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?
We cannot do better than listening to ourselves. Psychotherapy is about hearing what we have to say by talking to a therapist who listens us into hearing ourselves talking to some one who asks the right questions. We could talk to a smart mirror and get positive results. We need to place listening platforms into each day where we take up the practice of saying everything that needs to be said and asking every question that needs to be asked. Twenty minutes, twice a day. We could do it anywhere just by writing down the questions and the answers in a journal, asking the questions that beg to be asked and saying the things that need to be said. Being our own therapist and our best friend.
I am announcing here my new eBook on Kindle, going for $2.00 no kidding. “A dialogue with the invisible” is my most intriguing work to this point in my storied career. Indigenous peoples have always understood the material, physical universe to be upheld and guided by an invisible, spiritual universe. And we pray to the invisible world regularly, and honor the invisible world in worship services, with fasting, singing, dancing, etc, regularly and routinely. So, dialoguing with it is not much different from what we ordinarily do with it. I co-authored this book with Copilot, Microsoft Word’s AI guru, because out of the ordinary is what I do best. Copilot created the above image which serves as the book’s cover. I hope you will read and enjoy it!
Venus, the Moon and Pamlico Sound — Ocracoke Island, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Outer Banks, North Carolina
The Joy of life is the wonder of being alive–which flows from the recognition, the realization, that we are alive! And we take it so for granted. We are the only life form that is exactly like us ever in existence, right here, right now! Unique and irreplaceable! And, we are not impressed. A shrug and a “So what?” are the best we can do. Just another bee in the hive, right? Just another ant in the hill. Ho-hum. Who cares? Caring is clearly up to us! If we can’t celebrate the wonder of being alive here, now by the way we experience, see, hear, understand the wonder of being here, now, nobody will do it for us. Look around. They don’t care. If we don’t, it is on us! And up to us to know and be who we are with joy in our heart and a smile on our face, every day of our life. Are you with me here, or am I alone with the wonder and the joy of being me?
Beech Tree fall – Guilford College Woods, Greensboro, North Carolina
The Tao-Psyche-Intuition.com Blog has fallen into place and the new book–“Copilot’s Dialogue with the Invisible” is close to publication, and the cognitive decline is a distraction I would like to be done with. I never knew there was so much to remember! My work with emptiness, stillness and silence has not been wasted–I just drop into the silence and wait for the memory gears to click into place. And I hope that by the time they fail to do that I will have reached the point of not knowing or not caring.
Evening Ferry to Swanquarter — Silver Lake, Pamlico Sound, Ocracoke Island, Outer Banks, North Carolina
We deal with it as well as we can. And let that be that. If you are serving a life term, it is difficult to work up enthusiasm for breakfast. You just keep going, not because there is anything in it for you, but because you have developed a routine that calls for breakfast, and you go to breakfast. Big Woopie, as they say.
Life filled with routines like that is life only by definition–being 98.6 and breathing. We are built for more, but how much more becomes how much more we will settle for, and how far from exuberance and delight that is. It is a personal call, how alive we will be in the time left for living, and how much effort it would take to live with joy and gladness every minute of every day. I would say that is out of the question for us all, so we settle for the quality of life we settle for and let that be that. And deal with it as well as we can–letting it be what it is, and not caring about how much better we could do. Good enough is all we need to keep going. And that is more than most people have had throughout time. Central heat and running water, hot and cold. Most people have not had that. And they kept/keep going. While serving a life sentence, so to speak. Perhaps we should have a moment of silence in their honor, and hold them in high esteem–and be glad to be with them, to be in their company, upon the planet. May it be so! No?
And this means knowing and remembering and honoring that our life just as it is is much better than serving a life prison term. And we would be right to rejoice in that, and be glad. And allow the joy to spill over into the present moment through all of the present moments left to us–because the joy of life just as it is, is life knowing what it is to be alive, and living as though we mean it, as though we are glad to realize that life is LIFE–and that is to be honored and glorified, enjoyed and relished every day that is left to us on the earth. Amen! May it be so! No?
