My intuition seems to be a   
spontaneous response to my 
life-situation
that is reliably "there"
without me thinking it into action.

Before my intuition,
I am like the Moved
in response to the Mover.

And I'm wondering if perhaps
we projected God onto our intuition
in the long ago and far away
when we didn't have much more
than our intuition coming 
between us and a savage world
outside the cave.

The powers of our intuition
could easily be interpreted 
as the intervention of God.

And, like that, we develop
doctrine and dogma and beliefs
and heaven and hell and here we are.

And it is all intuition and imagination.

That has an intuitive feel to it for me.

–0–

Finding our way to the things 
that need to be done,
and doing them in the right way,
in the right place,
at the right time,
is all that is asked of us.

And we get plenty of practice in the art,
because it is asked of us
in each situation as it arises.

We can begin practicing recognizing
situations as they arise.

We spill the milk
and create a situation.

The dog needs to go out
and creates a situation.

How many situations come with each day?
Make a list.
Learn to spot them as they begin to develop.
Step into them looking for what needs to be done.
Where, 
When,
How.

And notice how you utalize
your original nature,
your inherent virtues/virtuosities
(What you do best and enjoy doing most)
and your intrinsic intuition
in meeting each situation
and doing there what needs to be done.

Practicing your awareness
is practicing your responsiveness.
And raising the level of your
response-ability
in each situation as it arises.

–0–

There are more things we can do nothing about 
than there are things we can do something about.
Guess which things we spend the most time thinking about.
Make sense of that for me
(Another thing nothing can be done about).

Making sense of things is way out of reach.
Making our peace with things we can't make sense of
should be doable, but.
I don't see much being done about that.

Making our peace with things
is fast approaching the status
of A Lost Art.

Coming to terms with things.
Allowing things to be as they are.
Being okay with things that are not okay...
Seems as though we could do that, but.

The Buddha would "pay it no mind."
Not thinking about things not worth thinking about
is a Buddha-thing.
"I'm not toting that load!"
Is one of the lost sayings of Buddha.

It is okay with him if we borrow it
whenever the occasion calls for it.

We take step closer to being the Buddha
every time we use it.

–0–

The right kind of conversation is therapeutic,
salvific, restorative, grounding, centering, 
revitalizing, awakening...
to such an extent,
that it is unfathomable that we devote
such little time and effort in the work
to develop our ability to converse with one another
from the heart about things that matter.

We talk about news, weather, sports, gossip, and drama.

When do we get to the things that matter most?

Why are our conversations too shallow to splash?

What do you have to say--
need to say--
that you never say to anyone?
Even your psychotherapist?

Think back to the piece I did here just yesterday
about imaginary conversations,
and make a date with yourself
to have an imaginary conversation with yourself
about things that matter.

To maintain your focus,
write it out as a dialogue
between "Me-1" and "Me-2,"
or come up with your own names
for the two of you.

And keep this going in a regular way
throughout what remains
of the time left for living.

P.S. It is what I do here everyday! 

–0–

I highly recommend imaginary conversations
with anyone you would like to talk to.
And the more surprising what you say
and what they say
the better.

Surprise gets us to the heart of the matter,
which is always our perception
of what's what.

If our perception isn't changing,
we aren't changing.
If we aren't changing,
we aren't seeing things as they are.
We are seeing things 
as we have always seen them to be.

This goes for our real life conversations
as well.

If we say the same things,
so that this conversation
is the same as last week's conversation,
we need to find new people to talk to--
and if we talk to them
the way we talk to the old people 
we always talk to,
we need to sit down
and have a heart-to-heart
with ourselves.

We are stuck,
and not budging
in the way we perceive the word
and what's worth talking about,
and what we have to say.

What is the newest thing we have said?
If we aren't calling into question 
the things we always say,
have always said,
we are wasting our time,
and may as well have died
all those years ago
right after the last new thing
we have realized came upon us,
or out of us.

(That's what conversation is for,
eliciting from ourselves things 
we have never thought of,
never said).

So sit down right now
with Jesus, say,
and ask him,
"Jesus, what were you thinking about?"
And see what he says.
And see how long the conversation runs
before it broaches something
you have never considered.

If you aren't saying/thinking new things,
you may as well be dead
for all the good to yourself and others
you are doing being alive!

