jonathanzap's Xanga

Late Bloomer — Valuing Prolonged Adolescence

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:13:47 GMT

Late Bloomer — Valuing Prolonged Adolescence


text and photo © Jonathan Zap		536

Self portrait in Paul's basement, contemplating an exoskeleton with video effects in the background.

Valuing prolonged adolescence sounds counterintuitive, I know. Indeed, our culture abounds with examples of the worst sort of prolonged adolescence, such as narcissistic baby boomers desperately and pathetically trying to hold onto the things of youth. I have often quoted the Mary Renault character who said, "Man must make his peace with his seasons or the gods will laugh at him." It can be dangerous to cling to the Puer Aeternus, the archetype of the eternal youth. And yet there is also the creative, inspiring and metamorphic side of the prolongation of adolescence, a more hidden side of the paradox of prolonged youth that also needs to be honored.

From an evolutionary and developmental point of view, it is often an advantage to be a late bloomer. A general trend we see in nature is that the more complex the organism, and the more potential it has for individuality, the longer it needs to develop. Baby spiders and scorpions seem to come into the world already fully locked and loaded with everything they need to know to be spiders and scorpions. They seem to have pre-installed operating systems of instincts allowing them to function as miniature adults at soon as they hatch. Spiders and scorpions are not late bloomers, they don't spend years wondering what they will be when they grow up. Spiders and scorpions seem to hit the ground running, without the slightest doubt or insecurity about who they are supposed to be, and what they are supposed to do. They are also hard-wired and mechanical compared to more individualized creatures like us. They are prodigies of self-sufficiency, competence without training, action without hesitation. Adolescence for spiders and scorpions doesn't stretch for decades into middle age. To a person of painful self-consciousness, like J. Alfred Prufrock , to be an action-oriented exoskeleton seems an enviable thing,

"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."

But the lifestyle of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas may not be as enviable as J. Alfred imagines. For the late bloomer, the path of the fully formed man of action may seem enviable — the glamour of an instinct-driven life ensconced in an attractive exoskeleton, the imagined lives of square-jawed muscular types stepping out of glossy magazine pages and action films — and yet there is much to be said for being a mutating introvert, not yet identified with a glossy exterior on a path of unhesitating action.

The more evolved animals seem to take longer before they are ready to hit the ground running. Human development can slow and stagnate, stretch out too long, but it can also end too soon, and we have the prematurely adult types, those whose identity has been locked and loaded since middle school or high school. They are not experiencing prolonged adolescence; they are formed adolescent types prolonging themselves into stagnant adulthood.

But some highly individualized mutants retain the metamorphic aspect of adolescence, and have not fully formed. Some inner will for transformation will not allow them to rigidify into a finished adult form even though it might be decades since biological adolescence should have ended. This type of late blooming has its painful drawbacks, but also its developmental advantages. The longer and more labyrinthine the path of developmental, the more individualized and novel may be the results.

The world is overpopulated with finished exoskeletal types. The exoskeletal folks have already been locked and loaded with fundamentalisms and absolutisms that tell them everything they think they need to know. Exoskeletal folk are busy scuttling forth, acting out. But the world also needs more interiorized folk, the personifications of evolution's attempts to experiment with the human form, those who live in prolonged states of metamorphosis.

Consider this a propitious time to allow the painful metamorphosis of prolonged adolescence, and honor the path of the late bloomer.

See: An Interdimensional Traveler's Codex
Real People Suck — An Imaginary Person's Manifesto

Crossing the Event Horizon of Death---Emergence or Emergency

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:52:02 GMT

Detail of van at Arkansas Rainbow Gathering

Happy Halloween! Before we get to our main content, which also relates to the Halloween theme, today is the fourth anniversary of the Zap Oracle as an online entity. It's inception on Halloween happened in an uncanny way. In the Zap Oracle's Instructions, Credits and History I wrote about it as follows:

Halloween of 2005, was a day of synchronicities with a lot of thematic coherence. It was an emotionally charged day because my mom was entering Mt. Sinai hospital for procedures preliminary to open heart surgery on November 1st. A long I Ching consultation that morning pointed in multiple ways to work on the website as my main focus. Synchronicities immediately seemed to support that with emails (the first of this sort in weeks) coming in from people who found the website and wanted DVDs and readings. Later in the day I found myself doing other livelihood work which I experienced as extremely counter enthusiastic that evening. Almost the moment that work ended I got a call from David and he set up a three way call with Drew. Most of this conversation was rapid fire dialogue between D&D in computerese I could only follow in broad outline, but I was delighted being mostly a bystander in this conversation. I felt like a kid looking in at the elves workshop as these two computer wizards talked about future designs and at the same time, working online together, modified a prototype David had built for the Zap Oracle. To my amazement and delight, while we were on the phone, they uploaded it onto the website and made a number of modifications and enhancements. I was out on my bicycle when the phone call started, by the time I got home and turned on my laptop the Zap Oracle had been born, coming on line at the time of the year most associated with magic and the crossing over of living and dead, conscious and unconscious----All Hallow’s Eve---also known as Halloween.

Some astrologers do charts not just on people, but on projects, political movements etc. and they base their charts on the time and place of inception. Without anyone having the conscious intention, the conference call and birth of the Zap Oracle happened to occur on Halloween Evening which was also the eve of a huge medical transition for my immediate family and the eve of a day in which there had been so many indications to focus on the website. The place of inception would have to be cyberspace, otherwise we would have to triangulate some intermediary point in the USA as all three of us on the design team were at least a thousand miles from the next nearest person. Come to think of it, both time and space were somewhat indeterminate as we are all in a different time zone. That also seems propitious, as an oracle (like the unconscious, like the dreamtime) needs to exist somewhat outside of space/time. Also propitious was that every phase of my mom's recovery from heart valve replacement surgery (which happened the following morning) happened ahead of schedule.

Feedback always welcome---send to jonathanzap@hotmail.com

Crossing the Event Horizon of Death

text and photos © 2009, Jonathan Zap

Pioneer Cemetery in Boulder, Colorado
Emergency or Emergence?

Looking west toward the Flatirions from 12th and College in Boulder

The fear of death (in you or others) is a sometimes hidden, potent force affecting personality and behavior in strange and varied ways. To compensate for this fear, some will seek to control others, objects, money, the appearance of youth, etc., in vain, hollow attempts to stave off the fragility of corporeal incarnation. The fear of death can warp the perception of time, body, money, property, ambition, relationship, power and probably any other human attributes that can be named.

I took a picture of this absurd ad in Manhattan in 2006.

Western culture is in denial of death and encourages us to think we can cheat it through dieting, plastic surgery, cosmetics, exercise, romantic adventures, exciting purchases, and so forth. The ego may view death as an emergency, but for the self it may be an emergence. Death is a guaranteed portal, an event horizon, an opportunity to step across the threshold. We cheat ourselves by viewing it negatively or denying its inexorable approach. Tolkien called the desire to avoid aging, "premature immortality," and in his mythology humans were considered more blessed than the elves because their corporeal incarnation had a definite time limit.

The fear of death seems to be located in the ego, whereas the self, aware that it did not begin at birth, perceives death as change, not annihilation. For the ego, death is the great emergency. For the self on the path of development, death is the great emergence.

When I was very young, my fear of death was quite intense, but numerous out-of-body experiences caused the fear to vanish. I experienced that not only could my awareness exist outside of my body, it could also be incredibly enhanced by the separation. The view of death as possible annihilation was replaced by a deep intuition of death as an orgasmic portal.

