Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

Curiosity is a super power.
Asking all the questions that beg to be asked,
saying all the things that cry out to be said,
getting to the bottom of things
that have no bottom,
seeking, 
searching,
knocking,
inquiring,
following hunches,
looking for clues,
sniffing out possibilities,
seeing answers
as the source of better questions,
leads us to the radiance and joy
of the ineffable,
the numinous,
the mystery at the heart of life and being.

Curiosity is the Philosopher's Stone,
turning base metal into precious gold--
metaphorically speaking--
and leading us down paths
we did not know were paths,
through doors we did not know were there,
into strange places
and far-off lands
that you wouldn't want to miss for the world--
because it is better than any world ever.

01

It is perspective all the way down,
and Mystery at the bottom.
Or, as Lao Tzu liked to say,
"Darkness within darkness,
the gateway to mystery."

We will never make sense of it.
All the explanations and theories
get in the way of enjoying 
the experience of Mystery.

Once we get that it is all Mystery,
we can't quit going, "Wow!"
and laughing out loud for no apparent reason.

And that reminds me of the story of the guy
going into a cafe in the deep south
and ordering "Coffee, cut the cream."
And the waitress replies, "That'll have to be milk,
Honey, 'cause we don't have any cream."

Don't try to make sense of it,
just laugh a lot.
And look forward to more. 

–0–

02

The only difference between a bad day
and a good day
is a shift in perspective.

Flipping perspectives is the role
of the Gateless Gate.

The essential act of turning the light around
is the back-and-forth,
"edge-of-the-coin"
optical illusion transition
from rational/logical/left-brain seeing
to metaphorical/symbolic/instinctive/intuitive/right-brain seeing.

If you can master that vantage point,
you will be straddling the Gateless Gate,
looking right and left,
or left and right,
and seeing different worlds
"without leaving home."

That puts you "at the still point
of the turning world" (T.S. Eliot),
at the fulcrum between worlds,
able to shift one world into the other
just by changing the way you think about
what you are seeing.

Nothing is only what it appears to be.
Everything can appear to be something else
just by the way we look at it.

Practice it on your parents,
and on your children,
on everyone you meet.

Become proficient in seeing everything
"from all sides."
And don't let anyone get by with 
one-way-only-seeing--
particularly yourself!

–0–

01

Enlightenment is a flip in perspective.
It is changing our mind about what is important.
That is the only difference between
seeing what's what
and not seeing what's what.
If we are going to see what we look at,
we have to be able to change our mind about what that is.
It is not that we don't see.
It is that we have so much at stake
in seeing the way we do
that we cannot change how we look at things.

There is nothing sacred about how we see.
How we see keeps us from seeing 
what is to be seen.

We have to be willing to change our mind
about what is to be seen.

We have to be willing to change our mind.

How many times have you changed your mind today?

How many times have you called into question
how you see things today?

The world isn't going to change
until we change our mind 
about what we see 
when we look at the world.

Start looking at your children differently.
And at your parents.
And at your spouse/partner.
And at your dog/cat/chores/job/etc.

Call it your spiritual practice,
and start looking differently
at everything you see.

–0–

02

The life of your dreams
is a simple matter of adjusting your dreams.

Or, to put it another way,
of changing your mind
about what's important.

Nothing is more important
than being right about what's important--
and living in its service.

We all think we know what's important.
How many of us are right about it?

Growing up is about 
changing our mind about
what's important--
to the point of being right about it.

Maturity is being right
about what's important,
and doing what that implies,
requires.

It's a function of time
spent in the right way.

Enlightenment is the outcome
of time spent in the right way,
so that we see (at last)
what is important and do it.

This is also known as salvation,
changing our mind about what matters most,
and being right about it,
and paying fealty to it
all our life long.

This kind of change of mind
is the function of the Gateless Gate 
in our life.

Everybody lives to have what they want.
How do they know what to want?
How many of us want what we ought to want?
How many of us care about
what we ought to want?