Baxter Creek Bridge — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Big Creek District, Waterville, NC exit access
My sister, Susan was brilliant, with 2 PhD’s, language ability in English and French and Academic Tenure at the university where she taught, and she took her own life by having a living will, admitting herself to Hospice and refusing to eat or drink until she died. That is meaning it. It is also having desire and expectations for life that are unmet on every level. Now, I have to say that there is a lot more that I will not miss about my life than I will miss, but I won’t miss it to the extent that I have to hurry my departure before it gets worse.
Susan and I looked at things differently. We had different perceptions, different perspectives. Perspective is everything. How we see what we look at makes all the difference. And what something we look at means to us determines, or strongly influences, what we do about what we see. The meanings we ascribe to the things in our lives, run and, perhaps, ruin, our life when we think that the way we see things is the way things are.
And the moral to this story is that we have to see our seeing, walk around it, sit with it, look it over from every angle until we can see the way we are seeing as the way it is and also is. When we examine the impact of our life. upon us, we are examining the impact of the way we see things and the meaning the way we see things has upon us. Changing the way we see things just by seeing the way we see things, changes the meaning life has for us, changes the way we live, changes life. Perspective is everything. As our perspective shifts, our life shifts with it. It is worth our time to sit with what we think we see until we can see our seeing and what impact it is having on the way we live (And how much in the way of drugs and alcohol we consume).
Alone on Christmas Eve — Blowing Rock, North Carolina
We all are born with what we need to find what we need to do what needs to be done in each situation as it arises. And it all depends upon what meets us at birth. Everything hinges on the environment that receives us when we are born. We are never alone. We all are encased in the invisible essence constituting the quality of life on this side of the womb. Many, perhaps most, of us spend our lives compensating for what was missing from our life at birth. And that comes down to, depends upon, flows from, the quality of our relationship with ourselves–and how observant, aware of, the fact of that relationship and the degree of its significance to the life we are living. And the marker reflecting all of this to eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that understand, may well be the quality of the manner in which we handle silence. How comfortable are we–how at home are we–with emptiness, stillness, silence? How quiet can we be for how long? What meets us in the silence? What do we do with the quiet? And, to what extent do we enjoy being alone with ourselves?
There comes a time when we must become the parents we never had. When we become the father/mother we needed but wasn’t/weren’t there. I am the best father I ever (never) had–And I have been growing into the role all my life. So that, by now, I am quite safe and secure with me. And enjoy my own company as much as I have ever enjoyed anyone’s. I am a delight to be around. And I laugh at/with me all of the time. Everything I write/think becomes a gift from us to ourselves and to all of those who read/hear what we have to say. The joy of knowing who I am, doing what is mine to do redeems/atones for all that was not there to greet me at birth. May it be so for us all!
Lake Crandall Mirror — Anne Springs Close Greenway, Fort Mill, South Carolina
Relaxing into the moment is being here, now–waiting to see what is called for in each situation as it arises. It is allowing our intuition to take the lead, permitting our mind to rest and simply receive whatever is calling for its attention. This is the place to be here, now, waiting to see what may come along in the next moment, with no expectations and no demands or requirements, just curious about what the next moment, situation, may bring.
Getting/having our way is not the way. Living aligned with the Way is the way. Doing what is called for here, now, when, where and how it is called for is the Way. It isn’t having, getting anything. It is being who we need to be, doing what needs to be done, here, now in every situation as it arises. To do that, we have to listen, look, see, hear, and know what we know. Which asks us to spend time being quiet, observing inner and outer, in order to see what we look at, realize what’s what, and do what is called for. That is called living live as it needs to be lived.