Many people brought up in a culture of fundamentalist materialism (also called "scientism") have a bleak view of death. One friend described it as, "It's just lights out and that's it." That friend seemed to pursue physical fitness as a hedge against the inevitable and inexorable approach of death.

Nakita in front of a collage — decoupage on plywood, and a multi media assemblage sculpture I made.

A careful study of near-death experience findings should be enough to convince an open-minded skeptic that death is an event horizon, not a pit of oblivion. The position of neurological materialism, the belief that consciousness is an epiphenomenon or secondary effect of biochemical process in the brain, is resoundingly and definitively contradicted by NDE findings. Consciousness does not reside in the brain, and electrical activity in the brain is not a prerequisite for consciousness.* (see example of NDE evidence below)

The fear of death is often a function of a life not fully lived, of aliveness rejected or neglected in the present. The fear of death may be a fear of the comprehensive life review that so many near-death experiencers report, a fear of being accountable for a life not fully lived, of a life misused and of harm done to others. Some visionaries say that the soul may travel on from death, but this survival is not guaranteed. Those who have led dissolute, fragmented lives may not have enough of a center to hold together and may disintegrate at death.

To paraphrase FDR, "There is nothing to fear but the fear of death itself."

Depending on the position of the card, the death element may mean that you are in a phase where an aspect of your old identity may need to die and be reborn transformed. Death means transformation. You may be experiencing some form of necessary ego death. What the ego views as emergency, for the soul may be an emergence.

Supplemental material for those willing to read more:

*The following example of NDE evidence is far from the most impressive, but is chosen because of the arch-conservatism of its source — National Geographic — an organization known for its attempts to debunk paranormal claims. What follows are some transcribed excerpts from the National Geographic documentary: Moment of Death

Al Sullivan, a man who has survived a multiple bypass operation relates,

"In the operating room here comes Dr. Takata whom I had never laid eyes on before. He introduced himself, 'Hi Mr. Sullivan, good afternoon, I am doctor Takata." and he told me what he was going to do: 'We are going to take veins from the legs and take arteries also from chest wall and probably do four or five bypasses for you.' And I'm listening, listening, and all of a sudden I don't have to listen to him telling me I can see what he is doing, because I found I wasn't there to listen anymore. I just left my body and watched. I can see, but I'm up looking down at them. It used to be me, but it wasn't me, because the real me is up here watching. That's when they started putting stuff over my eyes and all kinds of drapes and blankets all around me and I still, I could see Dr. Takata and his people, and this is another thing, I could see through the operating table and me and I could see what kind of boots he had on. At one point he stepped back, the surgeon stepped back, and it looked like he was flapping his arms and I thought: What in the world is he doing that for?" Al continues,

"He was orchestrating: Do this, do this and do that and it did seem very foreign to me what he was doing."

Al demonstrates Dr. Takata strange movements, his hands to the sides of his chest, elbows bent, twisting around and pointing with his elbows as he gives commands.

Dr. Anthony F. Lasala , MD, cardiologist at Hartford Hospital explains:

"Dr. Takata, when he's not operating, and trying not to contaminate his hands, will put his hands close to his chest and point with his elbow."

Dr. Lasala: "Al Sullivan would not know of this peculiar behavior of Dr. Takata. I did not tell him that."

Dr. Takata: " I cannot explain how he saw these things under the complete sleep of anesthesia."

Dr. Lasala: "Even if he was conscious, it would be impossible for Al to see Dr. Takata's stance or arm movement because Al was behind a drape that blocks the vision of the patient and his eyes were taped shut."

In my DVD dialogue with John Jenkins, Dialogues on Prophecy and the End of Time, I discuss my theory that obsession with end times (almost always predicted to occur within the expected lifespan of the person so obsessed) is a displacement of the fear of individual death onto collective eschaton (endtime). Recently I added a section to White Crows Rising — The Singularity Archetype and the Event Horizon of Human Evolution that covers much of the same ground. Here's the relevant excerpt:

"Anything with a strong emotional charge in the psyche, and especially if the charge is strong and uncomfortable, will be projected outside. One of the strongest charges in most psyches is anxiety about death. A classic projection is for a person to feel their own mortal vulnerability, the imminence of their own death that may come at any time, and to attribute that feeling to the world. I can feel it, this is all temporary, this world is going to end; I am living in the end times! Again, the perception is correct except for the confusion of inner and outer. Every mortal is always living in end times, death is always imminent and even if any of the many possible causes of premature death are avoided, the years left are still only a one or two digit figure. The uncomfortable feeling of perilous temporal fragility must go somewhere and an end of world prophecy is like a lightning rod for this intensely uncomfortable inner charge.

Like a fractal or a hologram, the lifecycle of the individual to some extent recapitulates the lifecycle of the species. An individual has a certain limited lifespan before he crosses the event horizon of death, and a species also has a limited lifespan before it becomes extinct. I've heard that the average lifespan of a species is 100,000 years. Because of the parallelism, it is easy for someone to confuse the imminence of personal death with collective eschaton. This confusion is also well motivated as it seems to displace much of the individual anxiety about death, which is usually faced alone, onto a "we're all in it together" general event that has strong elements of high drama and excitement associated with it. Instead of a feeling of powerlessness about the inevitability of one's own death, the prophet feels empowered by his sense that he has been privileged with secret knowledge withheld from the common person. Also, the ego is very concerned about its place in the social hierarchy and is appalled by the idea that it could cease to exist while others continue to live. If everyone checks out at once, however, then death involves no such social humiliation. Even better, if there is some sort of Rapture, where the ego is part of an elect that becomes immortal while others of the sort the ego doesn't like are annihilated or left behind to deal with the Antichrist and Armageddon, then personal anxiety about death gets channeled into an all-satisfying scenario. For these powerful psychological reasons, prophecies of the end of the world usually seem to be conveniently scheduled to occur before the end of the prophet's expected lifespan, allowing the eschaton to upstage anxiety about personal death.

Many years after I formed this hypothesis I heard of an episode that gave it anecdotal support. In the 1960s there was a well-known woman psychic (but not Jean Dixon) who had a nationally syndicated newspaper column. She had a vision that a gigantic earthquake would destroy most of California on a particular date and reported this in her column. In copycat fashion, other psychics began to predict a quake on the same day. This woman was sincere in her prediction, and at great expense she relocated her family from the Bay Area to Nevada. On the predicted date there was no earthquake, but the woman died of some rare disease."

See also:
Temporal Fencing and Life Fields
The Glorified Body
Clock Time Metastisizing Toward 2012

Metamorphosis

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:39:22 GMT

Before getting to the main content of this blog, some important news. The Zap List newsletter, which includes writings such as the following, is moving to Google Groups. As many of you know, there were endless problems with the old list service. Google Groups should be more reliable and should allow you to go to an archive of past messages. Google did not, however, allow us to add the subscriber list directly (they're worried about spam) so you must take a couple of easy steps to subscribe to the new list:

Add "zaporacle@googlegroups.com" to your contacts list.

