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?
This is the most bleak Fourth of July in my experience, and this is my 81st experience. The Constitution is out of vogue. The Bill of Rights is a laughter. The majority of the Supreme Court asks Trump how he wants them to vote. We have a king on his throne in the White House. And the welfare of the people with less than a billion dollars in their bank account is not the concern of the government that runs the country. And this is not going to get better any time soon. It will get worse as the days go by. And we have to take care of ourselves.
That is the one good thing coming out of all of this. Our life is our affair, our responsibility like never before. We have to learn to be who we are and do what is ours to do. No monkeying around. No living like it doesn't matter how we live. We have to live like it counts. There is no time to throw away.
We have to turn to the emptiness, stillness, silence because that is where the answers are to be found. The silence knows. And we can trust what we find there. Speaking of trust, we have to trust our intuition as never before. Listening to our intuition is the same thing as being enlightened. Sitting in the silence (And silence includes emptiness and stillness. The three are one), listening to our intuition is the way to spend the rest of our life. That is the way of the Tao. The way to a life worth living within any set of circumstances. That is what got us from the caves to the high-rises, and then we decided we didn't need silence anymore and embraced noise and ignorant pastimes as a way of life and that got us here, now. Now it is time to return to the silence and do what the silence calls for in each situation as it arises. All our life long.
Here we are, now what? Where do we go from here? How do we get there? Who says so? How do we know they know what they are talking about? What does it matter? Who says so? ...
I think we say so. About all of it. I think we are the absolute authority here. What we say goes. For the sake of the game, let's say I'm right about this. What do you say? About all of it.
I'll ask you to sit down and write it out. What are the questions that beg to be asked? What are the things that cry out to be said? You generate it all just see where it goes. Just to find out what you have to say. Trust one thing to lead to another. Off you go now. The game is afoot.
We are watching Democracy crumble as we watch. The British should have thought of this all those years ago. "Forget war! We will just buy you out. How about a million Pounds?" And the Civil War? Same thing. Lincoln makes a deal with the Confederacy. "Forget succession and we will pay you handsomely, every year for the next hundred years!" Trump just paid already wealthy old white guys to go along with him. To say "Yes!" to everything he suggests. Brilliant move. He will sell off the Armed Forces and buy off all his enemies. The guy is a ton smarter than I am. I would have never thought of it. And I couldn't have pulled it off even if I had thought of it. What a guy!
Beach Sunrise 11/2008 — Ocracoke Island, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, North Carolina
Silence steadies us and stabilizes us, grounds us and points the way. When Jesus said, "Pray always," he was saying "Live out of the silence." The silence is also emptiness and stillness. The three are one, like the Holy Trinity, and they connect us with all that is holy, and lead us to living lives that reveal who we are and what we are about, to our complete surprise and amazement.
Emptiness is the emptiness between breaths. We can experience that by inhaling normally for a count of five and exhaling normally for a count of five, and pausing between breaths for a count of ten. Do three rounds being aware of the emptiness between breaths. We might take up the practice of entering silence with three rounds of breathing and counting like this, and returning to the count of ten if we are restless and unable to quieten down and be silent.
It is fine to watch where our mind goes in the silence. We are waiting for the normal flitting and fluttering about to settle down, and are looking past that, beyond it, to something like a beach ball appearing out of nowhere. Something that arises of its own accord is a gift from the deeper regions calling us to look closer and see what comes to mind, just watching with curiosity and not interfering, waiting to see what comes next and where it goes. This will be fodder for reflection following our period of silence, something to carry with us back to the ordinary world of consciousness in normal, apparent reality.
Reflection to the point of new realizations is the gift of silence in leading us, or helping us to find the way within the current state of affairs of our life in the present moment and in all of the situations and circumstances as they arise. We are wondering in the background of our life what is called for and. how we might do what needs to be done with the gifts we possess from birth: Our original nature, our innate virtues--the things we do best and enjoy doing most--our inherent imagination, and our intrinsic intuition.
These are the things that connect us with "the spirit world," that is the world of Psychic Reality, the unconscious world from which we come and of which we know very little, but we are linked to that world by our inner regions of unconscious gifts and abilities that help us find our way to ourselves, our gifts and the life that is ours to live experiencing and exploring who we are and what we are about.
And silence leads the way as we "live out of the silence" in all that we do.
Growing up and doing what is called for in each situation as it arises is all there is to it. All there is to our life. It is more difficult than it might appear to be.
Growing is the hardest part. We all grow up against our will. That is what growing up is. Learning to do what we do not want to do, when, where and how it needs to be done. We have to do what we do not want to do IN THE RIGHT WAY!!! IN THE RIGHT PLACE!!! AT THE RIGHT TIME!!! Think, changing the baby's diaper every time the baby's diaper needs to be changed. The way the baby's diaper needs to be changed. Thinking about that will give us a sense of what we are up against.
And then there is the silence, which includes emptiness and stillness. The three are one. And they are essential to growing up because that is where we glean direction and focus. What is called for comes to us in the silence. We are not the source for knowing what is called for. The silence is the source. We drop into the silence in a regular and routine way, becoming as empty as the space between breaths, and wait to see/hear/understand what is called for.
