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?
10,000 things are in our way, necessitating our return to the emptiness, the stillness, the silence, waiting for the mud to settle and the water to clear, the noise to diminish the complexity to wain, in order to know what needs to be done, where, when and how, and do it, time after time, "without hope, without witness, without reward" (Steven Moffat), no matter what. If enough of us do that, it's a new world like that (snaps fingers). Why not? What's the problem?
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The world needs its human population to be vitally alive. For that to be true of us, we have to be interested in what we are doing, and understand it to be necessary work, vital work, important in a substantive way to the welfare of ourselves and our neighbors. We have to be doing work that interests us and is useful and helpful. Show of hands? My present thesis is that the quality of our moods, the number and seriousness of our symptoms, the state of our health, and the length of our life are reflected in the degree to which our work is interesting and useful. Check me out on that. Make inquiries. Conduct research studies. Let me know what the evidence shows. But only if you are interested in doing it and think the results will be useful.
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The frustrations of life need a lot of silence to be silenced. We need to sit quietly more often than we do, in more quiet than we are often allowed. Noise and bustle seem to be the orders of the day, every day. Because, I think, the other side of noise is recognition, realization, knowing, seeing, awakening, enlightenment... And that asks hard things of us. Better to live with the noise and bustle, frustration and wits' end than to take up the work of doing what needs to be done about the things unveiled by the silence.
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We are always trying to find our way. Circumstances overwhelm us. The noise of the 10,000 things gets in our way. The dust of the world kicks up complexity and complication. Distractions abound. We wake up again in the Wasteland wondering what's now, what's next, where do we go from here... Always the answer is the same one. Emptiness. Stillness. Silence. Looking. Listening. Waiting for a guide to appear in the silence to lead us back to the way again. Back to our original nature and the innate virtues that are our Anchor Stone forming our foundation, grounding us in the here/now, asking us what needs to be done, when, where, and how, here/now. And like that (Snaps fingers), we are back to the business at hand, seeing what's what and what needs to be done in response, aligned with the Tao, at one with ourselves and the moment, alive and in accord with what is called for, singing and dancin' with the Way.
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The life we are living needs to evoke, enable, serve our original nature and the innate virtues that are ours from birth. However, this may be other than what we do to pay the bills evokes, enables, serves. In that case, we walk two paths at the same time, by keeping an eye on the other path while our feet are on this one. The first path in this instance would be what we do to pay the bills, and the second path would be what we pay the bills to do. This life needs to be allowed to fall into place around our original nature and our innate virtues. What have we always loved to do? What have we always been good for? People depend on us for what? Looked to us for what? I have loved three things through adolescence and adulthood, a canoe, a camera, and a typewriter/word processor-- and my life has fallen into place around these things. I have aged out of the canoe, but I am still very much into photography and writing, and fully expect that to be the case as long as possible. So find your loves and work them into your life. Live to do what you love, and your life will take on a meaning and a vitality it may not have had for a while.
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It's tricky. We have to know what we are doing, and we have no idea of what we are doing, so we have to know that we do not know what we are doing, and focus on knowing what we know. We have to know what we know in each situation as it arises. Discounting, dismissing, disregarding, ignoring nothing without knowing that we are doing it, and doing it consciously, deliberately, intentionally, like with the noise and complexity that are interfering with our ability to know what we know without adding anything substantive/helpful to the situation as a whole. Knowing what we know, and what we do not know, is essential knowing. And we have to know at least that much all of the time. Which means spending a lot of time with the right kind of emptiness, stillness and silence. The Quakers seem to understand this, even though they don't articulate it at all. They are just quiet, trusting that to be enough. Quiet in the right kind of way is enough. Just being quiet, not so much. Being quiet in the right kind of way opens us to the wonder of silence, stillness and emptiness. To the wonder of the moment. to the wonder of being alive. And opens us to the experience of life being lived here/now. Deepening, expanding, enlarging the experience of the moment to include all there is in the moment, which is everything, all at once, here/now. And what needs to be done about it, in response to it, based on what we know of it and what is called for in response to it. This is the kind of knowing that knows. Be there. Do that. In each situation as it arises, your entire life long.
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"Without contrary is no progression," said William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Our opposites, inconsistencies, contradictions, polarities define us, identify us, form and shape us, bring us forth full-born into the world of duality and denial. Where do you cancel yourself out? X-out yourself? Fail to be who you are by being who you also are? Where do you refuse to bear the pain of your inner-opposition by denying it, ignoring it, pretending it does not exist? Our contending truths bring each other forth-- they do not cancel each other out! We contradict ourselves! We cannot help it! Sometimes we do it like this, and sometimes we do it like that, and that's the way we do it. Balance and harmony, Kid. Balance and harmony! It's yin/yang all the way! WE are yin/yang all the way! Let it be so! Because it is! We equalize ourselves by being contrary to ourselves. Make room for your opposites, honor them, allow them to round you out, top you off, show you who you are and who you also are-- fully capable of being exactly who/what you need to be in each situation as it arises, no matter what! Where are you contradicting yourself? Do it more completely, more fully, more consciously, more appropriately, more freely! Have fun with it! With being fully capable of being/doing whatever the situation calls for, by being wholly who you are in every situation-- no matter what! Doing what is needed, never-minding what that may be! Pull yourself together by inviting all of your disparate parts to the party! And living your life as it needs to be lived-- as it needs you to live it-- anyway, nevertheless, even so!!! May it always be so!!!
