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 30, 2022

 To Be Watched Over


It’s an amazing feeling to be watched over. It is a state of mind, not something that can be acquired, possessed, earned or deserved. It dissolves aggression and the fear behind it. Is like a soft wind on the skin and the feeling goes vastly deeper than winning or accomplishing or forcing one’s will on any circumstance and carries no unwanted side effects. Freed from confusion and conflict and worry one is much more intelligent, genuine, and alert and much more effective as a living being. Such people are interesting to behold. Their movements fascinate. They draw you in.


As I see it there are two kinds of humans living here on Earth. One kind has seen as a fact that the observer is the observed and lives from that angle. The other kind thinks himself or herself to be separate from that which it observes and acts on that belief as if it were true. Persons of this second type are easily led to become scientists, physicians, lawyers, judges, politicians, teachers, jailers, wardens, priests, coaches, executives, officers, critics, scholars, librarians and the like. The rest of them become accomplished loafers, artists, and poets as described by Walt Whitman.


Now, whenever any life form is by another form of life (be it animal, vegetable or mineral) seen to be one who knows the observer is the observed that one is immediately accepted into a family, not a word depending upon a definition but a feeling of being watched over, to be watched over. Such a life, knowing itself to be watched over, is going to be seriously unwilling to be labeled at all or to serve anything but the whole of life. Such a way is true religion rather than superstition. 


I tell you many such creatures live among the population now often seen by others to be loafers who cannot be controlled and manipulated. Such ones are definitely not "company men" or "team players".  Seen by the other type as chaotic by their attitude  these watch the waters of chaos growing deeper and deeper around the others yet stay here with them with a life line knowing the observer is the observed. Truly, that is family.