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!

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

 CHILDREN OF THE SMUG


Smugness. What is it? Dictionary meaning is “excessive pride in oneself or one’s achievements”. The source of it is insecurity. Is that a surprise? The source of insecurity is a limited and broken psychological state that makes a fella or gal imagine stupid things to escape the feeling. Inner conflict or fragmentation of the inner being weakens a human terribly. Such people are definitely affected by flattery and insults from others. Each of these flatteries or insults has been recorded permanently in the brains of these people as knowledge based on experience. A whole human being takes no thought of either flattery or insult. A wholistic life is secure. 


A close and sensitive knowledge of a tree brings instantly an understanding there is no such thing as a separate “tree” or a “not tree”. Touch one and give your complete attention to the sensation. You are the tree and the tree is you. Roots of the tree are your roots. A broken psychological state has been mended. A new human is awake suddenly. Smugness has vanished completely. The new human knows only a communion which has no opposite.


Once the writer met a young woman about to graduate from a major university with a 4 point average. We had several conversations over a few days. She told me she was troubled about what to do with her life after graduation. Without asking questions I told her “go sit under a tree nearby and ask the tree what to do and wait patiently for the tree to answer and tell me next time we meet what you learned from that tree”.  I was surprised she followed the directions and the next day she told me with great excitement “the tree told me to stop taking myself so seriously. I have felt much better since and I thank you . I believe I have learned more from you in a few conversations than I learned in the entire four years I spent in college”.

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