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?
Carolina Lakes 12 10/06/2013 — Crowders Mountain State Park, North Carolina
The scenes that we seek can be anywhere, but they are not everywhere. So, we have to keep looking.
The things we need to hear can be found anywhere, but they are not found everywhere, so we have to keep listing-- and just as importantly, we have to keep talking, because we can say what we need to hear as easily as anyone else can say what we need to hear (We never know where what we need to hear will come from--so we have to listen all of the time).
I stay antsy, thinking, "It isn't here. Where is it? I know it's around here somewhere! Frustrated because I can't find what I'm looking for because I don't know what I'm looking for. And I have to wait, not knowing what I'm waiting for.
I call it "The creative dilemma." We have to wait it out. I call that "The creative task."
Molasses Creek 10/23/2006 — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Outer Banks, Ocracoke Island, North Carolina
Our mind is a wonderful assist in figuring out how to do what needs to be done. But, knowing what needs to be done, when, where and how, is another matter.
Our intuition and imagination are better at "reading the signs," at "feeling the call," at knowing what "catches our eye" and tells us to "dig here now," etc.
One time is not just as good as another, and our spontaneous response to the time that is at hand, might be better than saying, "Next Monday at 3PM."
"The Spirit is like the wind, that blows where it will."
And "It takes the spirit of the prophets to understand the prophets."
There is knowing what time it is and there is knowing what it is time for.
And we cannot think our way onto the Way. We feel our way there-- knowing when we are on the beam and when we are off the beam, wandering in the wilderness of our own making.
Water Rock Knob Sunset — Blue Ridge Parkway, Maggie Valley, North Carolina
I have recently added “The Tao of Jesus” to my list of published works as an eBook on Amazon Kindle, and it should be up there in the next two or three days. I’ll let you know when it becomes available there.
Adams Mill Pond Morning — Goodale State Park, Camden, South Carolina
Every New Year is seeing through the trees dimly, hoping for the best, so we say, "Happy New Year!" to encourage ourselves in facing what's coming, like it or not.
I take heart in knowing, not what's coming, but who is facing it.
That would be us, all of us. And we have what it takes to do well with whatever comes our way during, and beyond, every New Year that comes along.
It is only a matter of doing what's called for in each situation as it arises all year long, year after year.
And, we have been doing that all our life. We are well practiced in the art of dealing with New Years, and grubby, wrinkled, old ones.
If we have learned anything helpful-- and we have learned quite a bit of helpful things-- it is that the way we respond to what happens is the swing point to what happens next.
We can strongly influence our future by the way we receive and deal with our present. And that remains so throughout the year every year.
We are not at all helpless before the portent of time. We have a say in matter, and what we say matters.
We have all we need to do what needs to be done with and about everything that comes along. Listening in the silence, and looking for what our intuition has to say in guiding our actions and leading the way is like having an Elder Wand in hand as we meet the future and impact what the days bring, smiling as we think about what they will bring forth in us and what we will bring forth in them, as we experience additional episodes in the Adventure of Being Alive.
Let's go do these things that await us upon the field of action in the good company of one another day after day all the way!
Rocky Mountain Mirror — Yellowhead Mountain, Mt. Robson Provincial Park, British Columbia
Finding the way is waiting to see what is called for and doing that as it needs to be done, when and where it needs to be done all the way along the way.
If we don't know what is called for, we wait for clarity.
Everything flows from and leads to clarity. And it only take waiting to know what that is.
This is the way cats do things. They spend most of their time waiting for clarity.
The older we get, the more time we spend waiting for clarity.
Though it is best to not do that at traffic signals.
Hidden Falls 07/02/2011 — Grand Teton National Park, Jackson Wyoming
We have to know what we are seeking. I am seeking truth. Other terms for the truth I am seeking are: Integrity. Transparency. Authenticity. Genuineness. Realness. Sincerity. Honesty. Spontaneity. Openness...
I am seeking "To live 'As One Thus Come.'" "To be the Christ." "To be the Buddha." "To be Myself." "Who I Am In Each Situation As It Arises." "Here, Now."
My Mission/Practice is to live the truth that I am here, now, in service to my Original Nature, Innate Virtues, Inherent Imagination, Intrinsic Intuition, by exhibiting them in service to what is Called For in each situation as it arises all my life long.
I realize this in the emptiness, stillness, silence, by emptying myself of all thoughts, desires, fear, emotions, duties, etc., so that I am as empty as the space between breaths, and remaining empty/still/silent waiting "for the mud to settle and the water to clear," so that I may see/hear/receive what arises/emerges/appears/occurs in the silence as realization, perhaps, or as a call to action, to do what is called for, here now, or an image to ponder/reflect on, etc. as a guide for my life here, now. And see where that goes. And how I apply that to my life, my mission/practice, here, now.
After Sunset Mirror — Grandfather Mountain and Price Lake, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina
There are problems I can't do anything about. Things like this reflection make that bearable somehow. You might say that it takes my pain away. They provide breathing room, allowing me to catch my breath, shift my focus and take heart in the presence of beauty and wonder that makes the insoluble contradictions tolerable, allowing me to do what I can do about the things that I can do something about.
That's what gotten all of us-- the entire species--where we are from where we have been.
We have never been able to do anything about the things we could do nothing about, and, yet, here we are, still going.
That realization is like this reflection, reminding me of beauty of wonder that exists all around me anyway, nevertheless, even so.
