Looking for that Quick Fix

(Zap Oracle Card # 551)

Quick Note:
I expect to be at the National Rainbow Gathering in New Mexico from June 26th to July 6 and will do free dream interpretation and I Ching readings there for all comers. Go to welcomehome.org for details. Very soon we will be putting a player on the main page of zaporacle.com that will give you free access to talks on mind parasites, the "logos beheld," and video dialogues with John Major Jenkins on Prophecy, the Mayan calender and the evolutionary event horizon.  

 
I found an anxious-seeming couple at the Boulder Creek Festival selling some sort of health elixir (no doubt genuinely healthy) that was also part of a multi-level marketing (pyramid) scheme promising both health transformation and financial freedom and asked if I could take their picture in the Spring of 2009. 

Nexus 2012

Nexus 2012

by Jonathan Zap

May 31, 2009,  early hours of the morning

        I find myself standing on a murky surface looking toward the dark rift at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.  I am thinking about the galactic alignment of 2012, and more particularly about the conference I have just attended on 2012: 2012 Now---Empowering the Transformation.

       But now I think even more particularly about the fact that I have been recruited to write about this conference, and now I feel like I am tumbling down the wrong end of a telescope, and my ever more particularized thoughts narrow and splinter:

  What exactly should I write about?   Should I meticulously and laboriously thank and recognize and appreciate all the amazing people that were at the center of this conference? Should I…what? Recapitulate everything that happened? 

      As I think these frantic thoughts I see the creative muse staring at me with the corners of her mouth drooping. She has the sullen look of an old, stubborn peasant woman who has put in a full day in the fields, has worked from dawn to dusk, and is now being asked to carry a basket of stones on her head and walk sixteen times around the block.  The look she gives me is the telepathic version of an old, stubborn peasant woman saying , “What the fuck is your problem?”  Except that she’s not saying it in an old, stubborn peasant woman’s tone of voice, but in a voice that is more like James Earl Jones as Darth Vader speaking in synthesized baritone from within his breath mask. Or, more precisely, like Vader’s voice slowed down and warbley,  a voice recorded on crinkled  magnetic tape playing at slightly uneven speed on an old reel to reel tape recorder.  It is, in other words, a fell voice of power, a voice of hypnotic and uncanny command, and I have no choice but to obey such a voice.

       So no, no way am I going to write any of that stuff that splintered my mind to even think about writing. 

      Instead I look back toward the dark rift in the Milky Way. Somewhere, cloaked and spinning in that dark rift is a singular object. But this singular object is a non-object, a black hole, a no-thing of unimaginable power, stranger than you think, stranger than you can think.

        I had always thought of this strange, attractive no-thing as a really black sphere.  It was so black that it made regular black look like white. But now they are saying no, it’s not spherical, it’s toroidal, it’s a coital portal as well as a ring of such fell power that it can give birth to and devour a galaxy. It’s a ?  Who knows what the fuck it is?  The story keeps changing.   But whatever it is, this ?, this no ring of fell power, this hyperdimensional torodial on galactic steroids, this whatever it is, it is starting to line up with the horizon line of my world, and that feels like it is effecting my world in massively, massively parallel ways.

      But what is this world?  I look  down at the murky surface of the world. My feet are covered in what seems like colored fog flowing all around me. And there is this strange sponginess and  humming beneath my feet. 

       This world is still young and unformed, molten and chaotic, a world where things have not yet crystallized and differentiated.  It is a murky world, but out in the murk there are moments when the fog seems to clear and I see that there is a fine webwork that  extends outward, outward to the vanishing point of my vision. I am standing on this webwork, and it is a humming and elastic webwork. It is a webwork made of ethereal filaments, filaments that sparkle, and scintillate with motes of light, an intricate jewelry of lights in all directions. 

