A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 03/08/16

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!

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

A rut and a grove. Same thing and yet so different. It's a mystery. How can it be so? What is it makes so much of a difference that cannot be found with the most sensitive instrument? You look at a living creature and proclaim, There is life here! If you were asked to find the life you speak of and show us, could you? I once heard a learned physicist reveal that an equation that he works with to try and explain the Universe is not alive. It is a dead thing. It just lies there. One can command it to sit up and walk or fly, but it just lies there. What gives it its juice? A mystery?

Take music. Same thing. What makes us dance? Where is it? Where's the rhythm? We do not doubt its existence, too much obvious evidence. But where is it?

And where is the true God? The Power that believed in you? It believes in you still. How do I know that? You breathe, for one thing. That's what I want to talk about.

A man or woman can be in a penitentiary wearing a prescribed drab uniform under armed guard always inside a fence taking orders about every detail of the day's activities and yet BE FREE. Another living person can be the owner of several mansions overlooking stunning views complete with lots of large closets of designer clothing and drive five automobiles anywhere and anytime he wants and spend money in unlimited amounts be rich and famous and BE A PRISONER. A rut and a groove. What really matters to you?

A teacher once told of searching for poverty. His journey took him to the slums of India. Seeing a little boy in the slum who wore only a torn shirt, no pants and no shoes, laughing as he ran rolling a tire down a dusty road with a stick the man knew he witnessed joy. And he asked me, Where is the poverty? A rut and a groove. It is important is it not to understand this world we live in? To live in mystery and be secure is an art. Wherever there is wisdom lurking about, no matter what the circumstance, there is always an answer to be found. Can you trust a mystery? As a mystery? No explanation necessary? I, myself, have experienced a slum dwelling wherein I bathed in light and joy. Do you know of such a thing as that? I bet you do. Dig in. The art lies hidden. Look beneath the surface of things.

I heard about a man famous for building bridges all over the world. He was proud of his work to join cities, he said. As I see it, we need to be about the business of building another kind of bridge. Such a building as that is not done with plans and drawings and heavy machinery. A building that is done in stillness, listening to and watching nothing, connects what has been disconnected by the building of bridges that connect cities. Have you noticed how the bridges between cities can actually divide us and facilitate invasion then war?