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, February 24, 2023

A Man For Every Woman

 I want to question something almost universally held to be true. Possibly it has been written down or memorized in every language there is on Earth. 


Does a man have a woman? Does a woman have a man? What is the evidence of  it? A mere abundance of sentiment? Is it possible to live well without such? There are so many songs and rhymes that seem to want it to be so they cannot be counted. This questioning is a heavy one with far reaching consequences. If one is convinced “I cannot have someone else as my possession” what happens to that one? 


Obviously, if the statement is correct it immediately makes a large excess of energy available for other things. Imagine, if you will, what that amount of energy released can accomplish.


It could be so that the only reason for clinging to a possibility so doubtful is to have someone to blame, besides myself, for the mess I have to endure. “My wife does not behave”; “my husband does not behave”; my children do not behave”, etc. For this reason it is suggested we look into who is it benefits from a widely held tradition that for every man there is a woman. Often such inquiry is revelatory of the tradition’s invalidity as a fundamental method for experiencing a sense of well-being in life. There is a belief behind the idea of marriage as a binding contract that it will help to ensure the control of people. Who desires to control people? Whose job description is that? How is it so closely related to whose job is it to manage and control children?  What underlies the belief that if we can control a child up to the age of seven or so we have that child for life? Think like a free animal. 


We are getting somewhere. Ask: if I make the decision to be in the company of another human moment to moment am I more or less likely to have a sound and solid relationship as opposed to some traditional assignment of me to him or her for a lifetime? Am I ill-equipped to live here naturally? Are you? Think like a free animal.


Somebody sold us a bag of rotten fruit in the form of bad tradition with a motive when we crossed a line into a world organized by other people for us before we were even born. Not so good for children. Well, do not feel so all alone. Every child must get stoned. Resurrect your living bones! 

 ENLIGHTENMENT


A close friend and I were talking recently about gurus we have known. One stands out to both of us. However we both acknowledged that after his death it was written that not one single person could be found anywhere on Earth who was enlightened by that man’s life long teaching. Too bad he was such a failure. My friend and I laughed.


The next day it came to me like a bolt out of the sky-nobody has ever been enlightened from the beginning of time for the obvious reason that for enlightenment to appear one must first see clearly 


“ I do not exist as a separate self and never have I existed so” 


Nobody will ever speak out “ I am enlightened” except to prove to others, “I am not”. Not surprising then was the writing that not one single person can be found who tells “that guru (the one my friend and I had discussed) enlightened me” and that means he did his job ever so well. And that is what I know of enlightenment.


ref: The Nobody Book by Nobody at all 

A copy is available free with cost of shipping only upon request