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?
Great Blue Heron 05/11/2019 — Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge, Noxubee County, Mississippi
On one hand, I would like to be able to say that I am not going to kill anyone intentionally.
On another hand, I recognize that there are people who need killing, and, given the right circumstances, I could and would do the job.
That opens the door to the contradictory essence of good and evil-- that good has to be able to do what would be evil in some circumstances, and evil has to give itself to the service of good in some circumstances.
We live between contradictory realities all our life long. And need to be able to do what is called for, when, where and how it is called for, in each situation as it arises. No matter what.
Doing what is called for, when, where, and how it is called for is the highest good, making the right thing the wrong thing from time to time. And we are here to make it happen, exactly as it needs to happen.
Great White Egret 05/13/2019 — Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge, Noxubee County, Mississippi
We get up and meet the day every day. The day asks things of us, and we find treasures and joy scattered throughout the day. Perspective, expectation, attitude, balance and harmony impact the day's impact on us and help to make things better or worse throughout the day.
For me, fatigue and nutrition/hydration are the primary factors determining how I react to and deal with what the day brings my way.
Being mindfully aware of the flow of what's called for and what's coming and going helps maintain my readiness for what's next and lets me know when it is time to call time out for rest and recovery in order to regroup and carry on.
Reflection and evaluation at day's end helps me gauge my response-ability situation-by-situation and provides insight and adjustments in preparation for what's coming in the days that lie ahead, which my nighttime dreams also help with in my on-going work to be/do what needs doing day-by-day all the way.
Great Blue Heron With Friend 05/07/2019 — Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge, Noxubee County, Mississippi
We do what is called for when it is called for, where it is called for, the way it is called for, anyway, nevertheless, even so-- whether we feel like it or not, whether we want to or not, whether we are in the mood for it or not, with the gifts that are ours to serve and share: our original nature, our innate virtues--the things we do best and enjoy doing most, our inherent imagination, our intrinsic intuition, for the joy of doing it, and the satisfaction of having done it, because we are who we are and that is what we do.
It is up to us to be who we are. No one can do it for us. We realize who we are and live in ways that express/exhibit that in each situation as it arises.
Start with selecting two symbols that express who you are over the course of your life. Live the remainder of your life in the service of those two symbols-- consciously, deliberately, intentionally.
One of my symbols is a combination question mark and exclamation Mark: ?! and the other is a huge Macy's Parade balloon man.
Signifying my determination to ask the questions that beg to be asked and to say the things that cry out to be said.
The balloon man is my determination to be bigger than that in response to whatever is happening here, now.
I am going to live consciously in the service of these symbols throughout the time left for living.
Schwabacher Landing 06/2011 — Grand Teton National Park, Jackson, Wyoming
Photography is a miracle of time and place. Everything is. And it goes mostly unacknowledged and unappreciated. We should be walking around agape with wonder at every here, now we experience. Instead, we rush on to the next here, now, having not noticed the last one at all.
Our life is wasted on us-- we live without bothering to pay attention to where we are, when we are, how we are or what we are doing.
Because we are thinking about other things. And a good bit of the time we couldn't tell you what we were thinking about if you asked us.
What are we thinking? What do we think we are doing?
Great White Egret and Cattle Egret 05/14/2019 — Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge, Mississippi
We live to learn to know and trust ourselves in order to find the way and know it when we do. We are looking for enlightenment/realization/recognition/ knowing. And we live lost and adrift, awash in uncertainty, fear, lethargy, addiction, without direction or purpose "on the heaving waves of the wine-dark sea."
Sex, money, drugs and alcohol are the best we can do. We know the emptiness of it, but we don't know what to do about it.
The systems have failed us. There has not been one--no, not one-- who knows more than we do to help us find the way. It is up to us. We each must find ourselves, know and trust ourselves in order to find the way and know it when we do.
We have to find/discover our original nature, our innate virtues--what we do best and enjoy doing most, our inherent imagination, our intrinsic intuition.
And hand ourselves over, with liege loyalty and filial devotion, to ourselves, and enter the silence, saying, "Let's go!" And mean it.
The covenant with ourselves has to become our adamantine foundation upon which we will not be moved.
We are One with who we are and what is ours to do, trusting ourselves to the silence and to what we find there to point the way in each situation as it arises as nature--OUR nature--leads the way.
That is what got us here, now, and we did not know what we were doing. Now we are listening in the silence for the next symbol/signal/sign to light the way.
Trusting ourselves to ourselves, swearing the oath of allegiance to ourselves, "To our own self be true!" And following the way that our experience and knowledge recognize as our own. Holding nothing back, at one with the guide within on the way that unwinds forever, at one for as long as it takes.
Baxter Creek Bridge, 2008 — Big Creek District/Picnic Area, Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Life consists of meeting the moment the way the moment needs to be met, doing what is called for, where, when and how it is called for, in each situation as it arises throughout our life.
The things that interfere with this are the things we want/desire/fear/feel obligated to do.
The freedom to live our life the way our life needs to be lived is difficult to arrange even for single people with no family to take into consideration.
Issues arise. Complications and complexity interfere. Things come up. It isn't easy doing what is called for with so many other things to take into account.
Returning to the silence helps to put things in order, allowing us to "rise to the occasion" and do what needs to be done.
Just being quiet helps to sill the clatter of the 10,000 things and settle "the dust of the world," so that we might collect ourselves and find the way through all that is in the way, regain our balance and harmony and get back on the beam.
Backside of Mt. Katahdin — Hundred Mile Wilderness, West Branch of the Penobscot River, Maine This is a faux reflection created by AI in Photoshop
The most important thing is knowing and doing what is called for here, now, in each situation as it arises-- doing the right thing in the right way at the right time in the right place.
This is to be aligned with the Tao of life and being, at one with the intuition of the Cosmos and of all things ert and inert therein.
We approach the sphere of the Tao, of intuition, seeing, hearing, knowing, being, doing through trance states and alignment with Truth! Justice! Equality! Liberty! Bearing the pain, anguish, agony, agoné of the questions:
How good is the good we call good? Whose good is served by the good we call good? What good will it do to do the good that is good anyway, nevertheless, even so, whether it does any good or not, against all odds, not caring what our chances are, with nothing in it for us beyond the joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it, in each situation as it arises, regardless of the circumstances, here, now, always and forever.
Jordon Pond — Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Maine
Wandering around looking for something to catch my eye is my idea of really living. And I do it for nothing. I get nothing out of it beyond the joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it.
The same thing applies to all the words I have ever written, and, likely, to all those I will ever write.
Money is only good for what it enables us to do with our life.
There is what we do to live, and there is what we live to do.
What do we live to do? What do we do with all our heart? What is worth our time? What is worth what remains of our time?
Drop into the silence wondering about these things and see what arises to call you to serve and share the gifts of your original nature, your innate virtues (The things you do best and love to do most), your inherent imagination and your intrinsic intuition in the time left for living.
Adams Mill Pond Mirror Mirror — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina
This is not a rational, logical, sensible universe. Life eats life. Except for black holes. They eat light. And everything else. I like the no beginning, no end guess, with energy neither being created or destroyed, only transformed or converted, meaning that we are all on the way to becoming something else, and dancing with all that comes our way in the meantime. "There is only the dance," as T.S. Eliot suggested. So find what is meaningful, blissful, graceful, joyful and invite it to dance while you can. Because there are black holes lurking about itching to dance with us. Or have us for dinner. It's all the same to a black hole.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 