Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

You wouldn’t watch a movie about my life. I have barely been able to live it. I don’t know why it is still going. I will enter my 83rd year in January and I do not see my entertainment value improving with age. Old age is not built for monologue. One day is much like the last one. My best one-liners were used up years ago. Where do I go for fresh material? Observation and evaluation have been redundant for years. Reflection is now reexamination. Even new books are repeating themselves. Another book on George Washington? And World War I? But here’s a new one for you: Looking out the window has not lost it’s appeal! It is as fresh and welcome as ever! I look forward to it each day.

We aren’t going to make things right in this world. But we can make things as right as we can make them, and let that be that. And let nature take its course. Doing as much is what Lao Tzu advised in the Tao Te Ching: “Do your work and stand aside, let nature take its course.” Beyond that things are on their own.

One way of finding The Way is allowing The Way to find us. One way to do that is to not care if we find The Way or not. To stop looking for The Way and simply focus on where our true interests lie. Allowing our interests to lead the way may reveal that our interests know more about what is really The Way for us than The (other) Way will be. It comes down to discovering what our own truth actually is. It may not be what we think it is. We might consider taking up the practice of standing/sitting before the choice at hand and thinking, “Yes? or No?” and seeing what our body says in the matter. Checking it out with our body first allows a different hierarchy to take command, with different outcomes, and new possibilities.

This is a snapshot of life as it is and as it ought to be. This is the natural world being natural. Doing its “thing.” Being what it is. With everything minding its own business, tending its own affairs. Everything is exactly as it needs to be. And the photograph is my way of honoring nature’s way of managing its life everyday throughout time throughout the cosmos, with everything being exactly what it needs to be every day.

I have no idea where this image was taken. If you have been there before, I would appreciate your telling me where I was.

I received notice today that my driver’s license can be renewed for four years through the mail. I will grab that opportunity, thinking this will be the last one. I still trust myself for short distances, grocery store, hair cut, Chick Fill A, gas station… High speed driving is long gone and high speed riding is on the way out.

And I will be interested to hear about the beach. It’s an iconic scene. Crescent Beach, Oregon seems possible but the time of day is off, so I will wait to be surprised.

The thing that matters most to me today is synchronicity. Coincidence that matters. That is built into the framework of existence, without which nothing would be. Which is to suggest that nothing happens for a reason and the old Taoists were right 5,000 years BCE in saying all of this is the result of “circumstances begetting circumstances.” Synchronicity is in charge of the universe. And life IS a beach and time is the ocean, and the beat goes on, and on, and on…

Living to see what catches my eye and calls my name is my primary motivation. I discover who I am by way of all that attracts me and holds my interest. “What will it be today?” I wonder, getting out of bed.

Our experience with life is the source of our beliefs about God. Early humans explained lightening and earth quakes as having their origin with an angry God and sought to appease that God with sacrifices and worship and things took off from there to the Roman Catholic Church and the Westminster Confession of Faith, and here we are. Now what?

My recommendation is emptiness, stillness and silence, the Buddha’s “Peaceful abiding, here, now,” with mindful attention to the impulse of our nature and the drift, course and direction of our interests, curiosity and the movement of our life.

Our life is as close to the God before and beyond theology as we can get. Listening to our life is like listening to “that which has always been called God.” Attending our dreams is a way of aligning ourselves with the forces that have been thought of as the natural rhythms, the balance and harmony of Tao and Psyche at work in our life.

Tending our life’s ebbs and flows, trends and tendencies is as much guidance as humans have ever had to work with, and in so doing, we follow in the steps of our ancient ancestors in finding our way and sensing that we are not alone.

I crawled to the lip of the canyon to take this photograph, amid the laughter of other photographers gathered about. I got the picture and they got to laugh. Worked out well, I say. A little something for everyone.

We have to know what our limits are and honor them by living within them. This gets us back to the bit about the difference between trusting our luck and pushing our luck, and knowing when our body draws a line and respecting our sense of where that line lies. And living to tell the tale.

We live, in part, to offset the impact of our life upon us to this point, at every point along the way. There is a sense in which we never get over having lived up to this point. We carry our past with us all the way. And we do not know who we might have been if it hadn’t been for various aspects of our experience and how we reacted to them. We are impacted for better and/or for worse by some of the things that happened in our life, but not by all of the things that happened. There are propitious events and there are inconsequential events in all of our lives–and how we reacted to them, responded to them, what we did about them made all the difference. And some of them still impact us to this very day. How might we recognize those momentous events, revisit them and revise the impact they had on us even now, even yet, even so? We owe it to ourselves to find out.

Exploring our past can transform our future. Changing our mind about some things can impact all things. Writing about our past, talking about our past, thinking about our past can alter our present and our future. It is a potential great adventure awaiting our attention.

When it’s too much for you, call time out. Acknowledge the overwhelming nature of events and circumstances. Sit quietly, or go for a walk, or take a shower… Whatever form timeout needs to take, and just allow the moment to be as it is, and turn things over to Psyche Tao Intuition (I don’t say “God” because “God” comes with all that theology and church baggage attached, and Psyche Tao Intuition are mystery, and interesting, and much older than theology, and being present with and open to whatever those words stand for gives the force they represent an opportunity to shift the mood a bit and open things up for “peaceful abiding, here, now,” and that’s a good thing).

Psyche, Tao, Intuition have always been and always will be. Settling in with them for the long haul is all it takes to have what it takes to do what needs to be done. That’s what emptiness, stillness, silence (One thing, not three) is for. We meet up with Psyche, Tao, Intuition in emptiness, stillness, silence when we open ourselves to its presence and relax into its wisdom and grace. We feel Psyche, Tao, Intuition–we do not think them. We are one with them, like we are one with ourselves. They are who we are. The same goes with God and Jesus. When we ask theology to leave the room, there are us, God, Jesus, Psyche, Tao, Intuition–all are one. The visible and the invisible. No thinking, only knowing. No logic and reason. Just realizing, sensing, experiencing the is and the now. We are not alone and there is no one here but us, now. Knowing that is being that, is the essence of life and being. We are consciousness being aware of itself.