World of Jonathan berman

Balance search with discovery... one who is addicted to searching for fear of losing something else, is never happy... how often I have found the perfect thing for me, only to continue my quest away from these splendid shores and continue looking for them!

It is okay to recognize when we have found our place, our favorite coffee, or experience and embrace it wholly... to build on what we have found...

This post may seem incredibly ambiguous or "inside" to others reading it, but I feel like it took me many years to just stop running, and enjoy the things I enjoy, as they say... "the search is over, you were with me all the while..."

This bit of dialog from Fringe Season 1 Episode 10 is meaningful to me because all my life I have shared my passionate way of seeing the world, and so often people throughout the years have joked that I must be high, they wish they had what I was taking, or smoking etc... and every single time I was of course stone sober, just purely lucid and making connections the way I am wired to do... it never bothered me, but it is interesting that I am sober the way most people are while under the influence... I guess I should take it as flattering.

When we make such connections, we are able to explore perspective in which grows imagination and great compassion and lucidity... it is perhaps the womb of inspiration itself...

Walter Visits the Federal Building

CHARLIE: According to your travel records, in 1985, you gave a lecture at Syracuse University. Now, these photos are of banks in the Syracuse area. Does any of this trigger anything in your mind?
WALTER: (glances at photos) Yes, but not about banks. Think back 20 years - imagine yourself then, imagining yourself now - 20 years into the future. In your wildest imagination, could you ever think you'd be here?
CHARLIE: (softly to Olivia) Is he stoned?

It has always been the imperfections that give me comfort in this life, and the lack of visible flaws which give me cause to be wary. These are all visceral, gut impulses... but perhaps imperfections are a sort of internal GPS to find our own cracks... a self diagnostic if you will.... the tiny hairs on Shaggy's face in Scooby Doo, the animation of the '80s which was so imperfect, the old animation that was hand drawn, water-color, or crayon... the organic longs for the organic... the physical effects in movies, and the more we depart from the physical, towards computer generation, the more the definition of what it means to be human changes... we are evolving perhaps beyond the physical... many are scared by this, going so far as calling transhumanism the work of the devil, of the dark forces... but I believe their fear is unwarranted... the religions, the paradigms... they are all changing... and quickly... as communication unlocks potential, we are all toiling away, and I do not believe we truly understand the ends of our means... our causes do not see their effects... but we must trust, do not be scared... we are working towards a new humanity, we are making old age a thing of the past, we are replacing religions, we are replacing ideologies, we are replacing what came before...

Many will cling to old ways, old thinking, old religions, I am not one to judge, I love vinyl, and the artistic process in a less convenient way of doing things... I believe much of convenience is unhealthy... and we must seek the process that is healthy, and not simply convenient... but there is a war between what perhaps is healthy, and what is familiar... a complexity for sure... a warring of forces, between the greedy power elite and their consumerism of convenience, and the righteous...

Let us cure the ailments of the world. Pettiness, suffering in all its forms. Let us champion the flight of beholden difference where we find them, and not clip the wings of beauty, nor villainize the ugliness of its nemesis, but recognize silence and strength, listening and measured support...

"As long as there has been 'One true God', there has been killing in his name..."

You cannot destroy the shadow without light, nor can you contain it, for any box will surely cast an even greater shadow, multiplying shadow upon shadow, until only darkness remains.

We artists and musicians so often stop creating as we get older because we become worried about getting somewhere... somewhere secure, somewhere safe, somewhere with hope and love, and all that crap we romanticized about when we were kids... we stopped smelling the flowers at some point and we just stopped, because we wondered where it would get us... but the beauty of art and its destination is the expression of that art, or that music... don't chase the music in hopes of greener pastures... simply create the music, and let it go... beauty is its own reward. Not everyone has those gifts, and if you got em... give em to the world... it needs them so badly right now.

Today's youthful drug culture is being absolutely exploited and enslaved by an over focusing on salacious, sexual promiscuity... they are enticing your vulnerable drug-addled brain with sex, and sex is great, but sexual energy is not something to drown in like the ocean, and let pull you under... sexual energy is creative energy... feel high, your blood rises, your energy rises, but then don't take that sex offramp, instead raise that energy up to your will center, to your heart center, to your listening, compassionate, aware center, the abyss of your fear center, the acknowledgement of illusion center, the now tansmute that sexual energy into inspiration, and higher pleasure, a pleasure that is not self-gratifying alone, but a watering for all things... sex becomes love... and then...

