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!

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

 Hello, Darkness


What the world calls darkness might be light. What does it mean? If I make claims such as “everybody has preferences” and know only that I have them what good am I? Such teachers need to address the meaning of “preference” deeply and then ask whether anyone has need of one. It matters not that I have one if I have no need of it. Certainly everybody who follows thought as a way of life will manufacture preferences but does that amount to “it is not possible to act without thinking first”? This brings us to a place to ask: what is the nature of action not preceded by thought? If there is any such thing. In other words, what is the quality of that produced by a still mind? “Hello, Darkness, my old Friend.” Suppose for a moment that rather than thought preceding happiness it is the other way round? Happiness trumps  thought every time. What is the meaning of, ”It came to me.” In team sports it is said, “Let the game come to you.” Every time we learn a new thing we find we have stopped thinking about it. So, did we already know it? I told myself for years that I had to suffer the agony of thinking  and trying to figure a thing out in order to…deserve to know it? There is the smell of guilt all over it. It is a cousin to do not ask for help, that is cheating. And that is evil in my book. 


Let life come to you. For it is always going to be so that if I cannot be happy where I am I cannot be happy anywhere.

No comments: