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, May 1, 2022

Beauty occurs when there is no separate self around. Beauty is pointless. The pointless is beautiful. It is recommended that one do and do often as many pointless activities as one can manage. In that way can it be possible to discover the value in the beautiful. It probably is so that some scientists will see evidence to show the Universe is coming apart gradually but some think it is, actually, self -creative.

 

Beauty probably plays a big part in that aspect.

Friday, April 29, 2022

 

Thinking In Its Proper Place


When you see, instantly you know what action to take. There is no choice to make. It is certain. It is done. 

Thinking can build a telescope and a rocket ship to the stars and account for money earned, saved and spent. And it can serve all all other mechanical operations it invents. But if you use thinking to guide your life psychologically from within what your life was soon will become a mechanical process. It is to be walking dead. There will be no creativity. There will be no love. You will be nagged by a recurring worry that some important thing is missing and you will not know what is lost. Like a machine you will repeat the same behaviors expecting different results so long as you shall happen to live. You will buy insurance, for example, expecting good health. You will invest money expecting to enjoy your old age. You will court the opposite sex and expect to find love. But love and enjoyment will stay away. Thinking is quite limited. Science makes many technological advances but always leaves many more to be explored. Thinking is quite limited. Science solves problems but creates many more. The missing ingredient in societies today is something that puts thinking in its proper place and leads a free human being on a living journey filled with love and peace and enjoyment and true abundance. It requires no naming and no religion and only is found by free people not being controlled by thought. Thinking is over-rated and quite limited. What is beyond it is unlimited.


Follow a butterfly. Imagine what the caterpillar realized when its cocoon opened.




Wednesday, April 27, 2022

 If there is a profound change now

the future will be new.

Monday, April 25, 2022

 BEYOND THINKING


Perhaps something which is very complex can be spoken simply. Once upon a time people on Planet Earth acted immediately in the now. Almost exclusively. Then thinking was introduced. At first on a limited basis. It grew rapidly. Without knowing it, people crossed a line into a world where thinking dominates action. Life changed.


Thinking is built on two things. Memory of a past which anticipates a future. The past and the future are its foundation, in other words. “I have been this I will be that.” I ate strawberries in the past and I want to eat them again. Question that goes unasked is: who is it says I ate strawberries and desire to eat them again? That, whatever it is, is now in charge of your life and is going to run it from now on is why it is important to ask that question. What is it? From where did it come? How real is it? How reliable? It may seem that the one who thinks is who I am but is it so? “I am” just might be something that was here before thinking began to predominate.


A most influential book in the field of psychology was published in the 1970’s. It definitely and brazenly declared a breakdown of the bi-cameral mind (brain) occurred centuries earlier and was the dawn of consciousness for human beings. People were at that time freed from being controlled by God. And yet, people who have had extreme  difficulty adjusting to the world of man in recent times, through serious psychic exploration, have become aware, at least to an extent, of a fact that all time is in the present moment and, therefore, effective action is always clear and instant. These ones claim their life has shifted from a difficult one to a thoroughly enjoyable one for which change they cannot find sufficient words to express extreme gratitude. And they uniformly declare for them “real” consciousness arose with the reduction in the value of a separate self rather than an elevation of its importance. The consciousness they speak of includes the whole world or the big picture. 


No attempt will be here made to go any further on the matter since the writer knows only those who are truly interested will go to the trouble to find for themselves what the author is discussing. All depends on you finally. If you find you will not bother to search for the psychology book and read it as a beginning you are not ready for the challenge. Perhaps at a later time you will be moved to dig for answers if the question sufficiently pressures you to do so. The problems associated with thinking as described here cannot, of course, be resolved by more thinking in the same dimension. Albert Einstein spoke that and realized that to continue to do the same thing expecting a different result is insanity. That is why this dialog ends here.


Saturday, April 23, 2022

 WHEN A CHILD MET CHRISTIANITY


I was told as an innocent young child that Jesus, a very nice man, died willingly for my sins, my wrongdoings, my shortcomings and the thought of it made me feel a terrible guilt. The guilt made me consider joining the outfit that taught me that message to perhaps in that way assuage my guilt. But, truly, at a deeper level, inside me, I was wishing Jesus had not died for me at all; that He had instead allowed me to bear the consequences of my own failures since it was so obvious to me that He was so much more than I would ever be. As it turns out, He did just that for me and all others.


Many, many years later I listened to someone speak to a group concerning the truth of it all in the manner of Jesus dialoging with a gathering of friends. He concluded by saying when you see the terrible dilemma of the whole human population you must feel, not bad for “yourself”, but bad for the whole of humanity from which you are inseparable, you feel utterly responsible. And in that I felt the truth of the story of Jesus’s sacrificial death. Real action has no future. There is such a thing as vanishing as a separate self and not wanting ever to be found. That one leaves your salvation in your hands out of love. And I could no longer take the sacrifice of Jesus personally. 