       Obviously this is not earth that I stand upon, this is not that  all too familiar sphere that some call “Gaia,” a sphere that is so riddled with  issues and problems, a sphere that is burdened with the heavy luggage of  millenia of history, a sphere both organic and machine, increasingly machine, a troubled sphere, a sphere with many issues, a sphere that you could still live on, but living on such a sphere  involved a self-to-sphere relationship that is high maintenance to say the least.  No, no this is not that sphere that I am standing on.  Standing on the earth sphere is an unmistakable feeling, a heavy, heavy feeling where a thousand-thousand worries gnaw at your mind like pale scorpions. 

       The sphere I stand on now is not heavy at all, it is light and elastic, for this is the Blogosphere, and on the Blogosphere things are mostly unformed and chaotic, and there is only the merest suggestion of gravity,  just enough to keep you from flying off into cyberspace.  This is a sphere on which you only plant cut flowers, because flowers without roots are the only kind that can grow here. Because this is a sphere without roots,  a sphere where the gravitational field of the past is extremely weak and vanishingly subtle.  After all, how much gravity can you expect from a massive aggregation of ones and zeros flowing through a webwork?   

      As I gaze out at the dark rift from my position on the Blogosphere I realize that I am living on a sphere where there is little history, and almost no rules.  On the Blogosphere there are no six thousands years of patriarchy to structure things, no rule masters telling me what to do, no norms to regularize things.

        The only explicit rule on the Blogosphere is  to blog, and “blog” is like it sounds, it’s unformed,  it’s wet, sloppy and rubbery.  It’s like the way a pirate’s brain feels when he drinks  too much grog, it’s blog, like the way an amoeba is blog.  The only implicit rule of blogging is to be massively self indulgent and self referential and go on at agonizing and irrelevant length like a garrulous drunk reciting  Vogon poetry.

     But actually I am still hoping to break that rule, I am still hoping to be relevant , I still plan to keep my commitment to blog  about 2012 Now---Empowering the Transformation.  

      And so I ask the Blogosphere how to deal with my perplexity, the problem of how to write about this since the muse does not want me to laboriously recount events or appreciate all the many people involved.  And the Blogosphere replies instantly:

  “Links, links, links. It’s all about using links.”

  And now I understand, I don’t have to describe these people because I can just keep throwing up the link: 2012 Now---Empowering the Transformation the 2012 . And if people follow the link they will find biographies, and the biographies have links to everybody’s websites, and those sites describe these amazing, brilliant people so much better than I ever could, and so there is no need for me to describe them at all, no need for me to say that Stanislav Grof, for example,  seems like a wizened, psychonaut lion approaching the winter season of a long and fulfilled life.  No, I don’t have to embarrass myself with stuff like that because of links, the endless availability of links, the endless convenience of links, links that I can get to do almost all my work for me, links that could take me anywhere and everywhere.  

     And using links isn’t even lazy, it is actually even weirdly appropriate because this is a case of form following function, because this is what the conference was, a massive nexus of links, links between participants, links between many minds, and hearts and spirits.  And this massive link nexus has made all sorts of new links in my mind, and refurbished and excited old links, and my mind got to link with other minds, and to propagate its own nexus of links, and to be part of a greater abundance of links, a massive redistribution of link wealth.

      And now that I think about it I realize that we are actually made of links, that’s what DNA is, that’s what a brain is, that’s what a molecule is, what a multiverse is, its links, it’s not turtles all the way down, it’s links all the way down.  And not just down, but up, and in every direction, the multilinkverse. And the multilinkverse is like a fractal, like a hologram, the small part recapitulates the whole, and whether you look microscopically, or macroscopically, all you see are links, links extending to the vanishing point of human comprehension.     

