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     I expect to be at Burning Man this year, let me know if you are going and I’ll tell you where you can find me for a free introductory dream interpretation or I Ching reading.

     I’ve been working on a new philosophy entitled Dynamic Paradoxicalism

(http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/144/dynamic-paradoxicalism-the-anti-ism-ism-)

and would love to hear what you think about it.  This philosophy is my attempt to offer an alternative to the strong human tendency toward absolutisms which are nearly as common amongst the left and New Agers as amongst the right and religious fundamentalists.

   There are a number of new entries in my dialogue with Australian Hermetic Philosopher Harald Kleeman,  read them at:

 Piercing the Veil and Dissing the Source Code of the Matrix of Patriarchial Fundametalism

 and Part II  One Star in Sight--an Inquiry into Magik

Before getting to today’s entry, a quick plug for my products and services, you can find about the CDs, DVDs I offer at zaporacle.com in the Products and Services section (click the teal-colored orb).

My dream interpretation service is getting some good reviews.

Rob Brezny (freewillastrology.com), whose column appears in 140 newspapers ,

called me a "Visionary Philosopher and Dream Worker Extraordinaire."

In his Free Will Astrology Newsletter  he wrote:

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.)

Kill the Time Grid and Fire up your Life----a Lesson in Practical Magic

© 2007, Jonathan Zap

Trouble reading this? Click here http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/148/kill-the-time-grid-and-fire-up-your-lifea-lesson-in-practical-magic to read the same document directly on my website.

Shame, and believing the lie that there is something wrong with you fragments and disassociates you from the present moment. You don't want to be who you think you are, and that leads to intense self conflict, pain and confusion and this inner darkness can coalesce into a "shame contract," and a key feature of the shame contract is that it exists as a "time grid."

A time grid is a way of attempted escape from the present moment (in which you believe yourself to be no good and feel ashamed) by projecting yourself into an imaginary idealized future. You make a shame-based contract with the future, and typically this contract has one or more of the following elements: The first element is self improvement, you see yourself in a more perfected body, more together, more successful, accomplished, disciplined or whatever. The second element is you see an improvement in outside conditions---typically you are wealthy and successful in various worldly ways, have acquired shiny new gadgets, cars, clothes, houses, fortunes, etc. The third element is social and interpersonal---you see your self as more socially successful or popular, and this may include specific interpersonal acceptances, typically including romantic and/or sexual fantasies. As you invest energy into the time grid with its idealized images, the present reality seems ever more shamefully inadequate and inferior by contrast. You, as the presumed creator of the present reality, also seem ever more shamefully inadequate and inferior, and this causes you to flee the present moment, to fragment and to invest and cling ever more nervously to the time grid. You become your own Wizard of Oz trying to keep your attention focused on the grand holographic images of yourself projected onto the time grid, and are ever more agitated by all the petty distractions that force your attention back to the man behind the curtain.

The quickest way out of the time grid is compassionate acceptance and embrace of the present moment, and who you are within the present moment. Lowering expectations of life seems to allow this. Lowered expectations of life doesn’t mean that you now have negative expectations of life, a grim acceptance of hardships, privations and diminished possibilities. It means that you have fewer expectations of any kind, positive or negative, because expectation is a time grid, and you are now choosing to live closer to the moment, closer to the pulse of life, and are willing to work with what the moment presents rather than what you think should be happening. More fully embracing the present moment, you have more access to power and magic, because you are more whole, more present, you have defragmented and have more access to the totality of who you are including all your talents and abilities. Your intuition is greatly enhanced, and your bodily coordination improves as your body moves only in the present, never in the future. You are a much more vivid social/interpersonal presence as your energy flows into engagement with people now, as compared to hiding shamefully behind curtains while trying to project unreal images of the future.

Maintaining a time grid takes continual energy, it is an electrified grid that produces distracting holographic images, and it is your life energy that fires that grid, and has to keep firing the grid, and when you reclaim that energy you have more vitality, more energy---and energy is the ability to do things and to be more fully alive, and when you've earned your access to greater energy you may find that it allows you to more fully feel things and appreciate things. There may be pain in the present moment sometimes, but living on an electrified grid is always painful, is always a ghetto life filled with suffering and frustrated longing.

There was a cruel experiment done with monkeys many years ago. A baby monkey was removed from its mother and was placed in a universe consisting of two connecting cages. One cage had food and water, and the other cage had a surrogate mother made of carpet attached to chicken wire shaped like an adult monkey with a ticking clock inside of it for a heart beat. The baby monkey would cling to the surrogate mother all day except for brief moments when it would go into the other cage, get food and water as quickly as possible, and then come back to cling to the surrogate mother again. A time grid is like a surrogate mother made of carpet and chicken wire with a mechanical heart. We may cling to it, but it has no real nourishment for us, and, unlike the baby monkey, we live in a more abundant universe that can offer us real nourishment if only we will stop clinging to our life surrogate time grid.

If we live the time grid life, we use our magic to fire the grid and to generate the most convincing holographic images we can of our idealized, imaginary future. This is an exhausting magical practice, a high maintenance practice which degrades the present and leaves us feeling disempowered. One way to change this is to focus on deeds that are worthwhile to accomplish (however humble) in the very near time frame, and first state them as a magical intention by saying to yourself, in a very strong voice, “I will….” As in “I will clean this counter top.” “I will enter the post office.” These may be humble deeds, but they are also magical accomplishments, as no one has yet satisfactorily explained how we translate our will into bodily actions. According to Aleister Crowley, magick is "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." ... In fact, Crowley says that "every intentional act is a Magickal Act." By stating as magical intentions achievable goals in the very near time frame, you are retraining and re-empowering yourself from the self-castrating magic of the time grid toward a recognition of the power you are continually and successfully engaging in the present.

An extremely effective and grounded magical practice is to identify your big dreams, the missions you really need to accomplish in this life time. The test of a big dream is to ask yourself, “Will I remember this well on my death bed?” If you have a big dream you will probably find that to accomplish it will require a minimum of two hours of devoted activity per day. At the beginning of the day make a short list of achievable, actionable I will…. statements that apply to today, and that move you, directly or indirectly, toward your big dream. The more direct ones are best, but the indirect ones, the actions that are necessary to maintain your practical life, also move you toward your dream because the neglect of them would sabotage your life in general. Now focus your energy, magic and presence on accomplishing your I will statements. Note also that your I will statements do not have to apply merely to grim accomplishments, but also to fun and enriching things, I will see the movie that just came out, I will meet up with my friends at the coffee shop, etc.

Stop clinging to the time grid and fire up your life!

Most relevant on this theme: Imagine Getting More

See also See also Path Finding and Day Mapping

for practical ways to empower your life and orient yourself effectively to time.

One of the worst ways to form a contract with a time grid is to fall for apocalypticism and/or counting down to some sort of rapture (fundamentalist or New Age), counting down to 2012 the latest version of this trap. See: Clocktime Metastisizing toward 2012