Jesus may have told of what he had seen, to Mary Magdalene for one, and the story was told and retold for many generations before Christianity as it exists today arose.  It had by then become possible by pasting together selected pieces of gossip over centuries to present a tale wherein the leading character dies on a cross a bloody death to save all the rest of mankind. It was the Romans who saw its potential as an organized program around which to reunite its fallen empire. It is put together by thought to promise all troubled peoples a Heaven somewhere else after death by telling it that some other “perfect”person died for the forgiveness of all their sins and omissions.


In the telling it became a crucifixion and actual death of the body and resurrection for a reason. Made into a personal sacrifice one could tell it and keep hold of the old favorites of the  personal self, now saved for eternity, along with its connections to all its favorite traditions, with all its allegiances, desires, ambitions, greed, lust, plans, etc. It was adopted as the official religion of Rome in that form and continues down to the present age. Although the Romans could see the popular attraction of such a teaching, they failed to  see that selling God is never going to lead to anything good hence the falling of Rome. Christianity is passed off or justified as a tale of the killing of innocence, as if that is a good thing, a sacred thing, but face it, adults do not read it that way for they are too far from innocence, kids do. And Kids are struck in terror by the tale…I will get slaughtered if I remain like a child, therefore, I must adjust to a world that includes the killing off of the pure and innocent. And most of us do adjust and become adults. Strange it is that Jesus had admonished his listeners that they must become as children to enter the Kingdom of God. Adults accept the preaching of a personal savior which allows them to remain separate from “bad guys” who do not have the same savior and now we understand why Christians are so willing, eager even, to send armies of their own children to kill humans in droves who are seen as in conflict with their personal selfish interests as “Christians”. 



Jesus flew all right but not from one place to another place in space. His escape was within entirely. The true story of Jesus is decidedly not a guilt trip. It is a complete release. Heaven he taught about is not in some place…away from Earth…it is here now. And now contains the future. So, real action has no future. Eternity is not a long, long, long, long time. It is now and the future as one. There is such a thing as vanishing as a separate self and not wanting ever to be found. Thus a sudden realization cheats death of all its power.


Friday, April 22, 2022

 THE 4-LETTER WORD


Listen, up, people, to what I will tell…


Love is not elusive or mysterious or fickle nor is it a 4-letter word. 


The word is not the thing. Love can have as many vowels and consonants as she pleases and then some more if she wanted to be one of your words but she does not. What you experience and call love is not love at all but a selfish game whereby you spell love and bind her and expect her to serve your books. Burn all books containing the 4-letter word that curses love. Love knows how to leave when it is time for her to go. When you come around. Offering a ring and a promise you will never keep. It is you who are elusive and mysterious and fickle unpredictable and dumb. 


You are the only life form on the Planet that sets traps for and tries to own innocence. Mine, you say. Another 4-letter word. You better listen up if you ever expect to be loved for one moment by any loving thing. By the way, God, not the speakable word, is love, but not the speakable word. 


Release her and let her know you have done it. Now. No, in a flash release everything you have named and mean it, if you can. Is it possible for your brain to be so empty? Once it was and yet alive and functioning well. You are the living proof of that fact. Do you not want to find out what life is like without a word? It might thrill you. Are you afraid you won’t be able to get your words back? What does that say about you? What have you become, my sweet young thing? A sponge? It is not an evil act to learn words but it is evil to forget who you are in the process. What chance do you have now? What good are you to you even? 


When something has no actual existence, is not a fact, but has the appearance of existence, what do you call it? A trick? Said the Joker to the Thief. We all want to know love as a fact yet settle for a trick because it feels safer. What a mess we are in. 


Whenever somebody does not receive a nice living by making bowls but makes a living doing work for an employer who sells bowls and tells him what to do and how to do it what do you call it? A trick? Said the Joker to the Thief. Again, why do we settle for the trick? It feels safer. We are afraid. The employer knows we are.



Does health actually exist or is it only to be found in books? Does a doctor have health to give or books describing health which word is not the thing? Why do we settle for a trick? Said the Joker to the Thief. It feels safer. We are afraid. The doctor knows we are afraid. 


Does a justice system have any justice? Said the Joker to the Thief. The lawyer knows we are afraid. 


Do weapons make a society less violent?


Does the media possess the knowledge you need in order to be safe? 


Does the person who tells that he has found God know God? His or her “self” hides behind the statement: I have found…Said the Joker.

  

Look into these matters. All these things we settle for which seem to promise safety are, when examined, in fact impotent and doomed.

Thursday, April 21, 2022

 ANOTHER HEART


Maybe “heart” the word as it has been used by poets and seers and lovers to point to some truth inside all people of all ages and both genders and all religions and all walks of life that is not an organ of the body that pumps blood symbolizes a complete psychic system free from problems of any kind. Could it be an actual  capability we have to “see” the whole picture at once with clear, complete, unfragmented awareness? It could be experienced as a song or a deep feeling of assurance or stillness or colors or in some other way. Is it a demonstration that words can symbolize what is felt when one realizes nothing is really something and something is nothing at all? Does it stand the world image the mind has constructed on its head? It does.