Our “Gnostic within” is our intuitive inner guide that first appeared as Gnosticism, “secret, inner knowing” following Jesus’ execution in the first century CE. Intuition has been with us always but was taken to be “the voice of God” early on. Plato (428-348 BCE) and others after him up to Carl Jung, and others after him are responsible for our understanding “the voice of God within” is a part of our own psychic makeup, the “how” of which has yet to be nailed down. Yet inner knowing is an experience common to us all, and giving it a central place in our process of deciding, choosing, doing provides us with an inner voice to confer with in making our way through the world. Developing our relationship with our inner Knower, whether we think of her as our Gnostic within or as Psyche/Tao, is an aid in finding guidance/direction on our path through the sea, and one we would do well to cultivate in knowing what’s what and what’s called for here, now, day to day.

What keeps me going is seeing what’s next and what I do about it, in response to it. What happens and what we do about it, in response to it, is the essence of life, the grounding foundation of being alive. With its suspenseful question left hanging, “And then what happened?” How can anyone live not-knowing “And then what happened?”? I certainly cannot! I have to know what happens next and what I do about it, and then what happens? because “And then what happens?” calls me forth and shows me what I’m capable of by requiring me to come up with another response to the stimulus provided by my environment testing my will and creativity in coming up with another response to what is being asked of me here, now, moment after moment all my life long.

I want to know what I am capable of. I am here to show myself what I can do, to know what my possibilities are. Our environment brings us forth, often against our will (We grow up against our will by willing ourselves to grow up against our will–It is the way of life in the world, revealing to ourselves who we are and what we are about). How can we live not knowing? So, we live to know! To know who we are and what we are capable of! And the only way to know is to keep going! “The game’s afoot!”

Democracy has officially ended in the not-so-united-states. And I don’ t see how we are going to get it back. ICE agents are authorized to kill anyone who tries to put things back in place. The Justice Department has disappeared. Congress is no more than a formality and may as well disappear along with the Supreme Court. For what? We became a police state “like that” (Snaps fingers) because why? Trump wants to be supreme. But he is going to die like everyone else and then what? Who will replace Trump? It will be a shoot-out no doubt, and we will never live to see the world we used to live in. “Make America Great Again”? Not! Talk about a sales pitch for the ages. It’s nothing more than total immersion in absurdity fueled by greed and hatred, leaving us with where do we go from here? Finding our own center and being clear about what we need to do in response to what happens next will be our work for the foreseeable future as we find our way as best we can through the Curse of Donald Trump.

We get up and face the day, day after day, and how well we do that over time
tells the tale.

It is never any more difficult than doing what is called for where, when and how it is called for, day after day.

No?

If we only knew what to do, when, where and how! We would have no anxiety, fear, uncertainty, anguish or despair. It would be a simple matter of doing what needs to be done, when, where and how, and letting that be that. Of course, we would have to be grown up about it, and that’s the kink in the hose. Having to do what we don’t want to do is the source of all of our problems today every day. It is not knowing! It is not wanting! That we need to do something about, and we don’t want to. So, we go bucking and snorting all along life’s way.

Drop out of the world crumbling into madness and absurdity without boundaries or values, and drop into the world of our own solidarity and trustworthiness. Seek out our own heart and the truth of what matters most to us here, now. What would that be? Emptying ourselves of the noise of the world and the fear/anxiety within, and waiting in the silence to see what arises to comfort and console and lead the way into reliance upon, and confidence in, “the still point of the turning world” that holds things together even as things fall apart. Finding the center. Remembering the ground. Knowing the truth of the force of the flow of even so, nevertheless, n matter what, and taking courage in the possibility of “peaceful abiding, here, now,” we look to see in every situation that which is called for with the eternal presence of our own original nature, our innate virtues of what we do best and enjoy doing most. The eternal things that never abandon us or leave us bereft, but always wait for the right time, and place, and way, to be and do what needs to be done here, now in each aspect of every circumstance where it is always appropriate for us to who we need be and do what can be done of what needs to be done in response to all of the occasions of our life, all our life long.

Beaver’s have a way of life that runs afoul of Park Rangers and that was the end of beavers along the Parkway. If you are in the way, you are soon to be out of the way, just for doing what you are built to do and what you have always done. Life is that way. Those in charge and in control do it their way.

And this segues nicely into the Tao and the way of doing what needs to be done be done, when, where and how it needs to be done being the way nature does it throughout the Cosmos, and how when we cooperate with nature natural things have a better life than when artificial rules are imposed to satisfy appearances or preferences that have nothing to do with honoring and maintaining the natural order of, say the tides and the routes of rivers and the migration patterns of elk and rain deer and the habits of beavers and honey bees.

When money decides how things are done, things take a turn for the worse for the ways of nature, and eventually for the ways of everything else, because “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” For the good of those with money and power and a yen for having their way NOW!

Treason and sedition from within were responsible for the Civil War and threaten the end of the Republic to this very day–lead by people who hate people not like they are and think money and power are the solution all of their problems.

The old Taoists knew it all came down to doing the right thing in the right way at the right time in the right place and that was 500 years B.C.E. Truth denied, denounced, decried is still the Truth, and will always be the Truth, hated and rejected by those who refuse to grow up and do what is called for in each situation as it arises no matter what forever.