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!

Thursday, January 7, 2021

 If I have everything I want


If everything I want is what I have


that which I want I have

that which I have I want 


If what I want are two large wings a graceful neck and a hot orange beak

I am a swan.


Happiness in life is so simple. It has nothing to do with acquiring what you do not have.  It has only to do with recognizing what you have been given that cannot be taken from you. It is a tragedy to have it and not know you have it because to you you may as well not have it at all. And you do.


I am a swan. And when you see me glide across a pool you imagine such a one must think:

“Look. I can get anything I want” 

but you are mistaken.

You see freedom. 

What is empty of wanting.

If I beheld that in you I could fly with you.


There is a big difference between believing you can have victory and knowing you are victory.

The one who believes will either lose and hate himself or win and then tell himself, “I was victorious” and spend the rest of his life remembering he once was victorious. Memories fade. Trophies corrode behind glass. 


Have you met anyone with a trophy case who is content? It violates the law of trophies. Never content is their slogan and so they remain discontent. For them it is always winter. For one who is content it is always Spring.


This writing points to you as you are. Many point you to what you are not. You are not defined by circumstances. Know that simple fact. Fly! Without wings fly!

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