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, July 3, 2018


Maybe long ago some people went astray and what they thought continues to this day. Hunters were out doing the hunt. They found nothing to kill that they were willing to eat and feed to their families. It was to them a bad day. They went out again. No luck again. For many days they went on the hunt and returned empty handed. People in the village were starving. Someone died. A child. Then another. This time was very sad and difficult for these people and the survivors later spoke of it as “The Terrible Hunger”.

They made stories to tell each other to remind themselves of how terrible it can get. One slip up caused them to change into a warring tribe that was always afraid of not having enough to feed everyone. It never occurred to them to take a careful look inside, at themselves, and see their role in the what came to be known popularly as the period of starvation. What they did was draw a conclusion on the wall so it would be kept uppermost in the minds of all for the rest of their existence as a tribe.

A series of events enough like this one occurred where tribes of humans lived all around the Earth who had never met, but would eventually meet, that this world, Earth, became a place where people expected to go to war and so kept large armies on the ready and fed through stories the fires of hatred toward others they would expect to war with over enough. Children were taught war games. There resulted groups around the Earth who have actually hated each other for thousands of years. They blame each other for the pain of war as matter of fact. It is not a fact and never will it be. Seems every tribe now has a current Big Hatred brewing in the background for instant use when thought necessary by its leaders.

I can imagine a scene for us all. When we die and meet God, as individuals, and are asked, "Well, how was it? Tell me the truth.” each of us will stammer and then realize we have to speak truly and we will say,

I always wondered, Lord, why you planted a tree of good and evil if you knew in advance we would eat from it? It was trouble, Lord. It all began when we went out for food one day and found nothing.
It was a terrible day.”


And God, speaking on behalf of it all, will answer simply, “Beams of love. Beams of love.”



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