourselves most 
by choosing the right kind of people
to hang out with.

Or, maybe they are choosing 
to not hang out with us.
We all have to be worth hanging out with,
and if we are not,
we need to work on that.

To be worth hanging out with,
we need to be mostly invisible.
Not loud.
Not intrusive.
Not invasive.
Not prying.
Not muddying the water.
Not directing/insisting/demanding.
Just putting it out there
in a "take what you need
and leave the rest behind" kind of way,
and letting people 
make their own choices.

Nobody can wake anybody up,
and being awake
is all everybody needs to be.
So, what good are we to each other
anyway?

We are all Passersby. 
Respecting each others' boundaries,
choices,
decisions,
ways of being who we are...
Working on being a safe,
welcoming,
place to be,
and letting that be enough,
because it is.

It also helps to be worth talking to.
And, a light touch goes a long way.
If you know what I mean.

–0–

02

See what you look at.

Hear what is being said.

You can't do those things
without getting out of the way.

Getting out of the way means
seeing your seeing
and hearing what you are listening to,
tuning into how you are interfering with
what you are seeing and hearing.

That is all it takes
to know what's what
and how to respond to it
in ways appropriate to the occasion.

Do that in every situation as it arises,
and you will have done as much
as anybody ever could do.

And that is all 
that is ever asked
of any of us.

Know what is happening
and respond to it appropriately.

Jesus couldn't do better than that.
Neither could his father.

–0–

03

Optimal is always coming and going,
never staying,
moving on,
passing through,
hello goodbye in a single greeting.

Or, maybe,
we are the ones on the move,
always looking for something better,
somewhere else.

Adam and Eve were stuck in paradise
for a while,
until the notion of a better life
struck them out of the blue,
and moved them on
in the endless search 
for improvement
and happiness ever after.

We're all looking for something better.
That's the rock we push
like Sisyphus
up and down the hills of time.
Whatever it is,
this isn't it.
Move on, move on, is all we know.
Here we go.
Again.

Every religion that has ever been
has sold something better
to all buyers.
Without the promise of something better,
where would religion be?

Without desire,
not as preference,
but as constant craving,
where would we be? 

We are addicted to something better!
To the escape from boredom!
To the unending flight away from this!
What?
We don't know what--
just Not THIS!

Make it a source of meditation.
Become fascinated with your yearning
for what, you do not know.
Sit with it.
Observe it.
Get to know it.
Become curious about it.
Lose yourself in it knowingly.
Get to the bottom 
of our incessant restlessness,
our unending quest
for equanimity,
balance,
harmony,
peace and contentment. 

–0–

04

What's your specialty?
Your shtick?
Your forte?
Your thing?

About what would you shout:
"Gimmetheball!
GimmietheBALL!
GIVEMETHEBALL!!!!"?

How often do you do it?

Have you built your life
around that?
In service to that?
With that at the heart and center
of what you do?

If not, why not?
If so, take a bow!

It all starts with and flows from
what we do best.
What we do with all our might.

What makes our little feet tap
and our little toes dance,
and our little heart sing.

How long has it been 
since your little heart sang?

Your sole goal in life
is to live in ways
that make your little heart sing
every day.
From now until you stop breathing.

–0–

05

The right kind of conversation 
is the doorway to reflection
and realization by way of articulation.

As we work to say what needs to be said,
we struggle Truth into verbal form,
are guided by the resonance vibrating
in our body,
and words that leap into consciousness,
from the dim world of mystery
and creativity,
and something new comes forth
into the world,
just because we moved beyond
what has always been said,
known, understood,
in order to search out for ourselves
new meanings
and found new questions
that demanded different
formulations/responses.

Nobody is the Teacher
in the right kind of conversation.
Everybody is the Student,
the Learner,
the Seeker,
on the Quest for more than we know,
more than is known,
more than can be known.

And we help each other along The Way
to "more than can be asked, or thought,
or imagined," for now, 
but not forever,
if we keep talking. 

01

The end of civilization 
is a lack of self-restraint.

We have to know where "good enough"
becomes "over the top,"
or, "too much of a good thing,"
and stop before we go that far.

Knowing when to quit
is the hallmark of success
on every level.

"The balance of nature"
is maintained by the food supply.
Successful species run out of food,
die out, or die down, 
giving "the food" an opportunity
to restock the shelves,
so to speak,
and start another round
of nature's way:
supply and demand.

We save ourselves the experience
of "the death spiral"
by checking our excesses,
and preventing the demand
from disappearing the supply.

Self-discipline is the heart
of self-advancement
and personal growth.
Knowing where to stop
is the essence of wisdom.

And all of this is readily apparent
to those who know how to be quiet
in the right way,
fostering awareness,
reflection
and realization,
drawing lines
and setting limits
at the right time,
in the right place,
and in the right way.

The hallmark of a life well-lived.

–0–

02

Aspiration, ambition, dreams and desire
can prevent us from maintaining the momentum
necessary to achieve balance and harmony
in the service of ends truly worthy of us.

