Practical Psychological Tools, Insights and Strategies for Dealing with Everyday Life

Self-portrait in Infinity Box (N0. 3), from the Awakened Vision series, 2012 by Matt Elson photographed at the Fractal Nation Art Gallery, Burning Man 2012 text and photos copyright Jonathan Zap, 2012 At about 330am (see Predawn Window Zone), just before awakening to resume work on my fantasy epic, Parallel Journeys, I had a dream about relating to the creative muse that used imagery and art from Burning Man. I am talking to Matt Elson who created these wonderful mirror boxes that were on display at the Fractal Nation art gallery dome. Matt is only vaguely present (essentially I am talking to myself). We are out in the blazing sun looking at a mirror box sitting on the playa. It is long and rectangular and apparently completely sealed to keep out the elements. I tell him that this is too egoistic and that the mirror box should be open to the elements and have portals so that insects could enter it. The mirror box is reconceived so that it now has an open corridor. Smash cut to next dream scene— I am biking along the edge of a desert canyon that has steeply slopping sides descending about a hundred feet [...]

copyright 2012, Jonathan Zap Status Update August 16, 2012 3:30 am Status Update August 16, 2012 3:30 am Awakened by the Spirits of the High Desert and the Red Book So often I find the muse waking me up between 3 and 4 in the morning, as it did this morning at about 3:10 am, and that can work out very well if I’ve gotten to sleep early enough, say 9pm. The predawn hours are the magical time for me creatively, a window zone where the veil between the realms seems thinner, and most people in the community are in the dreamtime and I have just come from the dreamtime. This morning I’m at 7200 feet in the high desert of Taos, New Mexico at the guest house of someone whose book I’m editing. The muse has been waking me up at 3 something all this week even if I’ve gone to sleep late. When that happens, my brain is just not rested enough and I usually have to go back to sleep. It feels like the muse is reminding me that I should have been ready, and when this happened a couple of days ago the awakening was from [...]

Has anyone else noticed that civil dialogue with atheists, even more than religious fundamentalists, seems to be nearly impossible? I left a brief comment to a bitter cartoon that an atheist I know, and care about, posted on FB that compared life to a video game in which you would always be killed no matter what you did. I said something like, “Well, the idea of life as futile is nothing new. Camus recognized this as he traced it back to the Myth of Sisyphus. Given this point of view, what motivates you to work so hard at a number of things (the atheist in question was working his way through law school) ?  Anonymous Atheist: I don’t think your seriously interested in my motives. and I am not interested in entering a philosophical conversation in a quasi-public forum. But for what its worth; Truth, beauty, and wisdom.Tuesday Jonathan: Fair enough, and I agree facebook is not the right forum. If you are interested in a more thoughtful challenge, and I understand you may not be, I would ask if you would read one chapter from my recent book. It’s one one near-death experience. Something that is often paired with atheism, but [...]

See Nocturnal Visions—Paintings by Nathan Zap ROUGH DRAFT, working title, photos and text copyright 2012, Jonathan Zap Friday, June 16, 2012 As I was gathering my will to begin a journal of my summer odyssey, I was doing what so often precedes adventure these days—catching up on Facebook status updates. An Estonian semiotician I know, who only a few years ago was part of a tribe of young mutants from the state of Washington I first met in 2001 at a Rainbow Gathering, had just posted the following James Joyce reference: Seccion Ameril: history is the nightmare People, including me, quickly added comments: Pär Tel: idiots+ideology Jonathan Zap: from which I am trying to awaken into the temporal evanescence, emotional disassociation and insubstantiality of facebook. Seccion Ameril: doesn’t anyone know what day it is? Jonathan Zap: Estonian Liberation Day, the day Estonia defeated Turkislamostan in 1166? Matthew Serenissima Cristoforo Campanella: bloomsday Pär Tel: It’s friday? Bloomsday, from Wikipedia: “Bloomsday is a commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce during which the events of his novel Ulysses (which is set on 16 June 1904) are relived. It is observed annually on 16 June in Dublin and elsewhere. [...]

Zones of inner jeopardy (ZIJ) are those familiar times when we are inwardly stressed, our thoughts and emotions are agitated, and we may be enveloped by dark moods. The causes of ZIJ are various, and usually there are multiple causes such as metabolic disequilibria, social/sexual issues, financial hardship, disturbances in the force and so forth.”ZIJ” is used in this essay to refer to both zones of inner jeopardy and a way of dealing with them.

Awakening from uneasy dreams, I was aware of myself as a self-reflecting starship. For a few moments I lingered in that warpy place between dreams and wakefulness, still feeling partly caught up in some painful drama with another starship that had played itself out as I slept. Slowly the dream faded, and the waking consciousness returned—that all-too-familiar sense of myself as a middle-aged starship, about halfway through its lifecycle in an era where well-maintained starships often lasted a century.

Stephen Colbert, a visionary Gen-X comedian who is especially popular with Millennials (unedited, rough draft) © 2011 Jonathan Zap An interesting trend I’ve noticed on Facebook is that young guys, who are mostly known to be heterosexual, and who usually have higher-than-average social status, make graphic statements about loving gay sex as jokes. For example, a probably heterosexual twenty-one-year-old student at CU posted a Facebook status update: “I love the way cock feels in and around my mouth.” Friends left good-natured comments going with the joke. In another such status update I noticed this morning, a very high status nineteen-year-old-male who is known to be popular with girls, has a bit of a reputation as a street fighter, and works in heavy construction posted: “now that i let some dude finish in my mouth i want in the butt.” Friends then posted comments that seemed to share in the joke, but without being mean-spirited, e.g. “ha, ha, I’m stoked.” They were all laughing with, not at, the joker. As a student of popular culture who writes about the evolution of sexuality (see http://www.zaporacle.com/eros-love-and-sexuality/ for some of my essays on the subject), I find this extremely interesting. But I also recognize [...]

photo by Whereisat © Jonathan Zap, 2011 Part I Edited by Austin Iredale Part I of this article was originally written for Reality Sandwich. You can read part 1 there with all of the many comments posted at the end: http://www.realitysandwich.com/transcending_online_road_rage I’ve added three additional parts: Part II  Comments Added to this Article and what they Reveal about On Line Road Rage Part III Aspects of On Line Road Rage Part IV  Principles for Transcending On Line Road Rage  —-Part IV is subdivided into two parts: Part IV A—- Watch out for your own Tendency Toward Web Rage Part IV B  Dealing with Web Ragers The speaker has no value whatsoever, nor what he says. What has value is how you understand yourself in listening to what he says. He is like a mirror, in which you see yourself reflected. Your consciousness, your daily activity, your unconscious demands, pursuits and fears are exposed. When you so listen, then you begin to discover for yourself not the ideas, the conclusions, the assertions of the speaker, but rather you see for yourself what is true and what is false. —Krishnamurti Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. [...]

Emotionally intense experiences, life phases, and relationships tend to form timelines that continue in the unconscious, and sometimes these alternate timelines can enrich the soul, and other times they can divert massive amounts of psychic energy from our being fully engaged with the present.

The definition of pushing the envelope I have come up with and will employ here is: Boundary expansion into a zone of novelty previously unexplored by the species or an individual.