Beauty in the Eye of the Phase Shifter © 2006, 2008 Jonathan Zap Edited by Austin Iredale (On May 31 of 1996, a morning of intense intuitions drastically changed my view of corporeality, beauty, sexuality, and eros. This experience is described in "The Path of the Numinous" and the intuitions of that morning are developed in "The Glorified Body---Metamorphosis of the Body and the Crisis Phase of Human Evolution,” and that work serves as a foundation for the present reflections. In writing the following reflection, I use the pronoun “we,” by which I mean “me,” but also the many others who have parallel feelings. There are some for whom the experience of beauty may be quite different, especially those who have been conditioned ...

The metabolism of our species is reaching a feverish intensity as we approach an evolutionary event horizon.  One symptom of this feverish metamorphosis is our mutating relationship to body. Suffering associated with body image has reached such epidemic proportions in our culture that it must be counted as one of the greatest spiritual plagues ever to be visited upon mankind. Media bombards us unceasingly with images of ever more idealized youth and beauty while vast portions of our population undergo voluntary starvation, grueling exercise regimens and surgery in an effort to control their body image. Attempts to control body image often result in collapsing self-esteem, intense suffering and premature death through self-imposed famine. The temptation is to view body image problems as an isolated illness, rather than a phenomenon that points right to the core of our evolutionary predicament. What from one vantage seems an illness ...

THE GLORIFIED BODY Metamorphosis of the Body and the Crisis Phase of Human Evolution --- a book proposal-- © 1996 Jonathan Zap revised 11/29/05 >Glad Day "Glad Day" by William Blake (To find out what inspired the following, and why it remains in this form, see The Path of the Numinous, but essentially I found that when I had written the proposal I had recorded what I had to say on the subject, and had no desire to turn it into a book. I have also rewritten this book proposal as a briefer article, you will miss some important sections but there is more flow, and you won't have the annoyance of frequently hearing about a nonexistant future book. To read the article click here) I. OVERVIEW Suffering associated with body image has reached such epidemic proportions in our culture ...

You're Only as Old as You Are: The Six Noble Truths of the Zap Philosophy of Aging © 2007, Jonathan Zap, age 49     Revised 2008   Edited by Austin Iredale “You’re only as old as you feel!” The problem is that expression got old by the twentieth time I heard it, back in 1973.  And now, after hearing it an additional twenty times a week in the ensuing thirty-five years, I have come to find this particular cliché to be very, very old.  In fact, if this cliché were as old as my feelings about it, it would probably be able to remember a time when the Big Bang was a mere twinkle in God’s eye.  And that’s just another way of saying ...