Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy
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?
Being open to what is trying to reach us, get our attention, wake us up to what is Called for here, now is being alert to what is happening here, now, and what mysterious forces are at work in our life to turn us toward the things that are calling us to wake up to what is with us to guide and direct us to the path that is opening before us with our name written all over it.
Trusting ourselves to the life that is asking us to live it is the wisest thing we will ever do.
It is our place to discover what we do best and what we like to do most. They may be the same thing, and they may be quite dif-ferent. And it is also our place to spend our life doing them along with all the other things we enjoy doing that spin off from what we do best and what we like to do most. So that our life becomes a collection of things we love to do, and it is our place as the collector of things we love most about life to live so as to increase the number of items in our collection year by year until we are brimming with the wonder and joy of things we love to do and are quite thrilled by and interested in so that we are looking forward to every day to find more things that thrill us and call us forth into life and being as those who are on a mission to relish each day for the delights and beauty it holds and shares with us throughout the time there is for living, and to know what a joy it is to live that way.
And it is never too late to begin living in this way. It is always just the right time to start. What do you do best? What do you enjoy doing most? Be about these things here and now, with all your heart, and mind, and soul and strength! Living as though you mean it throughout the time left for living! YahRoo! The game's afoot!
Right seeing, right hearing, right knowing, right doing, right being is all there is to it--and it is increasingly out of the question, because we have been overtaken by the noise and dust of the world. Bullied, you might say, into the new Dark Age where up is down, right is wrong and no one knows what's what.
And so, the need for emptiness, stillness, silence in which to sit and wait for the mud to settle and the water to clear and for everyone to regain their balance and find their bearings.
Finding the center requires us to sit still and breathe, waiting for balance, harmony and sanity to be restored, remembering, in the words of Martin Palmer, "The path that can be discerned as a path is not a reliable path." And the people who proclaim they have found the path are not reliable guides. The wold is awash in unreliable guides. Let the seeker beware, and seek the inner light to what is called for and serve that with all our heart, and mind, and soul and strength, regardless of what is trending. In these times, following the crowd may well lead deeper into the wasteland of dismay and disarray. No?
There is the God of theology, and there is "That Which Has Always Been Called God" beyond theology.
Theology was invented by the Church of Rome over the 400 years between Jesus' execution and the closing of the Canon which ended the amount of material that could be included in the Bible. The Church of Rome decided what was in and what was out of the Bible. The Church of Rome composed the Bible, we may as well say "The Church of Rome wrote the Bible," so that what the Bible says is what the Church of Rome wanted the Bible to say, which comes down to "You are all sinners going straight to hell unless you believe what we tell you and do what we say!" The Church of Rome gave itself some leverage that way, and guaranteed its future, not that it had anything at stake in choosing the scriptures it chose to comprise the Bible.
Before Theology was invented, there was only "That Which Has Always Been Called 'God,'" which was experienced more often than believed, and everyone knew what they were talking about when they talked about That Which Has Always Been called "God." Then Theology came along with Hell in tow and it all went to hell.
My point here is that we do not need theology. We only need to experience what has always been experienced as That Which Has Always Been Called God to know that God is one with us, that we are all "of God." That no one can draw the line between where we end and God starts. God is the stuff everything is made of. It is all of God, IS God, and everyone who has ever known has known this much. We are Psyche! We are God! There are no lines separating anything that theology did not draw.
Sit with that. See where it goes.
We are paying the price for electing Donald Trump, and will be paying it for the rest of our life. This train wreck won't fix itself, put itself back on the tracks and chug along to glory in our life time. We are on our own. It is up to us to put our life together in the aftermath of the complete loss of everything.
We start with our attitude. Suffering is made worse by the way we bear our suffering. Meeting the basic cost of living for the duration will be out of the question for a lot of people, and some of the people are working on ways to help with that. Those of us who are able can donate cash to the helping agencies and tip better at the coffee shops and restaurants. Cash encourage-ment is important in keeping people going. I say that wondering how long my social security checks will keep coming and Medicare helping with my medical needs. It could get really dicey and quite out of hand in no time, and making it from day-to-day will be interesting for all of us.
We all have inner resources, sources of guidance, direction, encouragement and insight/realization/awareness/knowledge... We are all members of a species that has survived environmental catastrophes and hardship throughout time, and we all have a genetic core that can be trusted to be what we need to find what we need to do what needs to be done to respond appropriately to all of the "Here we are, now what's?" in our path. So, we start building our relationship with and our reliance upon our inner capacity to be for ourselves "a very present help in time of trouble."