        So now I know what I’m going to write about.  I’m going to write about the links that lit up in my mind while I was at the conference.  This inner link approach seems self referential enough to satisfy the implicit rule of the Blogosphere that I be both amorphous and ego centric.  But it also seems possible that the inner links will find links in others’ minds, and what was numinous to me, might be numinous to others, or at least relevant.  Or maybe I won’t do that, maybe I’ll let people reflect on the links that lit up in their own minds, and people who weren’t there can get the DVDs and experience their own ecstasies of heightened linkage.  So maybe I’m done, I’ve already written over 1,500 words after all, and am two days under deadline.  This is a blog, so its boundaries are rubbery and amorphous, I could add more, or make changes at any time, every time I read through it I make changes, to observe a blog is to change a blog. 

     And so perhaps a blog is an artifact of galactic alignment.  It is a medium that arose during the zone of alignment, and it is somewhat indeterminate, it is able to mutate in infinite ways that confound patriarchal systems,  it is a portal aligned with the galactic center, a changeling object metamorphosing within a massive nexus of links. And so the medium of the blog is the message, and the analogue of the conference, a massive and metamorphic nexus of links shimmering and scintillating in an indeterminate space of possibilities.     

I will be at a conference on 2012:  2012 Now---Empowering the Transformation in Fort Collins, Colorado May 29 and 30th as the official blogger so check back here for updates.

Among the distinguished group of presenters are John Major Jenkins, Stanislav Grov, Richard Tarnas and William Henry. Follow link above for more details.

  Click on the red orb for the latest blog, I may have a chance to upload blogs during the conference.

Some 2012 related links and writings:

The Final Days

 Related readings: Dreamspell Dialogue --a dialogue between John and I on Jose Arguelles's deceptive Dreamspell. A Trialogue with John Jenkins and Ron Lampert 2012: The Center of Time and Mythos Some things I've written on the subject:

The Mutant versus the Machine, the end of the Iron Age, and the Galactic Alignment of 2012

Clock Time Metastisizes Toward 2012

cowritten with John:

A Mutant Convergence--- How John Major Jenkins, Jonathan Zap and Terence McKenna met during a Weekend of High Strangeness in 1996

And a travelogue of a journey we took through Mayan ruins: 

Vision at Chichén Itzá 

The following link is to my major work on what I call the "Singularity Archetype" and what I believe it has to say about the evolutionary event horizon we are hurtling toward.  I first wrote about this subject in a philosophy honors paper in 1978:    Archetypes of a New Evolution.   This updated treatment was first written in 1996 but has been very extensively rewritten and an epilogue has been added in 2009.

Dealing with Psychic Entropy

Collages in Boulder store front window

(Zap Oracle card # 550)

writing and photo copyright 2009, Jonathan Zap

Psychic or psychological entropy is a state of mind first written about by Carl Jung and later developed by  Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in his concept of Flow. A state of psychic entropy is characterized by anxiety, sadness and boredom and typically includes looping negative thought tapes. Psychic entropy is a state that leaves us hampered in our ability to deal with complex external tasks or useful inner contemplation.  We all know what this feels like -- that all too familiar state of being frazzled, fragmented and unraveled, paralyzed by inertia and self-conflict, worried thoughts gnawing our mind like a chew toy. So what can we do about that?

    One answer is to use such times to do easy mechanical tasks like laundry and dishes that can be done even if you attention is a bit fragmented. Entertaining, not too dense audio books and podcasts on headphones can be a way to fill the chaotic inner space with better quality content.  Psychic entropy is more likely to occur in solitude so if there is a positive social interaction available you can try that.  Focus on external considering -- on others' needs rather than your own -- as psychic entropy is based on internal considering.  Alternatively, you could go all the way in the other direction and sit down in solitude, perhaps with a journal open, and carefully observe, or even record, all the fragmenting thoughts as they loop through your mind and see what subpersonalities they come from and what their issues are.  If the state of psychic entropy comes from a general deficit of meaning in your life then see what you can do to increase meaningfulness.

       Consider Csikszentmihalyi's "5 C's" of a Complex Personality as summarized by Maryam.

