Jim Dollar's Published Works

The Good and the Void

How good is the good we call good?

Whose good is served by the good we call good?

These questions call into question

the glib and easy way we think of The Good and do it.

We cannot rush to answer these questions.

And thinking is futile.

Reason and logic mean nothing here.

We are on new ground–

which is groundless–

here.

We have to sink into the Void to find what we need,

and the Void is the last place we want to go.

Nevertheless,

there lies the treasure,

buried beyond all hope,

and courage beyond hope

is required to take us there.

Such courage is formed from melding

mindfulness and compassion

together in the heat of knowing what’s what

and what has to be done about it.

With seeing, hearing and understanding,

the options are despair and courage without hope.

But courage without hope

is the only courage there is.

Who needs courage when there is hope?

Hope is its own reason for being,

and courage is unnecessary.

Without hope,

courage is our only hope.

When the alternative is despair,

opt for courage,

anyway,

nevertheless,

even so–

and do whatever it takes

in the service of what must be done.

Those who know,

and have always known,

know that it is

hopeless,

useless,

pointless,

futile

and absurd–

and coming to a very bad end–

and that what we do in the meantime

makes all the difference.

So.

Sit quietly with the options,

the choices,

the possibilities and impossibilities,

and the consequences–

and allow the Void to call you home.

We come from the Void,

and to the Void we return,

and in between,

we have occasion to visit often.

But, there is a catch.

We have to visit in good faith.

We can’t get there in bad faith,

and it would be a mistake to try.

But good faith,

and a sincere desire to do what needs to be done

and do it,

work every time.

What is happening?

What needs to be done about it?

Who stands to win?

Who stands to lose?

Whose good should be served?

Whose good should be sacrificed?

Whose good is always served?

Whose good is always sacrificed?

What is The Good beyond all

relative,

temporary,

partial,

good?

We sit with the questions,

with the complexity,

the mess,

the unavailable,

and hold it all in awareness,

bearing the pain of its weight and reality

in the heart of the Void,

and wait there

for what realizations may arise.

This is known as the Travail of Transformation,

or Death Unto Life,

and is the way of serving the good

that is as good as good can be

given the context and circumstances of its advent

in each situation as it arises.

And those who have the heart for it

do it in each situation that arises.

But.

We are so exhausted by the lack of acceptable options—

by the absence of quality choices

from which to choose,

we ignore the Void

and throw the beer can in the recyclable bin,

or the paper towel in the trash

because there is no good to be had

when all the possibilities

are equally bad

for everyone and all things,

so what the hell?

And The Good doesn’t matter to us.

It is too far-fetched and out of reach.

We do what has to be done

without feeling,

or seeing,

or hearing,

or knowing,

or caring,

and numb ourselves

to the reality of our being and doing

because examination

is too painful,

and futile,

to consider.

And that’s where we are,

and where we must begin.

Take that to the Void.

Sit there in the silence

aware of the absurdity

of waiting,

and wait—

without prospects or point,

letting the end of hope

be the beginning of hope

on another level,

in a different way,

past madness

and despair,

a gift of vision

and life

from the Void.

And rise as the Phoenix from its ashes

to do what needs us to do it

in the service of a Good beyond believing,

because we must.

The Meaning of Life

If anyone ever asks you,

“What is the meaning of life?”

Ask them, “What is the meaning of your question?”

If they say, “What do you mean?”

Answer: “Are you asking ‘What is the meaning of life?’

like you might ask, ‘What is the meaning of a rock?’

If they say, “Yes!”

Ask them, “Are we talking about the meaning of a particular rock,

or a rock in general?”

If they say, “Rocks in general,”

say, “Things don’t mean anything in general.

They only have specific, concrete, here and now, in this very moment meaning.”

If they say, “I don’t understand.”

Reply, “A large number of vastly different items fall into the general category of Rocks.

A gold nugget could be thought of as a rock by someone who didn’t know what gold is,

and the same thing could be said about a diamond.

Gold and diamonds mean something quite different from granite, gravel and field stones.

And even if we limited our discussions to wave-tossed pebbles of granite,

worn smooth and sized almost identically by being ground down

through water action over time,

still one of those rocks would mean one thing to a boy with a slingshot,

and another thing to the bird, or the bull, he had his eye on

when he picked up the rock.

What something means is always what it means to someone—

and what it means to them is specific to the time and place,

moment and mood of the person in question.

For example, the question, ‘What is this thing called “Love”?’

means one thing to a college sophomore the second week in April,

having just been smitten by the encounter with his roommate’s sister

on the parade ground beneath balmy skies on their way to lunch.

He folds his hands over his chest, lifts his eyes to the heavens,

and proclaims in a wonder-struck way, ‘What is this thing called love?’

A thrice jilted lover, just told by another, ‘There is someone else,’

might look aghast, and wonder from his depths, ‘What IS this thing called love?’

A philosophical cynic, having been wounded at too many times,

asks of every expression of love, ‘WHAT? Is THIS THING called Love?’

And a new bride fresh home from the honeymoon,

asks of her husband’s first effort at grilling steaks, ‘And what is this thing called, Love?’

Putting this all together, we can say ‘The meaning of life’

is that life is a matrix

in which each living thing works out for itself the meaning of its own existence—

what it means for it to be alive—

by living in light of,

living toward,

living to express and serve—

by living in ways that have meaning—

are meaningful—for each living thing.

The meaning of your life is what your life means to you—

is what is meaningful in your life for you.

What is meaningful is your ground,

your bedrock,

your center.

It is YOU.

Find that center point,

and live to express it,

exhibit it,

and serve it in what you do,

in how you live.

Do what it takes to pay the bills,

but know that you are paying the bills

in order to do what is meaningful to you in the life you are living.

That’s the meaning of your life.”

There is Grace and there is Karma. Karma is Grace kicking butt. When Jesus said, “Father, Forgive them, they know not what they do,” he was being Grace in action, compassionate and kind–on a cross: the inevitability of goodness crushed beneath the weight of power lusting for power, and, also, the power of unrelenting Grace at work in the way Grace works.

Jesus died, and nothing changed. Everything remained tightly in place with the mighty running roughshod over the helpless, and the people playing their games to gain the advantage over one another and get ahead. The milieu, the sitz im leben, the matrix, the umwelt, the gestalt of the social order was what it had been, and would be, across time and place.

And, within that environment, Karma was at work making weal and creating woe. The general welfare was depressed and desperate. Kings were being poisoned by their close advisors. Coups were overthrowing rulers. Deceit and deception were being broadcast throughout the land in every land. Nothing was what it appeared to be, and everything was exactly what you might expect, given the universal discarding, dismissal and denial of the good on all levels.

Yet, all the while, something was stirring in the darkness–as it always does. Grace was about. The idea of justice was coming to the surface of consciousness.

From close to the beginning of human existence, the soft values have been sown among the people–all people, every people–along with the hard values. Justice, mercy/compassion, peace, kindness, gentleness, beauty, goodness, love, generosity, etc. have always been mixed in with ruthlessness, cruelty, meanness, littleness, pettiness, greed, hatred, vengeance, vindictiveness, lying, duplicity, etc.–with the hard values having the upper hand by virtue of their propensity to destroy everything in sight. But, the soft values are the most determined and pliable of things, and cannot be eradicated, even though they suffer silently out of sight, always looking for an opening to break out and come forth as boon and blessing upon all of life. Grace is forever at work in everything that happens everywhere, whether it is apparent or not.

One of the manifestations of Grace is in the idea of a better life in a better world that will not be silenced or forgotten. It is the work of the soft values rising like yeast in the dough of hard values, to alter, transform, demolish and replace the old world with the new. The hope is old past remembering: “The old has passed away! Behold! The new has come!” Grace is Karma’s way–Karma is Grace’s way–of balancing things out and giving the heart at the center of life and being a chance to shape life after its own image.

Karma is the force of Grace in the service of life (And the Tao is the force of Karma/Grace, Grace/Karma seen as One, The Way of Tao is the Way of Grace/Karma, Karma/Grace in action). “You have to pay the piper.” “You can pay me now or you can pay me later.” “What goes around, comes around.” “You reap what you sow.” “Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.” “Your chickens will come home to roost.” “There is always a day of reckoning.” “There are no free rides.” “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.” These are all ways of talking about Grace using Karma to kick butt. They say nothing about the Grace of forgiveness, or any of the other soft values.

Karma is a natural force working within the framework of life so that things become just what they are. Forgiveness (and all the soft values) work also within the framework of life to create a space for possibilities that could not exist without the nurture and cultivation of “something more” than the hard values can conceive or produce.

The Grace of Karma and the Grace of forgiveness, etc., work to produce a world that is more than the world is capable of experiencing on its own. On its own, the world is rocks smashing into rocks, where “every action creates an equal and opposite reaction” world without end, amen. But there is more to Grace than that. Within that scheme, Grace brings the soft values into play, and introduces what we might think of as a spiritual level of complexity in the world of physical matter.

“Spiritual” is a felt reality that is invisible in a different way than physical matter can be invisible. The invisibility of physical matter is dependent upon us devising mechanisms to “see” what we cannot “see” with instruments that are currently available, depicting wavelengths that are beyond our present perception. We may well develop ways of “seeing” spiritual realities (like “heart,” “soul,” “mind,” “meaning,” and all of the values, principles and character traits), but my bet is with things remaining in the “felt sense” spectrum of human experience and not coming into the “hard-and-fast facts” spectrum.

