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?
Morant’s Curve — Banff National Park, Canadian Rockies, Banff National Park, Alberta
We do not suffer from a dearth of information. We suffer from an abundance of desire. We want everything. Stop wanting and everything falls into place. Then, we do what is called for and not what satisfies our current craving.
If we wanted emptiness, stillness and silence the way we want what we want, it would be a different world like that (snaps fingers).
Our problems are not solvable intellectually, rationally, logically. They are solved emotionally, psychically, by changing our mind about what is important.
We cannot continue wanting what we want and think things are going to be different when we get it.
We have to stop wanting what we want, and give ourselves to the service of doing what is called for whether we want to or not (But. We have to do it as though we want to).
We have to do what is called for here, now in such a way that we cannot tell ourselves whether we want to do it or not. AA calls this "faking it until we make it." We have to live as though we don't want a drink until we don't want a drink. We have to do live as though we want to do what is called for here, now, until we do what is called for here, now, spontaneously, automatically, naturally.
"There is nothing to it but to do it" (Maya Angelo).
Tethered. The boat is useless and in the way unless it is tethered to something throughout its life. The same thing applies to each of us. To what are we tethered? What anchors us? declares what we are about? To what do we belong? What is our business? Ours to do?
Our identity is wrapped up in what is ours to do. Who are we? What is ours to do? We live to know. To find out. To discover. That is the whole point of our life. I am here to look out the window and see where it goes. To do what is asked of me here, now in light of who I have been and what I have done up to this point. The way only I can do it.
Jesus was who he was, doing what was his to do. I am who I am, doing what is mine to do. You are who you are, doing what is. yours to do.
Our life shows us who we are. Reveals to us what is ours to do. We know that by looking back over our life and seeing who we have been, what we did, have done, with the life we have lived.
We show ourselves who we are by looking into the mirror of our past life. What signals, shouts out, who we are what is ours to do? There we are. Our future is in our past. Our place here, now is to embrace who we have been what we have done, and do that with intention, determination, awareness and zeal in the time left for living.
To be who Jesus was is to be who we have been. That is all Jesus ever did, be who he was. Doing what was his to do. In the way that only he could do it.
My photographs show me who I am. I am the boat. Alone. Yet tethered to what is mine to do. In each situation as it arises. As only I can do it. As long as life shall last.
They live around making a life at Peggy's Cove. We live detached from making a life. We make a life "at the office," or somewhere out of sight. Away from where our life is lived.
I like the idea of living being what we do wherever we are, by giving ourselves to what is called for in each moment.
Do not put off what is called for! I wish life worked like that. And it could work like that if we would just "get in the zone" of doing what is called for, where, when and how it is called for wherever, whenever, however we are.
It only takes a shift in attention to do it, and putting wanting in its place.
Wanting directs our living. We have to put wanting aside in order to see what's happening here, now, and what that calls for here, now, never mind what we want.
The story of the Garden of Eden is a metaphor about wanting. Wanting that gets in the way of doing what is called for is sin. The primary sin.
Doing what is called for here, now is the cross that is ours to bear.
Atonement and redemption are about getting back on track and making doing what is called for the most important thing, never mind what we want.
That is the practice--doing what is called for--we all are asked to take up and perfect throughout the time left for living, wherever, whenever we are.
The psychological mechanism of Projection turns a psychic reality into a spiritual being--projecting "out there, up there" what is "in here." I cannot be the first/only person to figure that out. So, why are we still awash in the hocus-pocus, "Bubba! Help me!" stuff?
Bubba is "in here"! WE are BUBBA! Psychic reality is all we have! It is all we need! It has gotten us where we are! It will get us the rest of the way!
Truth impacts us in one of two ways. In the presence of Truth we either laugh or cry. I'm rolling on the floor, laughing. The joke is on us. We are what we worship and adore. Pander and serve. "We are all we have. We are all we need."
We meet who we are in the emptiness, stillness, silence. We wake up, see, hear, know, understand, who we are, what we are about and what is called for in each situation as it arises, do that, and that is all there is to it.