This what Jesus meant when he said, "Pray always." He meant, "Live out of the silence." We look to the silence to direct our life. To lead us to what is called for here, now in each situation as it arises, all our life long. It is not about partying hearty and passing a good time. It is about seeing, hearing, knowing, doing, being.
Seeing, hearing, knowing, doing what is called for and being aligned with when, where, and how it needs to be done.
Our life is our devotional duty. Our life brings us forth in ways that surprise us because we do not know what we have within until we find ourselves exhibiting strengths and talents we have no idea are there until circumstances call them forth.
I discovered I could talk to an audience in a Freshman speech class at the college I attended in Natchitoches, Louisiana. We had to give a demonstration speech. I brought an ironing board and an iron and demonstrated ironing a shirt. No notes, just talking to people about ironing a shirt. I've never been so amazed. And I made a career of preaching. None of which would I ever have imagined if it weren't for that demonstration speech.
We are packed with tools and abilities and affinities we don't know we have. Our life will pull them out of us--if we cooperate and stay out of the way.
The best thing we can do for ourselves is to be quiet in a routine and regular way.
When Jesus said, "Pray always," he meant, "Live out of the silence."
In the silence, we are in the presence of What Has Always Been Called "God." The silence is the bridge between worlds--the world of conscious reality and the world of unconscious reality.
Our role is to live in two worlds at the same time.
In the early days/years of the species, this was a snap. It is how life is in the natural world. Civilization is unnatural, and is cutoff from the world of unconscious reality, a world that can access us primarily when we are sleeping, but also when we are in a trance state, which we access through the meditative practice of entering the silence and tuning into what is happening there.
When we make ourselves available to the silence (emptiness and stillness--the three things are one), we consciously "bridge the worlds," and wait receptively to sense, "see," "hear," "experience" a communion with "the other side."
This "other side" has been thought of as "the unconscious," or "the psychic world" because it is accessed through our "psyche" and experienced through experiences with the Paranormal world of "woo-hoo, woo-hoo," and is the Provence of "That which has always been called "God."
The word "God" has been adopted/co-opted by Jewish/Christian theologians to mean specifically the God of the Bible, with all other gods being dismissed, discounted, ignored, condemned to the outer darkness and held in utter contempt. But Psychic reality will not go away. There is a world of Psychic/Paranormal goings-on "behind the scenes" which includes, "That which has always been called "God," but operates outside of the realm/range/territory of Orthodox theology, whether Jewish or Christian.
And we bridge the worlds. Or can, if/when we open ourselves to the worlds beyond the world of normal, apparent, reality. And when we don't do that, and even refuse to do that, we cut ourselves off from the Psychoid (A word coined by Carl Jung representing the supposed world beyond the physical and psychological realms of conscious reality and composing "The underlying, primary psychic reality which is so inconceivably complex that it can be grasped only at the farthest reach of intuition, and then but very dimly."
Which makes it very difficult to talk about--but it is there the way Dark Matter is there, as a way of holding things together that we sense but cannot see/touch/feel/talk about or explain. And it impacts us in ways we can only speculate and wonder about. But much that we call "God" has to do with this "Psychoid Realm" which R.D. Laing referenced when he said, "Some things can be experienced but not understood, and some things can be understood, but not explained. And which Heinrich Zimmer must have had in mind when he said, "The best things cannot be said, and the second-best things create confusion by trying to say what words cannot express, leaving us with the third-best things to talk about, news, weather, sports, hearsay and gossip."
Waiting to know IT when we see it, and trusting ourselves to know what to do about it when we do --and in the meantime what do we do while we wait?
Waiting is IT for me, and watching, seeing, hearing, knowing, doing, being. That has been IT, and I have had a good time doing IT.
Making this photograph, these photographs, was a total joy. Nobody was making me do it. I thought it up all on my own, and put myself in the way of a photo and clicked the shutter a number of times. Because it was a total joy.
I have spent my time in ways I took to be worthy. And didn't spend much of it in ways I took to be unworthy. I have written books I wanted to write and didn't care if I sold any. I haven't yet been cuffed and thrown in jail. Or ridden a bull, or chased by one. And I am at peace with all of it.
I let the day take the lead and say yes when I think yes will do, and no when I think no will do better. And haven't found a way to beat that, or a reason to look for one.
When I leave this place, it will be regretting all that needs to be regretted about how it works to the detriment of more people than it works for the betterment of. Why isn't this place geared to being good for people? Committed to the welfare of people? Interested more in profit than in being helpful? Congress is going to take Medicaid, Medicare, and social security away from people who need the help for the first two, and worked all their lives putting money into social security for the third one. To benefit people who have more money than they need already.
I'm disgusted with the way the country works. And with us and our way of putting up with the way it works. Because we didn't opt for justice and fairness from the start, and now we are at the point of thinking that justice is not fair, because it isn't fair if we don't get what we want when the poor and disenfranchised are given what they need. And we call help to them "entitlement programs" as though farm subsidies aren't entitlement programs and food stamps are, with both programs capable of being interpreted as paying their recipients for not working.