The spiritual is the felt sense of the Way of Tao being Karma/Grace, Grace/Karma at work in our experience of our life and our world. It has to be “taken on faith,” “believed” in order to be seen, to the extent that it can be seen, heard, to the degree it can be heard, understood to the level that it can be understood. With the entrance of the spiritual into our life experience, we enter into The Mystery of more than we can know, of more than can be thought, grasped, comprehended, explained, expressed, communicated. It is an experience of wonder, of Grace, of what we cannot say.

And, in this way, the spiritual, The Mystery, is like dark matter. We posit it as being “there,” but we cannot prove it, or know more about it than “it is.” So we fold it into our ever-expanding theory of existence, and await further reflection, realization, insight and understanding. This is where theories based on “belief” and “taking things on faith,” depart from theories that are doctrines and theology, and form the ground of religion. A theory that is open to further experience, experimentation and reflection is quite different from a theory that closes itself off from those things and seals itself into a world where the future must be the past forever, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable through all eternity.

Long before Jesus was born, and in the centuries following his death, the idea of democracy was coming to life in the collective mind of human beings, being tested here and there, being refined and clarified, and burst forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States–continuing to be further refined and clarified to this day. Soft values imposing themselves in a world run by hard values. Grace coming forth through Karma.

Karma exhibits the value of the soft values. History is a reckoning of life preferring soft to hard. Look at the places where hard values have ruled and at the places where soft values held sway. Where has life languished and suffered? Where has life excelled and thrived? History favors the soft side. Karma does, as well.

We Have To Be Right About What Matters Most

We have to know what matters most and be right about it–and serve it with our life, in each situation as it arises, all our life long. That is, as they say, “all there is to it.” It is like this:

Whatever you love, cherish, adore, revere, honor, prize, esteem, treasure, value, acclaim…you know, like that,
about your life–
about the experience of being alive–
deserves your loyalty, fidelity, allegiance, devotion, dedication, worship.
And it is the only thing that does–
the only things that do.
But, there is a catch.
It has to be the right kind of thing.
It has to truly warrant, justify, vindicate, call for
the place of highest veneration in your life.
You can’t get by with worshiping
money, power, drugs, sex, alcohol, entertainment, escape, distraction, diversion, denial…
The thing/things you love with all your heart
has/have to serve life,
offer life,
be life,
and not some substitute for life,
not some proxy life,
not some surrogate life,
not some pseudo life
not something to compensate you
for failing to love anything
with the abandon
and courage
and vulnerability
required to love what you love
that deserves to be loved.
It has (they have) to be the Real Thing.
Whatever you love has to connect you to life,
attach you to life,
bring you to life,
so that you positively vibrate with the joy of living,
with the wonder and delight of being alive.
And, here’s the other catch,
it has to
enliven, vitalize, awaken, enthuse, reorient
the world,
or at least the representatives of the world
whose lives contact/connect with your life
and reverberate with the “music of the spheres,”
which is the love of life,
pouring over,
spilling out,
from you to them
and transforming their life forever.
What I’m saying here
is that you have to re-think religion,
and make its center and focus
what you love,
and not what someone tells you to love
because if you don’t
you are going to hell.
The truth is
if you don’t love what is right for you to love,
you are already in hell,
and if you do love what is right for you to love,
you are already in heaven–
and no one has to tell you that.
It is as self-evident as anything ever has been
or will be.

Being right about what we love being the right thing to love–being truly worthy of our love–is the best trick in the entire book of tricks. Who can be so sure? Who can do it? It is asked of us all, and none of us can escape having to answer, or having failed to answer.

Codex Bezae contains a verse from the Gospel of Luke that is not found in any other source material for the Bible, and, for that reason, was not considered to be canonical when it came time for the Church to declare that “These, and these alone, are the Books of Holy Scripture, and none other need apply!” It is interesting to me that this verse constitutes a warning against the very thing the people who “closed the Canon” were doing, and they acted without any evidence of concern about their actions.

The buildup to the “non-canonical” verse are the first five verses of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Luke:

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grain fields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Then comes this verse found only in Codex Bezae:

“The same day, seeing someone working on the sabbath, (Jesus) said to him, ‘Man, if indeed you know what you are doing, then you are blessed. But, if you do not know, then you are accursed and a transgressor of the Law.’”

The difference between knowing what you are doing and thinking you know what you are doing is what? Who can be certain? Only experience can clarify the matter, and even then, some things have to be designated “To be determined.” Having to know what cannot be known is is called “The paradox at the heart of life.” And, it can be borne only by those who bear it consciously, knowing that it requires them to live transparent to–and in good faith with–themselves. Not kidding themselves about what they can know and not know, and living in search of a resonance they feel in their body with that which “calls their name” with a compelling urgency that must be obeyed, regardless of the implications for them personally. That is as close as we can come to knowing (in our body) what we love and what we must do in its service.

Carl Jung speaks to this “curse of the Call,” when he said: “Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.” And, “The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose within him.” And, “The artist can only obey the apparently alien impulse within and follow where it leads, sensing that his work is greater than himself.” And, “Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.” And, “As a pioneer, you must be able to put some trust in your intuition and follow your feeling even at the risk of going wrong.”

On those occasions when it becomes clear that we have “gone wrong,” we can only “Return to the center and look into our heart. Put our trust in our intuition and follow our feeling at the risk of going wrong” again. We cannot hope to be right without trusting ourselves to be right eventually, and, in the meantime, allowing ourselves to be wrong again and again in the service of our truest and best sense of what we need to do–of what needs us to do it–in each situation as it arises. “Tomorrow’s right is rooted in yesterday’s wrong and in today’s reflection and realization.”

“Reflection on experience leads to new realizations.” Joseph Campbell said this in talking about the importance of silence spent in examination, inspection and introspection. We have to work these meditative times into our life in regular and recurring ways, and permit the realization that leads to self-correction through repentance, redemption and atonement.

We have to be right about the importance of what we say is important–and keep working, striving, to be right in every context and circumstance of our life. The importance of knowing what is important demands the unrelenting practice of evaluating our evaluations, inspecting our judgments, investigating our conclusions, probing our convictions, examining our assumptions and recognizing that our opinions and theories are no more than opinions and theories. We are forever seeking what matters most–while serving as much as we know of it, and striving to expand our knowledge of it throughout our days on the earth.

To return once more to Carl Jung: “Aging is not a process of inexorable decline, but a time for the progressive refinement of what is essential.” This the path we all are to walk with mindful, compassionate, awareness of the process. We are living to get to the bottom of things–to know what is important, not because somebody told us so, but because we have lived our way there, and worked our way through a host of claimants to the title that turned out to be not so important at all, and know whereof we speak. And seek to know more, and live in ways which express it, each day of our life.

The Limits of Religion

Every institutional religious expression from Shaman rituals to high church–whether it is church or masque, temple or synagogue, or anything beyond or between–dirges and celebrations, everything said and done are aligned with what the people expect to hear and see. The limits of religion are the expectations of the people and the tolerance of the people for having those expectations stretched/expanded/exploded/denied.

The new religion of Christianity had to explain itself in terms of the expectations of both Jews and Gentiles. No religion can stray far from the expectations of the people and have any chance of being the religion of those people. The people will not pay to hear what they do not wish to be told.

The kind of politics that plays well in a local congregation is the only kind that will play well there–or, better perhaps, the only kind that will play at all there. Different congregations will be open to different political positions. Gun control and abortion are out of the question in certain churches, and Confederate flags and racism are out of the question in certain other churches, and no politics of any kind is welcome in still others.

Ministers in those churches play to the whims of the people. “The freedom of the pulpit” is only as free as the people in the congregation are willing to be disappointed/offended. There is a line beyond which a congregation will not go. The same thing applies to seminaries and denominations.

New ideas can only be “just so new.” You can’t take anybody where they do not want to go. Religion is always a compromise between what people need to hear and what they can be told. “Jim, why don’t you talk to us about things we can understand?” remains an apt summation of my career in the ministry. The person who asked that was asking, “Why don’t you tell us what we expect to hear–what we have always been told?” That’s what people look for. And that’s what keeps the church from being the church.

Every outward expression of the experience of “the inward spiritual grace” that is the encounter with the Numen, the ephemeral reality at the heart of religion, and which has always been called “God,” or “Shiva,” or “Tao,” or “Buddha,” or “Great Spirit,” etc. becomes locked into the words that are used to say what cannot be said. The church, when it is being the church, is connecting people with the experience of the Mystery that is more than words can say–and, it has to use words that leave the Mystery intact.

It does that by talking about the symbols at the center of the church’s heritage and life, and connecting them with the lives of the people–re-interpreting the symbols in ways that bring the experiences of the people to life for them, and bring them to life in their daily experience of being alive. Religion connects people to life, to vitality, to wonder and to mystery. When has the church of your experience done that?

The church that is being the church does it all the time. It does it by engaging the people with their experience. By teaching them the art of mindfulness–which is the practice of compassionate, non-judgmental, awareness of themselves and their present situation (what is happening within and without, and of what needs to happen in response, and what would be appropriate and proper to the situation) in each situation as it arises.

The church that is being the church teaches the people to seek out experiences with the Numen in art, music and nature–and to seek to know themselves and the validity, wonder, and authority that comes from self-reflection, self-examination, self-exploration, and self-expression, which form the center and ground of their own being, and is the bedrock which anchors them through the ebbs and flows of life in the world of space and time–and is itself an encounter with the Numen beyond space and time.

The church that is being the church calls people to spend time in silence and solitude, reflecting on their life-experience and forming new realizations. The silence before, during and after, “AUM” says all that can be said–or that needs to be said–about the religious experience at the heart of mystery and wonder. But we can’t build a religion around that. Religion requires sutras, doctrines, dogmas, creeds, rituals, prayers, orders of the day, holy books, and hierarchies without end–all held together with words about words which everyone expects to hear.

