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, June 9, 2022

 LITTLE DO I KNOW


So, as I see it, most people live everyday rating a false symbol above the truth. From that approach what can we expect to be life’s response? People complain about the weather…with each other. Who do we think we are talking to? Can it be hot as Hell weather has its own secret, or obvious, purpose? Is the answer in the question itself then? Look in there with me. I came to teach you what to pray for. That is what I hear the weather say. What did you hear? Love sent me? I’ll be damned!


I’ll tell one. I fell in love recently with a woman cashiering in a shop. Our eyes met. In a timeless moment there was the unusual. That is what I call it to fall in love. Not lust. Love. Here is the most important part I have to tell. What I fear is she did not fall as I did. She saw nothing unusual and had no timeless moment she shared with me and knew it. Get it? So strong is that fear it makes me fear the truth so much I grab a symbol, no, many symbols to chase after. I actually think they are more reliable than the moment as it happened to me. I crush that moment like crushing a bug under my foot each time I do. If I were that moment I’d give up on me. It has not yet. Yet. 


I mess around with escapes from the moment rather than give my whole being to the moment. If I were that moment I’d give up on me. She’s just a cashier. She’s much younger than me. She wants someone who holds out promises for a happy future. We all know those images. In a second the true moment is cast aside and replaced by a preferred future goal and not a now that just happened. The moment was so pure it held no opposite so from where do the opposites come? My conditioned mind? I’ll be damned!


Now, the real loss. Symbolically, I jumped to “I need to marry this woman”, or, in some other way, attach to her. That will give security. How crazy is that? I know already that marriage, an image, holds no security at all. Been there. Done that. Here I am back again…here I go down that wrong road…again. I realize I do this with jobs, business, children, friends, enemies, and all the rest of the symbols given to me for a solid, secure  life. 


That moment I shared with a woman at her job held out no promise whatsoever. It was complete and it grabbed me. What for? Is the answer in the question again? Look there with me. For all I know she could be someone who knows somebody who knows somebody else who knows another who has a cure for toe fungus. Little do I know. Important words to live by. It is true. Her eyes spoke to my eyes and told me “I know you as you are and have known you always”.  When I am still I am aware that there is no bottom to that pure message. It goes nowhere. Had no beginning and has no end. I will call it sacred. Trust I will in it in place of all the world’s images for the remainder of my days. That moment happened like anything happens. I await more. In the truth of who I am now, ignoring a need to become something, I totally end symbolic living.