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 3, 2022

 On Death


Consider for a bit the question:  What is death? 


As a human I say that it is death that matters to someone the most. We are told we die. We attend a funeral. We look upon a dead body. We read stories where death happens. We ask others and receive confirmation that we will die.  We recognize signs of aging in older people. We must wonder, at least a little, were we born to die? And then wonder what that question means and where from did it come to us to ask it. All these things mentioned so far can come to people who have no education formally and who never have read a book or written one. People who have no concept of who might be better than who nor think of themselves as smart have these experiences. Maybe this means these experiences are more trustworthy than all of that wordiness.


Now, suppose someone has experienced failure and its pain. Is that a form of death? Why not? It is a sharp experience of an ending of something important to that individual. It is certainly unwanted. It is at least kin to death. It is possible to turn a corner mentally here, at this point, and ask: Is death friendly? Does life have meaning if seen as separate from death? It is not that life is death but that it is inseparable from it. Truth is life-death. Could it be we are more than a little opposed to an ending. Not really opposed to either death or failure. Ending frightens because the unknown frightens. What is the cause of the fear of the unknown? It’s opposite…the known…is monotony. The unknown holds mystery and that is exciting. Why fear it?


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