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, June 7, 2022

 


 BEAUTY WITH NO OPPOSITE


Here is my favorite song this morning-All Along the Watchtower by Dylan.


It is a short one that says volumes. Also, the beginning is placed at the end. A trick with power to sneak by the conditioned mind and the way words become our rulers before we notice. In fact, I'd say this morning all of formal education takes place in a jail built with words which form systems that are nonexistent in reality so that in Not Dark Yet the singer says he just sees no reason to go on since every beauty he has known has had an evil side. The question of the day is: 


is it possible to live a human life in a world, a parallel universe, in which beauty has no opposite? Not Two Riders but One. Neither the Joker nor the Thief. One Rider. 


I say there is. It remains a mystery why most who find that out only play with its amazing grace more or less in secret and stay stuck in the same ol' universe of duality where everybody suffers, suffers, suffers. Buy the record. Listen to the song. Feel its truth. Rejoin misery. It seems we want false security, in symbols, that much! How weird it is to want false security more than the real.


I watched some football. The slogan of all coaches in competitive sports is “Winning is all that matters”. What if there is a world here and now where winning has no opposite?  In his song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” the singer says there’s no success like failure and failure is no success at all. It makes me feel, not think, there truly is no opposite for success. Secretly, every coach, when vulnerable, tells his players “if you do your best today you will be a success in my book regardless of what the score board says”.  What book is the coach aware of that his players also grasp immediately? 


In a Universe without an opposite for love when two lovers meet the whole thing is wrapped in “I love you”. Not in words. The fact! The fact is not followed by “or, I do not”. And the word is always followed by “or I do not”. Thesis-antithesis. All that follows ”I love you” in the suffering universe-that is, a ring, a promise, a license, a wedding then counting the days…that is entirely absent in the universe of love with no opposite. Does it exist? Do you know? This writer says it does.


Have one completely wholesome day. Hey, even an hour would amaze. Warning: people who analyze songs are bound to fall back into pairs of opposites when analyzing a poet’s effort at something new. There are poets and those who name them so who praise and analyze their work. They are coming from two separate worlds. A wild cat knows. The wind has the answer. They are the growl and howl of the poets.


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