People say those who know don't speak, and those who speak, don't know... which is why when I post on Facebook, people think I am doing it for attention, or to feel sorry for myself, or that I am outraged about something and suffering some psychotic break, egocentric and self-aggrandizing... or they're just nice people who enjoy what I'm sharing, when really all I'm doing is sharing thoughts, everything else is your interpretation and projection. Also, knowing is overrated, don't worry about knowing and not knowing, align yourself with your truth, even when that truth is to share thoughts and enjoy typing online at the moment, regardless of how that enjoyable activity is acknowledged and further divided by others...

People tell me Facebook is for cats and porn, and I have nothing against either of those things, but I do believe we have the power and the capacity to raise the level of debate online... to share meaningful information, and not just cats and porn.

We are more than people, we are an awareness, let us connect with one another's experience, and elevate that experience, by prioritizing the organization of our attention.

Sometimes I feel a little bit like Camille Claudel, like my family psychologically put me in a mental hospital years ago and left me there. And they'll keep me there now because you never have to do anything if you've got someone to which we can point a finger.

It's easy to justify animals in the zoo if you feel like you're either protecting them or others, when the only crime they committed was an offense in your own head. So often people reach out in negative ways out of frustration or loneliness and loss, and when you hear those cries and mistake them for attacks, you only create more separation, and perpetuate a culture of further diffusion of family and localized loneliness. And then one day you wake up and see no way back.

And I suppose it doesn't matter because if they're not trying to re build bridges, their destination must not be worth the trip.

Now when's the last time you saw a post referencing Camille Claudel on Facebook? I'm guessing you never have which makes me kind of cool so I'm celebrating.

There is no such thing as going with the flow, for that implies that there is something besides flow when there is not, other than the discriminating mind, and we often recognize this misinterpretation as suffering... but ultimately there is only flow and the failure to recognize it, and that ignorance and identification with a separation from self is what causes us all our problems. This leads us to chase what is pleasurable and avoid what is painful... we give birth to all dichotomy through our unawareness, and this attachment to one way good the other way bad is Samsara... but let go, and it is Samadhi. It is that simple.

I think it would be great of Italians felt that the Pope had betrayed Christian secrets by coming to America, the same way the Chinese felt about Bruce Lee, and the Pope had to fight all the Cardinals to win back their respect.

AC/DC and Adele both announced North American tour dates for 2016... my question is... which one is opening for the other?

Musicians today are experiencing what movie stars in the 20's must have... meaning, going from silent to talking films must have been just as difficult for many as offline to online musicians... the Youtube experience is a far cry from the street corner... I can empathize, as I work harder to make the transition myself with my second album.

It is a strange and peculiar sickness to society that once you become a celebrity, even the most mundane aspect of your life becomes newsworthy, and yet the most profound contributions of the disenfranchised go forever lost to time...

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My rule of thumb: If it's not interesting when a nobody does it, it's not interesting when a billionaire does it, I'm looking at you Mark Zuckerberg trending for changing his daughter's diaper.

When someone mistreats you and misfortune befalls you soon after, the narrow of perception blames the former for the latter, but life does not align along your simple ley lines... there is much vastness before us, and even more beneath the dark water that remains unseen. So it has always been, so it must always be.

If we treat every living creature we meet as a God who doesn't know how to solve anything, we can look at all things with the same compassion, because we have found the fundamental truth we all can relate to... we don't know, we can just give love and listening each moment... a life of learning and loving.

All is satire
All is lies
God is laughing
While people cry
Window shoppers all our lives

Release the day
Embrace the night
There is no gate
Get off the fence
And humbly return to innocence

The way men and women communicate must be a give and take of leadership, and not a battle of wills. We must recognize the insights each other shares, so we can move forward strengthened by each other...

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This morning I got a video of Neptune and Maggie together, unfortunately it is vertical, and very dark... I was going to upload it directly to Facebook, but Youtube has some video editing, so I am uploading it there to try to brighten it up before posting it...

Remember, the reward for giving is having been able to be in the position to do so.

Every time I burn a candle in my zen garden, I put a small amount of the sand into the finished candle cup when I throw it out, as a thank you and a reminder, that all things, loved, or unloved, must surely pass away...

Everyone is looking for love, yet don't see that all the tiny non-human earth creatures are essentially furry vessels of love just waiting for you to find them.. but we don't see with our hearts, we see with our appetites, so we kill them, we eat them, then continue our search for love.

Religion is a designer store for the rich and a sanctuary for the hopeless. One might imagine that it could bring everybody together, but it is usually what sets us apart that gets us there in the first place, so it simply becomes an added layer of delusion over the already overflowing repertoire of bullshit.