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, March 10, 2022

MEETING WITH AN ORIGINAL MAN


This morning I listened to an original man speak by way of film and video from many years ago. He asked those present with him then rather than being sponges who absorb and take things in from one they admire to listen from an originality in them to the original tones from the speaker. This reminded me immediately of our talks.


I thought of our consideration of what it must be like to play in Bob Dylan’s band, for instance. Those who have seem to find it a “Difficult” experience. I recalled the woman who said when she first listened to you speak she hated you and wished you to be paralyzed but later she noticed how you had grown and changed and she liked you and you told her, “Hey, Lady, it was not I who changed!” So, it made me feel a calm and clarity that to play in the band of an original requires the new player to change by retaining the original in himself and that accounts for the pain of difficulty. But more important to me than that even was the glimpse into what great opportunity is taking place to be in the company of someone who offers you nothing. 


Someone demands you keep hold of the original in yourself and not be a sponge or leave his or her company. Is that love? Or the Greatest Love? Jesus always before this most recent experience had baffled me by telling his 12 disciples 


“You will do greater works than me.”


Is it a brand new way of life? Is it jazz? Is it Moby-Dick? 








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