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, February 26, 2021

 HYMN TO THE SILENCE


The first time a child looks up at the sky in the daylight from within the silence of a still brain to behold the blue of it there what is heard can be crudely described as a sound of wordless wonder we all once knew well and have forgotten- “I am blue. What can be on the other side of that big blueness?” 


The child is so  recently aware of the time spent in a watery dark place from which it then popped forth into the air to take its first breath. That experience stimulates a wonder about the big blue sky.


Later, when every child has its first view of a cloudless night time sky the answer to the child’s wonder-filled quest comes complete and clear and whole and the child knows itself for the second time. Birth was the first time we were introduced to ourselves.


But not for long because adults will not permit such folly.


We, as adults, no longer even have the question to ask ourselves. We say something to ourselves with words like”It is daytime, about nine a.m. and the sky is blue in the daytime. And that’s all there is to it.” So no answer will be noticed by us under the night sky at all since we lost the question in a storehouse of thoughts as memories. Our brains are now too dull and bored to care. Albert Einstein, for one, stands out so brilliantly among us because he was a child in a grown-up’s body. He asked himself, “What in the world is light?” And spent the majority of his time playing with the quest for the knowledge he sought so single-mindedly.


It will not be the last time for the question and its answer for all of us though. Death awaits us all. Time will come for ”What is on the other side of this?” And to some lucky children a kind of death while still living in a human form is also given. Perhaps for you this is that opportunity knocking? Break free from the cocoon of cramped tradition. Know thyself.


Let Us Milk A Cow By The Hand Of Love And Share The Ice Cream.     Ran Smith Dairy

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