"The Complex Personality knows how to integrate variety of experiences into their overall experience, making the dullest moments interesting. Being in Flow leads to Complexity for when you experience Flow, you want to experience more of it and construct your world to pull you irresistibly towards experiences within the Flow. Focus on these to craft your world

1) Clarity - Know what you want to do in your life every day. Have clarity of goals, listen to feedback and adjust yourself to the feedback you receive from the world.

2) Center – You are in Balance. Your goal is to focus, to know how to avoid distractions, to become at one with what you're doing, with all of your attention under your control.

3) Choice - Knowing there are a variety of possibilities around you, that you're not determined by outside events but have choice and can move within it. Whatever you do, you do "at Choice".

4) Commitment- Care for what you're doing at all times. Remain conscious of what you care about. Commit to it.

5) Challenge - Keep upping your challenges as you master a certain level. Always make life more challenging."

     See  the section on "Dealing with Afflictive Thoughts and Feelings" in A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler for a more thorough discussion.

 Finally, here's a technique from the guide that will stop annoying mental tape loops cold and dead in their well worn tracks:

Breaking Inner Tape Loops with Numbers Exercises

 Use this method especially when you find that your mind is "looping" — playing the same negative storyline tapes again and again — "he said she said" etc. When you focus your mind on the numbers exercises you will stop the looping. True, numbers exercises may not be very entertaining, but I'll take nonentertainment over looping storylines that create the suffering of afflictive emotion and thereby degrade bodily health as well.

The first numbers exercise, which demands focused attention, is to count up by 2s from 1, and down by 2s from 100 in an alternating sequence:

1, 3,

100, 98,

5, 7,

96, 94,

9, 11,

92, 90,

13, 15,

88, 86, etc.

This gets a little tricky when the two streams of numbers cross, but you'll find that you get into a rhythm with it and it gets a lot easier with practice. Your mind will want to default back to storylines, day dreams or other distractions, and if it succeeds, it will break the numbers exercise at which point you just pick it up again, from the beginning if necessary.

The second numbers exercise is much easier and can be done partly on autopilot which presents a great temptation for your attention to wander and for you to lose track of the numbers. It's designed that way to train you to maintain focus, to have power over the default mechanism that wants to switch you back to storylines, daydreams, etc. It also trains you to divide attention as you can easily do this exercise while doing laundry, driving, manual chores, etc. This time you count up by twos in an ascending/descending sequence that keeps growing like a ladder that you climb up and down adding a new rung with each ascent. The top number is always repeated and is 2 higher than the last top number. It looks like this:

1 3 3 1

1 3 5 5 31

1 3 5 7 7 5 3 1

1 3 5 7 9 9 7 5 3 1

1 3 5 7 9 11 11 9 7 5 3 1

One more part of this easy sequence is that whenever you hit the number 11, coming up or down the ladder, you do some sort of bodily movement — snapping your fingers, blinking an eye, etc. You're doing well with this exercise if you can make it into the 70s without losing the number stream by defaulting into tape loops, daydreams, etc. Like push-ups and sit-ups, numbers exercises may not always be fun, but they are an effective and direct way to become stronger.

Don't Let a Thorn in Your Side become a Splinter in Your Mind/ A Dissenting Star Trek Review

This blog entry consists of a brief new Zap Oracle card followed by a dissenting review of the new Star Trek movie.  My next blog will present a psychological theory of the financial meltdown and a suggested remedy, hope you get a chance to read it.  As always, your feedback is appreciated.  Send to jonathanzap@hotmail.com

Don't Let a Thorn in Your Side become a Splinter in Your Mind

text and photo © Jonathan Zap

531

Incarnation in the Babylon Matrix almost always presents you with one or more thorns in your side. Some of the most common thorns include finances, health issues, dysfunctional relationships, loneliness, body image and career/job frustrations. You manage to remove one of these thorns and another pops up. It is very easy to let a thorn in your side become a glowing, red hot splinter in your mind and to dominate your existence. When you do you will tend to become either a passive victim or a desperate, obsessed Gollum on a forever quest to regain a lost Precious. One of the most crucial life skills is the ability to tolerate a thorn or two in your side without freaking out, without letting it become a splinter in your mind obsessing your attention.

