THE STORY OF JOHNNY WHOOPER SWAN We go to school trusting our parents. We meet a teacher there who stands up front with a big desk, and a pointer. She or he trains us in an authoritative manner. We attach mentally to a life long need for authority in order to live lives successfully. Right so far? In my case, at the age of 25 I was ready to enter the practice of law where I hoped for success and a happy life finally. Very shortly, very shortly, I became anxious. There was a foreboding. I was made more uncomfortable with each experience. Law work is nothing like what I was told it would be. The system is corrupt. But I still cling to my expectation that career success is necessary to my happiness as a man. Each day my grasp of what the fuck success amounts to after all becomes more clouded, murkier. I hear songs on the airwaves and at concerts which describe my life as the life of a fool. What am I becoming? I want to rip off my business suit to run naked in the street with my hair on fire! But I am too afraid. In strange, weird (weird comes from a word meaning wise), fragmented steps I go about a journey of my own believing myself to be the first man to have failed in such a total way which journey works so as to break up my career, end a marriage, and start an entirely new way of relating with my two children whom I love deeply. Almost magically I meet a woman who is a career counselor who asserts a beautiful message that I am made to be joyful in my work everyday and at all levels. This understanding sets me on a completely new course. It is no longer a world of systems to me but an undivided one of unlimited beauty. It reminds me of a painting. A true masterpiece. I am drawn from within to learn the truth about my identity and nobody else can teach me that. From this point onward I will use thinking capacity for mastering mechanical processes and follow my heart, which includes my whole nature, which includes your whole nature and that of every human being for all the rest. I’ll go by the name Johnny Whooper Swan who does not explain itself to anyone. By my fruits shall I be known. Watch me soar!

Friday, September 1, 2023

 IMMEDIATE PERCEPTION IN ACTION


Let’s see if we can discover by immediate, direct perception something about the mess we are in, isn’t that especially important, to discover somethin’ ‘bout the mess we find ourselves in?


Well, it appears to the writer we pay more of our attention to what man has built than what has naturally been given to us. The writer may be mistaken about that. Let’s take a close look together. Hell, we pay a great deal more attention to the manmade stuff and call it, “my career” and “my family”, and “our government” and “our religion” and “our church meeting” and “our Holy Book” and “our business” and “our house” and “my son or daughter” and “my boyfriend” and “my husband” and on and on and on. And, you know what? We practice blind ambition and its false pride by daring to claim we believe God gave us these ideas made by the minds of humans. 


And, most of our prayers are for God to protect all these images we invented with conditioned brains. Do you see how self, an image only,  is constructed out of identification with images? “I” am the owner of all the things “I “ mentioned but only because I think so. None of that stuff is anything but fluff. Just cotton candy. Hot air. Words. Thoughts. Theories. Ideals. None have roots in realities that contact the earth and are grounded directly by its energy field. None drink water nor take nourishment directly from the Sacred and none yearn to follow the natural, passionate drive to something sacred first thing every morning and all throughout the day with every breath of life drawn. Did you ever watch a single, tiny blade of grass grow out of a cement sidewalk? It comes about by the “natural flowering” of a living being. Without self identification. What would it be like to live by naturally flowering? Would “I” have to be a saint? Of course not, only naturally human! Surely, all can do it. To live without conflict is not an accomplishment. It comes naturally by seeing the terrible cost of living any other way. And what would it be like to live without conflict? Is it possible?


The embodiment of qualities thought to be those of a “saint” are truly those of a natural man or woman. That is why the path to enlightenment is a pathless one…we have had it from the beginning, naturally. The natural man desires nothing. Seeks nothing. Holds to nothing. Not because he is a favored saint, but because he sees 

that every bit of the manmade “stuff” brings division and division brings conflict. That “stuff’ fractures the natural community into “us” and “them” artificially. Examine them for yourself and be convinced all of them divide us from other humans. Career, family, governments, religions, marriages, etc. Can it be denied forever that marriage does not unite, it divides? The very act of swearing to love and serve another for life is a denial of the sacred truth that one is naturally related to all humanity in the very real bond of human compassion. We must do it because “I” hopes an oath and promises will force “me” to be who I ought to be. How is that working so far? Division always brings conflict, no? And conflict brings violence? When any system man has built breaks up in conflict what has man done historically? Puts together another divisive system and sells it to the crowd. Some put others in jails. Divorced couples seek out another marriage. That is just crazy thinking.


