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, January 20, 2020

Cry A Little Bit

A quiet mind absent thought is a most powerful friend. A noisy one is trouble. When a man or woman puts together by thoughts all constructs of security she can imagine there is always going to result a person in conflict with practically all the forces of nature. Then insurance may become the next construct of security, meaning, “I’ll at least get some monetary payoff on my inevitable loss.” (unless a tricky lawyer has placed in fine print a loophole to favor the insurance companies and I failed to catch it.)

My inquiry today is into a possibility someone suggested to me long ago.  He said, “There must be a way to harmonize my individual life with all forces of nature since I am here inside it. I predict I can be fed by a world each day that anticipates  my needs before I do when I am so aligned within it that I am at one with it. This is love. The same love can propel me along a songline that has on it my name as if I were anticipated before even my birth. Let us try it out for ourselves.”  I agreed. I have found it to be so as my friend told it would be. 

A faraway memory just appeared in my head. I was once a drunk who denied it to be so. On a Thanksgiving I had been invited to the home of a friend for a feast but was lost without a map and could not find my friend’s house, though I knew I had to be close. I decided (before cell phones were even marketed) to stop at just any house nearby and ask to borrow the use of a telephone to call my friend for directions. Pulling  up in front of the nearest house, I parked and walked to the front door and rang its doorbell.  A man opened the door.  I explained my situation and asked humbly for the use of his phone. He was most agreeable and invited me in.  His wife entered the front room and he introduced us telling her I needed to make a telephone call. After I made the call and was about to leave it became obvious the couple wanted me to stay awhile.  Without using the words they began in some unusual  way to beg me to remain with them, not to leave immediately.  I hesitated long enough for the man to tell me, “We have had some very sad news today.” His wife nodded. I replied, “Oh?”


The man added, “We just received a call telling us our son, our daughter-in-law, and both of our grandchildren were killed today in an airplane crash.” At that moment I was informed truly that I was the one chosen to give time to these two strangers in need of someone with ears to listen. Chosen by whom? What? Only a short time later was I to be led to an AA meeting where some former drunks had gathered to listen to me when I needed it and was ready to open up my pain to them. When such harmony is happening it is impossible to say who is helping whom. Really. I will stop for now to cry a bit. 

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