The disgust, resentment and hatred wealthy (and they all are wealthy compared to the people who clean their houses and bring food to their table in restaurants) white people have for poor people and people of color (and old people and people with infirmities and handicaps) is beyond all reason. And we have produced a culture where money matters more than people, and if a profit can be made a profit will be made, so what about the environment?
So there is an aspect of me that can't wait to get out of here, away from here because here is not what it professes to be ("Liberty and Justice for all!" and "No one is above the law!" and "the Majority Rules" with Gerrymandering tilting the table to make sure the majority does not ever rule, particularly in things that matter).
The truth is it is all a lie, with white people pretending they care about people of color, with disadvantages and personal needs that are beyond anything wealthy white people have ever experienced or ever will. And I've had enough of it, and won't miss any of it, and withdraw from all of it with my photography and my books (those I write and those I read).
Buddhism makes a thing about non-duality. Taoism makes a thing about Yin/Yang. Zen is more Taoist than Buddhism is, yet Zen-Buddhism is a Buddhist thing. Buddhism is the most self-contradictory religion I have ever met. Which makes it the most encased in denial religion I have ever met, and yet, get this, Buddhism is all about enlightenment. Have I succeeded in making an airtight case for Buddhism as the most contradictory and denial-based religion in the history of religion?
My fundamental complaint about all religions is the way they all are founded on their denial of projection. They all make outlandish statements that require belief as rock-solid truth, and every statement ever that requires belief is not grounded on factual evidence, but on projection. Projection is declaring something to be so that we, or someone, has made up and declared to be so. And that is the foundation of every religion. And, it is denied by every religion.
So, I recommend speculation and inquiry along Gnostic lines that connect us with our intuition and inner-knowing capabilities as being worthy of our time in finding our way to knowing what is called for in each situation as it arises and what needs to be done about it, when, where and how it needs to be done. Which is all the religion that anyone needs. This religion is centered, not on the God of theology, but on "That Which Has Always Been Called God"--and is the Mystery at the heart of life and being.
Orthodox Christianity and Gnostic Christianity form the Yin/Yang combination of the Christian Religion. In so doing, they represent Taoism at its best, balancing each other and offering the full edition of truth to meet the needs of the viewing audience. Something for everybody who knows what they are looking at (who knows what they need to see).
Orthodox Christianity spells it out, defines it clearly, proves it beyond question with scriptural references and doctrinal support in a quantifying kind of way, with authority grounded in the scriptures, traditions, rituals and clergy.
Gnostic Christianity talks about the qualities of its projections in using terms like "transparent to transcendence" and "the authority of one's own experience," to validate its assertions and claims.
Orthodox Christianity grounds its faith on its belief in the truth of the Bible, the creeds, the doctrines and the word of ministers, priests and "the way it has been done through the ages."
Gnostic Christianity places its faith in the validity of individual experience and the "felt sense" of the truth of personal encounters with realization, recognition, understanding and knowing what feels right, good, beautiful and valuable.
The two approaches to spiritual truth part ways with the questions of "Who says so?" and "What makes them think so?" and "How do we know whom to believe?" and "How do we know that what we are told to believe is true and trust that more than we trust the reality of our own personal experience?" "Do we take someone else's word for what is so, or the validity of our own convictions?" and "What part do we play in the construction/ development of our own beliefs, views, ideas and opinions?" and "Sense or Nonsense, who is to say?"
Sit still, be quiet, see what emerges from the silence and how it suggests what is called for here, now-- and how we might arise and do what needs to be done, when, where and how it needs to be done, and where that leads.
Allowing inner to direct us to outer puts us on the path of finding our own way from where we are to where we need-- and are needed--to be. We are the servants of our gifts of our original nature, our innate virtues (The things we do best and enjoy doing most), our inherent imagination and our inherent intuition.
These are the aspects of us that know who we are and how we might be of help here, now by doing what has need of what we have to offer. The Silence is with us always as companion, guide and friend. We can drop in any time for the blessing of its grace, welcoming us with kindness and goodwill for life everlasting.
To live from our center, core, ground, foundation, truth would mean what? Around what do we coalesce? Our identity flows from what? When we act spontaneously, without thinking, planning scheming, who do we show ourselves to be? When have we surprised ourselves by saying/doing something? That is who we are. Who is that? Make that our meditative focus for our next session with emptiness, stillness, silence, and see what comes. How does that compare with who we think we are?
Gnosticism was well ahead of its time. The first and second centuries CE were not ready to hear, "We all are God! We only need to wake up to this truth and be who we are!"
And the people who saw things this way then were martyred, or murdered, for their service to the truth--as Jesus had foretold that they would be.
But. Truth cannot be killed. "Truth will out." Will out-live lies, deception, and falsehoods. And "That Which Has Always Been Called God" is "not across the sea or over the mountains that we might go seek for it, but it is right here, now, that we might know it and do it."
Knowing and doing, not talking, thinking, or believing, are shifting the truth to experiencing, embracing and following. And the Gnostics are getting their due after all these years.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 