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, September 9, 2021

 FOLLOWING UP


Following up on my learning yesterday I am aware that I need no knowledge of anything I encounter for I am that which I observe. I need but watch, see, learn what is before me and it will be shown me. That is, for me, real love. In both directions.


One time I spent six months in the desert of West Texas known as the Big Bend. I arrived there with a long history stored-up as fear of snakes. Many are there. Many poisonous rattlesnakes. The first day there I went on a hike alone into the vast desert land. I met seven rattlers on that first hike.  All were coiled to strike and rattled a warning. I tell you that first one really sent a strong chill down my spine. I backed slowly and the snake lowered itself out of its striking posture. Giving the snake plenty of room, I walked on. Like I said this happened seven times on that walk. Seven meetings first hand. Each time, me and a snake met up, watched each other, and parted peacefully. None of the snakes failed to warn me and none were close enough at the time to reach me with a strike. I was struck powerfully by the decency of each warning. My fear was definitely receding already.


One evening, I hopped joyfully out of the house where I was staying with a towel and nothing more, naked as the day I was born, to take an outdoor shower. I was, by now, a content camper. I snapped my towel at nothing out of pure delight at my good fortune. Suddenly, from the corner of my eye I caught sight of a large diamondback rattler rising from the exact location where my towel had popped. It was coiled in my path to strike in self-defense.  I had learned through reading that this snake was close enough to bite me should it strike. I froze. The snake and I stared at one another for several seconds. The snake’s tongue searched the air. The snake seemed to me to make a decision of its own, lowered, then moved away from me. I recognized the snake as one which made a home in an enclosed garden close to the outdoor shower. Never again did the snake return to that garden nor anyplace on the property where I was living. Make of it what you will.

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