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 24, 2022

 What cripples the clarity of one’s own perception is a drug. Love is known only by people with clear eyes to see it. Love is not something that is possessed and then handed forth in pieces to someone’s special others like candy. It is not in any way connected to being a grandparent or a parent or a daughter or son or sibling or anyone interested in attaching to another for support and sustenance. That is all a game. Trickery. Addiction. Love is not ever going to be used for a selfish interest. Quite the contrary. Love has no motive. Like that wild nightingale it comes and goes of its own volition and sings purely when it wants to and not on command. Take it or leave it. Do not even attempt to meditate until you are first clear. Clear means no inner conflict whatsoever. 

What is being mentioned is that clarity of mind is the first priority in life. Make no mistake about it. Life is given to those who can appreciate it. When one looks closely one sees that people who are not so clear are insulting the very thing they most desire. With a crippled mind they seek to find happiness and wealth and purpose and even whether there is God, and, if so, what is God. With a crippled mind they intend to seek out the divine, if there is any, and to use it to become something great. Only those who end that will know they are great. 

Another way to say the same thing is that only free people can love. The freedom required is freedom from confusion and conflict of any kind. It is easy to listen to someone who claims to be a teacher tell you he knows and you do not. Only someone not ready to go the journey to its conclusion will follow another. This is your life. No one else can show you how to go. You want a formula, an explanation, a spelled-out doctrine, etc. All one who is not clear can do is to give a great deal of attention inwardly to that very situation. It will clear as you do. You are the watchman on the wall of existence. You are your teacher, guide, guru. So, to be a good one you need to be clear about it. It is up to each one of us. However, we can encourage and inspire each other by showing the way is within, but only by going. The word is not the thing.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)