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What's in it for God? What is God getting out of all this? Do you think God is having a good time? Just one Woopie Doo after another? Think God skips, whistles and dances everywhere all the time? Think anybody ever asks God how things are going? And listens to what God might have to say? It's all about us, isn't it? What we want. How we feel. "Gimme-Give me-Help Me Get! And forget us doing anything ever for nothing! We don't give God anything without expecting at least double in return. "What's in it for us???" That's what we want to know. We are in it for the payoff, and it better be good. It's time we turned the light around. There is no pay off. Nothing is in it for us. It is our place to do what needs to be done for the joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it. In each situation as it arises. All our life long. Think that will sell? Are you buying it? Everything hinges upon our buying it-- on our buying into it, and doing it as though our life depends on it. As though all of life depends on it. On our living as though this is so. All of it hangs in the balance, waiting for us to get it and show others how it is done.
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In the emptiness, stillness and silence, everything comes up for inspection. If we can hold it in our awareness as interested observers, without engaging with any of it, just watching, just seeing, just knowing, we can discover how our experience has impacted us by the frequency with which things appear to pass in review. and by our tendency to be "hooked" by some things more than others. In question here is our perspective and how we evaluate our experiences in light of their--what? What are our memories reminding us of? What is the perspective reflected in the memories we remember, and cannot stop thinking about? What does the weight we give certain experiences and the way we think about them, interpret them, assign meaning to them say about the way our perspective of events has shaped our life in ways that a different perspective of the same events would not have? What happened to us is not as much of a burden as how we reacted to what happened to us. How we reacted and continue to react is determined by the perspective we had/have regarding the experiences that remain vibrantly alive for us, even now, even so, even yet. Reflecting on our perspective offers the possibility of new realizations, insight, enlightenment, awakening, freedom and life, even now, even so, even yet. All because we sat quietly and watched what appeared in the silence.
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The Wasteland is everywhere people are living inauthentic lives cut off from their original nature and the innate virtues that are theirs at birth. The Wasteland is everywhere. +++
The world could be redeemed/transformed "like that" (Snaps fingers) if people would simply be who they are/were at birth. Jesus said it: "Unless you turn and become as children, you will never enter (he called it) the kingdom of heaven." The Buddha called it "the farther shore," or "Nirvana." Indigenous Americans called it "The Happy Hunting Grounds." Anne Murry called it "The Land of Gentle Breezes Where Peaceful Waters Flow." Everybody calls it something. It is where people are living authentic lives at-one with their original nature and the innate virtues that are theirs at birth. Everywhere else is the Wasteland. My idea of the church is where people are re-connected with themselves, their original nature and their innate virtues, and helped to find and live the life that is truly their life to live. Transforming the Wasteland into Sweet Beulah Land "like that" (Snaps fingers).
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The grounding center of true religion is listening, seeing, feeling, intuiting, knowing, trusting, doing, being what is called for in the time and place of our living. There is no believing any doctrine, theology, creed, or dogma. There is only the experience of the here/now and our response to it on the level of psyche/soma in doing what needs to be done when, where, and how it needs to be done in each situation as it arises, no matter what. Children can do this. Is it well within the reach of everyone. Yet, it seems to exceed our grasp. No one knows what to do about that.
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We have to know what is required of us and be right about it. And do it. We are not free to do whatever we want with our life. We are obligated to live according to, aligned with, in accord with, our life's idea for itself. We have to know what we need to do to be living the life our life desires to live, and be right about it. And do it. The natural world has no choice. An oak tree lives, not only like an oak tree, but also like the particular tree it is among all the oak trees there are. Just so, there is the general us, and the specific, unique, us, and we have to be aligned with both the "us" on the species level, and on the individual-specific level. Who are WE individually, specifically? We don't get to choose that. We have to BE that! And, in order to BE that, we have to know what we know, and how that is at odds with what we wish/want to be so, and go with what we know is right for us no matter how far that might be from what we want to be right for us. Go with what we know to be so! It is the rule of the ages! It is also what the theme of Death and Resurrection speaks to throughout the ages. Jesus' prayer, "Thy will not mine be done," addresses this very thing. The "Thy" here is the life his life is requiring him to live. He is acknowledging that he is not free to choose the life he would prefer to live, but is bound/obligated/obliged to live the life that is his to live. No matter what. As it was with Jesus, so it is with each one of us. We are duty bound to live the life that needs us to live it. To know what we know that it is and to do it. No matter what.
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Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy