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!

Sunday, January 1, 2017

How'd ya like to make $250,000? Do you know any red blooded American boy who would turn that down?

Suppose what you are asked to do is a little bit shady? A good deal shady? Down right felonious? Who in the employ of a corporation of a size large enough to influence legislation is not confronted with such challenges? Is it not the expected? When does a young person find it out? First year? Even before that?

Who are we kidding? We all live off the crimes. Even the small businesses are taking chances of being caught for wrongdoing to make larger profits. It is so tempting and so contagious. What else can be expected in a society that worships wealth measured in dollar earnings? Universities cheat at football to make big dough. Universities! Elementary schools cheat the system every day. Doctors cheat patients constantly. Lawyers cheat clients. Priests cheat families. The manager cheats the artist. The fan cheats the musician. And spouses? Parents? Kids? Fact is, you would have to look very closely with a powerful microscope or a blood hound to find anyone not cheating his way to the top and one of the most outrageous myths told and retold in the public media is that before law and order was brought into the picture in a wholesale way and made to be present constantly the place was filled with crime. Then it becomes easy to convince the public that we must have ever increasing police protection. It is seemingly apparent to everyone that wild, free people are horrible people. And yet, all the evidence points to the opposite. Controlled, manipulated conforming populations are wicked beyond belief. Living wild things actually get along in a naturally balanced way with little, if any, malice present. Wealthy members of the elite corps of citizens who want to believe they got that way by hard work and honest toil (and not by cheating) go to sleep at night in expensive mansions knowing that many children in their communities are starving to death unable to sleep from the pain of hunger. Some will perish in the night not because there is no food available, but because it is not available to them.

It is not the intention here to leave an impression that the poorer members of a cash driven society are victims. They are more accurately viewed as the losers in a contest of questionable virtue. In this setting it is the intention to suggest to the losers a new way of living.

The popular message is that when the lights go out on society's fun bubble of greed all of us will eat each other raw. It is at least as likely we will all finally love one another again. I would say the odds lie heavily on the side of peace. What is known, and has been so for thousands and thousands of years by some, is that if any man or woman chooses to step free of the game being played and give reality a chance to show what it can do for someone, anyone willing to accept it, wealth beyond one's wildest dreams. What is promised is a way of life that is passionately felt, and fully realized in a fulfillment at the core of one's being. That, and only that, satisfies the human heart. The other choice is to remain in a rigged game like Las Vegas with its flashy lights knowing that even if you win the prestigious award society praises you will know it is given out by liars with dirty hands which will cancel any hint of your deserving any glory. Lest you try, you will never know the purity that is felt and so known by a completely anonymous person who has given all that he has to save another.


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