The Structure of Spiritual Reality

Jesus is an ink blot, and God is an optical illusion. So is the Tao—an ink blot, and an optical illusion. So is the Buddha. What we see depends upon how we look. Now you see it, now you don’t. Now it’s like this, now it’s like that. Sometimes it’s this way, and sometimes it’s that way. Everything is a mirror, showing us ourselves. Or not. Projection, reflection, it’s all the same to eyes that see. Eyes that see, see into the heart of things, and know how things are and how they also are, and what is happening, and what needs to happen in response, and what we need to do to assist with what needs to happen in each situation as it arises—which is what knowing what’s what is good for, that is: Doing what needs to be done.
Prayer is the soul’s expression of, response to, the truth of its own experience, the truth of the way things are and the way things also are, its experience of the oppositional nature of truth, of what it is to be alive in the time and place of its living, of the experience of life, living, and being alive.
Don’t think that you can say anything about Truth that won’t be opposed—and deepened, enlarged and expanded—by something else you say about Truth.
Truth is true only so far as it goes. Nothing is so true that it never clashes with a contradictory truth. “Yes, but…” is always the response by those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart that understands. And, if you are one of those people, you are saying “Yes, but,” about now.
When our heart is in what we are doing, we are one with the center. But, perspective shifts with time, and we see things with new eyes, and do things differently in time. There is more than one way to see things, do things. Things do not stay the same forever. We do not think the way we have always thought, or do what we have always done. Those who see things clearly, see things differently over the course of their life. Changing our mind about what is important is one of the skills we have to develop on the spiritual journey.
To see what needs to be done, and do it in the way it needs to be done, at the time it needs to be done, is to be “on the beam,” and “in sync with the Source.” We may do things differently next time. The beam is not rigid, unchanging. “The spirit is like the wind that blows where it will.” The Source is fluid, dynamic, alive.
We interfere with our ability to see by having plans and agendas, and imposing them on our life—by willing what we want, by wanting what we have no business having.
When we enter into, or create, situations that have never existed before, we have nothing to guide us in knowing what to do, and avoid the discomfort of not-knowing by making up rules and policies that don’t fit, and saying what nice rules and policies they are, and forcing everyone to abide by them. It takes time to figure out what is required in response to the impact of a new thing. There has to be leeway for flexibility, and making things up as we go.
There is “in sync,” and there is “out of sync.” There is a catch, however: Out of sync may well be in sync with ultimate sync-ness, and it will take time to see that it is so. A child growing up can be out of sync with her, or his, parents’ ideas of how she, or he, should be. The child has to be willing to be seen as out of sync in order for ultimate sync-ness with the child’s own heart to shine through. Harmony, oneness, is everywhere. It just takes a while for it to be apparent sometimes.
The art of life is knowing when to give ourselves over to the Great Sea of Life, and allow it to carry us where it will.
The sage does things as they should be done. Which is to say that things are usually done as they should not be done. Which is to say it is better to do things as they should be done, than to do them as they should not be done. We are partial to the sage. Wisdom is preferred over folly. Why then do we persist in folly?
Don’t worry about it, just live your life, the life that is yours to live, and let that be that. Let your detractors be your detractors, and your critics be your critics, and your supporters be your supporters, and your fans be your fans. Let those who are against you be those who are against you, and let those who are for you be those who are for you, and don’t be undone, or impressed, or distracted by any of it.
We know enough. We don’t have to know everything. Live toward the best you can imagine based on what you know right now. What more you need to know will become apparent over time.
We work with the givens in doing what needs to be done, which is perceived by those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart that understands, in each situation as it arises.
It takes a lot of looking to be able to see, a lot of listening to be able to hear, a lot of asking, seeking and knocking to be able to understand. It takes a lot of living to be able to be awake, aware and alive. Don’t wait until you have it down. You won’t live that long.
Stepping aside, and letting life have its way with us, is a test of faith, of our capacity to trust ourselves to life unknowing, confident only that stepping aside is the right thing to do at that point in our life.
Oneness is the fundamental presumption. As is emptiness. As is nothingness. Quick! Which is it?
It is said, “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.” What isn’t said, but is also true, is that those who don’t live by the sword, die by the sword, or by those who wield the sword. Existence is violent. “Life eats life.” Peace hinges upon the cooperative, unilateral, good will of all concerned in the work to produce and maintain peace. If you think that’s easily arranged, try pulling it off in your family of origin.
What is this “No!” to violence from those who say “Say Yes to life!” and “Everything moves in oneness,” and “Nothing in the world is separate, unworthy, or lost”? Violence, harmony, impartiality, indifference—all is a part of the path. When to be violent, and when to be non-violent, is the question. Both violence and non-violence have their place in the field of action. To embrace all is to embrace ALL. It is to say, “Yes!” to “No!”
The sage doesn’t worry about it, but the sage knows about it.
Respond to your circumstances by doing what is called for in the situation as it arises! That’s the plan for the rest of your life.
What do we want? What is it that we cannot get enough of? What is the need that goes unmet, and sends us forever crashing into the limits of our life? What are we after? How does that interfere with what is being asked of us? With what is important? With what needs to be done?
Trying to have more than we can have—or have any business having—ravages the countryside, and rends the hearts, in every country.
When do we have what we need? When can we be content, satisfied, rest easily, not worry, trust ourselves to our life, assured that we will always have what it takes to deal appropriately with our circumstances?
The way that is the way is not the way to what we want.
To have all that we want is to have more than we have, always.
Harmony is not the highest value. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. We live in the service of what needs to happen without preconceived notions of what that might be. Sometimes disruption. Sometimes chaos. It is ad-lib all the way, and we are surprised to find ourselves doing what we do, having done what we have done.
The sage doesn’t have to have things be different than they are, but has eyes to see what is possible, and assists in the movement-to-the-good that is a potential in every moment. We live toward the best we can imagine in the situation as it arises, and let nature take its course.
Some futures are better than others. Some things are to be preferred over others. All states of being are not equal. It matters how we live.
Those who are alive, are alive to the time and place of their living. They see what is possible, and do what needs to be done in the service of a good that is greater than their own good. They do what is theirs to do without thinking about what they stand to gain or lose, or who is watching, taking names, keeping score. Whose advantage is served in doing what is right, now? It doesn’t matter. “Just do it.”
Some things have no business being. The child molester cannot be allowed to be himself, herself. The alcoholic, the psychopath, cannot be allowed to be who they are, as they are. Control and interference have their place, else why try to control the controlling power of those in control, or to interfere with the interference of those who interfere?
The trick is that each thing has to be itself in caring relationship with each other thing being itself. We are to be true to ourselves in caring relationship with others. We are to meet our own needs and express who we are, without interfering with anyone else’s ability to meet her or his own needs and express who she, who he, is. This does not make for peace and harmony, and easy living around the table. The Yellowstone caldera blows, being true to itself, spewing discord and chaos for thousands of miles. No one thinks, “How wonderful the smooth accord of natural things.”
The catch is that all things must be themselves in relationship with all other selves. That’s the rub that results in the mess. The fox’s way of being clashes with the rabbit’s way of being. Everything has its own idea of how things ought to be. Everything has to make its own peace with how things are, and respond in ways appropriate to the occasion.
Whose good is served by the good we serve? Whose good should be served? How good is the good we call good?
Once virtue becomes desirable, it ceases to be virtuous and becomes destructive. Seeking some end, we no longer listen to the moment, or offer what is being called for in the situation as it arises. We serve our agendas, follow our plans, assume the outcome will be what we want it to be, wonder what happened, where the mess came from, and look for someone to blame.
We are free to do what we want—to live like we feel like living—as long as we can get away with it. When we can no longer get away with it, we have to adjust our living to take the limits into account. All paths walked with awareness lead to the center. Awareness leads to the center, not the path. Awareness is the path.
Receiving what comes without judgment, conditions, expectations, or agendas opens us to the possibilities inherent in each situation, and enables an appropriate response.
Live with direction and preference, and without judgment, will or opinion.
The inner stillness permits perception into the heart of things. Knowing how things are enables us to understand what is called for within the situation as it arises, and allows us to offer what is needed in the moment of our living.
To be in accord with what is needed in the situation as it arises, we only have to get out of the way with our judgment, will and opinion.
Those who know, know they cannot say what they know. They don’t know, did not come to know what they know by hearing it said.
Live the contradictions! Dance with the contradictions! Embrace the contradictions! Reconcile the contradictions! Integrate the contradictions!
The “transcendent function of the Psyche” (Carl Jung’s term) is also the transcendent function of the conscious ego in sync with the Psyche. The conscious ego recognizes the fact of co-existent, and mutually exclusive dichotomies, and bears the agony of “this” and “that” (the polar opposite of “this”) being true at the same time—and transcends the awful truth of contraries at the heart of life, by acknowledging that truth and choosing to live in light of it, by acting in ways that lean toward one extreme “here,” and toward the other extreme “there,” as the situation and the circumstances dictate. We decide which values will be served as is appropriate to the occasion, and do not decree “this” to always be Right, and “that” to always be Wrong.
Step into your life with your eyes open. What’s hard about that?
Keep the horse from stopping to eat grass, and it finds its own way home.
There is no nice little trustworthy formula for living, “If you do this, that will happen.”
The essence of bad religion is, “If you do this, that will happen.”
What does it mean to “live successfully”? Who is to say? You are! But you can only say it about your own life. And you will have to change your mind over time.
The sage has to insert herself, insert himself, between the strongly opinionated, the powerful, the influential—those who know how the people should be living—and the people. And the sage has to protect the people from themselves. And protect himself from the people. Crucifixion is always in the hands of the people, who never know what to do with it.
We are to do what needs to be done in the situation as it arises, in every situation that arises, as long as there are situations that arise.
There is that which needs to be done which needs you to do it—which needs you to bring forth who you are, and what you have to offer. Do not withhold yourself from that which needs to be done. Trust yourself to it. It will lead you to life.
Turn yourself over to your life—to the circumstances of your living—and see where it goes. Relax yourself into the moment, and trust it to guide you along the way. We do not benefit from the help that is at hand, because we do not open ourselves to it.
“Leave them alone and they will come home, wagging their tails behind them.” Or not. Either way, you avoid the pitfall of making things worse by trying to make them better by the time you think they should be better.
There is that which is to be desired, and that which is to be avoided. There is the way of doing things, and the way of not doing things. There is right, and there is wrong. And, wrong is a step on the way to right. The wrong way leads to the right way. And, there is no absolute right or wrong. And, “everything moves in oneness.” But we can’t sit in the shade, and passively let the movement happen without us. And, the movement happens whether we participate in its happening or not. So, don’t waste your time trying to make sense of things. Strive to perceive what needs to be done, and do it, what needs to be not done, and don’t do it.
Living roots that are set deeply in solid ground provide a foundation, a connection, which allows us to be constantly open to the flow of opportunities and follow them wherever they go. It is a fluid, being-in the-way-of-things, which is not the same thing as being in the way. We have to get out of the way to be-in-the-way.
It is all hopeless, pointless, useless and coming to a very bad end—and how we live in the meantime makes all the difference.
An eye for the lights and life of Gay Paree disrupts the natural order! And, yet, everything is a part of the path, even Gay Paree.
Governing a large country is not like cooking a small fish, in that the fish doesn’t have to cooperate with—and has no voice in—its cooking. The willingness of the people to be ruled in accord with what needs to happen in the situation as it arises—and not have the things the people of neighboring nations have—makes it possible to govern a large country like cooking a small fish. But where do you find citizens who are like small fish?
We live best when we don’t know how other people are living. We live best when we know how other people are living.
What is there to gain? What is there to lose? What is more important, gaining or losing?
