A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 04/20/23

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!

Thursday, April 20, 2023

WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF US?

It seems obvious you are at peace. So, what of all the rest of us? We have our troubles, our responsibilities as wage earners, husbands and wives, parents and so on. We worry. We are anxious. We suffer. How can we have peace?

There are many decent people with good intentions who will tell us every time they open their mouths that it is “language” and “thought” (which invent each other) that are our greatest gifts and which will save us if we use them correctly

( and if we listen carefully they will reveal that “use them correctly” means “think like me”). Get the joke? I will tell you and mean it that the gifts of language and thought have their place, and it is a very limited one, but they always create conflict and confusion when relied upon to “save” us. The more we reason our way to the light the darker it gets. Love is the great gift. I am the world and the world is me. I am talking to myself here.

Silly. You have it. That is all there is to it. We are our only problem. We refuse to accept what are naturally our gifts. You accept breath and food and water since they do not interfere with your plans. Yet you take them for granted. You have ambitions. You treasure them. You are certain they are what divides you from the other animals, the non-human ones. You have dreams of a better world. Better than what? Look. Be honest. Better than what? It is better than right now. Better than the mess you have made and continue to make in ever-increasing degrees with ambition. What good is it? It has always distorted your appreciation of the beauty all around you. Ambition has you torturing and slaughtering people you never have met who have ambitions of their own and may one day torture and slaughter you. I am talking to myself here. Can you feel that? I am the world and the world is me.

Look. Something or somebody has caste a spell over you that makes you forever discontent. Who would do that? Who profits from you being always discontent? In earlier times they were called the “operators” and were noticeably out of step with the others. Now, not so much. Who is not in one way or another an “operator”? A boy hunting for a girl to exploit; a girl trapping a boy, for instance?

Look. Consider the lilies. They neither toil nor do they spin. Consider the other animals. Are they parents? Do they mate and make babies? Do they act in the world? Outside the human threat do they prosper? Are they not finely tuned to the whole living Earth? You have been made by mental tricks to prefer ambition is all and that makes you suffer. Even the rich man bemoans the lack of trustworthy laborers. The husband who takes pride in his wife is jealous and suffers too. What is to be done? You fool!

You have it!

In so many ways all of us will blame “them”. Who are “they”? Oh, those of us who will not behave? If a society organized by people and served obediently by people contains “trouble-makers” can it be honestly said that they are less the society that the rest? Look. Be honest. Seek to know, not to justify your predetermined position. One will never see truth through that kind of distortion. You are the man who is only interested in proving his foolish ways are correct and God-inspired in the face of tons of undeniable failure. I am talking to myself here. I am the world and the world is me. Love us. Unconditionally, love us.