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, April 10, 2018

Big Picture

We are in the age of specialized everything, including 

science. Little attention is paid to the whole big picture, as if it 

does not even count. The teachers who have genuinely 

helped me have been those who were relentless in the 

repetition of one simple message concerning what is the big 

picture, saying, if I know that, I am whole, and a whole person 

is bound to inherit the Earth.



I know what true wealth is now. I know what a penniless man 

can accomplish that no billionaire with all his money can 

even remotely touch. I am not going to insult you by telling 

you what that is, even if i could.



And that brings me finally to repeat my point. Those who 

have loved me gave me one thing...freedom...in the 

knowledge that that I have already within me everything I 

am going to need to be fulfilled 


as a human being. They encouraged me to spend time alone 

with that very real presence. By reassuring 

me that it is not something to be explained to me from outside 

myself I found I had the inborn courage to trust what I felt in my heart to 

be enough and it was my heart. Inborn courage is heart. The whole 

Universe is in there.


If I were a swan I'd fly.