There are things we ought to do
that have nothing to do
with what the culture/society/duty
say we ought to do.
We ought to do what our life
wants us to do
whether we want to or not.

This is the battle of the oughts.
We ought to do what is ours to do--
what needs us to do it--
whether or not anyone agrees
that it ought to be done.

We live to know what is important,
to know what needs to be done,
to know what ought to be done,
and to do it,
even if society calls us a heretic 
and burns us at the stake.

–0–

03

Everything depends on our making the connection--
the Mysterium Coniunctionis--
between "this" and "that."

For example, there is "the task,"
and there is our enthusiasm for "the task."
What is the connection?
Upon what does our enthusiasm for the task,
any task,
depend?

Everything depends upon that!
Everything depends upon our enthusiasm for the task,
no matter what task it might be.

If it needs to be done,
that should be all that is necessary
to evoke our enthusiasm for doing it.

But we know it doesn't work that way?
Why not???
Upon what does our enthusiasm for the task depend?
We think we have to care about the task,
as though the task elicits our response to the task.
If it is a task we deem to be worthy of us,
if we are drawn to it as a moth to the flame,
well fine, of course, we will do it,
gladly, exactly as it needs to be done.
We do not do lovingly any task
that does not inspire love within us for it.
We wait for a task we can feel like doing
with all our heart.

But.
Why hold anything back?
Why not love everything just as it is?
"Do not judge," said Jesus.
"Live as though you love your neighbor
as yourself, whether you do or not,"
said Jesus.
"Live so lovingly with your neighbor
that your neighbor can't tell
if your love her/him or not!
Live so lovingly with your neighbor
that YOU can't tell whether you love
him/her or not!!!" said Jesus.

Get it?

The mystery in the Mysterium Coniunctionis,
is how we disappear in acting
as though there is no contradiction
involved in doing what needs to be done,
when it needs to be done,
where it needs to be done,
how it needs to be done,
because it needs to be done.

We disappear in doing the deed
that needs us to do it.
This is what we were born for.
This is who we are.
What do we mean by holding anything back?
Whose side are we on?

Get it?

We step through the Gateless Gate,
and disappear.

–0–

01

Judas took the revelation of Jesus of Nazareth--
the stone that the builders reject
which was in fact the chief cornerstone,
and we toss it into the pile of rubble
to be used for ballast for ships
with not enough cargo for stable passage
back home--

Judas took the Word of God Made Flesh
and traded it for thirty pieces of silver,
and hung himself
when he realized what he did.

And we are still ignoring the Word Made Flesh
in favor of the wonderful old pastimes of the ages,
sex, drugs and alcohol,
greed and gluttony
and passing a good time
before time sweeps it all away.

Missing the point,
which is living a life worth the effort.
Because we have no idea 
where we might find one of those.

They come right out of our own imagination.

Right out of our own heart and soul.

Ready to be found by anyone willing 
to empty themselves of all distractions,
fear, desire, worry, anxiety, guilt, shame, suffering, etc.
and wait in the stillness and the silence
for something to stir to life within,
arising, emerging, appearing
with a call to life--
not the life of our dreams,
but the life that is ours to live
if we have the resolve of Ulysses 
who said in the Odyssey, 
"I will stay with it and endure!
And when the heaving sea
has shaken my raft to pieces,
then I will swim!"

Or, will we put it off
with "Not now.
Maybe tomorrow. 
Or next week.
Some other time.
Maybe one day.
Soon."?

–0–

02

It takes a "We" to make an "I."

We think "It takes two "I's" 
to make a "We."
As though any two "I's" will do.

If it isn't the right two "I's,"
it will never make a "We."
And it will never make an "I" either,
no matter how many babies it produces.

In order for two "I's" to be right
for a "We,"
each "I" has to be mutually accommodating.
And if one "I" can't manage that,
the other "I" has to accommodate
its failure to be accommodated,
and still make being with it
a really good place to be.