A simple man might suggest to a woman, “Hey, how about we build a house together and have some babies?” If the woman says she wants to but questions their ability to feed and care for the children the man is being told this is not the time or the right woman for my proposal. What if we sought first the Sacred? Would all else be added to us by that we find is Sacred? That would mean it comes to us naturally without effort. Ooohhh. That sounds like doing out of love for doing it and not to accomplish a conditioned purpose. Is it too much to swallow? Such a happening would most certainly eliminate conflict altogether. Now, all must agree, that’s a kind of relationship worth having. 


I see how money leads man while the Sacred is but an afterthought, like a stepchild kept in a dungeon. The belief there is something sacred is not the same as the reality of the Sacred. The idea is at best a temporary escape from the suffering and sorrow of living in a world where nothing is held sacred while we dream of a future that one wishes were here. It is here, friends! It has always been here. 


Fellow humans, slow down. Take a breath. Really notice it. We need a great big end the world flood not by force but of a sudden,  conscious awakening to what conflict has done, from whence it comes, and what it will continue to do if we continue to follow the same way that we have followed for ages and ages doing the same behaviors expecting different results. In seeing that fact, really seeing it, the stepchild will be naturally freed from the dungeon. The child will save us.


The writer is reminded here of words from the inauguration speech by newly elected President of the United States John F Kennedy  in 1961: “Ask not what can my country do for me but what can I do for my country”. It struck a chord of unity among people unknown before. In the spirit of it lay compassion and true faith in each other as humans who can do the impossible.


In an important sense those words quoted above separated people from reliance upon authorities. It’s an empowering message. “The Sixties and Seventies” were sparked. “You are alive! Live like it!” Unfortunately, the same old divisive patterns were followed by people who remain stuck in images and conflict has remained widespread and rampant. Yet it had its moment and sent a signal. We need a a change in consciousness to end conflict to cease doing the same behaviors expecting different results. 


People do better when left alone and allowed to live and to flower. It is a proven fact. Otherwise, we break our hearts on one damn thing after another. The Declaration of Independence will be fully realized by lives in love with the Sacred Truth- All Men are created equal endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In this way all who today are poor in spirit will repay ten-fold its Author. Time is now for a revolution of a kind that unites all without exception rather than dividing and creating conflict.


Who are you?


Thursday, August 31, 2023

 MECHANICAL PEOPLE


Organization people are mechanical people. To adjust to pretending to be a part of some institution invented by others, we agree to try to please another person. It begins in the application for membership. A human cannot do that but a puppet can. So we try to become good puppets in the name of security and justify it with “everybody’s doing it”. 


We think: “after awhile I shall be able to free myself from the need to please somebody” but find out that  everybody serves somebody. It is possible to serve Nobody but that’s service to the truth that brought you here as a human being. That power is the only one that does not want you to be anything but exactly who you are and have all your life been. Socrates used to ask those who were renowned as the greatest thinkers of his time “Sir, if you have a problem with your boat to whom do you take your boat?” When told it would be taken to the boat’s maker, Socrates would inquire thusly, “And, if you have a problem with a human being would you not take it to the maker of human beings?” That is exactly the meaning of the Nobody (No Body) one can serve. It is  service to something inwardly and freedom  from serving anyone or anything outwardly. Just how much security is there in a job? You can be terminated because the shape of your nose does not please the boss. You know that but still clamor to get a job, some job. I know, having applied myself for many jobs, we all lie. If lying got you the job should you not be terminated by the interviewer before you even begin; assuming the interviewer is honest, that is? Speaking of which it is recommended everyone considering employment investigate into the truth of the simple declaration that in order to live outside the law one must be honest. The story of Jesus is the story of such a man. Take what you find to heart.


The writer once took a job when he was certain that he did not care a bit whether he would keep this job for one day or 25,000 days! There had been no interview at all. In that job he fit. He served no human authority and quite soon was the unspoken leader of the whole place for inwardly he was only a servant there to help people find what work they enjoy passionately and do it. Many people came to him during the time of his employment there and loved him as he loved them. The whole experience was a joy! 


WHO MAKES IT HAP’M?


Make it hap’m, Cap’m; 

Cap’m of the still mind of love.

The answer blows in on a wind

as if nobody sent forth a snow, white dove.

What authority have “I” inside this marvelous creation?

who does not even know the difference between a good or bad situation.

Says the wind to “me” wanting to be a popular sensation 

what is to be done has already been done

By Nobody.