–0–

There is truth,
and there is assumed/presumed
(And where does that line lie?)
truth.
And there is inquiry into
the nature of truth,
which is rarely explored,
which is tragic,
because truth is everyone's
method of getting/serving what they want.

Trump and his supporters
declare the truth at every opportunity.
Russia and China fill the world
with the truth around the clock.
Preachers declare the truth
without pausing to breathe.

Everyone extols truth 
to their own advantage.
No one examines
the truthfulness of the truth
they call truth.

Truth is a perception
not a fact.
A tool in the hands
of propaganda experts
skilled at speaking the truth
to their advantage,
where the truth is
there is nothing but self-serving opinion
all the way down.

Every fact has to be interpreted/understood
subjectively.
That means the truth of the fact
lies in the perception of the beholder. 

When it comes to truth,
it is all a matter of how we look
at what we see--
or how we see what we look at.

We all need the right combination 
of the same things
in order to be who we are,
doing what is ours to do.

The birthing process goes on,
and on, and on...
throughout our life.

We are always being born again for the first time.
Always coming to life,
finally, at last.

Waking up to who we are
and what our life needs of us
within the context/circumstances
of our living.

And the people around us at any time
assist or inhibit our birth at that time.

We need people who see us when they look at us,
who listen to us when we speak,
who know us for who we are.
who can be trusted to keep us safe.

How many people like that have you ever known?
How often have you been someone like that
in someone else's life?

To see what we look at,
to hear what we listen to,
to know what we know,
to be who we are capable of being,
in each situation as it arises,
is to make an exceptional difference
in the lives of those who live with us
in this place--
and in our own life as well.

Wanting what we ought to want--
what we need to want--
instead of what we want,
and being at peace with ourselves
and our life,
and being open to what's what
and what's called for
throughout all of the times and places
of our living
will have a powerful impact upon
the way life is being lived around us.

And all we will have done
is to have seen and heard
what is to be seen and heard,
and responded to it in ways that 
were right in that moment.

We have to be intuitive to live like that.
And comfortable/confident with ourselves
and our ability to deal appropriately 
with anything that comes up,
any time, any place.

To be so grounded in the good
is to be a blessing and a grace
upon all times and places--
and that is well within our reach,
though it exceeds our grasp too much of the time.

And it is up to us to do what needs to be done
about that in the time left for living.
"There's nothing to it but to do it" (Maya Angelou).

–0–

We are seeking peace
with ourselves 
and with our life.

The path to that end is simple:
Stop wanting what you want,
and start wanting 
what you ought to want instead!

Start with sitting still
and being quiet,
seeking the right kind of
emptiness/stillness/silence.

Listening to yourself,
to your body,
to your life.

Teach yourself to live in a quiet,
attentive,
looking/listening,
seeing/hearing,
kind of way.

Check out Ann Wieser Cornell's
web site
and her book,
"The Radical Acceptance of Everything."

And start doing what you know
needs to be done,
when,
where,
and how it needs to be done
whether you want to or not,
whether you feel like it or not,
whether you are in the mood for it or not.

Your intuition is right here, now.
Your original nature is right here, now.
Your virtues/virtuosities
(The things you do best
and enjoy doing most)
are right here, now.

That is all you need
to find your way 
to the life you need
to be living.

Which is the path to peace
with yourself
and your life.

Getting you together
with yourself and your life
is the solution to all of your problems
today, every day, forever.

Wanting what you ought to want,
doing what needs to be done.

The only thing standing in your way
is you.

–0–

I have out-lived the desire to return 
to so many photo-worthy places,
this being one.

The images are worthy-enough reminders
of what's there--or was there--
to connect me with what is everywhere
in all places for eyes that see.

And, it takes sitting until we see
to see what we are looking at
anywhere all the time.

Do we take the time is the question.
Are we interested enough to bother?
Too busy to care?

What drives our boat 
on its path through the sea?
What are we seeking?
What are we after?

What is the life that is ours to live,
even now, even yet, even so?
And what do places like this one,
Big Creek, in April of 2004,
have to do with connecting us
with the life that is our life to live?

Where do we go to be so connected?
How open are we to being connected?
To seeing what we look at?
To finding what we seek?

To be so pulled into the moment
that we can't miss it,
and have to stop
and be there for a while,
and return often.

