A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 01/16/23

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!

Monday, January 16, 2023

What Has A Man Got?

The only thing we have when we get down to it is life. Beyond thought and time and self-pity, is life. And life, nothing else, is sacred. Have you found it? The question to be discussed over together here is this one: are you going to live your life or are you going to try and live the life another has told you is prepared for you by the best human thinking? Perception unaided by another is the source of a real life.

To struggle to understand what being alive has been or is all about is bound to leave one empty and unsatisfied…just, oh well, that was not much, but that’s it, I reckon, only a mess with no meaning really. Then one is left only with the hope granted by some theoretical after-life where I’ll see all my friends and family again, but as what? Saints? Angels? Or, perhaps reincarnation theoretically appeals as hope that I am not to end when this body dies. Investigate into the probability that the whole reason for being alive is to be found in being alive rather than by some theory concerning what comes after death.

There remains the question of death. The one most dreaded subject. What is that? Is death the end? To find out one must die..to everything…while still alive. Or miss the only thing we have…life. Life had no beginning and has no end and to know that one must die. So death is definitely not the end.

What is being discussed here actually makes good sense. It is simple, clear, and rational. The only thing we have when we get down to it is life. When the body, the organism, dies we are clear that all that can end is an image that has been trained mentally to call itself by name and pretend to exist inside that body as a spirit or a thinker or both which can be held responsible for the thoughts and actions of the body. Actually, the brain does the thinking and by the the word “spirit” the brain means I do not know what I am talking about and this “word” is my challenge to hate and fight anybody who exposes that fact. We know the body stays here as organic matter of the Earth itself. Well, of course, thinking and time must end. So, what lies beyond time and thought? That is shocking news!

The writer is reminded of an old joke that happens to be of great depth and importance. The fellow said, “I wish I was the man my dog thinks I am.” What is it the dog is so clear about?

Just say the line between you and me is not there.