A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 04/19/22

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, April 19, 2022

THINGS NEED TO CHANGE

Everybody agrees with “things need to change”. But most of us settle for going around searching for “how?” That’s no change at all and guarantees we will stay stuck. There’s a real change that actually begins and ends in a question that actually changes things by answering itself, though. Is that not elegance of a high order?

Question could be “Is it possible for things to change?” This leads to that and pretty soon things have changed. Now, it s only really important that when the question is asked the questioner means it and means it real bad! You see there’s really never any “how” to anything. There’s an infinite number of ways to go about doing a thing. With this approach the most blessed feature is that rather than setting a goal, making plans to meet it, and working hard to carry out the plan, modifying as seems necessary as you go…brings to mind a war room and a group of military officers carrying on with war plans under hot lights…in this alternative approach of asking a profound question and then going about living, there are no leaders, only players, and a feeling of fun, and freedom, and it is like this job is being done for me by ghosts who picked me out to join a uniquely creative sort of dance with them to participate in a wild bit of frolicking and luck and no one is to blame and no one is to be given credit for going along for the ride. Furthermore, no remorse or regret is possible for nothing is left over for all activity is in the slice of time called now without pause for reflection. Evaluation and explanation and analysis are of no value either. That’s a relief! Saves a lot of wasted energy if you ask me.

As a metaphor I leave you with this little tale from my life just today. I was struck by a strong need to find the name of a singer and a film made about her life. I did not go searching. A short while later I was getting something from the fridge and decided to sit down and read for awhile in a book I had started earlier. Reading, my book fell open in my lap accidentally and as I was finding my place to continue my read the pages flipped and I happened to notice a page with a yellow marker line and glanced quickly at it to find it revealed the name of the singer and the name of the film based on her life both. Life can be like that all the time. It is not predestination at all, though. It requires a serious attempt to stay in the present which happens to be where everything happens is all. The other way a person spends most of every day in the past or the future where nothing happens…missing life. Come on.