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!

Monday, March 19, 2018

HEART

The wise man said the answer you seek will always lie inside your own heart.  

Learn to be its closest relative, its servant.



The listeners rebuffed him asking, “Where is this heart you speak of, great 

master? I have no heart to my knowledge. Is it the organ in my chest that 

pumps blood you mean, ancient one? Is it some syrupy sweet sentimental 

notion that is so foolish it is childish thinking that makes wishes that a good 

fairy will save us all at the last minute?”



My master replied so simply to the questioner, “Where is the mind?”

Silence followed.



Then my master spoke again, “You all have a mind you know only too well. 

Where does it hang out?”



Heart is that in you that has always been with you since birth that longs for 

you to actually live your own life while you have that chance. Mind wants 

you to live the life others, and especially those who have hurt you and 

despised you and ignored you, those whose primary, constant chant to you all 

your life has been, “you are not good enough yet” want you to live that is not 

your life.



Heart, like mind, is always present. I tell you heart is with you at your lowest 

moments. Heart is with you in your stormiest hours. Heart is with you on a 

battlefield. Heart is with you at a brothel. Heart is with you in the gambling 

halls on Wall Street. Heart is with you in jail. Heart is with you in the sewers 

of the world. Heart is with you when you think there is no one who cares. 

Heart knows that the same people who praise you when you are up will 

abandon you when you fall. So long as you have a breath, Heart never 

abandons you. For some of us the Other Name for Heart's “The Hole”. That 

empty hole in the chest can't nothin' fill. Not booze, not money, not sex. 

Heart is present with one message, Know Thyself.



I met Townes Van Zandt and I met Prem Rawat. Like 'em both. It seems to 

me now that Townes meets people where they are not even trying to be nice 

or look good, kinda whupped, rather sorrowful; and Prem Rawat meets us 

when our teeth are brushed, nails clipped, pants pressed and we are wanting 

to straighten up and be something better than we seem to be ourselves. But 

both of them are one. Each points to the other. I am not here to tell you 

anything else.


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