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!

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Somebody was the first who said to you, you are responsible.

At first you probably did not understand what such a word meant. I am responsible. What was actually meant by the speaker was: you had better do what I expect of you or you will be sorry. So, the speaker was sure he knew what you are supposed to do and what you are not supposed to do...as if he knew which he does not and neither do you.

Yet, the statement did not go away but is said to us everyday
many times in many ways.

So, I want to suggest to you what it can mean to us. First and foremost, it can mean: if I am responsible I am first responsible to live in reality and not to pretend I am anything I am not truly. With all my heart I want you to know you are not responsible to perform for others like a robot they own. You are free.

Yesterday, a friend told me she was accused of making a mistake at work. She ships things around the world and she shipped something to a wrong address. She was devastated with shame and fearful of losing her position. I listened. Then I remembered we are responsible to live in truth. Truth is, nobody knows whether my friend's error was a bad thing or a good thing and probably never will know. If the error caused the client to actually gain favor from a customer or saved another person's life or kept the package from arriving in time to ruin the client's business or introduced two people who afterward discovered a cure for cancer...can that be said to be bad? You write the story. Go on. Write a story in which by delaying or preventing a shipment in error a great good was done. Show yourself what you do not know, in other words, reality.


Here is my point: he who chooses deliberately to live a life of pretend because he feels pressured to do it by a society which threatens him will ultimately reap the results everyone should expect from deciding to live a life of pretend. That is the real problem we have as humans, not the fact we sometimes mail things to the wrong address. Another way to see it is that nobody was born to please anybody else. By accepting jobs we pretend we can do it and like it and prosper by it. That is stupid. Ain't gonna happen. Ask Abraham.  


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