Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

Our problem is finding our way in the world.
We are questing for who we are
and what we are about--
for what is meaningful and necessary
(Or, "meet and right")
for us to do.

The Bible gives us direction when it says,
"It is not across the sea
that you should seek it there,
and it is not hidden in the mountains,
that you should seek it there,
and it is not tucked away in dusty books
that you should seek it there,
but it is in your own heart/soul/body,
waiting for you to sit still and be quiet,
so the mud might settle and the water clear,
and you might know beyond all doubt
what constitutes your original nature,
and your innate virtues 
(Which are the things you do best
and love to do most),
and your intrinsic intuition
by which you know what's what
and what is called for in each situation 
as it arises--
without knowing how you know
or what makes you think it is so"
(Or words to that effect).

That which we seek lies within
waiting on us to trust ourselves to it
and to our own body's knowledge,
in order that we might go where 
we are led
and do what needs to be done.

What do you do 
when there is nothing you can do?
Where do you turn
when there is nowhere to turn?
I'm serious.

What holds you up?
What keeps you going?
Were do you find your "Umph"?
Your spirit?
Your determination?
Your will?

What guides your boat
on its path through the sea?

Odysseus said,
"I will endure and I will press on!
And when the heaving sea 
has shaken my raft to pieces,
then I will swim!"

Where does that come from?

We are still here!
Like Odysseus, we have not caved
to our circumstances!
And we will not!

What keeps us going?

I asked that question to Martha Knott
at her bedside in XYZ Nursing home's intensive care ward.
She had fallen the night before getting out of bed,
and a large dark purple bruise covered her left cheek,
closing her eye.
Her left arm was in a sling.
She has just gone through her litany
of thing she could not do:
"I cannot see.
I cannot hear.
I cannot find my way to the toilet.
I cannot read the paper.
I cannot even drink a cup of coffee.
I don't know what is going to happen to me."

To which I had responded,
"Martha! What keeps you going?"

She paused for at least three minutes.
Turned her head and looked at me with her right eye.
Laughed and said, "I don't know. I just go."

We all "just go!"
May it be said of all of us always!
May it be so!

My sister Susan's suicide three years ago 
was the result of her evaluation of the way things are,
and her choice to not put up with it any longer.

She looked at the same universe Dr. King saw,
and she did not view it as bending toward justice at all.

"Each to their own," as we sometimes say.

However, our interpretation of things
determine--or strongly influence--our response to things.
That being the case,
I would be in favor of taking nothing 
as seriously as we tend to,
and giving every thing a spot of encouragement
and hope for the best
anyway, nevertheless, even so.

Our work is all the same regardless of our assessment
of each situation as it arises.
We are to simply do what is called for
with the gifts that come with us from the womb:
Our original nature,
our innate virtues (The things we do best
and enjoy doing most),
and our intrinsic intuition,
and let that be that
as we step into the situation following
which is already unfolding before us.

To allow our opinions about our chances for success
drag us down
is to reduce the quality of those chances
and the effort we put into doing what is called for.

And so the list:
No opinions!
No judgment!
No expectations!
No plans!
No agendas!
No striving, compelling, forcing, insisting, demanding.

Just doing what is called for moment to moment,
situation by situation.
Whether we feel like it or not.
Whether we want to or not.
Whether we are in the mood for it or not.
Because it is our place
to honor our original nature,
our innate virtues
and our intrinsic intuition
by living in their service for the good of the here, now,
in every here, now that comes our way.

It is called doing our part
all along the path.
May it be so
all day every day!

1) We have done ourselves no favors
with religion forcing dependency
upon the people,
by telling them they are sinful
and have no hope in their own devices
but must believe-BELIEVE!-what someone 
tells them to believe
or they will go to hell
swimming in molten lead lakes
throughout eternity
for their evil, detestable, ways.

We have created generations of people
afraid to live out of their own authority,
waiting to be hold how to think,
what to do.

And they are about to elect
an authoritarian idiot
to tell them how to think, 
what to do,
especially when he tells them,
"Listen to me! I will save you!
From the Deamoncrats who want to
eat your souls!"

Idiots love an idiot who spews out idiocy.
Who is one of them.
What a comfort.
What a terrible, terrible thing.

2) What moves you?
What compels you to action?
What calls your name
and keeps calling until you respond?

What are the meaningful things that you do?
What do you live to do?

I told a neighbor that I fell in love
with a camera when I was 18 years old,
and he would have none of it.
"You can't be in love with an inanimate object!"
I didn't waste any more time with him.
Musicians are in love with their instrument of choice.
Golfers are in love with their clubs
and their courses.

What are you in love with?

We are seeking what is meaningful to us
so that we might serve it with our life.

I am also in love with my intuition,
and I am here to serve it with my life.

Don't go to bed tonight without knowing
what you are in love with.
Without knowing what moves you.
Without knowing what is meaningful to you.

And if you do go to bed without knowing these things,
may you have a dream tonight 
that wakes you up knowing what it is
you are here to love and to serve
throughout the time left for living! 

If Trump wins
it will be the last election 
for a long time.

If Trump doesn't win,
the fallout could be devastating.
But more devastating if he wins,
with him pardoning everyone on his side
for anything they do.

The Madison Square Garden rally
will be everywhere all the time
only worse.

And there will be no way
to get out of the way.

Riding it out will be out of the question.
The new Dark Age will be close enough to everlasting
to not matter how long it will last.

Life in Trumplandia will be anything but.

If only there had been some way
to see it coming!

Wanting is the source
of all of our problems today.

Wanting and striving.
Striving to achieve what we want,
and to avoid what we don't want.