Ordinariness is another term for emptiness, for the kind of nothing that is the source of everything. Just being ordinary transforms the world without doing anything.
What is the value of doing what needs to be done in the situation as it arises? What is the value of seeing things as they are, taking what is available and doing what can be done with it? What is the value of not seeing? Not doing? Not knowing?
Misfortune, success, euphoria and dismay are part of the nature of things. Our experience is our experience, and our response to our experience is our response to our experience, and none of it means anything beyond what it means to those who are impacted by it, and how their response impacts life as it is lived about them. And it is all a part of the path.
Regarding everything as difficult means understanding that there is no effortless way, and that we are called to expend our effort in the service of what needs to happen whether we want to or not. If you think that’s easy, hop in the saddle, and tell them to open the chute.
Midwives assist in birth as it is happening. They do not beat virgins into delivering.
The sage does not expect anything to be easier than it is.
What are we trying to make happen? What can happen? What needs to happen? What is happening? How can we assist what is happening in the direction of what needs to happen?
In any situation, 10,000 futures are possible. How we live reduces the likelihood of some possibilities and increases the likelihood of others.
One thing’s doing is another thing’s undoing. One thing’s ordered grace is another thing’s traumatic disruption. Dinner for the lion is not something the antelope would bless.
Live without worrying about succeeding or failing, gaining or losing. Let come what’s coming and let go what’s going. Enjoy what is to be enjoyed. Grieve what is to be grieved. Do what needs to be done. Come to terms with how things are. Let your life be your life. Let your options be your options. Let your choices be your choices. Let your future be your future.
Cleverness knows how to manipulate means to achieve its ends. Simplicity observes what is happening, perceives what is trying to happen, and assists what needs to happen. Offering the right help in the right way at the right time is the essence of wisdom. You can’t improve on that.
Cleverness does this so that will happen. Simplicity does this so this will happen because this needs to happen whether that happens or not.
What can be done about what needs to be done is all that can be done, which is not the same as what has always been done. It takes the vision of a sage to see what can be done in any situation in order to do the work of redemption and transformation and bring the new into existence out of the old, one step at a time.
In remaining below, the sage receives what the situation has to offer and brings forth the baby struggling to be born.
In any moment, the sage simply offers what the moment needs out of what she, what he, has to give.
The sage does not calculate, strategize, manipulate, control. The sage observes what is happening, asks what needs to happen, and how she, how he, might assist its happening. You wouldn’t want a sage running your business. Do not hire one as a CEO. Making the share holders happy is not the sage’s concern.
We have to know what we are trying to do, and whether it can actually be done, and whether it really needs to be done.
Of what does life consist? Where is life to be found? What brings us to life, makes us alive? What do we need in order to be alive? What’s with all this other stuff in our life?
Some things are clearly better than others. Every living thing prefers one thing over another. The lion’s life is the buffalo’s death. There is no happy state in which everyone has exactly what is needed at no one’s expense. But, compassion keeps things reasonably tolerable much of the time.
Compassion lets things be, and lets things become what they might be, and says, “No!” to what should not be, and “Yes!” to what should be—in each situation as it arises.
To see what needs to be done and to do it—to be right about what is important and to serve it: That is all there is to it. Anything else is just talk.
The resistance can come from without, or from within. Don’t let your principles, or your interests, keep you from doing what is important, what needs to be done!
We want more than we can have, more than we have any business having, and cannot adjust ourselves to living within the limits of our life, within what our situation in life allows. “Our reach must exceed our grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” “You’ll never keep them on the farm once they’ve seen Gay Paree!”
The meaning of life is to be alive in the time and place of our living. What does it mean to be alive in the time and place of our living? Answer that question correctly, and you have it made. On the other hand, you may be crucified.
What is our life asking of us? What does the moment require? At times, our life is at odds with the moment. The flow is not always smooth. Disruption and chaos are also part of how things are. We take it all into account, and do what needs to be done.
Are we right about what needs to be done? Time will tell. We may be wrong. Maybe something else needs to be done. We may blow it. Life is like that. We can blow it. When we blow it, we need to do what needs to be done about that, and the cycle repeats, perhaps with a better outcome.
Sometimes we are punished for doing it the way we do it. Sometimes there is a price to be paid for doing it our way, and a price to be paid for not doing it our way. Whose way is going to be the way for us? Whose way is going to be the way we do it? Who is going to live our life? If not us, who?
The roots of tomorrow’s right are grounded in yesterday’s wrong.
Trusting the inner knowing, and letting things have their own mind is the essential act of faith. If you are going to believe in anything, believe in the power of things to become what they need to be, particularly when assisted by those who do nothing to force their will on the way things are, but constantly look for what needs to happen, and help it come forth in the right kind of way.
We are to our life as an artist is to the canvass. If you think the artist is the source of the painting, you should talk to an artist. Or become one. Wait! You are one!
What is to be gained by being the favored one? What is to be lost by being the disfavored one?
People are not afraid of dying, either because life has no value, and they do not care if they live or die, or because they know what is truly important, and are willing to sacrifice their life in the service of that good.
We have to carve wood the way we carve wood, not the way someone else carves wood. We have to live our life the way we would live our life, not the way we think our life ought to be lived—not the way we think someone else would live our life, or have us live it. We take the photo we see, not the photo someone else sees.
With nothing to live for, there is no reason to live. Therefore, finding value in life is the foundation of life. The spiritual quest is the search for what is important, for what counts, matters, makes a difference—has meaning—in our life, if no one else’s.
How much can we put up with, and still be who we are? Where do we draw the line? I don’t know how much time you think you have left to live, but how much of it are you willing to spend being not-you, doing what is not-you, associating with those who are not your kind of people? Where, and how, and how often are you drawing lines, saying “No,” and giving yourself to the things that have your name on them?
We have to know when who we are is running afoul of who we must (pretend to) be. We have to play parts, assume roles, do what must be done—and we have to be true to ourselves. We have to be who we are. We have to know when something is a role, a part, and not-us—and we have to compensate ourselves for all of our not-me roles by stepping out of the part as often as possible, and giving ourselves to the things that are us all the way.
Who knows why? Why this and not that? It doesn’t matter why. We have to step into the What and deal with the way things are, regardless of why they are that way, or of why we have to deal with it, or of why we have to live with all that we have to live with, or of why this and not that… What is required, here and now? What is being asked of us? What needs to be done? What next? What now? It is enough that we answer these questions without being lost in the questions that cannot be answered. Choosing the right questions to ask is the path of wisdom and life even before we answer them.
Creating intentional communities of innocence—innocent in that they have no agenda to serve, no need of us, no interest in us beyond existing to help us see, hear and understand who we are and what is being asked of us by the time and place of our living—enables us to find what we need to do what needs to be done within the context and circumstances of our life, and helps us be fully alive in the time and place of our living.
Where are we most alive? How often do we go there? Where are we mostly dead? How often do we find ourselves there?
How often do we do the things that bring us to life? What prevents us from doing those things more often?
How often do we engage in the things that please us? How conscious are we of being pleased when we are being pleased? How often do we deliberately give ourselves the gift of life, the pleasure of being alive?
It is the way of things to think that the way we do it is the way it is to be done. Every living thing has its idea of how it is to be done, of how to do it. We all think it is better to be this way than that way. It is better to do it like this than like that. We all think we know what we are doing, and that the others should do it our way.
We achieve balance by being connected with all things, and caring about all things equally—with no agenda, will or opinion, but with direction-that-can-be-changed and preference-that-can-be-laid-aside. Thus balanced, we are able to go in any direction, and do anything, in order to assist what needs to be done.
We can make too much of balance, and erect it to the position of unquestioned status quo. In so doing, we lose the balancing influence of subversive vitality. Creation and birth are chaotic upheavals, and disruptions of balance and order, which maintain balance and order.
Symmetry, harmony, balance, order and stability are ways of talking about opposition, dichotomy, contraries, conflict and contradiction. The difference lies in perspective. Things are what we perceive them to be—what we say they are.
Joseph Campbell said, paraphrasing the Bhagavad Gita, “Get in there and do your thing, and don’t worry about the outcome!” That is as succinct a summation of the task before us as you will ever find.
There is no highest good. Sometimes, we are the water. Sometimes, we are the rock. There is a place for the softness of water and the hardness of rock. We are to be what is called for in the situation as it arises.
There is no highest good. It is a circle. A mess. Everything impacts and influences everything else. Different goods come to the fore in different circumstances.
It all comes down to being alive in the time and place of our living. Alive is all there is to be.
Chaos is order from a different perspective. Order is chaos. All is one. Everything moves in oneness, and there is winning and losing, joy and sorrow, resentment and resistance, disillusionment and despair, hope and resiliency. Opposites. Contradiction. Extremes. Symmetry. Harmony. Balance. Dichotomy. One.
Oneness is duality, polarity. Yin, yang. Oneness is Twoness.
Those who are impartial cannot be partial to being impartial, and must be able to be partial as the occasion requires. We have our preferences, our chosen way of being in the world. Only the dead don’t care. And the dead can also care too much for their idea of what is important, and refuse to consider other options, even though they may need consideration. Preferences, not agendas, is the key.
Desire-less-ness is not the highest good. If we don’t care what happens, one thing is as good as another.
Impartiality is not the highest value. Life requires investment, caring, living in the service of that which matters.
Live the contradictions! Eschew certitude! Embrace conundrum! Relish paradox! Honor ambiguity! Keep everything in solution! It is the way of life!
Order or upheaval, it all depends on your point of view. Harmony is only harmonious from a particular perspective. How foxes and rabbits relate is a beautiful way of maintaining the harmony of balance within the food chain. Rabbits can be excused for failing to see the beauty of it.
People are easily bored, and create their own excitement by fighting to the death over things that don’t matter.
See into the heart of things, and live like you want to!
Carl Jung said, “There is no ‘how’ of life, one just does it… Follow your nose! That is your way!” And the KISS motto of Alcoholics Anonymous applies: “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
We are not after a steady-state of tranquility and contentment with the way things are. We are after dynamic, vital, engagement with the way things are—not passive acceptance and bland acquiescence! Passionate engagement! Active resistance! Viva Revolution!
There are those who resist resistance. “What we resist, persists,” they say. That is a dictum that applies to unconscious symptoms. We have to assist, accept, and embrace what comes from the unconscious, get to the bottom of it, reconcile ourselves to it, and consciously integrate it into our life. On another level, the status quo needs to be resisted, and the tendency to shoot ourselves in the foot—even as we work to understand what is behind our tendency to shoot ourselves in the foot!
Nobody is where they are. Everybody is on the way to somewhere else. Where would you like to be right now?
What is there to be upset about? How things are is how they have always been. Something is always coming. Something is always going. Nothing lasts. We assist this and resist that without knowing what is best, or how it is going to work out. We live toward our best guess of what needs to happen, and let that be that.
The more we try to make something like we want it to be, the less there is to like about the way things are.
Nothing is the origin of all that is—but it is a special kind of nothing, filled with possibilities.
There is no lasting advantage. We live toward the best we can imagine, doing what needs to be done in each situation as it arises, and let that be that.
We would always be better—or worse—off somewhere else, in some other situation. But, here we are, now, and something needs to happen. What will we assist? What will we resist? What will we do, here, now?
We do not know where the line lies until we cross it. No one can be so wise, so careful, as to know when the line is coming up before it is crossed. Wisdom is living with our eyes open, and stopping when we go too far.
Settle into your life. Assist its unfolding, and allow it to carry you where you need to be. Trust yourself to the next step, with everything hanging in the balance, and always on the line.
There is only life, living, and being alive. There is only seeing, and hearing, and understanding. When we see, and hear, and understand, we see, and hear, and understand what needs to be done in the moment of our living. When we do what needs to be done, the way it ought to be done, when it ought to be done in each moment of our life, that’s it. You’re done, take a nap. If that would be appropriate for the moment.