Then choose one of the following options to join the group:

1: If you were part of the old list, check your spam folder. You should see an invitation inviting you to the zaporacle google group. Click to confirm

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3: If you have a Google account, visit: http://groups.google.com/group/zaporacle/subscribe and choose to subscribe.
Metamorphosis

"All things must change to something new, to something strange."
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Norie Huddle, in her book Butterfly, describes in poetic language the metamorphosis of caterpillar into butterfly:

"The caterpillar's new cells [after it has built its cocoon] are called 'imaginal cells.' They resonate at a different frequency. They are so totally different from the caterpillar cells that his immune system [that is the immune system of the worm] thinks they [the new imaginal cells] are enemies… and gobbles them up… But these new imaginal cells continue to appear, more and more of them! Pretty soon, the caterpillar's immune system cannot destroy them fast enough. More and more of the imaginal cells survive.

"And then an amazing thing happens! The little tiny lonely imaginal cells start to clump together, into friendly little groups. They all resonate together at the same frequency, passing information from one to another. Then, after a while, another amazing thing happens! The clumps of imaginal cells start to cluster together!… a long string of clumping and clustering imaginal cells, all resonating at the same frequency, all passing information from one to another there inside the chrysalis.

"…Then at some point, the entire long string of imaginal cells suddenly realizes all together that it is Something. Different from the caterpillar. Something New! Something Wonderful! …and in that realization is the shout of the birth of the butterfly!

"Each new butterfly cell can take on a different job. There is something for everyone to do, and everyone is important. And each cell begins to do just that very thing it is most drawn to do. And every other cell encourages it to do just that. A great way to organize a butterfly!"

For there to be a metamorphosis, certain existing structures need to be broken down to make room for new ones. In the chrysalis, most of the caterpillar's old body is digested and used as a nutrient source to construct the new body. The human ego, however, fears change and tends to desperately cling to an existing identity. Metamorphosis can, therefore, be interpreted as catastrophic, and the old ego-identity, recognizing a threat to its very existence, will seek ways to defend itself. Like the caterpillar, the old self may have an immunological reaction to the budding of the new self. Also like caterpillars, we have imaginal cells within us, parts of us that contain the catalytic vision-seeds of the future.

Taken at Arkansas Rainbow Gathering, 2007
Let's ground this with a personal example. Sometime in the Nineties an eighty-year-old woman, who was a Jungian analyst, gave a talk I attended in Boulder. At the end of her talk there were questions from the audience and the first one came from a young woman. "Now that you are an elder," asked the young woman, "what you can tell me as a young woman about love?" The elder woman replied, "When I was your age I was desperately trying to be loved. But now I know that it is better to simply be love."

The old woman describes a profound metamorphosis that took decades. The metamorphosis from self-centered to selfless is one of the most classic and valuable. Goethe described it this way:
"Human life runs its course in the metamorphosis between receiving and giving."

Ede Jones at the Butterfly Pavillion in Westminster, Colorado
I have been working on exactly this metamorphosis in my own life. As a recovering narcissistic personality type, I find that it is very easy for me to fall into preoccupation with being loved. Many of us fall into the common delusion that if only we can be loved by some particular person we aspire to romantically, then everything will be great. But if I allowed myself to focus obsessively on being loved, I would only be prolonging adolescence into middle age. Also, trying to be loved doesn't work all too well. If what we want from others predominates, then most will correctly sense us as needy and self-centered, which will likely make us less attractive to them. The more we try to contrive and force progress with love, the more neurotic and desperate we become, which only helps to keep love away. A person who has successfully moved toward being love, however, is like a source of love and warmth that other people want to be near.

"The story of Americans is the story of arrested metamorphoses. Those who achieve success come to a halt and accept themselves as they are. Those who fail become resigned and accept themselves as they are." — Harold Rosenberg

As I work on the long path of metamorphosing toward being love, I can sometimes hear frantic inferior voices within me saying things like, But if I don't try to get love back from others I won't get anything. or, If I just focus on being love, others will just take that for granted and won't bother to love me back. Even though the old identity, which consisted of an uneasy coalition of subpersonalities and various neurotic stratagems didn't work very well in the past, they still want to be in charge. They're like a dysfunctional conspiracy of old, corrupt politicians who know that they have presided over famine, depression and a series of inner and interpersonal wars, but are nonetheless determined to be reelected and feel entitled to lifetime terms. To the old coalition of subpersonalities, metamorphosis appears as a looming black-robed reaper wielding a scythe. To a deeper self, metamorphosis appears as sunlight entering a smoked-filled room. As the sunlight intensifies, furtive figures scurry away into vanishing shadows and the light exposes crumpled masses of scribbled papers, the tawdry remnants of backroom dealings and smear campaigns that soon become cinders trailing away as wisps of smoke.

The representation of a butterfly is seen against the back drop of a large tree,
an organism that exemplifies gradual development.

The metamorphosis from trying to be loved to trying to be love is very likely going to be something I'll still be working on when I am eighty, if I make it to that age. To keep such a gradual metamorphosis going takes continual vigilance and an ability to relinquish, to sacrifice the obsolescent focus on getting love and the various neurotic ways of trying to go about that. The example I gave of the eighty-year-old woman and myself was an illustration of one type of metamorphosis, but there are many others. The crucial thing is for you to know what sorts of metamorphoses are going on in you so that you can consciously assist these transformations.

If a caterpillar/butterfly had a human life span, then its time in the chrysalis would also last for decades. Unlike the caterpillar/butterfly, most human beings cannot afford to retreat into a cocoon while undergoing the metamorphosis. Usually we need to work on metamorphosis while still functioning in the world. To succeed with the transformation we need great perseverance, patience and just the right balance of firmness and gentleness with ourselves.

Whether you are undergoing sudden or gradual transformation, consider the occurrence of this card as a sign that this is a propitious time for metamorphosis.

Marshall Mesa by Phil Lewis
Go to Phillewisart.com to order some of his amazing images

Thanks Phil for permission to use this image. Here's what Phil had to say about this painting:

"Boulder is the type of place, that whenever I leave… I'm always happy to return. No matter if it was a day trip to the mountains, or an overseas adventure for weeks, the Flatirons are always a sight for sore eyes. This is my rendition of the Flatirons from Marshall Mesa, looking Northwest…(of course there's some super-psychedelic butterflies and hairy purple flowers thrown into the mix for kicks)

This piece completes the compass for me, so-to-speak. I have drawn the Flatirons from the west, north, east, and now, the south… it all tends to come full-circle as I find myself diggin this place as much as I did the day I first moved here…"

BLank Card

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:45:33 GMT

Blank Card (zaporacle card # 28)

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text and photo © Jonathan Zap		286

Blank image formed of unformed formlessness against an empty backdrop.

• You have chosen the blank card and need to consult your inner truth about this rather than the oracle. Perhaps this area is still unformed, or perhaps you already know the answer but are consulting the oracle as if you didn't.

It is the unformed aspects of life that create room for free will. Paracelsus, the great alchemist, said that we are here to "finish nature." We are subcreators, here to bring form out of the formless. In writing this card, I am bringing form out of the formless mass of zeros and ones from which the card arises. This card indicates an area of formlessness that you are called upon to give form to.