Of course it's great if you can get thorns out of your side, but that is not always possible. Race car drivers are trained that if they are heading toward a wall that they shouldn't look at the wall, but at where they want to go. Stay focused on progressing along the open avenues of possibilities. Put your energy into your circle of influence, what you can actual affect right now, not on the circle of concern — the things you can only worry about right now.

Hemingway's definition of heroism is "Grace under pressure." Learn to handle the thorns in your side with grace, and don't let them become splinters in your mind.

Star Trek 2009 ----A Dissenting Review

        This movie  currently has a  96% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes and , by contrast, Wolverine Origins is at 37%.   Also I paid my nine bucks with every expectation that I was going to love this movie.  I’m not enough of a Trekkie to have ever worn pointy ears or owned a plastic com badge, but I am currently on season six of Next Generation which I have been watching in order, DVD by DVD.  Also I have really liked other things from J. J. Abrams. 

      I was prepared to boldly go into this Star Trek movie I had never seen before and for fifteen minutes or so there was just enough CGI eye candy for me to give it willing suspension of disbelief until I realized that I was being hurtled, at warp speed, into a sucktacular  ADD-friendly space cowboy, Star Ship Troopers type of plastic crap-fest with that annoying herky-jerky camera work and rapid fire MTV editing style, with sparks flying, and lights ever flashing, and constant in your face CGI mayhem, which probably would have worked for me if I was a twelve year old Ritalin addict with sweaty palms clutching handfuls of ultra sour candy. 

       I’m supposed to believe that the Federation goes out of its way to recruit a barroom-brawling hot head, square-jawed studly young made for TV renegade-maverick  Hollywood stock character to be captain of a Star Ship loaded with lethal technologies and a crew of hundreds.  Why do we set things in the future and then have a bunch of young Baywatch types whose personalities seem like they are from the Nineteen Fuckin’ Fifties?  

      I know a lot of you are saying to yourselves, “This guy just doesn’t get it.  These movies are made to appeal to twelve year olds, not fifty-one year old intellectuals, wake up and smell the Seven Eleven Slurpee, you don’t have the nervous system of pubescent boy whose fingers twitch with blurred speed over his X Box controller  for hours on end, but they’re the ones that a film like this has to lock its cash-hungry tractor beams onto to have a fan base that will keep the franchise going  and all that.”  Fine, but I loved the last Batman movie and so did the twelve year old boys. 

       Twelve year olds will not complain if you throw in some darkness, and visual novelty and don’t make the bridge of the Enterprise look like the chrome-trimmed, monitors everywhere look you see flashing behind the anchor man on the evening news. 

       When a director has confidence in his visual imagination he or she will slow the fuck down enough to show you a vision, but when what you’ve got is a failure of imagination then you do this herky-jerky unsteady steady cam shit with rapid fire MTV editing so we don’t notice that underneath the sparks and flashing lights are crappy sets and lame dialogue .  That’s what they did with the first Transformers  movie where the Transformers don’t even transform properly, they just throw a blur of sloppy CGI chaos at you for a couple of seconds.

       The reason I’m taking a few minutes to diss this movie is that Star Trek plays a key role in collective mythology.  Star Wars happened long ago and far away, and most sci fi fantasies are dystopian, visions of a world gone terribly wrong.  Star Trek is the most positive vision of a techno-future we’ve ever come up with---a pluralistic world where we’ve gotten past the dominance of money and where a philosopher kind like Jean Luc Piccard can use force or shrewd diplomacy as needed.  Instead we get dumbed-down space cow boy diplomacy of the “Go ahead, make my day, Romulian scum.” sort.  To be fair, many of the Trek movies have been terrible, even though they had casts that had polished their characters in long-running series. 

      My advice:  Save your money and watch the best Next Generation episodes, that’s as good  Trek will probably ever get.