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 11, 2021

FORAGING FOR LIFE



After I dropped the practice of law as a means of earning money with which I bought food and provisions for living as a human being, some would frequently ask, “What do you do?” That has always seemed to be the first question we ask upon getting acquainted with on another. At first, I was not comfortable with the question since I was living in a way different from most people of the day. However, soon it became a game I enjoyed playing. Today, I would say, I am a forager. I forage for food and provisions. A person hearing me might immediately picture me with a basket and a spear and bow and knife in the wilderness looking to find wild animals and berries and the like. That is not my way in today’s world in this part of the Earth. 


Ever since man and woman began to forage, millions of years ago, it has required much intelligence and skill. I would say it takes more knowledge and skill and a more fully engaged brain than practicing law does but not anywhere near the time daily required to act like a lawyer. Foraging takes into consideration a very, very wide range of possible sources and a mind open to literally any of the sources being today’s meal and lodging and provisions for what you are going to utilize today for a fascinating adventure of life.  This immediately preceding sentence causes links of any human brain to flash messages that direct the body to be tremendously awake and alert to every little nuance in the present environment where life happens in order to seize the bounty already set out before each forager. I have read that a forager on Earth 30,000 years ago had the capacity to listen to the slightest movement of grasses to detect the presence, for example, of a snake. Few humans can claim that depth of perception today. As a modern forager I do. However, by my own experience, I learned early that amazing capacities lurking within a human being can be realized only by a quiet brain that is fully operating at a high level of intelligence. I quickly saw that the time I spend each day in a practice of a truth that will always still a brain and bring quiet so no effort is wasted engaging by imagination in worries about troubles that will never come about. Obviously, this freedom is precious to a forager. A much more effective and efficient forage is at hand.


Do not be fooled.  The forager I tell of is not a thief nor a beggar.  Lawyers are and doctors and ministers and all the other professions practiced currently in the modern world to gain money as opposed to foraging as it is described here. Burn that fact into your conscious brain. Foragers share without hesitation. Foragers are happy people. Free of worries about having enough, these people are in love with life as they live it, not as someone promises it as a reward for suffering. I am telling of a world that anyone can enjoy to the fullest here and now with no strings attached. Begin today a self examination to bring a discovery of what capacities you have but utilize little or not at all to be wildly excited to wake up each morning in wonder. Surely, while reading this many exciting possibilities have occurred to you already that make you eager to begin your own examination of just what kind of world you would redesign for yourself should you feel invited to do so.

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