The Way of the Warrior: An Authentic Life Stance with Heart © 1996, 2009 by Jonathan Zap Edited by Austin Iredale WHAT IS A WARRIOR? Being an interdimensional traveler involves an arduous journey, and the stance that I recommend for this journey is that of the Warrior. Why is being a Warrior important, and what is meant by being a Warrior anyway? Language is so often a barrier to understanding. The word, "Warrior," for example, presents many problems. Sometimes the best available word has a shadow, a dark area of connotations that may be alien or even contradictory to what we are trying to convey. If we want to convey the possibility of a more effective focus in our lives, the word "discipline" comes to mind. But "discipline" can also mean to punish, and our Puritan heritage gives the word an unwanted sadistic resonance. In Sanskrit the nearest word to discipline ...

WARRIOR QUOTES THE WARRIOR SAYINGS OF DON JUAN The following quote collection has been culled from the Casteneda books and represents a distillation of Don Juan's philosophy of the warrior. Regardless of what you may think of the literal veracity of these books(they have been pretty successfully debunked as truthful encounters), they were for many in our culture, including me, the first encounter with the philosophy of the warrior. Don Juan's teachings about the Warrior stance have the perfection of a Samurai sword or arrows shot by a master Zen archer. Their concise, penetrating power is unequaled, and they pierce ego illusions like diamond bullets. Taken together they amount to a Toltec Warrior Manifesto. Someone once defined stories as "equipment for living." Don Juan's warrior teachings are also equipment for living, something never to leave behind, like a blade of impervious metal, ...

Taoist Quotes The following quotes come from Back to Beginnings, Reflections on the Tao by Huanchu Daoren, translated by Thomas Cleary. They were written around 1600 by a retired Chinese Scholar, Hong Yingming, whose Taoist name, Huanchu Daoren, means "A Wayfarer Back to Beginnings." In it can be seen a form of lay Taoism dating many centuries further back into history, in which the historical and sociological insights of pristine Confucianism are combined with the advanced educational and psychological know ledges and methodologies of Buddhism and Taoism. Nothing is really known of Huanchu Daoren, except that he wrote these meditations on the Tao which were originally entitled, "Vegetable Root Talks." He identifies himself as a Confucian, which means that he is a layman; his Taoist epithet, "Back to Beginnings," says in calendrical symbolism that he has passed the age of sixty, has retired from public affairs, and has started a new cycle of life. ...

The Taoist Path Introduction. © Jonathan Zap 2004 Someone once described stories as "equipment for living." Quality fiction does fit that definition and, of course, so does the right non fiction. The modern Taoist quotes presented here are almost the illustration of this definition. They are like a set of tools, deceptively simple in appearance, but made of an adamantine metal that grows stronger and sharper with long use. Someone else said, "Don't read a book unless it is like a ball of light glowing in your hands." When you find the right book, at the right time, it can be a sphere of light in your hands. ...

Mechanical Resistance Matrix © 2006,  2008 Jonathan Zap Edited by Austin Iredale “Mechanical resistance” is one of the great defining aspects of the matrix in which we are presently incarnated.  It is a force in our lives as powerful as gravity or mortality, and it overlaps and influences almost any area or parameter of our incarnation we can possibly think of---corporeality, illness, aging, money, sexuality, time, objects, consumerism, computers, technology, art, travel, etc.  I’m trying right now to think of an area of my life that does not involve mechanical resistance, and I can’t think of a single one.  If instead I try to think of areas of my life where there is mechanical resistance and where I wish there was less, the list that populates itself in my mind is so numerous and detailed that it starts scrolling off the ...

Path-Finding and Day-Mapping text and photo © Jonathan Zap 341 Jonathan path finding in Escalante Canyon, Utah This image relates to a very practical and grounded way to navigate your pathway through a chaotic world. I have a very poor natural sense of direction, and yet I was able to use ordinary map and compass skills to navigate myself, and a small group, through a maze of canyons with no marked paths (Escalante Canyon, Utah). The method is fairly simple, but profound in its proven effectiveness. You have a topographical map which you can orient to the visible landscape. You know that the map is not the territory, some features have changed, and some things may have been mapped wrong, but most things will correspond. You know the overall direction you want to go, and you use your compass to locate a near landmark that is along your ...

Imagine Getting More (Zap Oracle Card # 332)   copyright 2007, Jonathan Zap One of the most potent of spells or enchantments that can bind you into the matrix is to live under the compulsion of always having to imagine getting more in the future.  Under this spell you become a donkey forever hypnotized by an imaginary carrot just up ahead. The carrot, the “more”, that ever glitters in your mind’s eye like a ring of power, could be many things-----sex, money, power, fame, looks----often the imagined more is a vision of that more perfected life just up ahead, the one in which you have realized your ideal weight, made your first hundred million, and have an amazing lover with whom you live in a house featured in Architectural Review...  The phrase in the cigarette ...

photo and text copyright Jonathan Zap 2006 I've been getting a lot of messages from people that reflect a deep unhappiness with our present condition and a tendency to cling to unnourishing things to support themselves through the difficulties.  For example, a woman in New York City sent the following: I listened to you on X Zone tonight.  Re: 2012, my life has really become sitting around and waiting for 2012.  My job, my relationships, etc.  have all become "something to do while I wait."  I really don't like what I've become, because I feel that I am not living my life to the fullest NOW.  I am just waiting for something better to happen, waiting for something to save me. I am beginning to think that a lot of people feel the same way, based on stuff I'm reading on ...

Dynamic Paradoxicalism: The Anti-ism Ism © 2007, 2008 Jonathan Zap Edited by Austin Iredale "Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical."---Lao-tse 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.  The greatest of life skills is the ability to live with ambiguity, ambivalence, and paradox, without trying to regularize these uncertainties into finished, absolute truths.  Dynamic paradoxicalism recognizes that most important areas of truth exist as a paradox, where seemingly contradictory elements have a dynamic level of validity based on context specific circumstances.  Although a greater conception that synthesizes the disparate elements of a paradox into a grand unit is an awesome addition to the conceptual toolbox, it is not always ...