Right seeing, right hearing, right understanding, right knowing, right doing, right being arise in the moment of our living, when we are open to the possibilities contained in each situation. Sometimes, right action is no action at all. Sometimes, nothing can be done but to wait for another situation to develop in which something can be done.
Doing is the source of being. When we do what needs to be done in each situation as it arises, we become who we are born to be, who we are called to become.
Grace and disgrace, fortune and misfortune are the functions of perspective, of selecting aspects of our experience, emphasizing this, and dismissing that, and failing to take that over there into account. What we see is the result of how we look. So, look for “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, whatever is excellent and worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8). Look for what is joyful, and open yourself to the wonder of the experience of being alive.
There is no right way of seeing. Everything is unimportant, without value, from some perspective. The idea that only the constant and eternal matter is just an idea. Sex is great, though it does not last. So is ice cream.
When we stop looking at things as steps on the way to something else, and can be content with simply being where we are, doing what needs to be done just because it needs to be done—watering the flowers, for instance, or feeding the birds—the world is not threatened by us, nor we by the world.
Power, wealth, privilege and honor are not the highest values. There is no advantage to having all of the advantages.
We seek enlightenment, thinking it is going to do something for us.
We make it all up. When it seemed that sacrificing bulls and virgins worked, we sacrificed bulls and virgins. We have to trust something even if it is nothing—the great emptiness from which everything arises. So, we make up what is trustworthy, and trust ourselves to it. Of course, it works for a while. When it stops working, we have to make up something else.
We perceive the mystery, the magic—and having done our part, can relax into its presence and trust ourselves to the wonder of its unfolding.
May it be said of us that we danced beautifully with what life brought us.
May it be said of us that we did what needed to be done in the moment of our living—that we offered what we had to give to each situation as it arose.
It takes a revolution, or the threat of one, to move things along.
Throw yourself into doing what needs to be done as well as you can make those things out, and take the next step as well as you can make it out, and so on, all the way. Don’t worry about the rest of it.
Those who are into seeing constantly call into question what is seen. Makes them a pain in the collective neck. Often, they are dismissed, discounted, or ignored. Sometimes, they are crucified, or burned at the stake.
Everything is equidistant from perfect union with the Divine, bliss, oneness, transcendence, absorption in the Absolute—whatever it is that we think we are after. If you leave here and go there, or there, or there, you are no closer to “it” (however you think of it). “It” is right here. Right now. Seeing it or not seeing it has nothing to do with its proximity or its availability to be seen. See?
One thing leads to another. If we stick with what we think is important, it will lead us to what is important. We can begin with anything because everything is equidistant from what is important, and everything will lead us there if we live with our eyes open.
Where do we get those open eyes? Now they are open, now they are not. Are. Not…
Sometimes things work out like we want, and sometimes they don’t. There is no strategy for having our way, or for knowing what should happen, or how things should be. We live, as we are able, toward the best we can imagine within the givens of our circumstances, and let that be that.
There is no strategy for having it made.
We are always confusing what is with what seems to be. We are always talking about what seems to be as though it is.
Things are what they are, and what they also are. Everything comes with everything else attached. Nothing can be taken at face value. All is one. But, as they say, not the same one.
“You can’t keep them down on the farm—or on the path—once they’ve seen Gay Paree!” The farm/path has so little to commend it. It is so plain, so commonplace, so mind-numbing, tedious and dreary. It’s more of the same old same old. Today is like yesterday and tomorrow. We get up and do what needs to be done. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the life in that? Show me a sage who ever had a good time! Show me a saint who knew how to live! The sage is the most boring, lifeless human being in the history of human beings! May as well be a rock, or dead! The saint does not have a life, and is afraid to be alive. Emptiness is the sage’s companion. Fullness of life and joy of living are the friends of fools. So. We have to be a different kind of sage. A saint of an unusual hue. Bring on Zorba the Greek, or Tevya from Fiddler on the Roof! Or Chauncey Gardner. They can teach us a thing or two about sage-hood and saintliness—about farms and paths!
There is a time and place for everything. It’s all a part of the path. So don’t rule out Gay Paree. Jesus was called a glutton and a winebibber. Don’t be afraid to eat and drink. No one is taking names. Who are you trying to please? Whose side are you on? It is your life to live all the way. Who do you think knows better than you how to do it, or what needs to be done?
The requisite attitude is one of attentiveness, awareness, openness—to the possibilities, to the circumstances, to the situation as it arises, to what is happening, and needs to happen, and can happen. From right seeing comes right doing and right being. And, of course, from right being and right doing comes right seeing. It’s a circle, you know. It’s all one, with one thing leading to and flowing from another. World without end. Yin/yang forever. Amen.
Right being comes from the center, and is not a steady-state (death is the only steady-state), but a momentary alignment with the heart of being, from which right action (and right seeing is an aspect of right action—it’s a circle, you know) springs, flows.
Right being, right doing, are not steady-states. Life is not a steady-state of being, but a fluid, moving, interchange between the dynamic core, center, heart of being, and the moment-to-moment experience of life, which is the experience of the requirements and possibilities of existence in this moment right now.
How much life is exhibited in our living? How alive can we be in the time left for living? How in sync with the dynamic heart of being can we be within the context and circumstances of our life? The answer changes as each situation presents us with different options and possibilities. We can be more alive in some moments than others. Being alive is not a steady-state of being.
How do we know what to do, what needs to be done, when to do it and how? How do we make sense of our life? Of life? How do we know what is truly valuable? In light of what—toward what—away from what—do we live? How do we evaluate the validity of what we hold to be valid? We answer these questions, again and again, over the course of our life, over the course of the life of the species, in conversation with one another, out of our experience with life. The answers change with the time and place of our living.
We have to recognize and honor the stages of development at work in each age of our life. We have to live in ways appropriate to the time and place of our living. Young adulthood is different from middle adulthood, is different from old adulthood. We have no business living at 60 as we did at 20 or 45. We have to do what needs to be done in each stage of life, and move on to the next stage, letting go what’s going and letting come what’s coming. This is the natural order of things.
It is not enough to do “what happens naturally.” It was “natural” to own slaves and treat women and homosexuals as inferior. What is “natural” is not always so good. What the fox does to the rabbit is natural, but not good for the rabbit. What is good on one level, from one perspective, is not good on another level, from a different perspective. Whose good is served by the good we call good? Whose bad?
Good is not a steady-state of being. Being is dynamic. Vibrant. Alive. There is no steady-state of being.
We can hope to be guided by a sense of the ought-to-be-ness of things which leads us in responding to the circumstances of our life, if we approach our circumstances with eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that understand.
It is the arrogance of those who think they know in the service of their ideas of how things ought to be that obscures the good, and violates the sacred nature of what truly ought to be.
Those Who Know Best And Must Be Pleased screw it up for everyone.
Whom can we trust to know and do what truly ought to be done? We bring it forth out of the communal search for the good in conversation, reflection, realization, and experimentation over time.
There is no harmonious accord in the natural world. Planets collide. Stars explode. Volcanoes erupt. Earthquake, fire, flood, famine, you know. Dinosaurs become extinct. People wage war… Uncontrolled chaos is more apt a description for what passes for “the way things are” than “harmonious accord.” It’s a mess out there. We bring what peace there is to life through the quality of our engagement with life—by the way we live.
The sage lives the contradictions, and does not try to reduce things to a harmonious whole. There is no static, steady-state, of being.
We give up this to get that. One thing rules out another. Trade-offs and compromises characterize the work of life. The way things are live in tension with the way things also are. We live on the boundary between yin and yang. Sometimes this, sometimes that.
Negotiation and compromise, kid. Negotiation and compromise.
Some things must be forced, like a nail into wood. Some things cannot be forced, like the ripening of a peach. It is important to know what we are dealing with.
The oneness, the wholeness, is not harmonious but contradictory, oppositional, dynamic, discordant and interdependent. Yin/yang at the core.
You cannot “follow your bliss” without caring about your bliss—without being attached to your bliss. Detachment is not a steady-state. Attachment to the right things, detachment at the right time.
Pace and timing, Kid, pace and timing. And luck. Don’t forget to be lucky.
Negotiation and compromise, Kid, negotiation and compromise.
What excites you? What stirs you? Calls your name? How often do you do those things?
Look closer at whatever catches your eye.
Notice every time you dismiss or discount something that catches your eye.
The way is the way of being in relationship with the way things are, not the way of achieving things or having what we want.
Joseph Campbell said that primal societies always understood that the invisible world is the foundation of the visible world. Grounded in the visible world, we have no support, and are left to our own devices. Grounded in the invisible world, we are at one with our life, and able to offer what we have, in doing what is called for in every situation as it arises.
There is no static way of being, no steady-state. Everything is on the way to something else, somewhere, else. We cannot make things what we want them to be for long.
All paths walked with awareness lead to the center, where all are one (“But not the same one”).
There is nothing to do but wake up, nothing to be but awake, nothing to have but awareness.
In any situation, what we need for living appropriately in the situation and offering what is called for by the situation is available to us. Help is available if we open ourselves to it, and avail ourselves of it. It may not be what we want, or have in mind, but it will do quite nicely.
Our task is to know what is important and to do it. That is the Great Work. Everything else will fall into place around it. Or, as Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all that you need will be yours as well” (or, words to that effect).
When your emotions are aroused, positively or negatively, delay your response. Take a long walk. Think things through—wait to be settled, centered, clear.
Do not allow the world to create your response to the world. Live in the world out of your attachment to, and awareness of, the core of what matters most. Respond to the world out of that attachment.
Of all the possibilities for response to the situation, which is on the beam for you? What does it mean for you to live on the beam in this situation? The beam runs through all situations, though we may be distracted and lose the way in any situation.
Doing what we think is important with awareness is the only way to get to what is important. Knowing what is working, and what isn’t working leads us to the center. If we want to find the path, we only have to be sensitive to the difference between what works and what doesn’t work.
“It works.” “It isn’t working.” That’s all we need to know. We find what works by knowing what doesn’t work. We find the way by knowing what is not the way.
If we don’t know whether something will work, we only have to give it a spin. Everything becomes clear with time, even to those seeped in denial.
We can wake ourselves up or, if we live long enough, our life will do it for us. We can always opt for dying in denial. It’s always easier to be dead than alive.
There are two worlds, the visible world and the invisible world. Within this world, there is that world. Within that world, there is this one. We live in this one on the basis of that one. We pull that one into this one. We find what we need to live in this one on the strength of our association with that one. This is called Walking Two Paths At The Same Time.
All of the epic hero stories are about us, our gift, and our life. We struggle to bring forth our gift (our art, our genius), within the context and circumstances of our life the way Ulysses struggled with the Cyclops. The context and circumstances of our life are the Cyclops standing before us in each situation.
Five synonymous terms for “Gift” are “Art,” “Genius,” “Work,” “Life,” and “Destiny.” Our Gift is our Art is our Genius is our Work is our Life is our Destiny. The world around us has no conception of Art, Gift, Genius, Work, Life, Destiny. Wealth, Prosperity, Profit, and Money are the things it understands. We are not here to convert the world, to wake the world up. We are here to be awake, to be alive, and to do our work. If the world wakes up, fine. If not, fine.
Live as much of the Life that is yours to live as can be lived—share as much of the Art, the Gift and the Genius that are yours to share as can be shared—within the context and circumstances of life as it is, and let that be that.
It comes down to this: Wake up! Grow up! Square yourself up to the difference between the way life is and the way you wish it were! Get up and do what needs to be done! In every moment, each situation as it arises, whether you want to or not, whether you feel like it or not, whether you in the mood for it or not. And let that be that.

