Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

We must be strong
in the service of our intrinsic intuition!
So that our "yes" is "YES!"
and" our "no" is "NO!"

There is no middle ground--
no middle way--
between us and our intuition.

We are at one with,
aligned with,
in accord with
our intrinsic intuition
all the way!

We live to honor our intuition
with fealty,
liege loyalty,
filial devotion
in every situation as it arises,
no matter what,
all our life long.

The allegiance we have been told
belongs to God,
belongs to our intuition.

Our intuition is God!
And our place is to serve it
with all our heart and soul
and will and mind.

There is to be no him-hawing,
no equivocation,
no hesitation
when it comes to doing what needs to be done
from our intuition's point of view.

We have to know YES when we see/feel it.
We have to know NO when we see/feel it.
And live in the service of our intuition's directives
all our life long.

Being mindfully aware enough
of our body/mind/heart/soul
to know YES and NO when it is YES or NO
moment to moment all our life long
is our life long task.

We devote ourselves to it
as we devote ourselves to the experience
of the right kind of emptiness/stillness/silence
all our life long.

Got it?
DO IT!
Starting NOW!

We cannot think our way out of where we are
to some other, better, place instead.

All of our problems stem from the way we handle
our other problems.

Growing up is the solution 
to all of our problems today,
yet, all of our "solutions"
are built around not having to grow-up ever.

We want things to change
without being different.
Or, to be different
without changing.
The status quo must remain untouched forever.

Slavery goes but inequality and injustice remain.
Etc. throughout society and culture.
There is no evidence of growth and maturity
anywhere throughout the world.

Make it the universe.

Here is the situation that holds throughout the universe:

At birth everyone everywhere is born
exactly at the mid-point between
the Garden of Eden and the Garden of Gethsemane.
Everybody but Jesus, the Buddha, and indigenous peoples 
do it the way Adam and Eve did it,
with what "I" want,
how much can "I" get/have/amass/etc. before "I" die,
what can "I" get away with, etc.
driving our boat on its path through the sea,
and "Thy will not mine be done"
(With the "Thy" being our intrinsic intuition
and our innate, newborn, drift toward
liberty/justice/equality/truth) left to be lost on its own
in the wars and wrath of eternal brutality 
characterizing all expressions of civilization over time.

Only indigenous peoples--
with Native Americans leading the list--
show a propensity for doing it the way it needs to be done,
with those who have being considerate of those who have not
and everybody working together for the true good of the whole.

That's the right way to do it,
which stems from our intuition
and our in-born sense of liberty/justice/equality/truth.
Which is lost and gone forever
in the quest for wealth and glory
at the heart of civilization wherever it is found.

And what chance do we have
of turning things around?

This is where Jesus and the Buddha come to the fore
in not caring what their chances were,
and living in the service of liberty/justice/equality/truth
in each situation as it arose
all their life long,
no matter what.

We are our own authority. 
It only takes assuming the role
to know that it fits us perfectly.

What WE say goes
as far as what we do and leave undone goes.

WE say what matters,
what is important,
what needs to be done 
where, when, and how.

WE chose the clothes we wear
and what's for lunch
everyday.

And we know by listening to ourselves--
by tuning into our own intuition
and squaring things up with our stomach
and the rest of our body,
and our dreams at night.

So that who we are externally
is a reflection/expression
of who we are internally,
given form by listening/looking
regularly and reliably
to what is going on with our body
and with our dreams.

We are built to keep ourselves on the beam
but.
We have to pay attention to the signals
coming to us from us.

How long has it been since we have listened
attentively to our body,
to our dreams?

It has to become a daily/hourly practice,
tuning in to see what is going on with us,
physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually,
and correcting our life's direction
to align ourselves with ourselves
in the time left for living.

But, in truth, we don't have 
anything better to do.

Haiku is a Japanese poetry form
that consists of three lines
and seventeen syllables,
five on the first and third lines,
and seven on the middle line.

Traditionally, it would be about some aspect
of the natural world,
and would typically express/reflect
one of the four seasons of the year.

My fave is by Ryusui:
A lost child crying
stumbling over the dark fields...
pursuing fireflies

The trick is you won't be arrested
for pursuing any subject matter
in Haiku form.

My sister-in-law
brings noise to life in my life,
trashing my silence. 

And the three lines, 
seventeen syllables
will force you to think about
how to say what needs to be said,
focusing you on what needs to be said,
which is a discipline
that will open you to your own possibilities
in surprising and revealing ways.

I invite you to take up the practice
and see where it goes.

Who/what serves as the supreme authority in your life?
Who/what do you live to serve,
make/keep happy with you?
Whose happiness with you 
constitutes the sole purpose of your life?
Who/what do you live to please?
Who/what do you strive to please/serve every day?

The question of authority is the central question.
Get to the bottom of it.

Why do you think the way you think?
Value what you value?
Believe what you believe?
Do what you do?

What is your essential motive?
The primary reason you are the way you are
and not some other way instead?

Who/what is guiding your boat
on its path through the sea?

If you were the only person who mattered to you
how differently would you live?

What keeps you from reclaiming yourself
and living your life
the way you think your life needs to be lived?

What keeps you from declaring 
your own emancipation proclamation?
And being/becoming the person 
you know you need to be
in the time left for living?

Where does courage come from?