Get rid of wanting and striving
and it is a brand new world
just like that.

So, that is our task:
Ridding ourselves of wanting
and striving.

Our work is simple:
Live to want less today 
than we wanted yesterday.
To strive, endeavor, aspire...
less today than we did yesterday.

Want to not-want!
Strive to not-strive!

Those are the best things
we can do for ourselves and the planet
in all of the things that can be done
for ourselves and the planet!

Starting now!

Life seems to have such repetition about it, 
flowing through the ages, 
as though we all share someone else’s motivations and memories. My questing seems to be someone else’s 
forwarded to me—someone I am not related to 
in at least the two generations preceding my birth. 

The things that call to me did not call to anyone I know 
in the extended families of my parents, and their parents. 

If life never dies, 
but is passed along in ways that, 
more than span generations, 
but cut across generations… 

Well, that would support Einstein’s idea about 
“neither created nor destroyed, 
but transformed or converted.” 

As our bodies go from dust to dust, 
our spirits are “born again” and again, 
along intersecting rivers of energy and interests, 
and common experience 
to continue “the journey, 
the questing” that never ends...

We take what we find,
and see where it leads,
never entirely sure of what 
guides our boat on its path through the sea.

Which would be, I suppose, a form of reincarnation,
life moving forward, never dying
and and being always renewed
as a continuing thread binding all of us together,
making the phrase, "We are all one"
meaningful in ways we have not considered.

Netanyahu and Trump represent the failure of life,
with the Palestinians being to Netanyahu
as immigrants are to Trump:

The only way you can be safe
is to kill all your enemies.

You can't kill enough of them fast enough.

If they are going to live at all
it has to be somewhere far, far, away--
say on separate moons of Mars.

Life first appeared 3.7 Billion Years Ago.
And this is the best we can do.
Netanyahu and Trump carry the banner of life
into ruthlessness and madness,
with their mindless masses singing their praises
to their own shame forever.

For encores, we destroy the climate in our lifetime.

"Well we did land people on the moon!"
warrants no kudos at all. 

Donald Trump is a wrecking ball  
destroying democracy without taking office.
I've cancelled my Washington Post subscription
and am cold-turkeying my addiction to Amazon,
which will have no impact at all
upon the Tsunami that is pending
the outcome of the election,
but it ranks as a protest to Jeff Bezos
as owner of both the Post and Amazon
for caving to the potential power of Trump
to destroy his wealth
if he is not a loyal lapdog.

(The Post is not endorsing a Presidential Candidate
this year)

The power of power over the powerful
which is Trump's obsession
following Putin and all the authoritarian rulers,
current and deceased.

Those who vote for Trump 
are voting for ruthlessness and madness
without restraint
running rampant through the world,
laughing.

The question, 
"When/how did life begin?"
assumes a beginning point.

God, for instance, is given
"always been here" status.
Why not life as well?

We give God "no beginning no ending" existence,
but make room for the Big Bang for everything else.

We speak of THE Big Bang
as though there has been only one.
"How many have there been?" is a valid question.
How many comings and goings?

And, we know life has the ability
to "go dormant" for centuries
and to "wake up" when conditions are favorable
for its existence.
Applying dormancy to life changes things a bit.

We don't know that 
we are starting with absolutely nothing,
and we don't know what the possibilities
of dormancy are,
meaning we don't know what we are talking about.

Which is one of our outstanding tendencies.

If an asteroid ever makes landfall
with water encased,
it might expand our imagination--
particularly if the water contains
mosquito larvae.

Or a pacifier. 

We cannot hold onto anything. 
We must let go of everything.

Jesus, the Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr,
and all those like them through the ages
were able to give themselves wholeheartedly to their vision
because nothing was more important to them
than their vision.

We are here to give ourselves to the service
of what is called for
in each situation as it arises
with nothing in it for us
beyond the joy of doing it
and the satisfaction of having done it.

We aren't out for anything.
We aren't striving to gain anything.

We are here simply to do what needs to be done.
To do what must be done.
In the time left for living.

So what if nothing comes of it?

So what if Trump wins the day
and the champions of indoctrination
control the minds of 98% of the people worldwide?

That leaves 2% free to do the work
that is ours to do!
I love a challenge, don't you?

We take refuge in emptiness/stillness/silence
(One thing, not three),
and live from there
in the service of what is called for
in each situation as it arises--
to exhibit and express our original nature,
our innate virtues
(What we do best and enjoy doing most),
and our intrinsic intuition--
for as long as life lasts!

It is the way.
Always has been.
Always will be.
World without end.

The Tao, the Way,
flows from and leads to
our intrinsic intuition.

Those who know--
and live to serve--
their own intuition
live in sync with,
aligned with,
in full accord with,
their own intuition.

That is all there is to it.

All those who have known
through out the ages,
knew and served their intuition. 

Jesus did it.
Buddha did it.
Name a knower
and they did it.

And they all were as 
the moved before the mover.
The one who knows before 
the one who is known.

We are all that close
to being who they were.

We only need to open ourselves
to the one who waits to be known,
and say, "Let's go!"
and mean it.

And in the emptiness/stillness/silence
(One thing, not three)
there will arise an awareness
of what is called for here,now.
And it may only be that we do the dishes.

Do not require a great mission,
dismissing all others.
Merely listen, look,
see, hear
and do what is bidden,
when, where and how it needs to be done.

Time after time throughout the rest of time.

And that will be enough.

Should you ever feel as though
you are at a dead end,
trust the dead end
to point the way,
to be the way to the way,
to be the way
that looks like the end of the way.

And trust your intuition all of the way.

The cross must have seemed to be
the deadest of all dead ends, no?