Sea Stacks in the North Atlantic — Along the Cabot Trail, Nova Scotia
Kindlessness is Cruelty. Is Atrocity. Is Brutality. Is Abomination. Is Inhumanity.
Kindlessness at the top is Kindlessness all the way down.
Donald Trump! I'm talking to YOU!
You and your MAGA patrons are creating a culture of the inhumane and atrocious. And you don't care because that is what you intended from the start.
Fascism is a thing. A big, toothless, mindless, heartless thing. And nothing can be done about it, as Work War II shows. So, what to do? Trust no one. Assume everyone is a fascist. Give no one the benefit of the doubt. Even Communities of Innocence are hermits at heart. Leaving us to strive for "most of the time" and not "all of the time."
Most of the time we are gentle, loving, decent and kind. All of the time we are not.
On average, we can be trusted to do what is right by everyone. 100% overlooks those occasions when we are "dammed if we do and damned if we don't." Even Jesus fried the fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season.
Averaging us all out, are we mostly the kind of person we would like to be, or mostly the kind of person no one would want to be (Except those who are mean, horrendous, hateful, heinous, abhorrent, vile and disgusting, etc.)?
Midnight Hole, Big Creek — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Waterville, North Carolina Access
I think we all are, more or less, part of the dream awaiting realization. We are, in a sense, "a band of brothers and sisters," bringing each other forth, waking each other up, being what each other needs for the process of becoming who we are, doing what is ours to do.
We are one with one another to the extent that we realize that and live it out, the more consciously, the better.
This has been brought to light with me in conjunction with the serving staff in two restaurants my wife and I frequent regularly. We have become family over time, say three years. I would not be uncomfortable with the term "Coven." I would be happy to be a part of a Coven with those people. Cooking up life together, and being what each other needs over the course of our individual life together.
Sewing circles develop a similar pattern of concern and caring around the circle, and poker/bridge players, golf players... It is natural, automatic, an expression of who we are, what we need.
We do not do well alone. We are built for communion, community. Where we are close enough to know and care about one another, yet far enough apart to maintain our unique perspective, our specialties, our gifts, our Self.
I had two aunts, long dead now, who were sisters, one of whom did all the thinking/leading/directing for both of they. They dressed alike and did the same things together. One was the shadow of the other, which is not what I have in mind, or consider to be healthy. We each have to have our own way to being becoming who we are, what we are about. And we do that best in conjoint relationships with others that are close enough to be helpful and distant enough to be safe places to allow for our individual growth over time.
Which is the "whole point of being alive": Becoming who we are, doing what is ours to do.
The Dream is dreaming/realizing itself through us. We are waking up, realizing, knowing, doing, becoming, being who we are doing what is called for in each situation as it arises, as only we can, the way only we can do/be it. And, thanks to each other, this becomes possible for us all.
Price Lake Silhouettes — Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina
Conversation is the most important thing in our repertoire, and we generally throw it away and opt for small talk without saying anything. Better to talk to our Psyche and listen for Psyche's responses in the way of realizations moving us, guiding and directing us, and giving us things to think about as we make our way between the here, nows that comprise our life.
Writing is my favorite way of self-talk, and repeating myself is my way of working things out. And talking to Psyche in this way is great because it gives Psyche something to do in sending dreams my way for me to play with and contemplate (And Psyche just wrote that last sentence to remind me of what I am about).
Psyche writes a lot of my sentences, and keeps me alert to what we are doing with the time left for living. I am enjoying the journey and looking forward to what's next, and how we deal with what comes our way along the way. The Adventure winds on! And we are glad to have you with us through it all!
The psychological mechanism of projection is the most powerful producer of insanity/dysfunction to ever come along. To think something is what it is not and to be sure that it is what it is not is as crazy-making as can be. And then we bring gaslighting into the picture and it all goes to hell like that (snaps fingers). Where to we go to see things as they are? And to KNOW that how we see things is how things ARE?
What are our sources of verification? Of authentication? Of reality? How do we KNOW that reality is real? How sure/certain can we be about anything?
