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!

Friday, May 1, 2020

Whooper’s Dream

I dreamed Bob Dylan came to my yard.  Told me life had led him here to see me. 


Then up stepped some others. Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg had come with Bob while J. Krishnamurti brought Prem Rawat. Albert Camus came, too.There was Alan Watts and Gangaji and there was Mooji and some whose names I did not remember. Bill Wilson and Bob Smith came anonymously. One, who wore a mask, whispered to me he was the anonymous author of The Heart Sutra. Another added he was the anonymous author of the Book of Hebrews and Ecclesiastes, both. That was confusing. Each one who came told me he or she was here for no reason they knew. Just came. Drawn to come to my attention. Oh, I remember Abe Lincoln had come. Billy the Kid came. And Joan of Arc.

I replied, I think I may know why.  I am here because I know that governments and religions cannot live together in peace but human beings can. That is big medicine, they all agreed.

My experience in putting that knowledge into practical application is unique enough to be noticed,  I realized. I know any attempt to work with organized man on the subject of peace is a waste of time. We need the intelligence and strength and reliability of unorganized man…man and the God of his understanding, someone very much like everyone else, and I literally mean everyone else, to tackle the job 
of cleaning up this mess.

The job calls for someone to keep closely aligned with a clear understanding that this job is for everybody, not a handful, everybody, without exception, and yet nobody will be coerced to join and anybody is free to join up at anytime he or she wishes. 

That much I can do. I am capable of doing one. Thing well. Ha! I hollered. And awoke myself. But, just before I did, I was promised I’d probably be charged as a heretic, a sorcerer, and a cross-dresser.

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