A WHOOPER SWAN'S DIARY: 07/09/23

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!

Sunday, July 9, 2023

HU MAN IN THE ARENA

What is the meaning of “the man in the arena”? It has been told that the credit goes to that one. That would mean that one in the arena is totally responsible for the quality of the “show” does it not? When anyone asks “how?” it means that questioner does not really want an answer but wants to be told he does not need one. The question has been addressed to someone else. That is the place where all of us are stranded right now simply because we do not want to find out the truth so much as we want the one we ask to take over the responsibility for our lives. And it means the questioner is not looking for the way to live my life but really only wants to know, "how can I succeed in the society that has spelled out to me the right way of living?"

Real faith is intuitive knowledge. We have no faith. How come the Moon does not ask the learned physicist, “how?” How about a tiny weed growing through a crack in the cement of a sidewalk where you have stood? Are we not as worthy as the weed?

Where one human accepts, really accepts, as a fact, I am the human in the arena at all times, a whole different world instantly appears to that one brave no longer divided soul. Love swallows that one up and peace is all he or she knows. This all happens instantly, beyond time and thought. Yes, there is a gap.

I heard a loving human being say once, “I am so blessed to be the creator of a world where such as Bob Dylan, Jesus, Billy the kid and a weed that grew through cement of a sidewalk have lived”. Is that too much for anyone in the arena to comprehend? Just recall the weed in the cement, won’t you?