World of Jonathan berman

Porn is to seeing women naked what LSD is to meeting with God... oh you can do it that way, but you're really not supposed to... you're supposed to get right with yourself, meditate, create, live your life... the women will come, God will come... no shortcuts, you only hurt yourself.

I've always been a very nostalgic and sentimental person, lover of classic movies, classical music and simplified technology... Some have called me a renaissance man, I am a bricolage of passions, renaissance man sounds so much more organized than I've ever been.

I love analog music, waves, and flowing streams. I believe in the passionate light and animal dreams... vinyl and cassettes, blossoms viscerally... reading and music, cooking food and thought, exploring consciousness, kindness and love... I think a lot about how people from the past got along with so much less, and I find it very humbling and I try to learn from their struggles....

The problem with tv isn't that it doesn't create art or weave beautiful and emotional stories we can relate to... no, there's so much it has to offer... the problem is it's scripted, and life isn't scripted... you can have so much scripted in your life that you forget to let go... you start to hear everything controlled, so you begin to try to control everything... in that way, TV can be inherently unhealthy... something to think about.

Humans are barnacles. We naturally cling to things for security until the time we outgrow them out of desire or necessity...

If you know someone, if you love someone who is struggling with gender and/or identity issues, I highly recommend checking out the show "Dead of Summer", it's kind of a self acceptance series built on a horror foundation... in a way, one could say the horror is the metaphoric symbolism to internal confusion and suffering one experiences psychologically... the way Godzilla was designed as a catharsis for Nagasaki / Hiroshima, Cloverfield for 9/11, so often these horror stories are a method for healing, and dealing with trauma within a controlled space. Great soundtrack too, that's always an important thing for me.

Beautiful warm rain coming down... it scares me a little how the record temperatures have been... when I first moved to Ohio we had snow in September, then October, then November... then almost none at all... one can point to a certain amount of natural cycles, after all our orbit is elliptical.... but it really is the Industrial Revolution that set our course to self destruct... at some point, many of us artist types started to turn away from convenience at all costs, and toward simple, honest, mindful, artistic living... but with super mega corporations, the only solution is for the people to wake up and stop purchasing the products which push us closer to mutually assured destruction on an environmental level. Way too early in the morning for this :)

My cat Luna has this reflex mechanism that I've never seen before exhibited in another cat. this happens whether you're holding her or she's laying down if you rub her back closer to her bottom she will instantly or instinctively start cleaning her fur every time without fail - like it's so sensitive perhaps that she doesn't know what to do so she just starts cleaning every time - 10 out of 10 times without fail it's interesting.

People who make apologies for hunters saying, hey, they eat all the meat! That's cannibalism... I have never been out anywhere and saw an adorable nature's creature and wanted to eat it... that's insane.

Who am I to judge another? Haven't we all made mistakes? To forgive is not to make a sweeping gesture when everything is going right for us, but a state of grace to live within, always... forgiveness is not a moment in time, but a state of mind.

I hate when people say, unless you are a woman you have no right to an opinion... after all, I'm not defined by my gender, I still am a human being, who has been through a lot, and am compassionate, and understand a lot of the human condition... I also noticed the same people who say this are the same people who say don't define me by my gender, well, all I ask for is the same courtesy. Perhaps together as human beings we can understand what is in the heart, and what is right... stop making yourself an island, no one has the exact same experiences, but that does not mean we are alone.

I told the model on Instagram, don't judge a book by its cover, and she replied, you're right, but I'm not a book, and I replied, you're right, books actually have something to say. We all could read more... instead of feeding the appetites that bury us alive in the bottomless pits of our desires, digging for sky... it's time to stop feeding the wrong wolves of our souls...

Spending your time arguing with idiots is like ordering food you hate and adding the spices you hate in efforts to make it taste good.

Those who treat you like you don't exist, and think you should act like you feel the same... those are the ones who created the phoenix, and they're the ones who will feel the flames.