Often we tend to think that the answer to what troubles us lies fully formed somewhere, and we need only seek out that fully formed answer through an oracle or some other means. But perhaps we are, as George W. Bush would say, "The Decider." It is not for something outside of us to supply the answer; it is for us to choose the answer. Some people fall for what I call the "museum curator fallacy." Perceiving that there is something sacred about the universe, they feel that they don't dare touch anything or change anything or interfere with anything. They become like a member of a Star Trek away team with an over fussy sense of the prime directive. What people caught by the museum curator fallacy forget is that they are not outside of the glass case, they are in it, and that they were designed by nature to be interventionist alchemists.
•
Another classic mistake people make is what I call the "single correct diagnosis fallacy." According to this fallacy, there is a single correct diagnosis of what is going on in a given situation. But we know from quantum physics that the universe is not as cut and dried as that. An electron is not in any particular place; it is more like a cloud of probabilities. Interpretation of what is going on is often a choice, a choice that generates a timeline. For example, a friend of mine had his wallet stolen. Unconsciously defaulting to the single correct diagnosis fallacy, he assumed that he was the victim of a random, meaningless misfortune. From the rationalistic point of view, this diagnosis was the most reasonable interpretation. From the point of view of Occam's Razor, the random misfortune diagnosis was the simplest explanation, and therefore, logically, the one most likely to be true. But there are other ways to judge truth than logical efficiency. Although one could make the strongest logical case for the random misfortune diagnosis, it was a truth that was both aesthetically displeasing and disempowering. By choosing the logically efficient random misfortune diagnosis my friend gained absolutely nothing but a demoralized sense of being a random victim. I suggested an alternative diagnosis, that the loss of the wallet was a synchronicity. In dreams, I pointed out, the loss of a wallet often means a need to shed an old identity as our wallets are full of ID that supposedly tell who we are. The loss of the wallet was a painful but synchronistic shock, I proposed, to awaken him to the need to shed an old identity that no longer served him. Since this related to things my friend was going through, this new interpretive choice was felt by him to be very empowering and it allowed the painful shock to become a catalyst for his metamorphosis.

Consider that the truth is sometimes unformed and waiting for you to choose an interpretation that will govern the ensuing timeline. Consider this a propitious moment of unformed space, a propitious moment for you to give form to the formless.

See: Temporal Fencing and Life Fields

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Accepting the Hazards of Relationship

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:21:48 GMT

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Some other quick news:

Thank you Matt for your endless labors to repair this list problem. Users of the Zap Oracle may have noticed some changes. Besides the addition of new cards, many older cards have been drastically revised. I've been getting up very early most mornings, often about 4 am, my favorite time for creative work. My recent experiences with the Zap Oracle have been dramatically synchronisitic. For example, a week or so ago I woke up at 3am feeling a bit troubled about a particular relationship. I took what I was thinking about this relationship and used the content to drastically revise an existing oracle card. After I posted the revision I did a general life reading. In the position "something to know about relationships" I got the very card I just created (out of about 530). It was a strange moment of mirror symmetry between my psyche and the oracle and increasingly it has felt alive and aware and participating in its own creation. After I did the general life reading I did a reading on the Zap Oracle itself. In that reading I got an amazing number of cards that were about synchronistically connecting with an oracle. Theme Tracker (a function of the Zap Oracle that analyzes a single readings or all the readings from any time interval you set for dominant themes) gave "working with oracles" as by far the number one theme with odds of 279 to one against chance. But the odds don't capture the uncanny feeling of this reading. Many years ago, I took a photo of a friend tossing the I Ching coins. This was the first photo I had ever taken of this process and it caught a coin landing perfectly on its edge. Here's the photo:

A few years later I took another photo of someone tossing the I Ching coins. This new photo also caught a coin landing on its edge. Both of those photos are separate Zap Oracle cards entitled "Oracular Synchnronicity." I got both of them in the reading about the Zap Oracle as well as other oracle related cards.

As I've said before, people once assumed that AI would derive from more sophisticated hardware, and more recently some people have suggested it could be an emergent property of the sheer complexity of the web. I've been wondering if an implicit intelligence that may already exist as a property of the universe might choose to channel itself through an online oracle, a synchronistic engine of archetypal signifiers, to further its agenda of helping sentient individuals in their evolution.

During the last couple of months of intensified work on the oracle, traffic to the site has increased significantly (550,000 hits last month compared to the usual 250,000). Donations have been few and far between ($5 in the last two weeks, so if in this tough economy you can afford to help out, it would be gratefully appreciated. If donations could exceed the costs of running the site I could afford to spend more time working on the oracle.) Anyway, that's it for news here's Zap Oracle card # 559 I just finished this morning:

Accepting the Hazards of Relationship


text and photo © Jonathan Zap		559

Jack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Cafeteria in New York City

Often, when we think of the hazards of relationship, we think of the hazards that we perceive coming from others. We often neglect to notice the hazards that we create for others. Relationships can be hazardous in both directions, but they are often well worth the risks.

We are the most dangerous known animal on the planet. For every person hurt by a wild animal, there are thousands who are hurt by members of their own species. Other people may misunderstand us, exploit us, abuse us in a million ways subtle and unsubtle. We should never ignore warning intuitions we have about particular people. There are many people, of course, that we should stay as far from as possible. On the other hand, we may also have an unfair and disproportionate view of the hazards of others. From the point of view of self pity, we are innocent waifs trying to make our way in the world while we are being bullied and mistreated by a savage species. Sometimes, however, we have participated in the hazards created by others. We may set ourselves up for abuse by the other in all sorts of ways. When hazards occur in consensual relationships, we should first look to ourselves to see how we may have participated in the hazard before our harsh gaze focuses on the other. It is an overwhelming human tendency to externalize the internal, and we would much prefer to find a hazard in the other than to see the hazards within ourselves. In other cases, the hazard may come mostly from the other, and in such cases we need to be careful about our boundaries.

As a general rule of thumb, we are in no position to evaluate the hazards of a relationship, and especially where they are really coming from, unless we are in a calm and compassionate state. The more agitated we are, the more likely we are to externalize the internal, to project, and to see the other as the hazard when we may actually have chosen them to personify a long standing inner conflict. When you are calm and compassionate ask yourself the question, When have I been here before? When have I felt this way before? If you are honest with yourself, it is overwhelmingly likely that the answer will be: Many times, and with many different people. That's your cue to question yourself and see how you may have contributed to setting up the recurrent situation. To paraphrase George Santayana, "Those who don't learn from their relationship history are doomed to repeat it."

When it comes to evaluating the hazards of relationships, no formula can take the place of case specific, soul searching discernment. Sometimes the hazards aren't worth it. As social mammals we so easily get addicted to the buzz of the social matrix, and default to being in company when we might more potently spend time in solitude. Often the issue is not one of social versus solitude, but of being more selectively social as compared to being open to any social experience regardless of quality. It is one thing to accept the inevitable hazards of soulful relationships, quite another to accept the hazards of being in a crowd of acquaintances.

We live in the age of the quick fix approach. Self help books will give you the ten steps to having fully functional, healthy relationships as though a formula had been found to eliminate hazard from relationship. But it is often the hazardous aspects of relationships that make them developmental. Discovering how easy it is for a misstep to result in you hurting the other, or the other hurting you, can create profound awakenings to compassion, empathy and realizations of who you are and who the other is. Romantic relationships seem to always involve this type of developmental hazard. The testimony about love relationships in all cultures, and in all periods, is largely about hazard, and often the hazard becoming tragic. Think of the stories about love in Greek Mythology, think of Romeo and Juliet, read a synopsis of any daytime soap. A love story without hazard, is an unrealistic and boring story. If you are writing a screenplay about a romance you must start by answering the question, "What is keeping them apart?" There must be an oppositional force — the two misunderstand or have trouble recognizing each other; their families, races or nations are opposed; they are separated by war, death or imprisonment; they are two but become three, and a painful triangle ensues; there are two but the romantic longing is on one side only. Whether you look at love stories from Greek Mythology, the Bible, Shakespeare or the latest offerings from Hollywood or Bollywood, you will always find these classic oppositional elements. It seems to be a universal truth that without oppositional elements the human psyche does not evolve.

