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, October 11, 2021

 MORE ON SYSTEMS


Systems are by and large dumb and dishonest. This is another way to recognize that you are involved in a system. Here are a few examples. Chris Columbus was sailing West to get to the East, he thought. He named the residents he found when he struck what is now called America Indians because he thought he was in India. Later, when it was determined Columbus was greatly in error about his whereabouts, did the system he worked for correct the error? No. Until this day the aboriginal peoples in America are called Indians. Had they been called Americans, oh boy, it would have been far more difficult to justify completely displacing them. Correct? But since they are Indians, well, Hell, they are in the wrong place. Then, when black slavery was abolished it was thought, “Hell, send them back to Africa!” They too are in the wrong place. "This land is our land!" cried the immigrant. And it has long been taught that white children are superior to black children because they make much better grades on average in school. Schools they build! Duh? All traditions assembled under any system are contradictory and confusing, and especially so for children who are not yet dumbed down. They are taught to sit in an assigned seat for up to an hour at a time without talking to a neighbor or getting up and moving about. And they are taught to be friendly and to get plenty of exercise. And to stand up for their right to be free. They are taught not to ask a neighbor child for help on a test and taught it is divine to be helpful. They are taught sex is bad and that it is the most fun there ever was. They teach children to restrain and to assert. Teach them to dress alike and to be themselves and not to be vain. Children are trained to refrain from judgement and to judge everybody. Violence is condemned except for obligations to kill when it is required. One should respect and honor all people and yet despise your rivals in every contest and think and behave as if your school is better than their school, your country is better than theirs and your family is better. You are taught to love your parents even when you do not. And on and on and on. I even once read a sign nailed to the door of a church widely attended in Austin Texas that stated If you are hungry and in need of food or you need shelter please contact the appropriate governmental authorities as we do not provide such help. It is beginning to become  commonly recognized that to be free requires one to be free from conflicting ideals. When it is widely understood there will be no one to serve in a system of any kind. Systems will be obsolete and only free humans will there be. You may think this to be impossible. It will happen when enough take the trouble to find out for themselves a way far superior to any manmade system that works for everybody because it was set by the force that made the Universe and just as possible as life on Earth itself.

Sunday, October 10, 2021

 On Or Off


The system is like a bunch of roads you ask permission to walk on.That is the key to finding out you are in the system. The system is enough to make anybody sick. All know it. No argument there. But when you get sick what do you do? You turn to the system that made you sick to fix you. The system breeds crooks. That can make anybody sick. But when the crook strikes what do you do? Turn to the system that made the crook to catch the crook and make things right. The system requires everybody to have a job who is able to work or to starve. But the system sets your pay and provides that you may be fired or laid off. When you are fired what do you do? You turn to the system that fired you to put you back to work for them hoping they won’t fire you this time. How many roads must a woman walk down before you call her a woman? By the way, the wealthiest members of the system are made sick by the system so nobody who walks those roads is exempt from its many troubles. The crooks the system creates are always at work each stealing from weaker thieves than themselves, We sometimes call the troubles arising from the system the Blues. We sing, “Blues stay away from me”.  And others. But what do we do when we get the blues? Right. What else? The system. The system makes its rules for anyone to oppose it. Try it long enough, fighting the system, and you will learn that fighting it is part of the system so even if you were to win your fight you are in the system and it will not change. Wars are part of the system. Economic collapses are a part of it, too. All are planned for by the system. 


A system can be likened to a wheel built by pride. Every baby, including you, started out in a state of complete humility. A part of no system, the babies ask no one for permission to be alive. Humility leads to gifts. Gifts lead to pride. Pride leads to a downfall. Downfalls lead back to humility. That is the wheel. Back at the beginning now. Question. Are you going to ride the wheel again? How many times? It takes no guru to realize that if I choose this time to remain in humility I can  receive gifts by simply staying there, in humility, and avoiding pride. Can I? Of course I can. Will I? Who knows? Would you rather ride the wheel some more?  