In order for one "I" to be able 
to do the work of two "I's,"
it has to be that wheel turning
out of its own center
that Nietzsche talked about
being the goal/essence of maturity.

To do that, that "I" must be
incredibly gifted from the start
in seeing what is needed on all levels
and doing what is called for
in each situation as it arises.
That's an Old Soul from birth for you,
and there aren't many of them around.

There aren't many of the right kind of "We's"
around, either.
Mostly, we are a collection of "Wannabe-I's"
drifting lost and alone through the Wasteland,
packing together in a collective "Wannabe-We,"
seeking what they need to be a Self,
snarly and pissy, woebegone and depressed,
because they don't have the right combination
of possibilities for it to happen.

Nails the culture pretty well, I must say.

What to do about it is what matters most.

How does an "I" successfully self-emerge?
Without an adequate "We" to give it birth?
By learning and applying the trick of 
"Adequate We-ness."

"Adequate We-ness" is a communal affair
where "Insufficient-I's" come together with
"Sufficient-I's" to form a community devoted
to providing an environment conducive to the
self-development of its members.

We grow each other up by being a safe place
for each other to be
while we consciously experience/explore the agony
of self-emergence.

AA can be this kind of place.
Some religious organizations can do it.
Maybe a bridge club or a poker group can manage it.
We are looking for the right kind of
family substitute--
the right kind of artificial "We"--
to create, sustain, maintain and direct
the development
of the right kind of "I."

And, whether natural or artificial,
the right kind of "We"
that is capable of producing 
the right kind of "I"
has to make the Gateless Gate
the essential feature of what it has to offer.

–0–

03

The work of being human
is the work of maintaining
the balance and harmony
between two worlds,
the conscious world of visible,
apparent, reality,
and the world we are unconscious of,
the world of metaphor, mystery, symbol,
insight and knowing.

We know more than we know we know.
And where that comes from,
and how we know it
is Mystery dancing before us,
winking and laughing,
inviting us to hear the music
and join in the dance.

The work of being human
is dancing with two worlds
perfectly balanced and harmonious,
laughing all the way.

Carl Jung called this
"the Mysterium Coniunctionis."
The mysterious conjunction,
the mysterious contradiction,
the mysterious dichotomy,
paradox, contrary, polarity,
yin/yang
that has to be recognized,
embraced, accepted and worked out--
day by day,
moment by moment,
in each situation as it arises,
all our life long.

We take up the task 
by recognizing the obligation,
knowing the difference between the worlds
and stepping (metaphorically) into
the space between them,
and making a home for ourselves
between the worlds
to which we belong,
and in which we "live and move and have our being."

Doing so consciously makes
balance and harmony possible.
Laughter lightens our load
and enables the dance to become
a regular part of our life "between the worlds."

–0–

01

Joseph Campbell taught at Sara Lawrence College
for 38 years.
Each year, he conducted
what amounted to exit interviews
with each graduating student
who had taken his classes.

There were a large number of Jewish women
at Sara Lawrence,
but one stood apart from the others
when she said,
"Mr. Campbell, if I weren't a Jew,
I would not know who I am."

That's the People of the Jews
coming out in one individual Jew.
"It is the People that are the
heart, the backbone, the center, the essence
of Jewishness," Campbell would say
in later lectures.

"It isn't Abraham, or Moses,
or David, or Elijah--it is the People
who enable the Jews to stand apart." 

And that is the mythological crisis
that mythology addresses.

Mythology gives us a "We,"
and calls us forth out of the "We"
to be the "I" that we are.

In my nuclear family,
me, my wife and our three daughters,
we had a wall of extended family photographs
going back several generations.

Whenever there was a problem
with willing what should not be willed
on the part of one, or more,
of the daughters,
my wife or I would take them 
to the wall of ancestors
and say, "This is not the way We do it!
None of the people on this wall
would do it like you want to do it.
The way you want to do it 
is not the way it is to be done.
All of us (pointing to the wall) say so!"

