A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 06/30/21

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!

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

VAST UNBEKNOWN OF IT ALL

Old Man: Jesus is another name for the vast unbeknown of it all. You actually have separated yourself from it, have you not? You do not say, “I am the whole of life”, and remain still; you want to change this and improve that, you want to reject and to hold. You, the watcher, an immovable, permanent center in this vast movement of life are caught in conflict, in sorrow, and confusion. Now, you who are separate, how do you approach the whole? How do you come to this vastness, to the beauty of the earth and the heavens? Our lives are shallow and bound to routine; and the gods of the trivial mind are as silly and stupid as their maker. Whether we live in a palace or a village, whether we are hired hands or sit in the seats of the mighty, the fact is that our minds are petty, narrow, ambitious, envious; and it is with such minds that we want to find out if there is God, what truth is, what the perfect government is, and seek answers to the innumerable other questions that pop up….such as, What is the purpose of my life?

First: Yes, sir, that is our life. You nailed it! What can we do?”

Old Man: Die to the past, not little by little, but totally! In this way come suddenly to the point of beginning and learn what death is while still alive. Like I said, life is circular. It’s the petty mind that tries, that struggles, that has its ideals and systems. You must die to all you think you know for the unknown to be your way.

First: I can see that we should die to the past, but if I die to the past, what is there left then?

Old Man: You are saying – aren’t you? – that you will die to the past only when you are guaranteed a satisfactory substitute for what you have renounced. That’s not renunciation, that’s only another effort at gain. A petty mind wanting to know what there is after dying will find its own petty answer.

First: I think each one of us has felt deeply the truth of it all. May we come again?

Old Man: Yes. You may, but let us not delay. All the great geniuses with all their great works piled together throughout history have made no real difference at all. Surely it is time we admit that to ourselves, renounce civilization as it is known to be, and take a wild chance on the vast unknown.