We can want the wrong things
and spend ourselves in the pursuit
of imaginary wonders
and empty delights.

Wanting to be a writer
can keep us from writing
if what we want 
is the glory of Best-Seller-Hood
and not the quiet joy
of finding the right word
to say what we need to say
without anyone ever reading
what we have written.

Writers write
to say what they have to say.
And only writers do that,
day in and day out,
all their life long.

If you want to be a writer,
start writing.
And don't stop.
Write like a dog wags its tail
(Alan Stacell said that about artists
needing to "paint like a dog wags its tail").

Find what you must do,
and do that,
"rain or shine."

If you die without ever doing your thing,
it will be like,
"What was that all about?"

Why drag that around through all eternity?

–0–

03

What is your art?
What is your life?

Those who know and have known
know/knew
that living in the service
of art and our life
is the core, foundation, source
and goal
of a life well-lived.

This does not mean
that their art/life paid the bills.

Their art/life 
is/was what they paid the bills
to do.

What they did to pay the bills
is/was whatever it took,
but their real work
is/was their art/life.

Find your art/life,
and let everything fall into place
around that.

Hint:
Being quiet in the right kind of way
is the best way
to find the way,
to know what is important,
to understand what it means
to "live truthfully,"
and to have it made
in the best sense of the term.

Second hint:
We are here to know ourselves
and express ourselves,
and to help others do the same things--
and to live in the service
of those three things
all our life long.

Anything that distracts us
from these three things
is getting in the way.

01

We spend very little time
living the moment
as the moment needs to be lived.

We live the moment to get what we want,
or to avoid what we don't want.
Exploiting,
manipulating,
contriving,
forcing,
striving,
managing,
positioning ourselves
to profit from the moment
and gain great benefit
and personal advantage
to apply in all moments
flowing from this one.

This is a strategy people embrace
and employ worldwide. 

A quick glance around
provides ample evidence
of its worthlessness.

In it's place,
I recommend
living each moment
the way the moment 
needs to be lived
for the sake of 
the good of the moment.

Let's try it that way
for a month
and see what happens.

01

Whatever the question,
the answer is always,
"Back to the silence!"

The silence knows the answer
to everything.
The silence knows all.

Everything that has been added 
to the world over time--
the things that were not original
with the beginning--
emerged from the silence.

The silence is the origin 
of everything.
The duality of yin/yang,
contradiction,
complexity,
conflict,
opposition,
dichotomy
and contrary
comes straight from 
the heart of the silence.

We are divided at the core.

On the one hand this,
on the other hand that.
This is the way things are,
and this is the way things also are.

We all are always
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden,
and Jesus of Nazareth
in the Garden of Gethsemane,
deciding what is to be done
in response to what is before us
here and now.

The choices of Eden and Gethsemane
are the same choices.
In every moment
of each situation as it arises.
We live in light of what?
We decide in life of what?
What is being asked of us 
here and now?

Sit still.
Be quiet.
Wait.
Watch.
For the mud to settle
and the water to clear,
and the way to arise,
emerge,
appear,
occur to us,
reveal itself to us,
call to us,
urge/compel us to action
out of the silence.

After all these years,
we can't improve on the silence
as a reliable guide,
even though we are the one
who must wrestle with 
the conflict of interests and values
complicating matters
and making things interesting
at the heart of life and being.

What to do is the mystery
upon which everything depends,
and its up to us.

Our part in the play
is to decide what to do
here and now
in each situation as it arises.

That's where we come in.

He said,
laughing.

–0–

02

The themes of our existence
have been identified over time,
and pertain to us as individuals
and as a species.

Bondage and Freedom,
Guilt and Redemption,
Death and Resurrection,
Lost and Found,
Blindness and Vision,
Darkness and Light,
Greed and Generosity,
Ruthlessness and Compassion,
Selfishness and Altruism,
Evil and Good...

The extremes of human nature
are encountered and worked out
in our lifetime
and in the collective experience
of humanity as a whole.

Our original nature tilts us
toward one end of the scale or the other,
and by our choices,
we build momentum toward the extremes,
or a harmonious balance between them
over time.

"Live toward the center"
is the best advice one generation
can offer another.
"Integrate the opposites!"
"Maintain the tension!"
"Bear the pain!"
"Avoid the extremes!"
"Hold everything in your awareness!"
"Do not take anything
with more seriousness than it deserves!"
"Make your peace with the way things are
and also are!"
"Do what you can to make things
as good as they can be
for all concerned!"
"Strive to do no harm!"

And let that be that.

–0–

03

The problem with God
is that God is not free
to be who God is
because God is bound to
the image formed by the
Judeo-Christian Tradition.

God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
the Father of the Only Begotten Son of God
Our Lord Jesus Christ,
and there can be no other God
but the God the Jews and Christians
call God.

God is who the Jews and Christians
say God is.

God is not free to be different
from the God the Jews and Christians
declare to be God.

A God who is bound to the doctrines
and dogmas of organized religion
is not free to be God
as only God can be God.