There is seeing
and there is projection,
delusion,
illusion,
(Where does that line lie?),
deception,
impression,
perception/misperception
(Where does that line lie?),
gas lighting,
propaganda,
lying,
...
to the point of knowing/notknowing
(Where does that line lie?)
and how do we know we are seeing
what we are looking at
and how much more is there
to what we apprehend/comprehend
than we imagine?

Did someone say "imagine"?
I was just thinking about that.
How do we know where the line lies
between what we think is so,
what we imagine to be so,
and what is so?

And who says so?

And what informs our response
to our life as we experience it?

There is truth
and there is denial of truth.
And where does that line lie?

And who is to say so?

We live on the basis of our impressions
and assumptions,
our presumptions
and our "informed" opinions
about hearsay, rumor and gossip.

It is all smoke and mirrors,
"vanity and chasing the wind,"
"waiting, waiting,
for the mud to settle
and the water to clear."

Where do you go to sit and wait?
How often do you go there?
Low long do you sit?
How do you know what you think you know?
What makes you think so?

Did someone leave it here
and walk away?
Did it drift in pushed
by some long forgotten hurricane?

I want to know all of the stories!
Of every thing, 
every animal,
every person
that ever has been and will be.

That's what I'm going to spend heaven doing.
Forget angelic choirs,
praise and glory.
I'm bored just writing the words.

I want to know the stories!
If there is no place for stories in heaven,
I am going to hell,
because heaven without stories would be hell,
and maybe hell has stories,
and some really good ones at that!
Making it heaven for me forever!

Life is an optical illusion.
We live with a foot in different worlds,
on different paths.
It is like this and that at the same time.
The Buddhists like to say, "All is one."
Everyone else knows it is anything BUT one.
The Buddhists even admit it
with their, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."

There is "the Buddha" and there is "not the Buddha."

They also say, "If you meet an elephant on the path,
GET OFF the path!"

There is "the elephant" and there is "not the elephant."
And it pays to distinguish between the two.

On another hand, also a dichotomy,
they would be happy to affirm Einstein's postulate
that it is all energy
(Rocks, etc. are composed of atoms
with whizzing electrons at their center) 
and "energy can't be created or destroyed,
only converted or transformed."

Which is to say, "It is all one."
"Two-ness" (Or "multifaceted-ness") is "One-ness."
And, it is also two-ness (or multifaceted-ness)
at the same time,
depending on how we look at it,
in a now you see it, now you don't kind of way,
like an optical illusion,
which is dependent upon duality to work.

Not that it matters.

Unless you like balance and harmony,
serenity and tranquility,
and enjoy the idea of oneness being multifaceted-ness
(or duality being non-duality)
the way energy is a rock
at the same time.

All we need is a sounding board.
We all need a sounding board.
Someone who can hear what we have to say
and encourage us to keep talking 
until WE hear what we have to say.

When WE hear what we have to say,
it changes everything.

So. We can write it out, as I do here,
to you who are serving as my sounding board.
I am writing as though you are listening,
and you can do the same thing
to imaginary sounding boards,
just saying what you have to say,
several times a day,
clarifying it as the day wears on,
so that you are clear yourself
as to what you are saying,
and are able to reflect on that
until you come to new realizations
which produce a shift in attitude
and orientation
resulting in mid-course corrections
and adjustments
creating mild to dramatic differences
in the way you live
just because you took the time
to hear what you have to say,
in a regular and reliable way
throughout each day.

I listen to myself at night,
ranting and writhing at terrifying
possibilities and threatening turns in the road,
saying only, "I wonder what I will do about that,"
and "I wonder how I will handle that,"
and "What will ever come of that,"
and by morning everything is all clarified
and I am ready to do what is called for
in each situation as it arises,
having prepared myself for the absolute worse
throughout the night.

Makes the day a breeze,
getting it all said at night.

Wisdom is merely
a life-time from birth to death
of experience and reflection
to the point of realization
applied to here/now choices
and decisions.

What experience is
and what it means
in light of previous experience
applied to present experience--
including the cumulative exprience
of the species--is wisdom
at work in our life.

And it depends on 
the right kind of reflective use
of emptiness, stillness and silence.

It is thinking in the right way
about what's what
and what its implications are
for here, now
in each here, now that comes along,
including thinking about our thinking.

It is awareness of awareness
expanded to include all of life
throughout time.

The people who do that best
are the wisest among us.
Including "the little child who leads (us)."

I do not know many people
who are content with 
doing what is called for
in each situation as it arises.

Everybody has an agenda.
A plan.
An idea of how things ought to be.
They live in the service
of what's in it for them--
of what they stand to gain or lose
in each situation as it arises.

They have opinions
and a will in the service
of most of them,
either for or against.

Pushing/forcing/striving/endeavoring...

Willing even what cannot be willed.

And reacting emotionally to everything.

Living in the simple service
of what is called for
does not rank anywhere in their list
of things that are important.

Thinking is the source
of all of our troubles today,
and every day.

Our troubles disappear "like that"
when we change the way we think about them.

Thus, thinking is also the solution
to all of our troubles today.

Changing the way we think
changes everything.

See how many different ways 
you can think about the things
you normally think about.

If you sense trouble arising,
change the ways you are thinking about it.
Disappear it running toward you
in mid-stride.

A little poof here
and a little poof there,
here a poof,
there a poof,
everywhere a poof, poof,
oh, my mercy!
Changing the way we think
will change the world!