The problem with this country 
and with the world
is that we do not have a We Wall
to stand before.

There is no sense of We-ness 
holding us together.
We do not know who we are
or who we are supposed to be.
We are in free-fall through the Wasteland,
with each going their own way,
having no idea of what The Way actually is
because there is no We to point it out for us
and instruct us as to how it is to be done,
whatever "it" might happen to be.

We have lost the We,
and are lost ourselves because of it.
We have no mythology
to connect us with a long line
of generations of People like the Jews
who knew how to do it
and who point out to us how it is to be done.

But. And here is the catch.

It is the place, the role, of the We
in our life
to create an "I" who is capable
of standing apart from the "We"
in knowing and doing what must be done
in each situation as it arises--
because situations are always arising
which have never been faced before
by any "We" that have gone before us,
and we must be capable of finding The Way
through the clashing rocks
and the heaving waves
that no one has ever seen.

So, Jesus could ask his disciples,
"Who do men say that I am?"
And then, the killer,
"Who do YOU say that I am?"

It is not "What do the People say?"
It is "Who do YOU say?"

This is the mythological crisis
that myth exists to guide us through.
We find examples in the myths--
in the magical stories we tell ourselves--
of heroes who find the way on their own.

And so, in "The Quest for the Holy Grail,"
comes the legend, the myth, that calls us
into the Adventure that is ours alone,
and no one can help us with.

There we read that the knights who went
in search of the Grail
"agreed that all would go on this quest, 
but they thought it would be a disgrace 
to go forth in a group, 
so each entered the forest 
at a point that he, himself, had chosen, 
where it was the darkest and there was no path.”

It is the role of the We in our life--
of the People in our life--
go get us to the point of asking,
and answering,
the essential, all important, question,
"Who do YOU say that you are?"

And in answering that question correctly,
we become, ourselves, "The Great I AM!"
Living "like a wheel turning 
out of its own center."

This what the We, properly understood,
enables/creates--an "I" capable
of living the life "I" alone am capable of living.

It is the role of a living mythology
to create the We
that creates the I
that creates the We
that creates the I
and that is the Circle of Life,
"a wheel of fortune and pain."

And here we are, wondering together,
"Who do YOU say that YOU are?"

–0–

02

It is the role/place of mythology
to move us from dependence to independence--
from being a "We" to being an "I,"
without losing our capacity for "We-ness."

It is a tight rope walk across gaping chasms. 
Many do not make it,
because they do not trust themselves
to the weapons and the helpers
that are theirs to use.

The weapons are the right kind of 
emptiness, stillness and silence.
The helpers are our original nature,
the virtues that come with us from the womb,
sincerity,
integrity
self-transparency
and reliance upon the Mystery--
the Source--
at the heart of life and being.

We do not trust ourselves to these things
because we have a better idea. 
Our better idea consists of what we want,
what we desire,
what we crave and must have:
our way NOW!

And so the theme of death and resurrection
that runs throughout mythology.
We have to die to our idea of what our life is to be
in order to live the life that is our life to live--
in order to have the adventure that waits for us
to say, "Let's go!"

Look around you. 
The Ukrainian's are the only ones
putting their life on the line,
in serving their destiny
at the expense of their desire for their own life.
We see in them the model
for how to do it
in being gripped by a mythic vision
of our life,
and serving that vision above and beyond
all else.

We cannot take refuge in 
Mama and Daddy substitutes,
or in the addictions of the day.

We have to stand up and step into our life,
the life that calls us to live it--
the life that needs us to live it--
the life we are born to live,
with an original nature and its special virtues
perfectly suited for the live we are to live,
no matter what.

Doing what needs to be done,
when, where and how it needs to be done,
never-mind what we would like to be doing instead
with the diversions, distractions and entertaining
pastimes of the day.

The Adventure waits while we demur,
looking for a way out
of doing what is ours to do.

–0–