Your Totem Animal

If you were an animal, what particular animal would you be? If nothing comes immediately to mind, wait for it to come when you call for it. Bring the animal clearly into focus in your mind’s eye. Consider this to be your Totem Animal. For the remainder of this exercise, allow yourself to become the animal. The following questions are directed to you as the animal. Answer them as the animal you now are.

Do not force any of the answers to these questions. Simply wait, allowing them to arise within, to emerge from the silence, to come to you from “out of the blue.”

What kind of animal are you?
What is your name?
What do you like best about being this animal?
What do you enjoy doing most as this animal?
Where do you like to spend your time?
What are your ambitions—what do you want for yourself?
What are your hopes and dreams about?
What are your greatest fears or concerns?
Upon what does your happiness depend?
What do you need most as this animal?
Where do you go to be nurtured and strengthened?
What motto do you live by?
What burdens do you carry?
What gifts are yours to give the world?
What do you think of the other animals?
What do the other animals think of you?
What would you like to tell the other animals?
What do you think the other animals would like to tell you?
What strengths do you have as an animal that you could use in your life as a human being?
What message do you have for your human side?

As this exercise comes to a close, become yourself again and thank your animal for its presence and its place in your life. Your animal has a gift to offer you. Receive the gift from your animal, and present your animal with a gift in return. Promise your animal, if you mean to keep the promise, that you will invite her or him to visit you again in the near future. Say goodbye for now and return to your life in apparent, normal reality. What did your animal give you? What did you give your animal? Spend some time this week considering the gifts and what meaning they might have for you.

You might decide to make your Totem Animal a part of your life by purchasing, or painting, or creating a likeness of your animal. Perhaps a stuffed toy, or a pottery sit-about for a shelf or a table top. An ever-present symbol of the animal that is ever-present within your Psyche, and always has been.

A Philosophy of Health

What goes into being healthy? That is as rhetorical as a question can be. But, it sets up what is to follow.

A healthy lifestyle is more than eating well and exercising. It includes how we set limits, draw lines and establish boundaries—and bear the pain of living within them in conjunction with everybody else on the planet doing the same thing.

The way we live has implications for us and for all people everywhere. Implications that include complications, conflicts, contradictions, paradoxes and collisions. How we work it all out determines how healthy we are.

Basketball is played best when two teams of five players each dance together for two twenty-minute halves. How hard can that be? It is impossible.

An individual basketball player goes through spans of time when they are on-and-off, dancing-and-not-dancing, in the flow of the game, in sync with their team members, doing what needs to be done in each moment of the game, moment-by-moment-by-moment, and not in the flow, not in sync, not doing what needs to be done. Back and forth, in-and-out, here-and-now and not-here-not-now. For two twenty-minute halves.

How each player responds personally to the in-and-out nature of their “game,” and how the other team members respond to the player—and to their own in-and-out-ness—has implications (complications, conflicts, contradictions, paradoxes, collisions) for the entire game, and for their life together off the court.

