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?
At Home in the Marsh — A Tri-Colored Heron on the move
Chief Seattle and Black Elk were two Native American spiritual leaders on par with Jesus and the Buddha according to my take on things. They had dreams and visions as accurate and valid as anyone’s ever. And they took the loss of their land and their people in as mature a way as anyone ever has. It was/is our arrogance and our shame that we have treated them and their people as ignorant savages without honor, without holiness, without commendation, without acclaim. We need a Wailing Wall on the Mall in Washington to commemorate Native American civilization and their place of honor among all the peoples of the earth, equal in every way with all the other peoples worldwide.
Ballantyne Gingko Park 12 — Charlotte, North Carolina
There is the experience of our experience and there is the observation of our experience. Observing our experience removes us from our experience and provides us with the experience of experiencing our experience–and that puts us in the position of impacting our experience by being removed from it to the extent of altering its impact through the addition of our awareness of our experience of our experience of our experience, bringing curiosity, wonder, humor, etc. to bear on our experience and freeing us to distance ourselves from what is happening by enlarging what is happening through the observation of what is happening. Which makes going to the dentist something to look forward to as a playground for awareness to explore from the vantage point of the dental chair.
Avalanche Lake — Glacier National Park, Kalispell, Montana
Laying our desires, ambition, wants, will, idea of how things ought to be aside and living in the service of what is called for in each situation as it arises by doing what needs to be done here, now in order for that to happen, and doing it in the right way, in the right place, at the right time puts us in accord with the Tao and at one with the flow of life and being, for the wonder and joy of the experience, and the satisfaction of having done it day by day all our life long. Like a field of buttercups or a forest of long-leaf pines.
We live in trying times. The way things are supposed to be is nothing like they are. The Constitution, Democracy, the Rule of Law, Truth, Justice, Equality, Freedom… Have all been replaced with Authoritarianism, Mobster Rule, Obscenity, Atrocity, Brutality, Cruelty, Inhumanity, Ruthlessness, Iniquity, Abomination, etc. without end. No one in position to enforce goodness is good. They all are without scruples, principles, conscience, morals or a recognition of the difference between right and wrong. The leadership of this country is rotten, amoral and unscrupulous. Under sail without direction or compass, led only by whim and fancy and the fantasy of excellence and perfection. Excellent only as an example of lunacy and perfect only as an exhibition of insanity and complete instability. Self-destruction is inevitable, but in the meantime, the collapse of the systems holding things together will be the bane of MAGA absurdity through decades of recovery.
In the meantime, I recommend erecting Wailing Walls and making regular visits there marking the only kind of wall Trump was capable of building.
We bring justice, compassion, grace, mercy, peace, and all the soft values to life in the Cosmos–in as much as we allow ourselves to be alive to one another and all living things. It is the gift of life to care about the living. And it is my bet that Neanderthal had an over-abundance of the Soft Side and that Homo-sapiens took care of that in short order–with the tendency flowing on against all those who aren’t enough like us to suit us throughout the universe. We are the bane of life. Give us forests and watch what we do with trees, no? “Fill the earth and subdue it!” was prophetic, or perhaps just boastful bar-talk among celebrating conquistadors.
The soft values have a hard time of it through most of civilization. The Wailing Wall, in all of its manifestations, stands as a metaphor of soft being traumatized by hard–or, perhaps of hard being victimized by harder, and biding its time in the service of bringing revenge to bear upon the conquerors. The world is a tough place to go about living, with the Law of the Jungle remaining in place throughout time: The big fish eat the little fish and the little fish swim through the holes in the nets hauling the big fish to the cannery. Serving the soft values in a hard world is the art of living with what we are given in light of the best we can imagine over time. The Sisyphean work against the way things are over time.
At Home in the Marsh — A Tri-colored Heron flies by
How many worlds are there in this world? How many worlds do all living things live in over the span of their lifetimes? It is no wonder that we have such a difficult time sharing space in this world that unites us all without actually uniting us at all. No? Making, in my mind, it all the more a thing to celebrate and cherish the times we can come together enjoying each other’s company and benefiting from each other’s presence by sharing the wonder of life together, here, now.
And, we could make our differences, our differentness, more of a joy and a pleasure if we merely flipped the switch on our perspectives and became friends with our enemies. I wonder why we don’t do more of that more often. It could become an actual thing, if we let it.
The Woman on a Black Horse 09 — Botany Bay National Historic Area and Wildlife Refuge, Edisto Island, South Carolina
What do you know that no one told you, and you do not know how you know?
How much do you know that no one told you and you don’t know how you know?