Wednesday, August 30, 2023

 POWER IS NOT IN THE WORD



How could we have sunk so low as humans to fall under the spell of words and allowed them so much power over us? So much, indeed, that in today’s world all effort in education and religious training of the young is based in words. There is no life in a word. Tell the loftiest word to stand up and show us your metal and the word will lie still in print or sound and flex no muscle at all, having none. Shout it! Print in letters 400  feet tall. Still it is much, much weaker than a single blade of grass. It is nothing but a symbol of something else. One cannot sit on the word “chair” safely but on a real substantial chair one can feel   comfortable without fear of falling on the floor. 


Dictionaries are fat and there are many languages in the world. But we can use a single example from English to make ourselves understood. For example, we can use the word ”charge!” long used for urging warriors to battle. Say the word as loudly as you wish to a cat and …nothing happens. And yet we have seen a cat “charge” its prey. The symbol for charge is not the container of the charge as an action. That is contained in the animal. That fact is important to anyone sensitive to a full understanding of the nature of the life form one is directing a given word or words unto. In this case, a cat. Is one thoroughly acquainted with the nature of cats?


Here we want to stress whether one is fully acquainted with the nature of a human being? An effort is going to be made here to state a sublime truth that is crucial to understand humanity. You are requested to listen with all your being so much as is possible for you now. We are dealing with devilish trickery and striving to expose it. The only way to train a human of either gender to obey words is to trick that lovely, sensitive, spectacular being into “thinking” itself to be a set of words rather than a living being naturally endowed with certain inalienable rights that among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit  of happiness”. Declaration Of Independence, United States of America. Humans flower. Should the human being told to “charge” be really human and not a set of words from a dictionary conditioned by words “to obey authority as defined by more words” (by which the life form has been taught to “think” he or she is a “citizen” of some “nation” bound to obey words spoken by “authorities” defined by words) be simply true to its own nature it would quite possibly reply to “charge!” with “beg your pardon?” Or “I prefer not to”.


Now, the wheels are felt to be turning inside conditioned brains everywhere to explain to this writer that were it not for excellent, rigorous education in a civilized system there will be chaos and mass confusion. First, are we not at this time living in chaos and mass confusion? If not, one can afford to ignore this writing altogether.  Second, have we so little faith in ourselves as we are? Third, would you starve a herd of cattle to prevent a stampede and call it success? Is it not obvious that to condition a brain to serve a system rather than to flower its own life its way is akin to starvation? Fourth, would wise human beings not look into the real cause of stampedes? Finding it is the herd’s natural perception of insecurity about things as they are, would they not act to end those threatening conditions? Is that not a clear and accurate picture of the current condition of humanity on Planet Earth, our home? And does an individual human actually believe they are not at least as well prepared from the beginning to live here as is a cow? A school might assist a human to evaluate the characteristics of different paints and brushes and canvases but not at all is able to assist in the painting of his masterpiece. Neither love nor passion nor life can be measured or compared. Living is compassion and love in relationship and that is inalienably endowed from the Creator. Such power is unparalleled. It can move mountains; and, furthermore, we know it. “Everything I know, I know because I love”. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace


Tuesday, August 29, 2023

 LOVE, or the Misuse of the Word



Sing out-


I will not attach to you and let you attach to me

I would not do that to anyone I love.

How could I? I’m you. 

I love you and we mustn’t attach.


When two people attach love goes flying away

Attachment actually divides, look, you’ll see it’s that way

Divided humans, those husbands and wives call attachment “love” 

out of fear of the greatest mystery either below or above.

And ‘cause fearful people tend to avoid the unknown 

for those attached true love will never be known.

How could it? We misuse the word “love” to attach 

trying to evade the power of these everlasting facts.


Selfless, love will always favor its freedom.


Billions of selves say desire to “belong” to another is love, a twisted and tangled up misnomer; and it follows as night the day that detachment’s the futile act of the same illusory rascal; 

so this writer claims that to love one other person and not love all the rest is just impossibly fantastical!. 

Love is no possession of mine.

Love is not cash or credit; it’s life’s beat and it’s rhyme.

Love, the word, can only truly be applied to a state of being fresh. wild, and free. 

A poet’s dimension. Two, having fallen for no reason stand back up god and goddess to make a poem to praise all the nimble creatures in a tree!

While “Love” mis-used most pop-u-lar-ly 

means: “How’dcha like to own somebody just like me?” 

That is not what Christ meant by “loving one another”; 

the Lord’s one commandment, means “ Go forth, My lovelies, be free!”