The assumption that things are whatever we take them to be is the ground of life. If we cannot take them to be what they appear to be, WHAT???
And so the importance of a community, a family, of troth and reliability. Of people being who they say they are. They confirm for us a space that is what we take it to be--and that is something we all need to find our way along the way. It should be guaranteed and not just a matter of luck.
We have been one with Psyche from the beginning. Psyche is not other than we are, but is one with us from the start.
When Jesus said, "The Father and I are one," he created a stir at the very idea. But if he had said, "The Psyche and I are one," everyone would say, "Of course! The same goes for all of us!"
The Psyche is one with us, but we don't make much of it. It doesn't mean a thing to us. We dismiss, discount, ignore this fundamental fact of life, in a "So what? Who cares? What difference does it make?" kind of way.
Nothing could change our life for the better smoother and quicker than being one with the Psyche who is one with us.
Psyche is life, and is one with all of life. Psyche is the Life Force, the power that leads and guides us all the way along the way. The Tao. That Which Knows and directs our life throughout our life--when we listen and are moved to do what we know is called for, but which we ignore because it does not jive with our ideas and desires for the life we want to live.
Look around. This is what ignoring Psyche looks like. And it gets worse the longer we play the game of Dissing Psyche all day every day.
Patching things up with Psyche is no more difficult than dropping into the emptiness, stillness and silence, saying, "Here I am. Now what?" And meaning every word--and listening for what is called for here, now, and doing what we know needs to be done, starting here, now.
There is reality and there is the experience of reality. And we do not know where one stops and the other starts.
How we think things are and how things are, are not the same thing.
We wander around in a world we create by wandering around.
Everything is our impression of all things. That it ever "works" is always amazing.
"Am I Chung-Zu dreaming I am a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am Chung-Zu?"
My recommendation is that we take things with no more seriousness than they deserve, and that we enjoy all that is to be enjoyed as fully as it is capable of being enjoyed, and that we worry about nothing, because we are only making it up, no matter what it is.
Big Creek Fall — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Waterville North Carolina Access
The relationship between the flow of life and emptiness, stillness, silence is "right there," for all of us to experience any time.
The place of silence (emptiness and stillness) in the life of the species from the beginning of consciousness until now is a topic I would like to have explored by those in position to know what they are talking about.
Silence is the ground/source of everything we know. It all comes out of the silence (etc.). Paul spent three years "in the wilderness" working out an intellectual/logical/reasonable understanding of his psychic experience on the road to Damascus, and Christianity was born there.
The Psyche is the original experience with "God." All religion, all of everything, comes out of the silence (etc.). We live best when we live knowingly "out of the silence." Which is to say, "Out of connection with the Psyche."
There is only us and our Psyche. That is all there ever has been. Exploring our connection with "our" Psyche is all we have ever had to work with throughout time.
The aborigines' "Walkabouts," the Native Americans' "Vision quests," are explorations of the Psyche.
There is no one here but us. Nothing to explore but ourselves and "our" Psyche. And it has been this way forever.
The psychological (Psyche-logical) (Psychically-logical) element of Projection is the explanation/origin of all religion everywhere. The origin of all art and all science. Of civilization. Everything is the outcome of our trying to make sense of our experience with life and being.
There is no "objective reality." It is all subjective. It is all a reflection of our reflections of ourselves and our Psyche. We are the source of everything. The "out there" and the "in here" are one thing. We do not know where the line lies between "things" and "our experience of things." All that we have been told is nothing more than someone's effort to make sense of the world they live in. And war is always a war of projections clashing with projections.
Imagination is all there is, and it is a very deadly thing.
Moon Set — Price Lake, Grandfather Mountain, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina
I would like for everyone's life to be like this picture. And, I wonder how many people would hate for their life to be this way. Yet this seems to catch the contemplative, meditative manner to perfection--and is a reflection of how far the contemplative, meditative life is from those who want to tear it down and burn it up--and there be many who want just that everywhere all the time.
Anger, hatred, greed and fear generate reasons for their own existence through the long years of time. No?
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 