Sit with that secret knowledge. Take it into the emptiness, stillness, silence with you, and wait there “for the mud to settle and the water to clear.” Waiting in the silence for clarity is waiting for something to stir to life beyond the stillness with a riddle, or a symbol, or a stereotype, or a memory, or… Gifting you with it as something to work with to take you where you need to be. This is like a daytime dream, offering insight into your life at this moment, this here, now, offering you the mission of discovery, of enlightenment, of awakening, of realization. Starting with the intuitive sense of something starring to life beyond the stillness, there in the silence along with the knowledge that you don’t know how you know.
These two paragraphs are #131 and #132 in Zen Thoughts on my Published Works Blog on WordPress:
You know the things we know without knowing how we know? Be aware of that kind of knowing when you know it. Look closer. Sit with it in the silence. See what emerges from the stillness beyond the silence. You are in the presence of intuitive awareness, which goes beyond mindful awareness to the very essence of “mind.” To the foundation of “mind.” To the boundary separating Psyche and “mind.” To the experience of Psyche informing “mind.” Serving as at the ground of “mind.” Psyche becoming “mind.” At the place where we, ourselves, become cognizant of Psyche, Mind and Self. The three that are one. The Real Holy Trinity. No?
We are talking foundation. And flow. And Psyche. And presence. Psychic foundation, flow, presence. And our awareness of ourselves being aware of, cognizant of, Psychic foundation, flow and presence–of being one with Psychic foundation, flow and presence. Which is the same thing as being at one with the Tao. Aligned with the Tao. In accord with the Tao. Which is the same thing as enlightenment and awakening. And it all comes together before our eyes, here, now. Psyche, Flow, Presence, Knowing/Knowledge, Cognizance, Tao, Enlightenment, Awakening, Me and You, Here, Now. No?
Ballantyne Gingko Park — Charlotte, North Carolina
Being and remaining mindfully open to the present moment and what is happening here, now–and what is called for in meeting the moment as the moment needs to be met–is an automatic, spontaneous, realization akin to enlightenment and awakening in each moment that comes along. Knowing what’s what here, now and what the situation is asking us to do in response is as enlightened as anyone needs to be in any place at any time. And we can manage that just by dropping into the emptiness, stillness and silence and waiting for “the mud to settle and the water to clear.” Babies do it all the time. And cats and dogs and giant sequoias. They don’t think about it. They just know it by being open to it. Without wants and wishes, desires, cravings and aspirations getting in the way.
The Woman on a Black Horse 02–On a back road near Winston-Salem, North Carolina
The Woman on a Black Horse is my metaphor for my Intuition, the Psyche-Psychic source and center of my being. What’s yours? With this statement and this question, I am reforming religion as we know it and making it more personal and more reflective, meditative, mindful, vibrant and alive than the religion I am replacing with its theology, doctrine, dogma, beliefs about heaven and hell, sin, redemption, atonement, salvation, God, Jesus, the Bible, etc. ad nauseam. I am the proponent of a new reformation. Out with the old in with the new–or as Jesus said, “The old has passed away, behold the new has come!”
The new has come for me in the form/image of The Woman on a Black Horse whom I saw first riding with my wife and Tom Phillips, the high priest of photography guides in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park near Mexican Hat, Arizona. We were driving/being driven through the desert to Tom’s favorite photography sites when I saw coming toward in the sagebrush a Native-American woman on a black horse, whom I instantly recognized as The Photograph of the journey. I wondered if Tom would point her out but he didn’t and I did not request that he stop so that I might take the picture that needed to be taken. My hesitation was grounded in my uncertainty about two things, one the decorum of a beginner photography presuming to know more about the picture that needed to be taken than the Buddha of Photography in Monument Valley, and also the etiquette of a white man disrespecting the integrity and dishonoring the sacredness of the silence surrounding the woman on her journey taking care of her own private business. I did not know where the lines might be lying and did not want to impose my will upon the decorum of the situation at hand. Looking back, I should have asked Tom about the propriety of taking the photograph that was jumping up and down before me, waving its little hands, shouting, “What About ME? What About ME?” And I drove past leaving it untaken and haunting me with regret every day of my life since that moment. The Photo untaken. The albatross around every photographer’s neck all their life long. And the Lucky Charm chanting “Never Again” in our ear every time we see the photograph that needs to be taken, daring us to fail ever again to do what is called for in each situation as it arise and honoring it with doing the right thing in the right place at the right time in the right way AND GETTING THE PICTURE NO MATTER WHAT!!!
The Woman on a Black Horse goes with me wherever I go. My lifelong Psychic companion, guide, director, instructor and friend, to whom I owe everything in my photographic career and also my life, because it spills over into everything, don’t you know? Becoming what needs to be said, what needs to be done, what needs to happen, what is called for everywhere, all of the time, beckoning me to action in the service of what needs to happen, here, now, no matter what.
