DVD Announcement

This DVD is a collection of 265 photos with music from two Greensboro musicians, Betsy Bevan (piano) and Will Ridenour (Kora, or African Harp), and audio reflections from me on photography and life. Sells for $25 through PayPal at my web site: www.jimdollarphotography.com under "Numinous Landscape DVD" in the menu.

My Credo, Part IV

Mind? Self? Soul/Psyche? These terms represent the interface between the Spiritual Realm and the material universe. They are our pathway for tuning into spiritual reality and translating that reality into physical existence. Self, with a capital “S,” is synonymous with Christ to my way of thinking. In saying “Jesus was the Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One),” we are saying Jesus was “a chip off the old block,” so to speak, that he was the visible expression of Divine grace, mercy, peace—evidence of the purposeful Mystery of existence—within the confines of tangible reality, and that he exhibited the right way of doing things in the physical universe. We do the same things when we become the Self we are called to be. The Self is the Christ, spiritual reality becoming apparent through us within the time and place of our living. Spiritual reality, you might say, is “born” through us into the world of physical existence. We all are the Mother of God.

When we live aligned with the Self we are called to be, we are “on the beam,” “on track,” “on course,” “on the Path,” in synch with “the purposeful Mystery of existence.” Then, we are one with the Way, and exhibit the truth at the heart of things within the context and circumstances of our life. Of course, this is not easy. It is very tricky because we not only have to be aligned with the Way, but we also have to take into account How Things Are And Also Are on every level of existence.

All the worlds come together in us. We have to be reconciled with, we have to “square up to,” the requirements of life in the world AND the requirements of life at the heart of things. We have to come to terms with the terms and conditions of life in the world of physical reality AND we have to come to terms with our own emotional and psychological reality AND we have to be aligned with, live in sync with, what has always been called “the Way of God,” which is also the Way that is uniquely our Way, the Way with our name on it—our destiny. We have to accommodate ourselves to both Inner and Outer Reality—to physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual reality. This is where things get interesting and become meaningful. This is what we live for, whether we know it or not.

There are no formulas, or recipe, or rules, or laws governing how we are to strike the necessary balance, how we are to integrate all of the contradictory forces at work within and without. So, we have to pay attention, be alert, awake, and aware. We engage and express the purposeful Mystery of existence in each moment as we work to do what is needed in the situation as it arises. We cannot plan this out beforehand. We live into the Mystery. We live the Mystery, as we assist in the coming forth, in the emergence, of what is called for in each moment. The work to do this brings us to life and is LIFE in the deepest, richest, sense of the word. May we all live so fully and so well!

My Credo, Part III

Did someone say “destiny”? No? Thank goodness! That would have been too much of a coincidence. I was just thinking about destiny. Destiny is not the same as fate. Our fate consists of the givens present in our life situation—the time and place of our living, our genetic make-up, who our parents were, what is available for us to work with, “how things are with us.” Our fate is also what becomes of us, what happens to us—what we are left with—if we reject, deny, or ignore our destiny. We either embrace and serve our destiny, or we succumb to our fate. There is no third option.

Our destiny is what/who we are called to become within the time and place, the context and circumstances, of our living. Destiny is what we do with our fate, what we construct with the materials that are available for us to work with, who we show ourselves to be through the process of living our life. We are called to a particular destiny in exhibiting the gifts that are, the genius that is, uniquely ours within the circumstances of life, which are generally the same for a large number of our contemporaries, though our destinies are quite different.

You can think of destiny as “God’s will for our lives,” or “the way of God for us.” When we live aligned with “the Way of God,” we are also aligned with “the Way” that exists for us individually, personally, and live to bring ourselves forth as we bring what has always been thought of as God forth into the world of normal, concrete, apparent reality.

Here’s the problem: Our heart's true desire is to be one with its destiny but. We have eyes for other things. The work of maturity is connecting with our heart. This is dying to our idea of what is important and aligning ourselves with heart’s idea, with soul’s idea, of what is important. “Thy will, not mine, be done!” “Those who would be my disciple must pick up their cross daily and follow me.” Our cross is the difference between our soul’s idea of what is important and our idea of what is important.

The heart knows its true joy/love, its destiny, and it is our place to align ourselves with the drift of heart/soul toward its sense of where it belongs and what it needs to be about. This is going with the flow in the deepest, truest sense of the term. And in that undertaking, Jesus is the "first born of all creation," leading the way with his “come follow me!”

The work of that which has always been called salvation, that is being aligned with that which is our true destiny, our true life, is the work of maturity, of growing up, of connecting with our heart and living, at last, aligned with our calling, and living the life that is truly our life to live. Our life's work is awakening to our heart's true joy--its love for and affiliation with its true destiny--and letting that become our life. We are here to help you do the work that is yours to do, on living the life that is yours to live. Everything here is predicated on your doing the work that is yours to do, on living the life that is yours to live. If you aren't doing that, or if you aren’t interested in doing that, you won’t likely find much here that you can relate to.

My Credo, Part II

God? God is the purposeful Mystery of existence. Any attempt to state what the purpose is, or what the Mystery is, is to say what cannot be said. We cannot talk knowledgeably about more than we can know, and we cannot know what we cannot see, hear, smell, taste, touch, weigh, measure, count, quantify, compute, calculate, etc. We can sense the Mystery, intuit it, perceive it, but we cannot define or explain it. But, we can trust it. We can believe in it.

We can believe in the purposeful Mystery of existence and trust ourselves to it, and see what comes of it. We only have to open ourselves to the experience of our lives to see the drift, the movement, that has brought us to this moment. Our lives are moving us along. Life is movement toward something, toward some good. Our lives are moving us toward something. We cannot deny the movement of our life, the drift that our life has taken, often without our awareness, sometimes against our will, usually without our knowing assistance.

God is the purposeful Mystery at work in the movement of life toward some good. God is the highest possible good, the highest order of good, the best there is. Our values find their essence in God. God is inseparable from “the Will of God” or “the Way of God,” which is also “the Way of Life,” or simply, “the Way.” This is also called “Tao.” I believe “the Way (or Will) of God” for us is particular, individual, unique for each of us and it is generally the same for all of us. Generally, we can use such words as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, generosity, goodness, grace, mercy, peace, etc.” to describe the demeanor of someone who is in, or on, “the Way.” Particularly, the person who exhibited those general values would also be aligned with her or his own personal destiny, or way of being in the world, and would live out of a “Thy will, not mine, be done” orientation.