If a player gets angry/frustrated with being off their “game” and tries to force their “game” to be at its best all of the time, their “game” deteriorates even further, and spills over into the “game” of the other players, so that the entire team gets out of sync, out of rhythm, out of “the grove,” out of “the flow,” and it becomes quite a mess in a very short period of time.

The key is recognizing what is going on, understanding the nature of “flow,” being patient with the process, and waiting for their individual “game” to come back on its own. The tide ebbs and flows. The rhythm of a basketball game, of life, of the universe, is always in flux. It is always coming in, or going out, or turning around. We do not control the coming, or the going, or the turning. We participate with awareness in what is happening—or not—but we do not determine what is happening. While we are not in control of what is happening, we can be in command of how we respond to it, of what we do about it. And our best choice about what to do in response to what is happening in each moment is to keep playing with awareness of what is going on, moment-by-moment, and let the game come and go as it will.

This is called “Being in the game without being in control of the game.” Can we play without being in control? Can we play “just seeing, just knowing, just doing”—without opinions or judgment? Without evaluating our performance? Just being aware of our performance without trying to force it to be anything more than it is? Just being intently, and intentionally, aware of the game and our place in it without emotional reaction/response? Without trying to control what cannot be controlled? Without trying to force what cannot be forced? Responding spontaneously to the unfolding of the moment without interfering with what is happening, and what needs to happen in response?

“That” means “this,” period. “This” is required in response to “that.” If we make a bad decision, that is just “that,” and what needs to happen in response to it is what we need to do, without opinion, judgment, evaluation, condemnation, etc., about “that.” We do “this” without spending any time dwelling on “that.” “That” just means “this.” No more, no less. “That” flows into “this.” And we flow with it, in command of our response, and not in control of what is happening, and not bothered by being not in control—with no attachment to, or investment in, the outcome, only with the process, with being who we are needed to be in the situation as it arises, moment-by-moment-by-moment. And dealing with what interferes with that, simply by being aware of it, and letting nature take its course.

As players, we have to be patient with this process and wait for our “game” to come back on its own. This enables our “game” to be what it can be in every game. The key to being able to do this throughout the game, and throughout our life, is bearing well the pain/anxiety/fear/frustration of not being in control. Not being in control is the source of our pain. How well we square up to that, and deal with it, tells the tale we are living out “in each situation as it arises.”

How well we do that depends upon how often we enter the silence, how much time we spend there and how well we meet what meets us there.

Everything comes up in the silence. Silence borne well is the way of health. Silence borne poorly is the way of dis-ease. We have to be easy with the silence. We have to know what to do with the silence—how to listen to the silence, and bear well what we encounter there.

In the silence, and out of it, we have to ask the questions that beg to be asked, and say the things that cry out to be said, and hear the things that need to be heard, and see the things that need to be seen, and wait in the silence for the way to emerge, appear, occur to us.

We can enter the silence anywhere, everywhere. In the middle of a basketball game—in the stands or on the court. We can open ourselves to the silence wherever we are, and wait while we are eating popcorn or dribbling toward the basket.

We do not think our way to solutions to our situation, we wait for them to spontaneously appear. This is not good for the economy, of course. The economy, and the culture, is based on providing us with means of coping with situations beyond control—an economy/culture founded on symptoms and illness, sickness and death. The silence teaches us that we do not need what the economy/culture want us to have, but can find what we need simply by bearing the pain of waiting for it to become apparent—and it may not be what we think it is, or should be.

The economy—the entire culture—depends on us sleepwalking through our life, never opening our eyes, never being aware of what is plain to see, just following the cow in front of us from the barn, to the pasture and back to the barn. The economy/culture is grounded, based, on illness, sickness, dis-ease. The economy/culture depends upon us to be endlessly wanting to feel better, but never getting better, certainly not getting/being well!

We are fighting for our life against an economy/culture that both sustains and enables our life, and is killing us by keeping us only alive-enough to sustain and enable the economy/culture. The culture does not want us bearing our pain! The economy/culture is a monstrous pain management system. It enables us to live via diversion, distraction, denial through various forms of entertainment, sex, drugs (“medications”), alcohol—and all of the “positive” addictions, which are, nevertheless, still addictions, keeping us in the eternal cycle of pain-and-escape-from-pain.

Health is freedom from addictions. Freedom from escapes. Freedom from denial. Health is facing straight-on, straight-up, what needs to be faced, and doing what needs to be done about it in each situation as it arises. In any situation, there is what is called for and what is not called for. Healthy people do what is called for, when it is called for, where it is called for, how it is called for, for as long as it is called for. That is the path of good health.

One of the key principles of good health is this: “When things come up, you should respond appropriately.” Acting in accordance with what needs to be done in each situation as it arises is the basis of good health. To live like this is to be in the flow, in the groove, on the path, on the beam, at one with the good of the moment, moment-by-moment-by-moment. And it is the fundamental ingredient in Integrity.

Integrity is the spiritual equivalent of good health. Good health is the physical equivalent of Integrity. People who are healthy are in accord with themselves, live in conjunction with themselves, keep faith with themselves, are transparent to themselves, and live in ways which exhibit the truth of who they are at the core of their life and being. Symptoms point to something being off center, out of tune, out of alignment between our life and our core. Dreams offer directions, suggestions for reflection, in finding our way back to the path, in harmony with who we are.

There are no steady states of being. Health and Integrity, harmony and discord, vary with the tides and the movement of the spheres. We are in flux, moving into and out of relationship with ourselves and with the situations of our life. Our mind is in motion, carrying us toward, and away from, the best interest of life and being. We are not in control of the elements that make up our life.

It is as though we are playing two twenty minute halves of basketball. How well we do that depends on how awake we are, and how much our awareness of each moment, here and now, guides us in living in response to what is happening then and there. The quality of our health is an indicator of where we need to get to work in being aware of what is going on, and being aware of what to do about it.

Grounded, Centered, Focused, Awake, Aware, Alive

There are four things doubled into eight things:

Tao

Dharma

Kairos

Grace

Virtue

Vitality

Energy

Spirit

These eight things produce:

Harmony

Balance

Stability

Enabling us to be:

Grounded

Centered

Focused

Awake

Aware

Alive

All of this blends in together, flows into and out of one another, to form the shape our lives take between birth and death. The degree to which we recognize, participate in, cooperate and collaborate with, the process of incarnating the truth of who we are throughout our life determines how well we live.

2. This is how I think about the elements in this process:

The Dao is the guiding principle of arrangement and harmony, governing the rhythm and flow of the tides and times of our life.

Dharma is the blueprint, the design, directing each of our lives and the overall shape of existence. It is the original essence, the original nature of all things, and works in harmony with the Dao to shape and form the way things come together in light of their original essence, nature, in conjunction with the situations and circumstances of life in physical reality. There is a spiritual—that is invisible, unknown, unknowable—intent built into each of us that is suggested in Sheldon Kopp’s formula, “Some things can be experienced, but not understood, and some things can be understood but not explained”—which endeavors to be expressed, exhibited, incarnated, realized in the fact of our lived existence within the time and place, context and circumstances of our day-to-day experience. Dao, Dharma, Kairos and Grace merge and flow together in the emergence of our original essence/nature in the day-to-day experience of our life in the world.

Kairos is the appointed time, the right time, the time for doing what needs to be done. It is the time the egg hatches, or is fertilized. The time the fruit ripens. The time the baby walks, or learns to ride a bicycle, or learns to swim. It is always time for something—maybe, the time for waiting for the time to act. But what it is time for here, now, and when it is time to act, are things that “can be experienced, but not understood, understood but not explained.” And so, we have to listen and look. We have to stop and see/hear. We have to know who we are and what is ours to do, and when to do what, where and how. We have to live mindfully aware of our place in the time and place of our living, and take our cues from within in knowing what’s what and what needs to be done about it and how to do it with the gifts/talents/abilities/proclivities/special powers/etc. that come with us from the womb.

Grace is the magic that holds it all together, guides it all on its way, produces what needs to be in order for all of it to be realized in the moment-to-moment experience of our life in the world.

Virtue is the conscious realization of,

That we have an original essence/nature, and
That it is our place to incarnate it, live in light of it, in partnership with it, in expressing it, exhibiting it, and bringing it to life in the moment-to-moment experience of our life in the world

Virtue is our living aligned with our original essence, our original nature, in the here and now of everyday life.

Vitality is the creative principle that we bring to life in our life, which, in turn, brings us to life in our life, in a self-generating cycle of enthusiasm, excitement, wonder, amazement, delight, awe, rapture, bliss in response to the realization that we can be—and are—a part of this.

Energy is movement, strength, power, breathing, hearing, seeing, doing, being a particular expression of life in each moment of life.

Spirit is a quality of mind, consciousness, awareness, thought, reflection, realization that leads to, and flows from, energy and vitality, and takes a specific shape and form in the world of concrete reality through who-and-how we are here-and-now.

As we cultivate our conscious/mindful association with these eight things, we generate our own harmony, balance, and stability by living a life that is grounded, centered, focused, awake, aware and alive.

And that, is all there is to it.

But. Learning to do it is the tricky part.

And. Doing it is the best trick in the entire Book of Tricks.

Our Original Nature

The basic framework/outline/substance of this piece occurred to me in the shower. Our place is to watch for what occurs to us, take note of it, and act on it–if we deem it to be appropriate for the here and now of our living, which I do, so here it is.

Our Original Nature is the Spirit who is like the wind that blows where it will.

We are capable of anything, at any time, in response to the situation as it arises,
to the occasion as it presents itself to us.