________________________________________


To be spoken-

It is so obvious by now how much goes wrong, how much suffering takes place in the popular misuse of the word “love” and not just between husbands and wives; between parents and children, siblings, fellow combatants in competitive dramas, religious fanatics attached to a guru, covetous nations with flags, distraught people clinging to a mutual hatred of a defined and named group of “others”, the capture and training and breeding of wild animals, the entire enormous, complex commercial enterprise surrounding marriage, family, and home making and so on. Even the climate changes. Dogs bark differently. The saying goes, “everybody does it”  “so I have to do it”. That’s a worn excuse.


It is safe to say all of the above confusion comes from “desire”. Desire comes directly and only from peoples’ thoughts. Definitely, love is not made by thoughts. You must see that! Really need to see that! 


Man makes desires, God is love! Since man makes desire he can end it. See it like it is:  “I made it. I am desire.” Stay with that fact. Do not evade it. Simply watch it. You will see it fade away as so much dust. It is so important to finally learn the change we need is never going to be realized from a “project” of accomplishment. No mantra, no set of beliefs, no ritual of any nature will save us. It is all about seeing beyond illusion.


It takes a new brain to build something truly new. The old one is too much damaged to be dependable in important matters. Who or what can renew a brain? Ask the maker of love inside the gap of time within the whole of human consciousness within you and it shall be so.


It is suggested here: a new brain can look at games of sport as totally cooperative and grand festivities whereby others make it possible for each on the field to discover the hidden excellence  within him and her. That is the payoff! Absolutely no place is there for trophies or championships or flattery or insult or any of the other stuff which make fools of unbelievably noble human beings. Make us dull and boring in ridiculously repetitive schedules year after year leaving most crying “wait til next year!” All of it fake for the benefit of commercial  enterprise. Guaranteeing nothing we say we “love” is sacred on the Earth.

Monday, August 28, 2023

 A NEW WAY TO LIVE


Let us speak of finding a new way. A common arrangement long practiced throughout humanity across the Earth is marriage and family. All have some  familiarity with that subject whether they marry or do not. It is all around every neighborhood. It makes a good place to start.


The institution, though widespread, has little going for it. At its base was a plan by men to dominate women and the children they birth. That makes it so very suspicious all at once. It is completely the work of thinking brains of human manipulation. Nothing supports the belief that a Great Spirit told man to carry out such domination and abuse upon those he is supposed to love and cherish. Man and woman are conditioned deeply to make the claim it is so, though. Historians will chime in by claiming the alternative to marriage is an utterly chaotic world where men brutally take women by force for pleasure then abandon them and the children so conceived. Seem familiar?


So it is usually written in defense of a civilization that man has continuously attempted to improve the originally brutal system by declaring marriage to be a “sacred” instrument of the local religion. It is claimed that Great Spirit brings the two people together and binds them. But then they go to the home, close the door, and Hell breaks loose. So much for such a Great Spirit. For most, marriage  quite soon becomes a dull, monotonous repetition one has been taught to accept as never ending. Quite a Hell, actually. I can go on. Enough for now to close by writing that both sexes have been participating in the arrangement for thousands and thousands of years, at least; but does anybody really conclude it is working? I overheard a woman ask a man who had just complimented her  “then why do you not ask me out?” The dating game…courting is the old-fashioned name for it. Same thing. Courting is illusive. When “I “ court “you” we create images of one another. Based on the images we decide whether to continue the courting or break it off. Many marry the image they have of the other. All know that is not working out. This courting thing is very mechanical and life is certainly not mechanical! There is absolutely no method in love. Actually, courting is produced by fear. It’s the same for all image-making. Look. My image of myself attaches to the image of “marriage”. Why? It gives a certain feeling of security and we all crave security. Ask deeply of your inner being “what is true security?” and let the question answer itself. Two who meet in love (a dimension within each) will act purely without thoughts of a future or past (time) to bring further private meetings together to explore the love they feel. There is a gap between time and the timeless. It is also the gap between thinking and inner stillness (the dimension of love).


Here is what is seen on introspection. I have been taught that choice is freedom and freedom is choice. So, in marriage I make a choice. A problem arises between us. So, what do people do? They first make the mistake they always have made when a problem presents itself. They work on the named problem to make it better. Only the very foolish would fail (right quickly) to see that there are countless factors working together to make the situation as it is and realize a serious look at the whole picture is required to make anything truly new in the sense that the overall well-being of the couple can be expected to improve from the work to be done. In fact, a young child’s brain would go there first. Not so for the adult’s conditioned brain. You might ask why do the adults not ask the children. That’s a good question. Freedom is not a state of having a choice between images. A free human is clear and certain. Pure action follows. No room is there for decision-making there. It happens from time to time that two meet for the first time and one asks, “Why don’t we make a home together and have babies?”


