Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

Who is your favorite human being,
real or fictional?

Tevya ranks as mine.

I would love to spend some time
with Tevya.

Mostly, laughing.

So, I spend time with Tevya
in my mind.

Who do you spend time with
in your mind?

Spending time with our favorite people
is time well-spent,
whether it is real
or imaginary.

Of course, the imaginary time spent
is all projection,
revealing all about us
and nothing about them.

We make them up,
but that is added value!
Because it shows us better who we are
than an actual favorite person ever could.

What we imagine that we need
IS what we need!
And we need to sit with that
and allow it to grow us up
a bit more, yet again.

I need to be 
who I imagine Tevya to have been.

Same goes for our most despised person.
We need to see all the ways we resemble
him/her.

For, they, too, are mirrors showing us
who we are,
or, at least, who we are capable of being.

And, give us something to work on
for the rest of our life.

–0–

There are books I think everyone
should read and refer to 
throughout the time left for living. 

A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living,
by Diane K. Osbon Note: There are two books by the same title out, this is the oldest and the best in my opinion. I don't know if it is still in print, so used bookstores may be your best bet.

Focusing, by Gene (Or Eugene) Gendlin

The Radical Acceptance of Everything, by Ann Weiser Cornell

Teaching as a Subversive Activity, by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner

Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, by Jon Kabat-Zinn

The Tao of Zen,by Ray Grigg

The Wisdom of Your Dreams: Using Dreams to Tap into Your Unconscious and Transform Your Life, By Jeremy Taylor

I'm surprised there aren't more than this,
and these seven books will tell you all you
need to know about me.

May the singers not run out of songs,
may the poets not run out of poems,
may the stars not run out of shine,
may the oceans not run out of waves,
and may things be always the same enough
to be known,
and different enough to be what we need,
time after time,
day after day.
And may we be exactly what the day needs.
Time after time.
Day after day.
World without end.

I invite you to consider your life
and see how long you can make a list
of things worth knowing.

Here follows my list
which I am creating on the spot,
right here, right now.

So you might stop reading until you have
composed your own list
to keep me from influencing you.

1) The most important thing I consider to be 
worth knowing is mindful, attentive, awareness
of each moment that is here/now.

The next most important things that I find to be 
worth knowing are our original nature,
and our inherent virtuosities--the things we do best,
and enjoy/love doing most.

The next would be knowing what's what,
what's happening
and what is called for in response
in each situation as it arises.

Additional things worth knowing in no particular order are:
Where I stop and you start.
What is my business and what is not my business.
What is worth my time and what is not worth my time.
How to recognize, access, realize, trust and follow
my intuition,
my body's felt sense,
and my nighttime dreams
through all the situations 
and circumstances of my life.

If I had all these things going for me,
I think I would have what it takes
to do right-enough by my life
in the time left for living
to be proud of what I'm doing
and to enjoy doing it.

Reserving the right to know more things
as they occur to me as being important
from here on out.

–0–

Is God male or female?
Is the question appropriate
to the occasion?

Is light male or female?
Is electricity male or female?
Is hope male or female?
Is AUM male or female?

Is "man" different from "male"?
Is "woman" different from "female"?

Where does male or female
become irrelevant?

What does "oneness" mean?

What questions do you
refuse to allow yourself to ask?

What questions do you
refuse to allow others to ask?

Where do you draw the line
between "male" and "female"?

Between "man" and "woman"?

Does "oneness" disappear all lines?

Is God one with all things?

Inseparable from all things?

What is "life"?

Where does "life" come from?

Where does "life" go?

Where does harmony belong?

What disrupts the flow of harmony?

What are the forces of destabilization?

What are the forces of stabilization?

Of harmony?

Of peace?

Discord?

Accord?

How do you harmonize yourself
with your environment?

With your life?

Are you more in accord with your life
or out of tune with your life?

How do you lose the AUM?

How do you get it back?

–0–

The individual is the hope of the world.

As an individual,
the most important thing I can do
is convince you of your own significance.

And encourage you to develop
your relationship with yourself,
particularly learning to recognize 
your original nature
and your inherent virtuousities
(The things you do best
and enjoy/love doing most),
while honoring and following
the guidance of
your intuition,
your body's felt sense,
and your nighttime dreams.

While de-emphasizing personal gain,
success, recognition and advancement
as goals worthy of you.

I lost you with that, didn't I.

You have what it takes to save the world
and you want to be wealthy.

What does, "Thy will not mine be done,"
with the "thy" being your own intuition,
your body's felt sense,
and your nighttime dreams,
mean to you?

–0–

How can anything be not God?

