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!

Sunday, August 27, 2023

 

CARRIED  ON A WIND


Deadlines and commitments. WHAT TO TAKE OUT AND WHAT TO LEAVE IN. “Against the Wind” by Bob Seger. 


The stuff of worry, anxiety, and depression is what the song is about.  All have felt that stuff, sometimes more, sometimes less but all. Should you be done with it there is a way to end it and to live as a free human being here and now in your own body. You can if you try very seriously to find the illusion in you that is addicted to flattery and insult. There is no method for it. Why not? Because it is what you have naturally. Not possible is it to flatter or insult an infant.  Finding what you have is far different from finding what you do not have. The path of pathlessness it has been called. Unlearning is required, not learning. You watch your own thoughts closely and patiently without resistance or desire to escape. Merely watch. This is the beginning of true meditation. There is a gap between time and the timeless. There will come in you while you watch your thoughts a state, perhaps only a faint state at first, where for you there is no time. Remain in the gap and all else will be shown to you lovingly, as if by magic, except in reality it happens. This is for you alone. You will know it to be so that you are home within at last dancing a songline of your own a free human being. Up to now you have been trying to dance to another’s tune. 


Do not focus your attention on these words but as you read pay attention to the thoughts that have arisen in your own mind. That is yourself. That is your real business. It is now time to spot yourself as you are. It is of no benefit to argue with the words or analyze or criticize or defend any position. Notice the thoughts your mind produces such as “ This is a waste of time. We have other things to do”. Watch. Watch. Watch. What is actually behind all these thoughts? Illusions maybe? What is bound to result from actions you take based on illusion? A mess of conflict and confusion…deadlines and commitments…all of which turn out to be “self-devotion” caused by fear? Does any of this sound familiar? This has not been an exercise for intellectual entertainment. It has been directly facing a question of whether I am wasting my life or really living. There is an unmistakable “taste” to life.

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