Why did anyone ever come up with the idea to build a jail? That is worthy of careful and deep study for it will bear good fruit that actually can make a very much more satisfying world for all of us. It is a fact that a jail stands for the proposition that some of us are bad people who need to be locked up. And to be treated like criminals and the rest of the population are good people who ought to be allowed to move freely about. The result could have been foreseen. As more and more people are jailed it is becoming obvious to just about all that the wise thing to do is to cease trying to increase effort that fails and look at the whole picture for a change. We are the bad people we despise. This bundle of bad people is us. None are separate from the bundle. We must learn to love one another. And everybody will be surprised to find it is much less costly than a system of criminal courts and jails. Actually to love is a dimension beyond accounting figures altogether just as it is beyond “choice”. When a human acts in love there is a repayment vastly larger than any cost. And the ridiculous thing is, everybody knows it! Love cannot be “figured out”.


The practice of family carries with it the notion of a family name. In the West it is the common practice to concoct a system around a surname based on the male’s name which was concocted in the same arbitrary manner that has no more legitimacy than the practice of building jails. It is absolutely the spoiled fruit from ages of male domination. A common name is Smith. But Mister Smith had a mother. Also, Mister Smith’s father had one, too. These people as well had both mothers and fathers who each had such a pair who also each had mothers and fathers as well…and so on and on up the family tree. It is called a family tree but it as an enormously vast multitude of relationships. We know as a fact that all people have a mother and a father but it is not a fact that Mister Smith’s name is Smith. That is illusion. That symbolic practice results from a game developed along with a benefit to be gained by lying to children. And, millions have been persecuted and killed as a result of  the game. Wars are only justified by the “family” game. All the while, there is a fact that all of us are one nameless family all born related to everyone else as human beings. This writer happens to be equally related to the Smith family, the West family, the Bennett family and the King family…and that is just at the level of grandparents. Each grandparent had a branch like me. We honor but a tiny branch of the whole tree and ignore all the rest. 


Actually we are trees! 

We are the birds singing in the trees! 

And need to learn all their songs!


Many have thought violence is a requirement for us all and believe we will become peaceful after death if we have joined and practiced the right religious “method”. How silly can it get? For any who look it will be found that thinking divides whatever it thinks about into fragments and in separation there is no love. Love trumps thought. That ends the game. And instantly, one recognizes the actual problem concerning marriages and jails and wars throughout the world today. Need I say it?

We have no love. 

We have no peace, only cease fires to reload for the next war.

Sunday, August 27, 2023

 

CARRIED  ON A WIND


Deadlines and commitments. WHAT TO TAKE OUT AND WHAT TO LEAVE IN. “Against the Wind” by Bob Seger. 


The stuff of worry, anxiety, and depression is what the song is about.  All have felt that stuff, sometimes more, sometimes less but all. Should you be done with it there is a way to end it and to live as a free human being here and now in your own body. You can if you try very seriously to find the illusion in you that is addicted to flattery and insult. There is no method for it. Why not? Because it is what you have naturally. Not possible is it to flatter or insult an infant.  Finding what you have is far different from finding what you do not have. The path of pathlessness it has been called. Unlearning is required, not learning. You watch your own thoughts closely and patiently without resistance or desire to escape. Merely watch. This is the beginning of true meditation. There is a gap between time and the timeless. There will come in you while you watch your thoughts a state, perhaps only a faint state at first, where for you there is no time. Remain in the gap and all else will be shown to you lovingly, as if by magic, except in reality it happens. This is for you alone. You will know it to be so that you are home within at last dancing a songline of your own a free human being. Up to now you have been trying to dance to another’s tune. 


Do not focus your attention on these words but as you read pay attention to the thoughts that have arisen in your own mind. That is yourself. That is your real business. It is now time to spot yourself as you are. It is of no benefit to argue with the words or analyze or criticize or defend any position. Notice the thoughts your mind produces such as “ This is a waste of time. We have other things to do”. Watch. Watch. Watch. What is actually behind all these thoughts? Illusions maybe? What is bound to result from actions you take based on illusion? A mess of conflict and confusion…deadlines and commitments…all of which turn out to be “self-devotion” caused by fear? Does any of this sound familiar? This has not been an exercise for intellectual entertainment. It has been directly facing a question of whether I am wasting my life or really living. There is an unmistakable “taste” to life.