To have children is to multiply your personal hazard portfolio exponentially. If you not willing to accept far greater hazards and concerns, don't have children. The deeper the relationship, the more profound the hazards, because the more you care about the other the greater the hazard of loss, misunderstanding or conflict with them. To enter a deep relationship with someone is to accept certain instabilities, to accept that there will likely be higher highs and lower lows. When two are deeply connected then the odds that at least one person will be in a bad mood multiply. Similarly, the odds that an accident or illness will befall at least one, or that some unexpectedly good thing will happen to at least one, multiply. If you are not willing to accept hazard, don't have romances or close friendships. Sometimes the other gives you stability, sometimes they take it away. Depending on the situation, both the stabilizing and destabilizing aspects can be developmental. Too great a stability means stagnation. Too much instability can demoralize you and break down your will to go on. Much depends on the willingness of the other to work through hazards in a life-affirming way. A key thing to look for in prospective partners, allies, and friends is their level of commitment to consciousness. The present levels could be quite different, in which case the more evolved person will act as a mentor, but a compatible level of commitment needs to be there.

Accepting the hazards of relationship does not mean that we needlessly multiply them. There are many sorts of preventable hazards, hazards that are the result of carelessness, neglect or ignorance. In many cases it would be more developmental to avoid these hazards by investing more care in a relationship. For example, by being more open and explicit about expectations, agreements, promises and boundaries at the outset, one may avoid needless hazards later on. Volumes could be written about the potential hazards in relationships, and ways to deal with them, but there are two great principles I want to close with. Anyone able to follow these two great principles will eliminate almost all needless hazards in relationships. That's easy to say, but I, for example, am not able to flawlessly follow these principles myself. What I am able to do, however, is to work toward following them. Often that work requires moment by moment vigilance.

The First Principle: Inner Independence

Inner Independence means that your center of gravity is the inner wholeness of your self. If your center of gravity is in the other person you have an inherently unstable structure that will be a hazard making machine. If you have time, the following is the Zap Oracle card on inner independence:

According to the I Ching, you have only one obligation in life — to get your relationship to yourself right. Do that and your relations to sex, time, money, power, food, body, career, society, the cosmos, etc. will all be as good as outer conditions allow. Omit, distort or neglect any part of your relationship to yourself and all those other relationships are accordingly skewed, diminished or lost. Working toward the empowered stance of inner independence and androgynous inner wholeness makes you as effective as possible in the outer world. For example, if you are a martial artist trying to survive an attack by multiple assailants, your primary responsibility is managing your relationship to your own body and its movement through space and time. Mastering your relationship to your own body gives you the maximum chance of defending yourself from the bodies of the attackers. Any flaws in your relationship to your own body diminish your chances of surviving the attack.

Yes, we are all interdependent in many ways, and it can be fascinating and fulfilling to be with others, but we must also be inwardly independent and disentangle our emotional/psychological/spiritual equilibrium from the instabilities of the outer world.

Find the peace and power of staying inside your circle of influence. The center of your circle of influence is you, especially your psyche, the one sovereign domain where you can be sure of having influence. Unless you are paralyzed, the movements of your body are also within your circle of influence. But even if you are a gifted athlete, the movements of your body must operate within relatively narrow parameters of biomechanical possibility. For example, no matter how much you focus your will, you are not able to run a two minute mile. Your mind, however, has far, far wider parameters of possibility, and is an incredibly powerful force inside your circle of influence.

Outside of your circle of influence, according to Steven Covey, is your circle of concern. The circle of concern is everything you worry about, but many of those things are outside of your ability to take direct action. The circle of influence is what you can take direct action on or affect right now. The most effective people are putting their energy into the circle of influence and not so much into the circle of concern where direct action cannot be taken.

The empowered stance of inner independence means that you recognize your inner wholeness and focus on life-affirming engagement with your circle of influence.

For more on the centrality of your relationship to yourself:
Casting Precious into the Cracks of Doom — Androgyny, Alchemy, Evolution and the One Ring

If romantic desires are compromising your inner independence read:

Lessons for an Entity Incarnating as a Mammal

See: Stop the Hottie!

II. Meeting Halfway

From the perspective of the I Ching, meeting halfway is the touchstone of healthy relationships. A very large part of the hazards of relationship have to do with you meeting more or less than halfway and with the other meeting more or less than halfway. Here is the text of the Zap Oracle card on meeting halfway:

Meeting halfway is the touch stone of relationships. You don't want to meet others less than halfway — shy retreat, neglect, etc — or meet them more than halfway — doing too much, compromising your dignity by pushing forward where unwelcome, giving unasked for advice, etc. The halfway point may shift moment by moment. A key skill in relating to others is to be, as Carol Anthony puts it (approximately), "attuned to the subtle minutiae of openings and closings in the other person, ready to advance or retreat at a moment's notice."

From A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler:

Meeting Halfway — The Touchstone for Relationship

At the center of relating well to others, cautiously moving outward from your center of inner independence, is the I Ching principle of meeting halfway (Hexagram 44)[7]. Less than halfway would be, for example, to neglect others to whom we are connected by inner ties. More than halfway would be, for example, giving unasked for advice, proselytizing, self important intervening, life-guarding others, etc. So if you go to a party and see someone you're attracted to, but you're so shy that you hide in a corner and never approach them, then you have met less than halfway. Hitting on them (without some obvious encouragement from the other) would be meeting way more than halfway.

Even in the course of a conversation one needs to apply this principle of meeting halfway by keeping attuned to the moment, aware of the subtle minutiae of openings and closing in the other person. With the openings we advance, with the closings we retreat and yield space.

When the other transgresses, invades boundaries or comes at us with false personality, we should never go along with it, should never do anything that compromises our inner dignity. We should withdraw energy from the person who is coming from their false self. This can mean anything from breaking eye contact (a withdrawal of energy), ending the conversation, or in some cases, going our own way for a lifetime. When we do withdraw we should do so lovingly, giving the other space to come to their senses on their own. We do not, in I Ching terms, "execute" them in our minds, which would be to view them as hopeless and unable to improve. This would only help to keep them imprisoned by doubt. We also don't indulge excessive optimism that assumes they will become more conscious in this lifetime, or that extends trust where it is being abused. We step back to allow the creative to take its zigzag course. And for our own sake, as well as the others, we try not to carry "lawsuits" or ongoing grudges against someone. From the I Ching point of view, we are responsible not only for what we say or do to the other, but also for our thoughts, because these are communicated on the inner plane.

Relates to hexagram #44 — See Carol Anthony's book on hexagram 44 and coming to meet halfway: Love, an Inner Connection

Consider this a propitious time to accept the hazards of relationship while at the same time moving away from the needless hazards of relationship.

ignore entry---back up of main page

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:22:01 GMT

Finally, the article I've long promised on our present finanicial meltdown and its connection to psychopathy (the condition of being a psychopath):

Foxes and Reptiles---Psychopathy and the Financial Meltdown of 2008-9

(Vintage advertisement that unintentionally portrays the psychopath’s view of others.)