God is the first and the last
God is she who is honored and she who is mocked
God is the whore and the holy woman
God is the wife and the virgin
God is the the mother and the daughter
God is a sterile woman who has many children
God is she whose wedding is extravagant and who didn’t have a husband….
God is the silence never found
God is the idea infinitely recalled
God is a barbarian among barbarians….
God is a foreigner in, and a citizen of, every land
...

These words are adapted from The Thunder: Perfect Mind,
a poem found among the Gnostic gospels 
at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945.

It only takes sitting with the poem
to realize that it is of God,
from God,
to God,
and so are we all.

"Why do (we) kick against the goads?"

We owe ourselves intrinsic loyalty,
filial devotion,
love and duty.

How do we think of our foundation,
of our core,
of our source
and the ground of our being?

Our life is the testimony 
of our allegiance
to our original nature
and the innate virtuosities
(The things we do best
and love/enjoy doing most).

To betray them is to leave the path,
to depart from the way,
to wander from the course
into the wasteland of our discontent.

The way back 
is the way of emptiness,
stillness and silence,
and waiting there
for the mud to settle
and the water to clear
allowing a guide to appear
in the darkness 
to bring us back to life.

How these metaphors appear
in our own case,
what shape they take
and what form our life takes
under their tutelage 
will be different for us all.

Our place is to intuit guidance
when it beckons
and to follow where we are led--
seeing with hindsight
what progress we have made.

–0–

If we aren't yet Jesus and the Buddha,
we are the closest thing to both
that a lot of people will ever get,
and it would behoove us to realize this,
and do our best Jesus/Buddha imitation
when we are going about our business
in the world.

Our business is very much Jesus' business,
is very much the Buddha's business,
and how we carry ourselves while doing it
tells the tale we are here to tell.

Being ourselves as Jesus would be us.
Doing our thing as the Buddha would do it.
And consciously being us 
being Jesus and the Buddha being us,
puts us on a different plane
than if we were unconscious
of our association with either
while being us doing our thing.

–0–

A couple of Bible verses,
"Time and chance happen to us all,"
"It rains on the just and the unjust alike,"
put the hiatus on the idea 
that everything that happens is God's will
that it happens.

We need a rest from that nonsense,
a lengthy break.

That and the idea that if God didn't will it,
"God let it happen."

God did this as punishment for that,
and did that as reward for that over there.

We need a hiatus from all of this.
Forever would not be long enough.

"Circumstances beget circumstances!"
That observation may go back to before 500 BCE.

We prefer the idea of a God that punishes and rewards.
Like Santa Claus with ashes and switches or presents
for those who have been naughty or good
(So be good for goodness sake!
But, it is really for the sake
of presents and the promise of more).

The stuff we believe/know to be so
that isn't so
makes life much worse than it needs to be.

I wish we would stop it.
It gives me the wanderlust. 
Like wandering over yonder 
to see if they are free of the nonsense
that is so abundant hereabouts. 

–0–

How do you maintain
your balance and harmony?

We need a regimen,
a process,
a program,
a routine
that we engage in regularly
to clear our vision,
regain our perspective,
recharge our resolution,
reorient our direction,
reclaim our determination,
revitalize our incentive
put ourselves back on track
and get underway again.

Finding things that need to be done
that we can do
wholeheartedly is a great way
to get underway
and stay there.

Maintaining our balance and harmony
sustains us for the journey
one day at a time.

–0–

Theology and spirituality are mutually exclusive, 
theology being the product of the Left Hemisphere, 
and spirituality being the steady state of the Right Hemisphere.

Theology is thinking/logically/reasonably knowing, 
and spirituality being seeing/hearing/realizing/grasping/comprehending/understanding/etc. knowing. 

Theology’s knowing is content with knowing, 
spirituality’s knowing must express/exhibit/reveal/etc. itself in doing—the right thing in the right way at the right time in the right place. 

And it doesn’t have to think what is right, 
it knows what is right, spontaneously, intuitively, telepathically/etc. 

And with spiritually, what is right here/now, 
may not be right then/there, 
and so Jesus could say, 
“The spirit is like the wind 
that blows where it will,” 
meaning the spirit doesn’t know 
what it is going to do next, 
and may not know what it is doing now, 
in a “Don’t let the left hand know what the right hand is doing” kind of way 
(And the only way we can do that 
is to not know what we are doing 
(from the Left Brain’s standpoint).

We are the balancing agent 
between our brain's hemispheres,
which represent different ways
of perceiving/responding to
apparent reality,
and our place is to bring awareness/mindfulness
to play
in choosing how to see/respond to
what we perceive in each moment
of every situation as it arises.

We have to see our seeing
and think about our thinking
all of the time.

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