Drop into the silence throughout the day, open to and present with what meets us there, and see where it goes throughout the times that are upon us and beyond.
Our personal authority extends to cover a wide range of matters, internal and external. A lot of us claim personal authority over how our hair is cut. I don't push into that area, and say, "Whatever you think I deserve, when sitting in the hair stalest's chair. There is generally some light-hearted back and forth, and we settle on "About an inch off all over." I have come out just fine over time.
We know what is right for us and what is wrong, where we belong and where we have no business being. And the Old Testament commandment that did not make the top ten but should be #1 in my book, "Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor's landmark," is sacrosanct and beyond challenge. Our neighbor, and each of us, know what's what regarding our neighbor and ourselves. And all of us need to recognize and honor that throughout time.
We know what we know, and, ideally, live in close communion with The Knower within, who guides and directs us throughout our life in knowing and doing what needs to be done in each situation as it arises. May we all realize that this is so and spend the necessary amount of time in emptiness, stillness and silence developing our relationship with our Knower and learning how to read the signs directing our way through the choices and decisions that fill each day. So that we might know, for example, when to pull over to the side of the road and take the picture that catches our eye in the moment of our seizure. Etc., and so forth throughout all of life.
Living out of the silence (emptiness/stillness) enables us to be mindfully aware of the place of wanting and caring about the wrong things plays in our day-to-day, and how regularly our thinking revolves around things that have no connection at all with what the present situation is calling for and what would be the most appropriate response we could make to that here, now. We are lost in the dust of the world. Adrift in the churning confluence of things that count for little or nothing on the scale of What Matters Most. We are wasting our time, wasting our life, lost in the wasteland of discontent.
We turn things around by being centered and focused on who we are and what we are here for, and taking up the search for where our deep joy is found and living there, doing that. Being true to the truth of who we are and what we are about honors and serves our Original Nature, Innate Virtues (The things we do best and the things we enjoy doing most), Inherent Intuition, Intrinsic Imagination. In serving these things, we bring them forth and make them apart of our day-to-day life in doing what is called for when, where and how it is called for, and everything falls into place around that.
Dropping into the silence to be present with what meets us there is a life-long strategy for living open to what's what, what's happening and what is called for here, now. In the silence over time, we avoid the distractions/diversions/smoke/dust/haze that prevents us from being here, now doing what needs to be done, when, where and how it needs to be done through all conditions, situations and circumstances that we meet along the way. And we are able to attend what needs our vital attention moment to moment in being who we are and doing what is ours to do--often what we do best and enjoy doing most--by being shanghaied or waylaid by the noise of the world.
In the silence, we see, hear, know and understand where we are and what needs to be done about it, and with practice we can do this with one breath walking wherever we are going. Simply inhale for a count of five, pause for a count of five and exhale for a count of five. You have take a Silent Break from your life and given yourself a count of fifty opportunity to shift your perspective, remember where you are and what you need to do about it here, now. And you might be amazed at what a lift this gives your life. Do it throughout each day and observe the difference it makes.
Our frame of mind makes all the difference. Fragility or stability hangs in the balance, depending upon our frame of mind. Change that and everything changes. We are as steady and
confident as our point of view permits.
All of which is to say that the MAGA mind set is far from confident and self-assured. It is hanging by a thread, held in check only by the bluster of Donald Trump. Without his brash behavior and getting by with dancing on the edge, they are without foundation, and teeter on the brink of collapse and ruin. If he slips, the show is over, the lights go out, and great will be the fall of the House of Trump.
The line between “Reformer” and “Heretic” is too fine to be seen. It doesn’t exist. It all depends on how we see what we look at. Jesus was a reformer who was executed as a heretic by the Romans at the request of Caiphas, the High Priest of the Temple in Jerusalem. And the doctrines of Original Sin, Redemption, Atonement, Salvation, etc. were invented by the Church of Rome in the 400 years between the crucifixion and the closing of the Canon, with the Church declaring, “You are all going to hell for all eternity if you don’t believe what we say and do what we tell you to do.” Guaranteeing the survival of the Church, and all churches through the ages to here, now
Leaving us with the opportunity/responsibility of rethinking all we have ever been taught/told about God, which now can be understood to be “That Which Has Always Been Called ‘God'” and re-thought in ways that take all that we know into account.
Like the way balance and harmony, rhythm and flow can be experienced/known in the way conditions and situations unfold in a day, and how we can be “on the beam,” or “off it,” and “in the flow” or “out of it.”
Joseph Campbell said, “We know when we are on the beam and when we are off the beam.” And we do. What do we know when we know that? How do we know when we know that? This is the Mystery at the heart of existence.