Encouraging me to carry on, carry on. Through all that comes my way. Doing what can be done and letting the rest fall out as it may for another day's work and another day's worry.
In the meantime, there is the company of others to be my comfort and consolation, and the sustaining presence of the natural world to carry me on.
ACE Basin Wildlife Refuge — Hollywood, South Carolina
Imagine yourself in this scene. What is to be done here beyond being present with what is present with you?
And doing what is called for from one situation to another? You might choose to stand or sit there, or walk through the scene, doing whatever occurs to you and seems to be appropriate to the occasion.
Being one with the scene as a participant doing what needs to be done in each situation as it arises, and leaving when you wish, or staying as long as would be fitting and proper.
And why not treat every scene that way? Being completely present, as a full participant for as long as that would be appropriate to the occasion, and then moving on?
Following the flow of scenes throughout our day as one who is a present participant in each one?
Fall Woods 10/24/2007 — Great Smoky Mountains National Forest, Gatlinburg, Tennessee
It is well within the Reformed tradition—the Reformed Jewish tradition, that is-- to see Jesus and John the Baptist as classical prophets of Judaism, come to proclaim “Now is the time!” To turn the light around and understand the present moment as the time and place for reformation of the religion of the forefathers and the reclamation by the people of the Land of Promise--by living in it as it should be lived in, welcoming the stranger and the foreigner alike, and bringing the Kingdom of God to life upon the earth.
Their message was reformation and reconciliation of the religion of the day with the way of the Father who led the people through the desert to the Promised Land.
Reclaiming the land was a spiritual, not a a political process.
In Jesus’ proclamation, “You have heard it said, but I say unto you,” and his “I am” declarations in John’s Gospel, and various “Sayings” scattered through the Gospels, he makes plain his intention for Israel to become the land of milk and honey for all people.
However, the Scribes, Pharisees, and Romans were not to be converted, and the people were more interested in being delivered than being transformed, and so Jesus’ “How long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” etc.
His death and the testimonies of his resurrection played into the hands of opportunists (Paul and some of the apostles, with the “Thou art Peter” declarations and the proclamation of the Christian Church as the bearer of salvation for a new age catching on to the chagrin of both Judaism and Rome, and the rest is history.
But, how many are to see things in this light when the "Truth" has been proclaimed through the ages to the prosperity of those serving that Gospel? And, what’s the point of disturbing the Doctrines as they have been handed to us? To what end the folderol? When Bebe Jesu is all the rage?
With what might have been always on the scaffold, and what is always on the throne.
Zion Silhouette — Zion National Park, Springdale, Utah
We hold the power of creation in/over each situation as it arises.
What we make of it makes all the difference. What we say about it brings it to life. We speak/see reality into existence. It all--ourselves included--becomes what we say it is.
Be careful with your words-- you speak the truth into being.
What we say becomes real in the act of speaking it forth.
We speak the world in which we live into being. How we talk about it brings it forth.
We are God in this way.
It is the Way of life and being.
We are born with the power of the Way. How we wield it tells the tale.
Look at your life and tell me it isn't so.
Look at your future and tell me what you see. You are telling me what will be.
Let your seeing guide your saying. Once said, it is so.
If we understood the power at our disposal, we would speak less and contemplate, consider, more.
The world takes shape around us.
Emptiness is waiting for us to give it form.
"We are the hammer and the chisel, and the stone" (Alexis Carrel).
Tupper Lake Sunset Panorama 01 — 09/22/2015, Adirondack Park, New York
The associations we make with Christmas, and Christmas Day, stir emotions and cast moods for a life time.
I wonder what my associations would have been like if my mother had been a Jazz singer and my father had been a poet.
What would my Christmas memories have been then? And the emotions? And the moods?
Idle reflections, these, playing with reality.
But, reality itself is a reflection of projections we create and plant in our memories to produce "facts" that were more impressions of events than recollections of events "as they were."
The stories we tell ourselves sculpt a past life in stone, but how accurate are those perceptions that we have tended over time?
My mother was not a Jazz singer and my father was not a poet, and I would have been better off if each of them had been more self-aware and conscious of the truth of their own life, of their own original nature, their own innate virtues (the things they were capable of doing, the person they were capable of being), and their own inherent imagination, and their own intrinsic intuition.
If they had known and served those things, how different things would have been for all of us!
Carl Jung stated somewhere: “The development of personality means fidelity to the law of one’s own being.”
My parents, like the vast majority of all parents ever, knew more about who they "ought to be," who they were "supposed to be," than who they were. They felt like they were "not good enough," and never "just right the way they were."
My parents didn't have a chance because they had no one to tell them to listen to themselves, to trust themselves to the way their own heart told them was the way for them to be.
"Fidelity to the law of their own being" was not something they were ever told about, not something they ever considered.
And I have had many people, many voices, telling me those things, and I have found many models of people who told themselves those things-- and who have become for me the parents I sadly (for them and for me) never had.
I regret that my parents never had what it would have taken for them to have turned to the emptiness, stillness, silence asking, "What am I doing? "How can I do it better?" and sat waiting for the mud to settle and the water to clear, and for clarity to show them the way to the answer to both those questions over the full course of their life.
And my Christmas wish for all of us is that we take those two questions into the silence, etc., with us, and not leave until we have the answers we need for the remainder of our life.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 