A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 08/19/22

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!

Friday, August 19, 2022

People who want you not free will admonish you that with every bit of freedom comes an equal amount of responsibility. They cancel freedom in one strike with that admonishment and do not apologize. Have you ever really considered for yourself what freedom is? What it is not, maybe? Is freedom a state in which you are seeking a reward? Seeking your fortune? Or, is it obvious to you that by seeking a reward you cancel freedom in a single stroke yourself and become prisoner to a hoped-for future? Do you see that tomorrow never arrives? See how success becomes paramount for those who seek rewards. Failure is not acceptable for them. I say for a free human being failure must be ever bit as important as success. Actually, I say, a good, solid real life depends on a possibility of failure. The thrill depends on it. Any other way is not life at all.

It has been said many times that to be prepared when opportunity comes is key to a good life. The possibility for failure is critical for such a way. And, moreover, today fully-lived is indispensable to being prepared for opportunity when it shows. Consider a forest in nature. Consider a ball game. In a contest between teams of equal ability, financing, and training the outcome will be uncertain throughout. Time will end the game arbitrarily and a winner declared just to have a winner, don’t you see? Winning is meaningless since it never is real even when the teams are of equal strength. When there is a mismatch, forget it. The real fun comes when there is an upset and the underdog wins! Why is that? It points out how we really do not feel comfortable in contests. In show business it has long been the case that a fan secretly hopes for the celebrity to fail also. A goofy world has been created for humans to go crazy in.

I say that it is far better to say, “Let me be a man” then ever to say “let me be a good man”. Same for the women, of course. The thought to be a good man carries with it a thought of not being a bad one. That is a choice. And that is separation in thought and thought alone since a choosing must create conflict within and without. Conflict leads to sorrow. Is sorrow a good thing? Of course not.

To ask only to be a man is to be willing to discover truth. To be at peace with the truth of who you actually are is freedom. I say that is the secret behind the concept of forgiveness. It is to admit to another you were just being who you are and to hold that against you is an absurdity. The one forgiven who actually perceives “I am that which I despise” is bound to change instantly without effort. That is the beginning of freedom. Try it. In that way discover you have always been worthy of freedom.