Thus, the need of a new name for God--
a new name that is not in any way
tied to
and bound up in
the concepts,
ideas,
beliefs
and opinions
of the Judeo-Christian Tradition.

The new name has to be free of all associations,
and free for unlimited and unrestricted
possibilities of development in the way of
creative understanding and interpretation.

Starting with this:
"The God who is God
is beyond all concepts of God,
and nothing can be said of God
beyond saying nothing can be said."

That name could be "The Unknown and Unknowable,"
"The Source and Goal,"
"The Silence,"
"The Stillness,"
"The Presence,"
etc.

With the only stipulation being
No Theology is to be developed
around the new name of God.
A God who is theology-free
is the only God who is free to be God.
And a God who is not free to be God
is not worthy of the name of God,
no matter what it might be.

01

Experience validates experience
when we are open to experience
and to The Silence,
listening/watching
for what arises,
emerges,
appears,
occurs to us
in the silence
to affirm or question
our interpretation of our experience.

We are self-correcting,
self-guided,
self-validating,
self-conscious,
self-regulating,
self-developing,
self-enhancing
self-determining
vehicles of life and being.

But, there is a catch.

We have to trust ourselves
to That Which We Do Not Know
and live in good faith
with ourselves all the way.

Joseph Campbell said,
"We know when we are on the beam
and when we are off."

We have to know what we know,
and stay on the beam!!!

We cannot do it alone!
We have to surround ourselves
with a Community of Innocence--
innocent in the sense of
having nothing to gain or lose
by its association with us,
but existing solely for the sake of
staying on the beam itself
by assisting all of its members
in their work to stay on the beam.

Another term for "staying on the beam"
is "Finding our life and living it."

We belong to our life.
Our life does not belong to us.
We are here to serve our life.
Our life is not here to serve us.

This is the lesson of the Garden of Eden
and of the Garden of Gethsemane.

We are learning what it means to say
"Thy will, not mine, be done,"
with the "Thy" understood to be "Our Life,"
moment to moment
in each situation as it arises.

Our Community of Innocence is composed
of those who help us find our life and live it.
They are our Guardians, Gurus and Guides.
Many of them are long dead,
but living in us and through us to keep life alive,
in us and those like us, 
through time.

We live to keep it going!
By going ourselves!

My Community of Innocence consists of
Joseph Campbell, whose works:
Myths of Light,
Myths to Live By,
A Joseph Campbell Companion compiled by Dian K. Osbon
and A Joseph Campbell Companion edited by Robert Walter,
The Power of Myth
Pathways to Bliss
are especially not to be missed.

Carl Jung's
Memories, Dreams and Reflections
Modern Man in Search of a Soul
The Undiscovered Self
The Portable Jung, edited by Joseph Campbell

Jon Kabat-Zinn
Marianne Moore
MC Richards
T.S. Eliot
W.B. Yeats
Martin Palmer
Thomas Cleary
Eva Wong
And a host of others.

Who comprise yours?

–0–

02

Managing our life is basically a matter of 
to the silence,
listening/looking
for what arises,
emerges,
appears,
occurs to us,
from a level deeper 
than thinking,
sparking realization,
awareness,
awakening,
illumination,
insight,
enlightenment
pertaining directly to
what is happening here and now
and what needs to be done
in response to it,
recognizing and offering
what is being called for
out of the gifts/genius/daemon (sounds like "diamond")
that are our original nature
from beyond the womb
to be expressed and exhibited
in the context and circumstances of our life
throughout our life,
moment by moment
in each situation as it arises.

Living in this fashion
is life at its best--
sincere and spontaneous,
without contrivance or exploitation--
lived in service to what needs to happen
because it needs to happen,
here and now
over the long sweep of time.

–0–

03

Listen to your body:
Listen to your heart (What makes your little heart sing?)
Listen to your stomach (What is your Gut Feeling?)
Listen to your bones (What do you know in your bones?)

Listen to your nighttime dreams.

Listen to your intuition.
Listen to your instincts.
Listen to what resonates with you.
Listen to that “Uh-oh feeling.”

Listen to your experience.

Listen to the silence—see what emerges.

Listen to your feeling:
    We feel our way to what.
    We think our way to how.
Notice what feels right
and what feels wrong.

“Some things can be experienced,
but not understood.
Some things can be understood,
but not explained.” (Sheldon Kopp)

Engage in internal dialogue with yourself.
Ask questions and answer them.
Ask the questions that beg to be asked by the answers.

Say the things that cry out to be said—
at least internally,
and externally when the circumstances allow it.

Notice everything.

Take up the practice of mindful awareness—
and devote yourself to it.
Watch all of the Jon Kabat-Zinn YouTube videos
(The shortest ones first).
Become proficient at attending the present moment—
without becoming emotionally engaged,
without judgment or opinion,
but with compassionate awareness
and acceptance of the fact that this is happening
and that is not happening.

Endeavor to see what you look at,
to hear what you listen to,
to know what’s what
and what needs to be done about it
in each situation as it arises.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

Practice is performance.
Performance is practice.
What is our practice?
What are we practicing?
The right practice makes all the difference!