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, July 14, 2021

                                                                  Did It My Way


There’s a phrase and it goes “to my way o’ thinkin’ “. Or, “to his way of thinkin’ “.  And so on. Should you find yourself using that phrase you will probably also think the person referred to is an independent-minded fellow in control of his life, following his own path, etc.  Kind that is swelled up with pride about things. Truth, though, is otherwise entirely. All those folks are really pathetic, fooling themselves. All the time spent following your own way of thinkin’ is gonna cost more than you ever wanted to pay. Thought thinks it can divide the indivisible and it cannot. These people will one day spend hours looking out a window and imagining what might have been and wondering why they failed to do those things that attracted them most of all. And, sadly, will they believe it is the way life is for everybody. It is not.


Anyone who finds a way to bypass their own thoughts can live in still, quiet peace with razor sharp awareness. Another expression for bypassing the thoughts of the head is to pray without ceasing. For them there will be no choices ever to be made. What to do will be clear to them. When to do nothing will also be clear. These people live truly by faith. Faith is not the word faith it is an intuitive knowing. It is keen, sharp, effective. A samurai warrior comes to mind. You see, the way to live is to be free first. Free of what? I’ll tell you. You must be free from the conditioning of others around you, your borrowed thoughts are not your own. You cannot be contained in thought.  Nobody can. Those governed by thinking are robotic and life passes them by while they are too busy for it. Imagine that! You are alive and yet too busy to live. I tell this by my own experience. I know what it is like to be a pawn in somebody else’s game. Unless you invented basketball, play it only for exercise and the joy of movement. Do not take it seriously. Or you will be looking out that window long before it is time for you to die, wondering, what happened? 


Final note: those who say they do things their way never do. Simple. My way is beyond all thought and words. People will ask someone like that how he lives and he will respond something like, “Oh, I breath in and then breathe out.” 

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