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 13, 2018

Gotta Eat and Live
(or, A Monetized Way of Life)


So, people gotta eat and live. Is that an excuse? What is it an excuse for? Is its meaning that we cannot expect to eat if we are honest and engaged in some noble work we love? How often has the story been repeated of the young person who confides in his parents his heart's desire to be an artist only to have his heart stomped upon and crushed into goo before his eyes? To be ridiculed as a childish goofball by someone he admires and loves? How does it feel? When done with special vigor is it not obvious the parent is imitating his own parent? And is it not his, the parent's, stored up pain that is being unloaded on the child?

So, people gotta eat and live. If asked, Do you believe in God? Would your answer be in the affirmative? It is for most people and yet few of them do any work that is satisfying to the soul. And nearly all would crush such romantic notions from their children's thinking instantly upon its discovery. Almost none would accept a plan by their offspring that did not include financial security. So, what is a God for? In my upbringing it was primarily offered as a source of forgiveness for the sins which derive from my low base nature. (Which God is given credit for creating in the first place) Seems, primarily, it is a useless thing held out to the neighbors as evidence I am to be trusted. (Since a scheme has been presented for forgiveness one need not seriously consider one's greed, meanness, cruelty, fear, anger, etc. However even a young child will surely wonder occasionally whether his sins are not being produced by the sins of his father. After all, the kid knows he is not, at heart, a base critter, but an enormously creative spirit.) And yet, nobody has met a banker who will lend you money because you are religious or will swear you know God. What is it the banker knows? Knows just how afraid you are of insecurity. The more you are, the more he will lend. Ironic. (So, fearful cowards gain most from a monetized way of life.)


Some people actually crave and adore insecurity for it brings them closer to their God. People gotta eat and live.

No comments: