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!

Wednesday, June 3, 2020

I am Whooper Swan. I am who? I am walking, talking dirt. Made of earth stuff which was made of Sun’s fire. I walk and talk and laugh and cry. I can even fly! Now, Dear God, let my poor voice be heard.

A friend tells of a time in his youth when he lay in some grass looking up at the sky and felt completely happy for awhile. Nothing, he said, brought this experience into being. It was many years ago and he has never felt that way again. But he still searches for it. He had it for no reason, had it, and he searches. How foolish is that?  He makes gratitude lists when he already knows it comes out of nowhere for free. 

He has been told often by those he has met who are happy that gratitude comes from one thing only, it comes from knowledge you are alive. That other thing, the thought of gratitude, the words, “Thank you”, is all about good manners and has nothing to do with feeling grateful.  All the gratitude lists in the world will never bring the feeling of gratitude. And, so, my friend does not make the connection with his own simple experience lying in the grass doing nothing. Only meditating. What a tragedy! 



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