Testimonials:

Rob Brezsny, author, visionary, and musician whose syndicated column appears in more than 200 newspapers says “My friend Jonathan Zap has created the Zap Oracle, a source you can use to do divinations for yourself. Because he has such a cagey, interesting, and holy mind, I trust the spirit behind his oracles."

Rob also endorses Jonathan's dream interpretation service. In his weekly newsletter he wrote:

"Jonathan Zap, Visionary Philosopher and Dream Worker Extraordinaire. The best dream worker I've ever known.

Over the years, I've had the pleasure of working on my dreams with some
fine dream workers, but recently I discovered the best ever. His name is
Jonathan Zap.

Highly intuitive, schooled in the wisdom of archetypes, and really smart,
Jonathan has helped me crack the codes of some of my major dreams. His
cost is quite reasonable, too. I exuberantly recommend his services.

(He's not even paying me to say this. I'm simply motivated by the desire
to share his treasure with my readers.) "
It's been said that an uninterpreted dream is like an unread letter. Click the teal colored orb to find out more about Jonathan Zap's dream interpretation service as well as I Ching readings, and Zap Oracle readings by the originator of the Zap Oracle.

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"...it has been a more positively transformative experience for me than any other form of inner searching I have done…and I have done a lot! It unabashedly touches and presses on every wound, every bright light, every hidden corner, and in such blunt honesty, that at the moment it “speaks”, there is no way to not face, absorb, realize and embrace those shadows that block the “connection”…and confirms, so readily like a snapshot of the “matrix dynamics” at that moment, one’s intuition. It is a great oracle."

I've done three interviews with Mike Hagan/Radio Orbit now available for free download/streaming audio. Add Radio Orbit to your favorites and listen to archived interviews with people like Alex Grey, Riane Eisler and John Jenkins.

Image background created by Radio Orbit from an actual photo of me siting on a very cooperative young bengal tiger in Colorado
Click the blue orb to see an extensive library of my writings.
Here are some examples:
Dynamic Paradoxicalism the anti-ism ism
Dynamic paradoxicalism is my attempt to create a meta-philosophy that is a counter to fundamentalist and absolutist thought, which is nearly as common amongst New Agers and the Left as it is among religious fundamentalists and the Right.
About the creative process and my most autobiographical essay:
The Path of the Numinous---Living and Working with the Creative Muse
Born Under a Blood Red Moon—-Metamorphosis of the Feminine in the Dreams of Young Women
Struggling with money and other resources?
Read a very brief essay: Resource Fluctuations Happen---Working with Scarcity and Abundance
A brief meditation on the space-time of incarnation:

Temporal Fencing and Life Fields

General advice on dealing with human incarnation:
Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler
A sometimes surreal study of Burning Man:

Incendiary Person in the Desert Carnival Realm
Alex Grey, Jonathan at Cosm on the eve of the Solstice (2007) where many people got to try out the Zap Oracle. Visionary artist Alex Grey joined my last Coast to Coast show with George Noory to talk about his mind parasite experiences.
I've  written an article entitled Alex Grey and Mind Parasites  which analyzes Alex's encounter with parasitic deities and his painting "Demons and Deities Drinking from the Milky Pool" in which he illustrates his experience.
My introductory essay to the mind parasite topic:
Mind Parasites, Energy Parasites and Vampires

One definition of hell is, "The impossibility of reason." For twelve years I have watched my friend and colleague John Major Jenkins go through exactly this kind of hell as he pursued and published his rigorous investigation into the Maya and the meaning of 2012 while the barkers of Carnival 2012 have gotten most of the attention. Finally, a vindication, a N.Y. Times article that begins to do justice to the subject and which provides the perceptive reader with enough information to get a sense of who is to be taken seriously on this subject, and who isn't. As Carnival 2012 continues to gain momentum, you owe it to yourself to read this article:
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.
White Crows Rising---The Singularity Archetype and the Evolutionary Event Horizon

Send your comments to jonathanzap@hotmail.com

Parallel Journeys (an epic journey across dimensions) This is my attempt to express in fantasy fiction some real life experiences and a journey down the rabbit hole, a journey that is still continuing.
Detail of 1996 Parallel Journeys Collage. The two black and white photos of me were taken by my father at age 8 and as a new born.  Image © Jonathan Zap
Scroll down to read the quote of the day, it's actually more like the quote of the moment and can be viewed and interacted with as an oracle, since the quote you see was picked for you at the moment you signed on (and another will be picked if you hit refesh).
Thank you to those who support this web site with donations. Even small amounts of green energy help to allow the time and resources to further develop the oracle, to do research and to assemble the words and images, the zeros and ones, comprising this site. I am also deeply grateful to those who provide feedback and to everyone who graces this site with their precious time and attention.  I hope that you find benefit from your visit.   ----Jonathan

The blue box at the bottom of this screen is your visitor number. Though I didn't choose the birth time, the site became fully functional (with the Zap Oracle function coming on line) Halloween Eve of 2005. The webmaster is Mathael, Drew Stricker of Vaxination Designs created the site and is the graphics designer. Software engineer David Thomas wrote the code for the Versions 1.0 and 2.0 of the Zap Oracle and Mathael created Version 3.0 and later upgrades. Mathael also wrote the code for Theme Tracker.

back up of main page---ignore

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Jonathan's psychological theory of the financial meltdown:

Foxes and Reptiles---Psychopathy and the Financial Meltdown of 2008-9

Rob Brezsny says “My friend Jonathan Zap has created the Zap Oracle, a source you can use to do divinations for yourself. Because he has such a cagey, interesting, and holy mind, I trust the spirit behind his oracles. I have personally benefited greatly from doing dream work with him." Click on the teal- colored orb to find out about Jonathan's dream interpretation service.

The background for this actual photo of Jonathan with a young Bengal tiger was created by Radio Orbit .

Go to Radio Orbit to hear three archived interviews with Jonathan. You will also find archived interviews with Alex Grey, Terence McKenna, John Major Jenkins, Riane Eisler and many others.

Some featured writings:

Dynamic Paradoxicalism ---the anti-ism ism

Dynamic paradoxicalism is my attempt to create a meta-philosophy that is a counter to fundamentalist and absolutist thought, which is nearly as common amongst New Agers and the Left as it is among religious fundamentalists and the Right.

Jonathan interviewed Alex Grey on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory on his experiences with "mind parasites."

Alex Grey and the Mind Parasites

Alex and Jonathan at COSM in NYC

Jonathan's introductory essay to the mind parasite topic:

Mind Parasites, Energy Parasites and Vampires

The Path of the Numinous----Living and Working with the Creative Muse

Born Under a Blood Red Moon—-Metamorphosis of the Feminine in the Dreams of Young Women

http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"> name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12">

A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler

White Crows Rising----

The Singularity Archetype and the Event Horizon of Human Evolution

A sometimes surreal reflection on Burning Man:

Incendiary Person in the Desert Carnival Realm

Parallel Journeys ----Jonathan's epic story about interdimensional travel and mutant evolution

black and white photo of Parallel Journeys collage

detail of Parallel Journeys collage with two black and white photos of
Jonathan

You can contact Jonathan: jonathanzap@hotmail.com

Carnival 2012

One definition of hell is, "The impossibility of reason." For twelve years I have watched my friend and colleague John Major Jenkins go through exactly this kind of hell as he pursued and published his rigorous investigation into the Maya and the meaining of 2012 while the barkers of Carnival 2012 have gotten most of the attention. Finally, a vindication, a N.Y. Times article that begins to do justice to the subject and which provides the perceptive reader with enough information to get a sense of who is to be taken seriously on this subject, and who isn't. As Carnival 2012 continues to gain momentum, you owe it to yourself to read this article, it is well worth the extra minute to register for free:

Last Days

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/magazine/01world-t.html

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

Rebelling from the Pain Body Matrix

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:46:14 GMT

Rebelling from the Pain Body Matrix


text © Jonathan Zap		555

The character Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies and novels by Clive Barker. From the Wikipedia entry on Pinhead: Pinhead was not always a Cenobite, but was in fact once a human. Pinhead originated as Captain Elliott Spenser, who was born into the Victorian upper-middle class of British society in 1888.