And she has become the source and ground/foundation of the New Religion that I am espousing here, now, urging you to join me in worshipping and working for The Woman on the Black Horse as she calls us to wake up, see, hear, understand what’s what and what is happening, what is going on, and what is called for here, now in every moment of every situation from now until our death, begging us to respond to what is called for with the right action in the right way and the right time and the right place which, I am here, now, to tell you that is all Jesus was doing when he walked among the people doing his thing in ways that it needed to be done and woke them up and transformed their lives, even though the Church of Rome and all churches ever since have shamefully applied their own spin to in a way that pays the churches way through the world with tithes and offerings and wealth and privilege being as they now are the only path to heaven there is and who wouldn’t to whatever they are told to do with their personal salvation on the line?
The new reformation is about just you and me and our Psyche–The Woman on a Black Horse, who knows what we need to know about what’s what and what needs to be done here, now with the gifts that are ours to give, like the gift of seeing what needs to be done with the gifts of our original nature, our innate virtues–what we do best and enjoy doing most (Which we often do not do, like I did not say, “Can we stop so I can take that picture?”), our intrinsic intuition, our inherent imagination, etc. amounting to all we need to meed the situation as it arises and do there what needs to be done, where, when and how it needs to be done, always and forever–for the sheer joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it, no matter what. As Flip Wilson might want me to say: WELCOME TO THE CHURCH OF WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW! Amen! May It Be So!
Lake Chicot Mirror — Lake Chicot State Park, Ville Platte, Louisiana
You know Jesus’ instructions to “Pray always”? He was talking about creating a regular, on-going, uninterrupted conscious presence with our Psyche. Psyche is that which has always been called “God,”–especially before theology, doctrine, heaven and hell, etc. Which is to say, before the Church of Rome invented theology, doctrine, heaven and hell, etc. in the four hundred years between Jesus’ death and the closing of the canon of scriptures we call “the Bible,” when the Church of Rome declared it to be all the Bible we would ever need in 392 CE.
Before then it was always Psyche that we experienced which the Church of Rome would call “God.” Psyche is the foundational source of our spiritual knowledge, which is to say knowledge beyond our physical senses.
I wrote this as the 114th entry in “Zen Thoughts” over in my Published Works Blog:
Carl Jung put Psyche forth as the guiding force in our life, whose purpose with us is to assist in our aligning ourselves with the Tao, with the swings and flow of our life as we develop into the self we are built/called/ment to be. Jung’s ideas about “individuation” is about us becoming who we are, the person we are born to be, “the antithetical self,” as opposed to “the Primary Self, or as he calls them, the Antithetical Mask,” with “the Primary Mask” with the “Primary Mask” being who we are supposed to be/expected to be by parents and society, and “the Antithetical Self/Mask,” being the person we authentically are called/ment to be. Our place is to know and be who we are. Jung’s idea of enlightenment/awakening would be knowing and being who we are, and his word, “individuation” was his idea of our task in being alive, that is to say, becoming who we are. And Psyche is with us to assist us in the work to live out of our true identity in our life. And I am interested in knowing how best we might do that in the time left for living. Jung would say we do that by attending our dreams and our symptoms and the swings and flow of our life in light of doors opening and shutting and events happening and opportunities coming our way, and where we are lucky and where we are not lucky with the trends and tendencies of our life over time.
The work to recover/develop/tend our relationship with Psyche, or God without the theology and doctrines, will be a renewal of our spiritual life requiring us to work out a partnership with Psyche in knowing what is called for and doing what needs to be done, when, where, and how it needs to be done, or as the Taoists would put it, “Doing the right thing at the right time in the right place and right way.” Without doctrines and theology to tell us what that is to be.
If you could be you for the rest of your life, what would you do?
If I could be me for the rest of my life I would live for things like this:
Today checking out at the grocery store, the young woman at the cash register (And with me that’s between 18 and 30) asked me if I was ready for Thanksgiving. I laughed and said, “I just go where they tell me to go and do what they tell me to do.” We laughed together and I asked her if she were ready for Thanksgiving and she said, “I just go where they tell me to go and do what they tell me to do.” More laughter, and I said, “We have the plan for making it through the holidays.” I live for this kind of interchange.
And this: At lunch this past week I saw a woman with her, probably two year old daughter in her arms waiting for a table, and the joy those two women were having with each other was delightful. They had it right and I hope they keep it up for the rest of their lives, and I’m confident that they will.
And this: Coming out of a different restaurant at lunch I watched a, say 6 year old boy holding hands with his, say, 4 year old sister, skipping from the restaurant to their car.
My days have enough of these kinds of experiences tucked away in them for me to be conscious of looking for them somewhere in each one. It is a wonderful way of inserting expectant wonder into the days that are left to me.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 