We are one with the Mystery. We are the Mystery ourselves. All of this is Mystery. Mystery and “God” are the same thing. We say “God” and think we have said something, but not so. What we associate with the word “God” was invented by the Church of Rome in the 4 centuries between Jesus’ death and the closing of the Canon when no more ideas about God and Jesus were allowed to be in the Bible. All we know about “God” is what the Church of Rome wanted us to know. All we know is the Church of Rome’s idea of God. Who is to say whose idea is the truth of how things are? Who is the authority in these matters? Who says so? How do they know? They know the way we all know when we are on the beam and when we are off the beam.
Lao Tzu said in talking about the Tao, “Darkness within darkness, the gateway to Mystery!” We can think of the Tao as “God,” as “Mystery.” They all can be experienced but not understood. “The Tao that can be said/told/explained is not the eternal Tao.” We can know things we cannot talk about. How do we know? It is a mystery.
We have to become those who honor The Mystery of Life and Being and Knowing! And, in the words of Iris DeMent, “Let the Mystery be.”
We are back to where the old Taoists were with Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching in the neighborhood of 600 years BCE, with living to be in sync with, aligned with, in accord with the movement, the rhythm and flow, of life and being.
The fundamental/foundational recognition/understanding is that there is a right way and a wrong way, a good way and a bad way, to do everything. Where we, as a species, get off track is by thinking "right and wrong," "good and bad," have to do exclusively and especially with OUR good and Our bad, Our wants and Our want-nots, Our advantage and Our disadvantage, Our profit/benefit/gain and Our loss, deficit, dismay... We look at everything in terms of its impact upon us and our desires.
This has been our problem from the beginning. The story of the Garden of Eden addressed the matter of corrupt wanting/caring being the source of all out difficulties. It has been so and remains so throughout time--but it has nothing to do with Original Sin and our need for Redemption, Atonement, Salvation, and everything to do with our need to wake up, grow up, and align ourselves with the Tao, the rhythm and flow of doing what is called for here, now. With doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right place, in the right way no matter what that means for us personally, with our gain or loss being of no importance whatsoever in doing what needs to be done in each situation as it arises for the sake of doing what is called for here, now alone in mind, time after time, without keeping score or wondering, even, when it is going to be our turn.
Look around and take stock. Everything is as it is because of improper wanting, caring, striving, seeking, to get our way in each situation as it arises no matter what. Call it "The Oh-No!"
So we have the Tao and the Oh-No existing together throughout time like Yin and Yang. Making a mess of everything. Destroying any hope of rhythm and flow. Keeping war and rumors of war foremost in each generation with everyone striving to have their way at the expense of everyone else's way.
And in each generation the background call to all people is to align themselves with the good of the here, now, doing what is called for here, now, regardless of its implications for each of us personally throughout the lifetimes of every person in every generation. Everyone doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, in the right place always and forever. Living aligned with the Tao all of the time everywhere. The fantasy at the heart of life and being.
When we toss theology and doctrine, all of which was invented by the Church of Rome during the 400 years between Jesus' crucifixion and the closing of the Canon, with the Church coming up with the catchy slogan, "This is what Jesus did for you and you are going straight to hell if you don't believe what we say and do what we tell you to do!" And when we toss that, we are left with That Which Has Always Been Called "God," without the theology and doctrine, to revere, honor, know and serve with all of our life and being--for the sheer joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it.
Theology and doctrine have always been grounded on our projection/imagination based on our experience with That Which Has Always Been Called "God," which is beyond which we cannot go in explaining the origin of life and being, and all of which we lump together as "God's will" in explaining everything we cannot otherwise begin to understand, coincidence, synchronicity, intuition, and the sense that everything seems to work together somehow to produce the lives we all are living as though they are part of some marvelous plan from the start.
Our experience takes us to the threshold of mystery, which we cannot leave alone, but must take apart, analyze, explain, define and duplicate in our own zeal to be in complete control of all things, and not at the mercy of "time and chance happening to us all."
Once we concede "time and chance happening to us all," we are free to explore our relationship with that which cannot be explained/understood/controlled to serve our ends and desires, we free to live without will and desire, simply doing what is called for when, where and how it is called for and, as Lao Tzu suggested around a thousand years before Jesus was born, "Let nature take its course."
On one hand this threatens us to the core to be at the mercy of nature taking its course, and on another hand, it is totally thrilling and delightful to not know what is going to happen next and what we will do about it in service to what is called for here, now in every situation as it arises throughout our life--in service to and relationship with the mystery at the heart of life and being.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy