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
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self portrait age 14 or 15
(with Alex Grey at Cosm in New York City)
Jonathan Zap grew up in the Bronx and attended the Bronx High School of Science. He graduated from Ursinus College with honors in Philosophy and English and received his Masters degree in English from NYU.
Jonathan is a photographer, author, teacher, paranormal researcher and philosopher who has written extensively on human evolution and contemporary mythology. Jonathan has worked as a staff gemologist and instructor for the Gemological Institute of America. He has taught English in High School and College ...
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Challenging Thoughts on Love
© 1999 Jonathan Zap
Revised 2009 Edited by Austin Iredale
Many people seem to view love as a feeling, and in New Age circles love often seems like a dose of aromatherapy, a passive, sentimentalized, set of hollow declarations that leaves a saccharine, toxic aftertaste, like eating Rose Bouquet Air Wick Solid for dessert.
What many people have pointed out is that love is not so much a feeling it is as a verb. If you have love, that means you take action. As someone once pointed out, if you want to find out what you really love, notice what you spend time on. Anyone can say they love their kids, or in their absence have a Kodak moment ...
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Tags: Eros: Love and Sexuality
Some Thoughts on Human Sexuality
© 2003, Jonathan Zap
Revised 2008 Edited by Austin Iredale
Recently, I was called on to comment on a document that attempted, with the best intentions, to come up with a conscious, inclusive, reformed approach to human sexuality. Although there were many good things in this document, I began to have a strong reaction when I noticed that there was an attempt to create a softer-edged template, a model of romantic relationships that emphasized long-term committed relationships. Although my personal bias favors long-term committed relationships, I found that in reaction to the document I ended up going on a rant against the well-intentioned impulse to regularize human sexuality and conduct. My rant, written at high speed, ...
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collage and text ©Jonathan Zap
You
You. I know you. I saw you survive red flames twisting glass and steel burning the dry night air. Saw the heat of greedy fingers on the smooth skin of your youth as you splintered into fragments of light glittering through the dark suction of tunnels spiraling upward to entrance threshold intensity. I saw you and I saw every particle of sand on your naked skin as you awakened in desert night, spirit drawing back into wounded flesh and rousing itself into mosaic perceptions of reptiles, cactus spines, red rock, stars. I saw you, you with the will to survive and to glow upon the open mesa, tendrils of light penetrating the ...
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