A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 05/11/21

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, May 11, 2021

ON FREEDOM

Now then, there is an illusion of freedom and there is the true experience of freedom. Freedom actually is not being trapped in illusions. So, those two are racing away from each other at the speed of light squared! Dylan wondered in song, Are birds ever free from the chains of the skyway? That is saying that if jumping over the moon is freedom and if you can what about jumping over Mars? And so on and on.

I do not want. That is freedom. I want not water for there is more than enough. I do not want food for there is more than enough. I do not want air for there is more than enough of it. I do not want sunshine for there is always enough for everybody. That means I am content. Satisfied.

People who spend fortunes on clothes never cease talking about those times they let themselves take them off and get laid. Why bother?

You may say that there may be enough water but I may not be able to find it. Yes? Well, we are living thousands of years into a way of life that led most of us to kill others of us just to keep a supply of water and food and a territory where we can settle down in the illusion we have enough and protect with weapons our family from them and others like them. When we run short, we attack. Kill. Rape. Plunder. Lie. Cheat. Deceive. Steal. Gamble. Trick. Threaten. Coerce. Charm. So, by now, we mostly do not know how many times we turned one way instead of another and lost our capability to find what we need that is right under our feet and over our heads. We forgot. That is the source of illusion and that is the real loss of real freedom. And, by now, we have a list longer than the Milky Way of crap we want. Of kindness, honesty, integrity, dignity, courage we are unladen and poor indeed.