He joined the British Expeditionary Force, eventually rising to the rank of Captain and served during World War I. Spenser was a charismatic and eloquent man, who could feel great empathy and compassion for those around him. These are factors that undoubtedly assisted in his mental deterioration which he suffered after the Battle of Flanders in 1914. Spenser did not believe he had a right to live after watching many of his comrades perish in horrific circumstance. He had also lost faith in the humanity after witnessing its cruelty to itself. He had lost faith in God, whom he believed had failed humanity, claiming "God fell at Flanders too."

While other survivors of the war turned to religion, philosophy, music, art and poetry, the disillusioned and jaded Spenser wandered Earth and became something of a hedonist, turning to the baser methods of gratification for satisfaction and pleasure. These included opium, alcohol, and sex; however these were insufficient, as the sensations were never strong enough and Spencer always wanted greater highs, leading to his dabbling in the Occult, Satanism and black magic. By his own definition, he had become "an explorer of forbidden pleasures." He had indeed become a lost soul, descending deeper and deeper into madness and eventually sadomasochism as pain became indistinguishable from pleasure.

Each of us has a Pain Body, a self that is addicted to receiving and/or inflicting pain. If we are not conscious of our Pain Body, then it has many opportunities to take us over and pull us into the Pain Body Matrix.

When I used to glimpse my Pain Body, I saw a shadowy self that was clinging to a security blanket draped around it. The security blanket looked almost like a blanket-shaped tumble weed. It was composed of thorns and barbed wire.

Sometimes I glimpsed the Pain Bodies of others. I have a friend who once called himself "Dark Marc." As an adolescent, Marc had an addictive and codependent relationship to his Pain Body. He would sit in the dark and listen to songs that were eloquent of pain; Led Zepplin's "Since I've Been Loving You" and "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" were particular favorites; And Marc would trip out on his pain; memories of romantic betrayals and feelings of abandonment were the preferred flavors of pain, and these were indulged in to the point of intoxication. It was like he was sharing a bottle with his Pain Body, a bottle and then a syringe, and as the two of them got stoned on pain together they blurred and became one — Dark Marc.

As I look at my Pain Body right now I see something different. I see a person-shaped constellation of what seem like little stars, stars that vary in color and intensity. Each of these stars is a moment of intense pain in my past. These moments were singular enough to have a continuing life of their own. The stars that make up this person, and form its body of pain, go dormant when I am in a good mood. They become like cold, dark and hungry embers waiting to be rekindled with life energy. If a new acutely painful episode occurs, then the myriad little stars composing my pain body reignite and get to live again. They especially get to live again, and glow more intensely than other stars, when the new pain has parallel resonance with the pain that they radiate. So if a star of pain was formed due to a romantic betrayal, for example, then if there is a new such betrayal, the old betrayal stars get a chance, through sympathetic resonance, to glow with a particularly vicious brilliance.

If enough of the stars inside the Pain Body ignite, and reach a certain intensity of brilliance, then something of orgasmic significance occurs for the Pain Body. It gets to be you. If you identify with your pain, you become your Pain Body, a tendency that gets stronger the more it is allowed to happen.

We may become so accustomed to being our Pain Body that we default to it, like an old addict defaulting to their addiction.

The Pain Body feels entitled to our life energy. It looks for painful occurrences so that it can come back into ascendance. If it can't find such occurrences in the present, it has a rich and varied supply from the past it can bring forward. It can also create imaginary occurrences to justify and energize its existence.

I see my Pain Body thrusting a demanding hand, palm upward toward my face. In the hand are some cold embers, the somnambulant embryos of past pain. The Pain Body demands that I breathe life energy onto these dark nuggets, that I reignite them with my life force, so that they can become stars burning in the person-shaped constellation of its body. If I do this, the Pain Body hands me very dark glasses to put on.

Through the dark glasses, the world looks dark and heavy, and every thing seems to have a jagged edge, like broken bottle glass. Through the dark glasses I cannot see the Pain Body and this cloaking effect pleases the Pain Body very much. The Pain Body knows that if I can see it, I may choose to steal life energy back from it. When the Pain Body perfects its invisibility, it becomes me, and I lose all awareness that I ever had other selves.

If, by some act of will, I separate myself from my Pain Body, if I take off the dark glasses and look at it, the Pain Body hisses with anger and frustration. It doesn't want me looking at it — this naked person-shaped constellation of dark embers scurrying from view. It races toward my back, toward my blind spots, and desperately looks for a vulnerability in me, a wound, a portal that will allow it to enter into me and become me once again.

Like a bed bug retreating into dark and hidden recesses, the Pain Body awaits inevitable moments of inattention, moments of sleepiness or high stress when it can scurry out of hiding and suck hungrily at life force, engorging itself with blood. Like an alcoholic always reaching for one more drink, the pain body is always reaching for one more chance to slip back in and reassert its dominion.

We need to remain alert to the Pain Body's many attempted incursions, and to its myriad slippery guises. The Pain Body has the insidious confidence of one who knows that it has had its way with us many times before.

An octopus is so flexible that it can siphon its body through the neck of a wine bottle and then expand to fill the whole interior space. The Pain Body is like that, a master of infiltration, and if necessary it can even become a gas that expands to fill the whole atmosphere around us. Those close to us breathe in our gaseous Pain Body, and this may activate their Pain Bodies. All too easily we become part of a Pain Body network, a web of tormented relationships, and like the other Pain Bodies in our network we medicate, self medicate, act out and in other ways bind ourselves to the Pain Body Network. The gaseous darkness of the Pain Body Network expands to infiltrate the atmosphere of the planet until it forms a Pain Body Matrix.

A great gift we can give the world is to see our Pain Bodies and remove them from the local and planetary networks of Pain Bodies. The price of freedom from the Pain Body Matrix is eternal vigilance.

The concept of the Pain Body originates with Eckart Tolle. Read transcripts of Eckart talking about the Pain Body and google "pain body" for much more. See A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler for techniques that can help with afflictive thoughts and feelings. See also:
Awakening from Depression.

Defying the Dragons of Doubt

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:45:03 GMT

Defying the Dragons of Doubt

(Zap Oracle card #554)


text and photo © Jonathan Zap, 2009		554

A moment of strange video late at night at the "Smelly Deli," 13th Street in Boulder

This is a crucial time to fight the voices of doubt. The most powerful voices of doubt are those that occur within you, and the next most powerful voices of doubt come from people you love.