The key is knowing it is right here,
right now.
We have been living with, in, around
the life that is ours to live
all our life long,
not knowing what we were doing.

Now we know what we are doing,
looking for what we have been doing
that is IT,
always has been,
always will be.

Asking questions is my life to live.
Looking out the window.
Connecting the dots.
Reflection-Realization-Recognition...
Always has been,
always will be.

All I've missed is knowing what I was about
while being about it.
Now that I know it,
I do it knowingly.
That is the only difference.

How far are we ever 
from the life that is our life to live?
If all it takes is reflection/realization/recognition?
It is always just right there, waiting.
For us to wake up
and see what we have been looking at
all this time.

It isn't as though we have missed anything.
We have merely been preparing to see
what has always been there all this time.

Now that we know about reflecting/realizing/recognizing,
we can take our time,
and begin looking at what we are looking at
as though for the first time.
"Arriving at the place we started
and knowing it" finally, at last (T.S. Eliot).

–0–

Doing an internet search for
"who put the bible together and when"
does us the favor 
of moving the conversation away from
"GOD,"
and enables us to consider the question,
"What did those Roman Catholic Men
stand to gain from putting the Bible together
as they did,
in terms of 'What to leave in and what to leave out?'"

When we look at what those men stood to gain
by including what they included in "the Holy Scriptures,"
and then declaring what "God said"
in quoting the very scriptures they had put together
in their power struggles with the Roman Empire,
and in their unending quest to expand the membership
of The Church (Their Church) 
by proclaiming what "God said," in 350 BCE, and following,
it becomes clear that the men who said
what the Bible says
by making sure it was in the Bible,
had everything to gain--for themselves and for The Church--
in seeing to it that the Bible says what they wanted
it to say.

And the fact that those men, 
or those like them,
from 50 to 350 BCE
were also guilty of persecuting,
killing, bullying, exorcising, purging, expelling, etc.
all those who disagreed
with their version of "revealed Truth,"
clarifies to all onlookers
that the church benefits handsomely
by what the bible says and says not,
and that its spokespersons
are hardly disinterested participants 
in the process of determining
what God has to say about anything. 

In other words,
"Isn't it convenient
that the Bible says 
what the church says the Bible says?
It's another miracle!
And a wonder of Grace at work in our lives!"
Wink, wink, nod, nod.

–0–

I have said here before
that my fifth grade teacher
told my mother in one of those
parent/teacher conferences,
"Jimmy looks out the window a lot."

A lot of that was because
Jimmy was safer out the window.
The adults in my life were intent
on molding me after their image of me.
So I withdrew without knowing what I was doing
like an oyster into its shell.

I read a lot. Mostly Hardy Boys and science fiction.
And spent a good bit of time wandering in the woods
near our house,
and building model airplanes and ships from plastic kits.
And fished with other boys my age.

I did not know an actual flesh and blood adult
who was any help to me whatsoever.

Mad magazine provided a foundation of sorts with satire
and humor, but I lacked any real sense of stability,
purpose and direction.

That began to take shape in the time I spend
reflecting on what interested me
and how I might make sense of things.

That really took off when I graduated from seminary,
and could get away from people telling me what to think
in order to ask my own questions and seek my own answers
to those questions.

My education began when I left school.

I read everything that caught my eye from all fields of study.
And everything raised more questions.
Even its answers raised questions.
And my experiences with life generated even more questions.
And here I am. Still asking questions!
I don't expect my death to slow it down!

I'll be looking out the windows still, even then.
But then, as now, with purpose and direction.

–0–

Doing what needs to be done 
when, where and how it needs to be done,
is the work that needs us to do it
with the gifts that are encoded in our DNA--
but we don't devote ourselves to that,
and while away the hours daydreaming
of smooth and easy,
having our way
and getting what we want.

Lethargy and laziness,
fear and desire,
have their way with us,
and our life never has a chance at us.

We are our life's only hope.
We have to wake up,
realize what's what,
hand ourselves over to our life,
say, "Okay. Now what?"
and sit in the right kind of 
emptiness, stillness and silence,
waiting for the mud to settle
and the water to clear
so that the way
(Which is the way to our intrinsic intuition)
beckons and we follow
in the service of that which is ours to do,
our life to live,
throughout the time left for living,
and far into what is beyond
for as long as time lasts.

–0–