False Kevia — Canyonlands National Park, Moab, Utah
This image and the one I made in Watkins Glen are the two prime examples of my devotion to my intuition. I saw photos of both locations in photography magazines and was moved sufficiently by each to go to the trouble of getting to each site and doing that it took to come home with acceptable photographs. I will add that intuition is responsible for my photography from the start. I fell in love with a 35mm single lens reflex camera resting on a pool side table in a made for TV detective thriller that I saw as I walked through our den on my way out of the house when I was a junior in college. And a camera has been a part of my life ever since. And intuition has been a bigger part of my life, leading me from there to here, now all along the way. Leading me to this conclusion: If you aren’t living in the service of your intuition, you are missing your life. And it is never too late to wake up, get on board and allow your intuition to guide you the rest of the way.
Cullasaja River Cascades — Cullasaja River Gorge, Franklin, North Carolina, Nantahala National Forest
The thing to remember about Jesus is that he didn’t have a way. “Thy will, not mine be done.” Now we all are of the opinion that this was addressed to “God the Father, Almighty,” because we have been told that for absolute ages. I am here to suggest to you that God the Father Almighty is the creation of theology, primarily that of the Church of Rome in the 392 years between Jesu’s crucifixion for turning over the tables of the money changers in the temple and being a threat to the power of Judaism in Jerusalem. He was a revolutionary reformer and he was executed for it. And my contention is that he was addressing his, “Thy will, not mine be done,” to his intrinsic Intuition that was guiding him along his life’s way. And Jesus knew that his will, his wanting what he wanted and not what he needed to want was in his way, and he sacrificed his way and himself for the sake of what the situation called for: His death in the service of his idea of how Judaism ought to be.
Jesus was a revolutionary reformer in the traditions of all of the prophets of lore. And the difference between a reformer and a heretic is exactly what? The Priest and the leaders of the Temple saw Jesus as a heretic and a threat to the religious establishment. Jesus was a reformer and a threat to the religious establishment. And he died, like hundreds of his followers who also were reformers called heretics just like their leader, in the service of their idea of what the religious establishment should be. And neither Jesus nor his follow reformers had a will that got in their way. Their intuition–their heart-felt knowledge of what was called for an needed to be done–led the all along the way.
Our will gets in the way–because we will what we want. Our place is to read the signs of the times and to know what we know and take up the cause of what is called for amid what’s what, what’s happening, what’s called for and what needs to be done about it in each situation as it arises. When we are clear about that and live in the service of what is called for here, now, we are being who Jesus was. We are then Jesus in 2026 CE as he was Jesus in 036 CE. And what we want takes a seat in deference to, and the service of that which is called for and needs to be done in each situation as it arises here, now.
So getting what we want and having our way are not the driving force of our life. Seeing what’s what and knowing what is called for is (to be) the driving force of our life. And that means turning the light around. It also means praying without ceasing, which was Jesus’ call to drop into emptiness, stillness and silence often enough and long enough to know what’s what, what’s happening, and what is called for here, now in every here, now that comes along, which equates nicely to praying without ceasing, no?
Baxter Creek Bridge, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Big Creek District, Waterville, NC Access, North Carolina
Our overall, around the clock life strategy is to trust ourselves to the moment, to the here, now of our life, staying out of our way and allowing ourselves to respond to each moment of each situation as it arises with what is needed, when, where and how it is needed all our life long. Our undergirding belief is in ourselves, knowing that we have what we need to find what we need to do what needs to be done, here, now, always and forever. Thus, we walk into each day prepared to do what is called for throughout the day. Taking our cue for how to respond to the moment from the moment itself. No anxiety, no fear, no uncertainty. We have what it takes. Let’s see what is called for. This is our attitude for each moment of every day for the rest of our life. Notice this does not place the emphasis on having our way and getting what we want, but on seeing what is called for and offering what we have to give in doing what is called for and letting that be that. Our will and our way take a back seat to what is called for here, now. Our faith is not in getting what we want but in doing what is asked of us and trusting our needs to be met, perhaps at the expense of our ambition/desire.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 