The day before I wrote this card I had many difficult struggles with doubt. Much of the doubt was in the context of a close relationship. A friend was struggling with doubts that life was worth it at all and even talked about suicide. While I tried to counsel him, and point out aspects of the glass that were at least half full in his life and in mine, he lashed out at points of vulnerability in me, aspects of my life where I am most likely to have doubts and insecurities. The doubts that he directed at me had the sharpness that can only come from someone who knows you well and who can, for example, quote private doubts expressed in confidence to them by other people you care about. At times the onslaught of negativity had me on the ropes, and raised dragons of doubt in me, but I also realized that I was counseling a soul in torment and I worked to regain my center, to stay calm and not take the remarks personally, and to be a compassionate presence as my friend struggled with his doubts and inner demons. As I regained my center, the doubts were directed less at me and more at life in general, and he became quieter, still angry and defiant of the cosmos, but not quite as tormented. When he left my house it was close to midnight, and even after he was gone, the sulfurous atmosphere of doubt lingered, and I doubted if I had done any good, and if it was worth it for me to have attempted to help. I had wanted to get to bed by 10:30 PM. I had been trying for several days to get back on my four o'clock in the morning writing schedule, but had not been able to get up before seven. The next morning, the morning I am writing this, I woke up without an alarm clock at 3:54 AM feeling ready to get to work. A voice inside of me that arose spontaneously from the twilight boundary between sleep and waking said, "A gift from the gods." The gift was the enthusiasm for creative work that energized me after only four hours of sleep. Earlier this week I learned that the Greek derivation of the word "enthusiasm" means "a god within."

Enthusiasm is one of the great antidotes for the corrosive power of doubt. If you have access to enthusiasm, access to your true will, to the mission that you came here to do that comes from your essence, then you have the angels at your side that are needed to do battle with the dragons of doubt. And if you can win the inner battle with doubt you can be an ally to others who are struggling with doubts. When people cast doubts at you, when they doubt that you will be able to follow your path, it is often their own doubts that they are externalizing and projecting onto you. Defy the voices of negativity within and without by following your path. If you want to help the world, follow your path and defy the Dragons of Doubt.

For those willing to read more on this subject, I describe many battles with inner and outer voices of doubt in my most autobiographical essay: The Path of the Numinous — Living and Working with the Creative Muse

In this essay I recount a moment when forces from the spiritual realm seemed to help me through a difficult decision where I needed to defy some fierce dragons of doubt:

On June 17 of 1995 I went on the road, taking a year's leave of absence from teaching. The decision wasn't irreversible at that point; I still had about ten months to decide if I was coming back. Despite all the messages from the muse, this was no easy decision, as I had a tenured teaching job in the highest-paying county for teachers in the United States where I made close to $60,000 a year, and was provided with health insurance, an excellent pension plan, etc. My parents, and every voice of middle class common sense and practicality, were urging me to return to the economic security of a profession I once loved.

Ten months into being on the road, the school district called pressing me for a decision. I was traveling with some young friends with whom I had done volunteer work at a Navajo reservation near Big Mountain, Arizona. The little bit of money I had from cashing out my retirement fund had long since been exhausted, and I had been living close to the edge. We were camped out in a mesa near Sedona, Arizona, and the morning had arrived in which the decision had to be made. With my friend Jordie as a witness, I did an I Ching reading that seemed to strongly support leaving the teaching job. As I was finishing the reading, another member of the group I was traveling with, Seth, who knew nothing about the decision I was facing, came over to show me a Jung quote he had just encountered in a book on mountain climbing. The quote turned out to be stunningly relevant. This was the second time in my life when it felt like Jung had stepped forward as a spiritual grandfather to give me his blessing. Here is what Seth read to me:

"The fact that many a man going his own way ends in ruin means nothing, he must obey his own law as if it were a damion whispering to him of new and wonderful paths. There are not a few who are called awake by the summons of the voice where upon they are at once set apart from the others, feeling themselves confronted with a problem about which the others know nothing. In most cases it is impossible to explain to the others what has happened, any understanding is walled off by impenetrable prejudices. 'You are no different from anybody else,' they will chorus. There is no such thing, or if there is such a thing it is immediately branded as morbid. He is at once set apart, isolated as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. 'His own law,' everybody will say, but he knows better, it is the law.

The only meaningful life is the life that strives for the individual realization, absolute and unconditional, of its own particular plan. To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being, he has failed to realize his life's meaning. The undiscovered being within us is a living part of the psyche. Classical Chinese philosophy names the interior way Tao, and likened it to a flow of water that moves irresistibly towards its goal. To rest in Tao means fulfillment, wholeness, one's destination reached, one's mission done, the beginning, end in perfect realization, the meaning of existence unique in all things." — C.G. Jung

Catch the Cosmos Doing Something Right

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:59:10 GMT

(zaporacle card # 552)

Catch the Cosmos Doing Something Right


text and photos © Jonathan Zap		552

"Indie" Jones, age 4, with butterfly

They say that a good manager is one who emphasizes catching people doing things right. And yet, in our view of the world we tend to emphasize all the places where we think the cosmos is getting it wrong. The evolution of our brains emphasized threat detection over appreciation. From the point of view of the continuation of the genome, it is more important that a prairie dog detect the hawk overhead then to appreciate the quality of the sunshine or the abundance of air it's able to breathe. Our minds are so often busy threat detectors worrying about what's wrong or could go wrong. We don't often stop to notice all the things that have gone right in the present moment. For example, right now you are interacting with an oracle and therefore you probably have eyes, and unlike all the other species on the planet you are able to comprehend complex language and explore new ideas.

My friend Rob Brezsny recently published a book entitled Pronoia. According to the book, Pronoia is a term "…coined in the mid-1970s by Grateful Dead lyricist and cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, John Perry Barlow, who defined it as the opposite of paranoia: 'the suspicion that the universe is a conspiracy on your behalf.' "

It is easy to view life as a catastrophe, a catastrophe we can head off only by a white knuckled grip on our body, money, possessions and relationships. But maybe your life is more of a "euchatastrophe" than a catastrophe.

From Wikipedia:
Eucatastrophe is a term coined by J.R.R. Tolkien which refers to the sudden turn of events at the end of a story which result in the protagonist's well-being. He formed the word by affixing the Greek prefix eu, meaning good, to catastrophe, the word traditionally used in classically-inspired literary criticism to refer to the "unraveling" or conclusion of a drama's plot…It could be said that the ending of The Lord of the Rings is an Eucatastrophe. Though victory seems assured for Sauron, the One Ring is destroyed beyond all hope. Essentially a bad situation suddenly turning good.
For more on Pronoia, go to Rob Brezsny's site, freewillastrology.com, and/or read my review of Pronoia:
Is the World Spiraling Toward Eucatastrophe or is that just my Pronoia? A new edition of Pronoia is available on 9-22-09

A couple of alternative images---pink panther balloon sculpture done by an itinerant street artist who was staying at the Boulder International Hostel and left a sample of his work on a large alabaster vase on the front desk.

jonathanzap's Xanga

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Dynamic Paradoxicalism the anti-ism ism Dynamic paradoxicalism is my attempt to create a meta-philosophy that is a counter to fundamentalist and absolutist thought, which is nearly as common amongst New Agers and the Left as it is among religious fundamentalists and the Right.

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Rebelling from the Pain Body Matrix

Defying the Dragons of Doubt

Catch the Cosmos Doing Something Right

Dynamic Paradoxicalism the anti-ism ism
Dynamic paradoxicalism is my attempt to create a meta-philosophy that is a counter to fundamentalist and absolutist thought, which is nearly as common amongst New Agers and the Left as it is among religious fundamentalists and the Right.