Monday, October 4, 2021

 It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born. Bob Dylan 

                                                                           

Thursday, September 30, 2021

 A Separated World



By thought human animals separate things of all kinds. Thought is used as a clever. It is done, it seems, to make life easier to sort and organize and operate within. See, how even life itself is separated from the living creature by the very practice? What the clever does is to make each thinker soon see itself as against the others it has chopped off. Husbands go against wives. Wives go against husbands. Parents go against children. Children go against parents. Christians go against Jews. Capitalists go against Communists. Communists go against capitalists. Rich go against poor. Poor go against rich. On and on and on. 


It certainly has become the human way of life. We go against anything we see as a problem. Fight. Fight. FIGHT! is the basis of every system. Good against evil. In the beginning was a Tree. It is so obvious, is it not? Evil is the creation of us all. Could it be this simple? That it is the division within a human being thrust outward that divides all things? So, can one human being look into why he or she is divided within against him or herself and, so, end the conflict inside and out? Of course it can be done! Look into it.




Wednesday, September 29, 2021

 HUMAN PROPERTY


This much is known. At some time after the beginning of human beings on Earth there came to be a notion that every man needs a woman of his own who belongs to him and no other man and that every woman needs to belong to one man and no other man. In some locales a man was said to be entitled to more than one woman but all such were his own women and belonged to no one else. In other locales it was decided some women were entitled to own more than one man as their exclusive property. The thing we know is that there came to be enforced everywhere a notion that one human could and should be the property of one other human. By what support in reality under the stars can it be said a human is the property of any other? Indecency was born. That brings us to the subordinate rule that the offspring born to these unions of ownership of a human being by another human being belong to the two adults. The kids began to be regularly referred to as “my children” and “our children”. By what support in reality under the stars can it be said a human is property? This nonsense can and has become unquestioned fact only because the people trust words more than they trust themselves. “My” and  “our” rule over intelligence and “I” and “me” do likewise. As a simple, clear fact no human being belongs to any other.


Animals exist. Human animals exist and are aware of the fact. The conscious awareness of the fact of one’s existence is infinite and shared by all humans. It does not separate us from the other forms of life in the least. It gives awareness. Mankind developed language. The languages grew in scope to deal with the growing practice of trade or commerce. As deals were made through language and broken wars happened. Slaves were taken as one of the spoils of war. Women were taken and brutalized. Slaves and women became commodities. Children, women, and slaves became commercial properties sought after by warriors. It’s a mess. The mess has been incorporated into the languages and is spread and widespread. People think they own each other or belong to each other and that wars are inevitable. The mess grows messier every day. So, what can be done?


The only answer is consciousness. In the state of mind “I am” lie dignity and decency as if they are blowing in the Wind. These things cannot be cultivated but can be found inside every human and given priority they once had. It begins with an admission that my way of life is indecent and lacks dignity. If made at a deep level by a serious human being no more is required as decency and dignity blow in under their own power. No human is better than any other human. No human saves any other human. Bodies are born, live, and die. Consciousness is everlasting.

Monday, September 27, 2021

 THE TROUBLES WE FACE ARE AT THE SAME TIME VERY COMPLEX AND ALSO VERY SIMPLE.


THAT TOO MUCH? 


I tell you the problems we have identified so far are the natural consequence of a life form, in this case, human, in which, for the most part, all have allowed themselves to become addicted to symbols or words. By that, I mean we serve them religiously without even knowing we do it and it is therefore next to impossible for us to give them up. But it is not completely impossible. We can recover our sanity. Really all those we identify as geniuses are the most adept at serving concepts made of words, including, of course, equations of mathematics. We give to them awards and praise and follow them into a deeper and deeper sickness. It is all about awakening a lost skill that sees through words sideways in a way that  makes them servants to reality. There is great danger in repetition of words without knowing what is the true meaning which is always beyond words. Call it heart. Heart must rule. Compassion must reign as slogans die for the heart to fly! 

Kill them off constantly. Answers blow in the wind.


Scientific projects tend to ignore this factor altogether or not to apply it in an important way in the work because they do not know how to approach the unknown. Feelings embarrass the smug who only pretend to control. Building the first atomic 

bomb did not bring security, it increased insecurity many times over. Let go.


THAT TOO MUCH? 


Friday, September 24, 2021

 Voice-over: And every young child who races inside imagination after a vanishing train is scolded in a classroom although imagination will always be greater than knowledge! (Albert Einstein)