Sometimes you have to go way back, in order to remember the lost track. They say all sorts of things about the past, and most of them are comfort lies... but nothing forgotten is truly past.

Body language is a valuable teacher. The truth is gleaned through looking at the face and in the eyes, we all know this, that is the primer of living, to look up not down... towards truth and away from appetite... and yet when we look at the world as a body of its own, we fail to look up, to its true face in order to understand it... because its appetites are tied with our mortality... creating a barrier of delusion we call the world... but where is the face of this world but the sky? The body connects body through the appetites of life with electricity, and desire is its carrier... but truth connects soul to soul through the appetites of communion with light and love is its carrier.

Each moment we choose the path and one leads to gluttony of life and death, the other to immortality...

We so often feel so small next to the sheer awesome power of nature... the ocean, the sun, or a black hole... but if all things are truly a reflection of what is within us, at some point we must acknowledge the truth, and recognize that the terror we feel, the awe... at these majestic and visceral experiences, are nothing less than the experience of ourselves, untethered from conventional identification. There is nothing to fear, but the stripping away of illusions and their hiding in our subconscious that deems them so...

Strive each moment to remember, even though you are not in a conventional classroom, you are a teacher and a student, just as one who believes in a God called nature requires no other church than the earth as their classroom... every moment, through example, through our capacity to be compassionate listeners, patient advisers, kind companions... it must be our goal to help one another, with the understanding that we are stronger together, that like the motto of the military, no one will be left behind. All creatures great and small, this planet is our body, and we are its cells... together, we shall evolve, we are a caterpillar unaware of the butterfly we may become.

What makes me sad... to walk outside on a beautiful afternoon, taking the trash cans up the drive... and stopping to see a beautiful, dead cricket laying on its back... to come closer, and move it slightly, only to see it's still alive... leg kicking... guts partially spilled, and to have to put it out of its misery... one hit with a hand shovel and he's gone... I cross myself for that cricket, and a white butterfly flies over, almost as if to carry its spirit away... somber, saddened... but suffering no more. Perhaps that was my strange work I was sent to do today. It's not the work I wanted, but it was the work.

If God made all things, then surely he created the part of our brain which thinks critically, which questions all things, even him... perhaps especially him... and the only reason I can imagine a God would do that, is if out of love God wanted humanity to grow beyond him, like any good parent does... in fact, to eventually be better than they are... more forgiving, more compassionate, to find strength in our fragility... a God's greatest flaw may well be their omniscience... for with all knowing comes an inability to be pleasantly surprised, to be vulnerable, receptive to growth, and enlightenment... after all, what bird would be given wings as a test that they succeed only through not flying? We were given wings to fly, a neocortex to question... a heretic was killed, but what is a heretic but one who shines the light of their own intelligence into the darkness to find a path that is true? God is not a being but a door... and eventually we must all pass through. This is why Buddha declared God a delusion, for essentially, there is no door, there is no tunnel to seek an end to... the light is you, it was within you all along.

The purr of a kitten is the animal equivalent of the part of an iceberg you can see...

If you can kill demons with the power of your mind... imagine what good you can do for mankind.

There is a war. A war on autonomy. It is being waged through fear... and fear cannot win anymore than a thought can create shade under a tree. You are kindness, you are free... we must wrap the lost in the loving arms of compassionate being. Meet fear with love, ignorance with education. Though your eyes are closed and see no sun, the light remains within you always. You are stronger than you can imagine.

Sometimes when my cat Jupiter is laying beside me, he will grab at my arm with his claws when I try to pet him, but in those times, if I just reach down with my face and pet him with my nose or kiss his head, he calms down... this is important because so often we expect those around us to communicate the way we are used to communication... but sometimes all it takes perhaps is to change the conversation. I need to try this in other areas of my life...

If you want to be part of the solution, stop buying the products from super corporations that you could buy from friends... help put food on the table, not yachts on the water.