We can dance to any tune the band plays.

But, there is a problem.

We do not know our Original Nature.

We have lived as Brothers, Sisters,
to our Original Nature all our life long
and do not know the first thing
about the one who is closer to us than life itself.

That’s because we come from a long line of ancestors
who did not know what their Original Nature was–
who did not know they had an Original Nature–
how could they begin to teach us how to know it?

So here comes a short list of instructions
for knowing our Original Nature,
and living as its adoring twin
for the rest of our days.

The first step is to enter the silence.

The silence is everywhere,
and we can enter it anywhere,
any time.

Taking a shower (One of my favorite places),
mowing the grass (I hate that one)
(But I do enjoy) watering the grass,
a crowded elevator,
at a concert…
The place does not matter.

The silence is not a function of place,
but of perspective.

The silence is only a perspective shift away at all times.

We enter the silence
by shifting into the silence.
Anywhere.
Any time.

Shift into the silence.
And immediately open yourself
to the following five things:

Be alert to what occurs to you in the silence.

This is the most important thing.
Such occurrences are the source of our life and being.
We think we know what we are doing,
where we are going,
what will make us happy, etc.
But.

The Knower lives within,
and waits for us to be quiet and listen.
Once we are quiet and listening,
the Knower speaks to us through the things that occur to us,
“Out of nowhere.”
“Out of the blue.”
“Spontaneously.”
“Of its own accord.”
“Of its own volition.”
“Impromptu.”
“Uninvited.”
“Unexpected.”
“On its own.”

The things that “just occur” to us
are the secret source of life and being.
They are the hints, directions, that lead us
into wherever it is that we are going.

We go nowhere,
we make no progress,
without careful attention
to the things that occur to us.

As we get this down,
and become proficient
at noticing the things that occur to us,
it will happen anywhere.
Any time.
All the time.

It will no longer have to wait
for us to enter the silence.
It will bear down upon us
from two miles away,
every day,
fifteen times an hour.

The Knower has been waiting forever for this,
and has things for us to do
that will need several lifetimes to complete,
so we have to get started HERE! NOW!

Starting here, now,
we have to be alert to what occurs to us
at every point throughout this process.
Bear the pain!
Bearing the pain is the essential,
critical,
crucial,
single most important ingredient
in a life well-lived.

What pain is that, you ask?
The pain of your experience,
actual and imagined.
The pain that meets you
in your life.
The pain you carry with you
from your past,
the pain you confront in your present,
the pain you fear in your future.

Carl Jung said,
“Neurosis is always a substitute
for legitimate suffering.”

When we will not bear our pain consciously,
we suffer it unconsciously
in the form of symptoms,
moods,
anger,
fear,
anxiety
and various ways of acting out.

Refusing to bear our pain
prevents us from seeing what is to be seen,
hearing what is to be heard,
sensing what is to be sensed,
feeling what is to be felt,
knowing what is to be known
and doing what needs to be done
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.

Fearing/fleeing the pain
locks us into addiction and denial,
fantasy and self-deception.
And rules out any possibility
of integrity (The oneness of inner with outer)
and self-transparency.

We must befriend our pain.
Acknowledge it.
Welcome it.
Embrace it.
Hold it in our compassion.
Treat it gently,
with tender mercy.
And receive it into our care,
so that it understands
that its home is always with us.

We cannot go forward
without the companionship of our pain.
For we will meet more along the way,
and will need to be able to offer it
a place in our awareness
well-adapted to its nature,
enabling us to use its gifts
in finding our way forward.

What could those gifts possibly be, you ask?
Our pain makes us one with the human family,
for one.
It creates an affinity for fellow sufferers, for two.
It enables our sensitivity for the plight of others, for three.
It generates compassion and empathy for ourselves
and one another, for four.
It slows us down
and reminds us to
Stop. Look. Listen. See. Hear.
instead of rushing headlong into decisions
and actions that generate more pain for us, for five.

If you are sufficiently motivated,
I am sure you can extend the list
out of your own experience
and imagination,
once you begin to bear the pain
of realization.

Bearing the pain
will enable you to go forward
with this exercise,
and engage all of the experiences
you will be asked to expose yourself to
here and now,
and throughout what remains of your life.

Bearing the pain will be the greatest asset
you can develop
for the task
of living the life that is yours to live
from this point forward.
Ask the questions that beg to be asked.
Say the things that cry out to be said.

The questions invite the statements.
The statements ignite the questions.
You will never quit talking.

Questions lead the way to grappling with meaning,
with the essence and nature of life,
of you,
of what’s what in every here and now.

What are your questions?
What questions keep coming back around?

What do you have to say
that you have never said?
That no one you know will hear?
What do you have to say that is anathema?
That is blasphemous?
Heretical?
Not allowed?

What needs to be said right now?
What needs to be asked right now?

Start saying what needs to be said,
and asking what needs to be asked.
And do not stop until you run out of time.
Look in the mirror.
What you have done to this point,
in this exercise,
with your questions and statements,
is to create a mirror
reflecting your conflicts,
fears,
wishes,
desires,
interests,
ambivalences
etc.

We all are a rolling sea
of all we have been and can be–
as a species,
and as individuals within the species.
We all carry within us
everything that has ever been true
of any of us,
of all of us
throughout time.

We are Legion!
And, yet, our questions and statements,
while being representative of the entire human species,
are also specific to us individually.

As individuals,
we represent the species,
and we stand apart from the species.
To borrow from Carl Jung,
each of us represents the Collective
and the Personal.

Our questions and statements connect us
with the whole human family,
and express the unique,
individual,
one-of-a-kind
manifestation/contribution
we represent/make to the on-going,
never-ending,
development/evolution/conscious awareness
of the species-as-a-whole.

We are One and we are Many.
At this point, we don’t have to bother
with where the line lies between One and Many,
we only have to be cognizant of being both One and Many.
What is true for one of us
is true for all of us.
What is true for all of us
is true for each one of us.

We all draw water from the same well.

We share the same Original Nature.
We all have different fingerprints,
and we all have fingerprints.

We all have different configurations
of all of the elements that make us human.
We all have different contributions to make
to the human impact upon all of life
and the existence of all things.

Our Original Nature is unique to us
and shared by all human beings,
and all living things.
We are One and we are Many.

Our place is to realize our “us-ness”
our “I-ness,” our “me-ness,”
and to live in ways that honor,
serve,
exhibit,
express,
incarnate,
bring forth
(in the way we live our life),
both our “us-ness” and our “I-ness.”

We do that by becoming conscious—
mindfully,
compassionately,
non-judgmentally,
aware—
of all of the things that are true about us
as reflected in our questions and statements.

These questions and statements
are who we are
on both the Collective and Personal levels.
They are our questions and statements.
They were/are generated by us.
They arise from our experience,
our history,
our circumstances,
our responses to all of these things,
and to the impact
they have had on us
over the course of our life,
shaping and forming us
into who we have become.

As we ponder,
consider,
examine,
explore,
expand,
deepen,
enlarge,
mull over,
inspect,
investigate,
wonder about,
sit with,
meditate on,
reflect on,
live with
and embrace
our questions and statements,
we will be looking in a mirror
reflecting us to us.

We will be seeing ourselves as we are.
We will be seeing what is important to us—
what matters most to us—
how we think,
who we are,
and also are,
at our foundational level.

At our foundational level,
we discover our Original Nature.
This is who we live to serve,
become
and be
in the way we live our life.
It is our place
to be true to who we are—
to consciously,
deliberately,
intentionally
allow our life
to flow from who we are
into each situation,
into each here and now of our life.
To live in each moment with intentional integrity,
by not interfering with our
spontaneous,
intuitive,
natural response to the things
that come our way in a day,
and being,
moment-to-moment,
who our life
has shaped us to be–
in light of the good of the Whole
of which we are a part.

This Whole constitutes the Collective,
which is more than our ancestral heritage.
It is the entire natural world
which worked in such a way
as to produce us,
along with everything else
over long epochs of time,
until, whoops, look,
here we are!

We are here out of a process
that produced everything there is.
The “way” that worked to produce us
and the entire natural world
is not to be dismissed,
discounted,
ignored,
or taken for granted.

We cannot live well
without living in accord with The Way
that brought us forth–
and living aligned with our own Original Nature
that is the foundation of who we are.

Our conscious affiliation with The Way
and with our own Original Nature
is the source of our knowing
when to do what and how
in each situation as it arises
without having to think about it.
“There is a time for every matter under heaven,”
says Ecclesiastes.
It is all a matter of timing,
but, when is it time to do what (and how)?
What is this situation asking of us?
How and when do we offer it?

These questions form the ground of our approach
to each situation.
With them in mind,
as we are enveloped by each situation,
moment-by-moment-by-moment,
we Stop. Listen. Look. See. Hear.
And wait for the What? When? How?
to arise spontaneously,
intuitively,
“On their own,”
when the time is right.

This is like knowing when-to-do-what-how
when playing tennis or basketball.
The game takes over,
and each situation calls forth
the right response from us
at the right time,
point-by-point-by-point.
Without our thinking about
how we know what to do when.

Just so, following The Way,
living in accord with the Tao,
in each situation as it arises,
is a matter of aligning ourselves
with our Original Nature,
and with The Way at work in the world,
by stepping back
and allowing “the game” to take over,
calling forth the necessary response from us
as it is needed
moment-by-moment-by-moment.

In this way, we do the things
that need to be done
in response to the moment at hand,
in each situation as it arises,
All our life long.

That is all there is to it.
Nothing more than that
can ever be asked of any of us.