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, September 1, 2022

 DIAGNOSIS  HUMAN


If a man says "I am a part of an indivisible whole (such as a religion or a nation, humanity, etc. and lives as if he is separate who is that man really?

 



(Hint: he is the divided up nut case most humans are and a liar) 


It simply counts for little what one thinks or believes. What we know is what counts. Such a man is living a double life. That means he is a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction. If you knew and cared about that man and he asked you why he is so sorrowful what would you tell him?

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

 GOING EASY


The past and the future are contained in the now. That means life and death always travel together. To live and die at the same time means no time inwardly and that means absolute freedom inwardly from that trivial concern about myself which is time. So, the only thing that ends at death is ego that never did exist having been concocted over time through human thought. And so nothing lasting cares a hoot about “where do we go when we die?” 


Show-offs  are bookish about life. Such outward show of talent is a sign of an inner sense of lack. It is the very real lack of the child’s profound understanding that the Emperor robed for a show is actually naked. Reading and study is good but is good for remembering where you keep your toothbrush and the tooth paste and your keys, for example, and not of any use in understanding yourself. It is actually an escape from that vital individual effort. Each is a competent scientist in their own life. 


It is just not so that God made the world and added humans to the mix to search for and publish works of other men to be deciphered and studied by a few which will resolve our concern about why. That has always brought conflict and wars rather than peace. And all that surrounds that malarky is superstitious nonsense that when applied has resulted in human sacrifice of unspeakably horrible descriptions and all know it and yet it continues. No book written and published by the hand of man is a proper substitute for the content of each human born. There are more links in a human brain than there are atoms in the Universe. A free human being never explains him or herself to anyone. Know thyself. Make that book the priority. Embark upon a course of action that depends upon no authoritarian dictum whatsoever. Find that garden where real dreams blossom. Enjoy life.


Trust the garden you have found within you to be the way to act as a whole being without contradiction so complete it does not arouse more conflict, sorrow and suffering. It is the way to draw from the Universe such harmonious responses as an orchestra following a highly skilled conductor. There is absolute proof in the music that follows that reality is a thrilling piece. This is no theory or method. It is an actual way to live daily and not just when the crisis is upon us and the war has begun. It cannot be taught to you by another. You have to discover it.


We are to cross a river of ignorance together, not separately, one a teacher the other a student. Read this writing as a mirror to observe yourself.

Monday, August 29, 2022

 LIFE DEATH LOVE ARE ONE


The question concerning what is there after death is rather meaningless for you if you do not know how to live here now. Is that not so? At least explore into whether you are equipped, as you are, to live here at peace in this lifetime. By peace is meant a state in which one does not let other people get his kicks for him. Then there is more meaning to the first question…what is next? That question may be quite different for you when you are content and fulfilled to be as you are now rather than fearful.


I became attracted to a tale about a youngster who lived in the Nineteenth Century in New Mexico Territory branded with the monicker Billy the Kid by those who work for money making up falsehoods about someone to build a legendary person in the minds of readers. That Kid did not fear death. He may have died young but he lived freely outside any concern about how other people saw him and that is why he died young and not because of the number of revolutions of Earth around the Sun since the day of his birth. Youth is a state of mind. It interested me that such a human lived here. I spent years passionately digging into the nature of such a human as that. However many years, Billy lived in greatness. How thrilling!


You will get very little out of this reading as a writing. You must find out for yourself what is possible for you! Step out of the mainstream of human existence and step into the arena of a free life. That freedom is love. When it is done, there begins a recognition of your true relationship with those caught in the mainstream.

Sunday, August 28, 2022

 Free People Do Not Compare Or Measure


Here’s where man and woman went wrong simply put. In a human lies the consciousness of all humanity since the beginning. In the beginning there was no center or self perceived to be within a human body just as there is none in any other living thing. Each human developed that theoretical center inside the body over time by the process called thinking…knowledge derived from limited experiences recorded as memory in the brain (which we do now with computers) constructs the concept of a self within us and gives it a name to be called upon to justify itself to other imaginary selves in the rest of the tribe. The self thus invented by thought has to measure itself against another. And as we have thought about this we have constructed a very complex mental vocabulary to make more real to us the “psyche” or the psychological self or the ego. It is not there in reality and never has it been. It is made-up. It results from “I think therefore I am”. It is a mental prop or dummy as a stand-in for a would-be thinker. Thinking happens all right but there is no thinker.  


A deep, serious examination of the matter will reveal an entirely different dimension where there is no ego. Furthermore, it will reveal along side that fake concept of me as separate from you is another false concept that the fake self made over time by thought needs its own time to become something better. Do not think this is a theoretical formula for how to live. All life is interrelated as a fact. It is not important at all for you to agree or disagree with this. It’s made to encourage the reader to explore into the self and determine what is so. It is no use for you to believe me or trust me or follow me at all. This matter is all about freedom. Simply look into it if there is a passionate desire to do so. Passion will do the work.


Once I was convinced that anybody with a great talent or capacity was far better off than myself. I suffered about it and wished for a great talent. When I undertook the inward study of life it threw me into a circle of talented people. Once I got acquainted I was shocked at first to learn they were just as unhappy about themselves as I had been. Any outward show of talent is a show of an inward sense of lack. One friend with a gaggle of fans told me, “When they tell me I am great it immediately causes me to think to myself, ‘if you only knew how disgusting I really am you would not ask for my autograph’”.  Find out how wonderful it is to be free of all of that.

Saturday, August 27, 2022

 GREAT BIG INSIGHT


As I write I am seeing and so it can be said that the seeing is writing, not me. So far, I see, I have been limited to the use of small, manageable examples out of life that are common to us all in order to attempt to suddenly point out that this example is universal to all issues of humanity and make possible a great insight, a timeless one, which covers all our issues and that great insight has the power to set a human being free!


We all want a someone to love who will love us in return. Right? There are endless tragic stories about attempts to bring that about which have always failed and the stories have a common ending…oh, well, at least we (they) tried and maybe if we keep up this trying we will eventually make a happy world out of this one. So, what if the unhappiness we all share is not actual but is made by us because we insist on holding onto old stories that did not work out?


What if the Power that created the Universe as we know it did not bring about this trouble we do? And it continues only because we are not aware how we do it? We are in need of an insight into this question. 


 We do not ever look at the big picture. We work on the little pictures of many problems, one at a time, as if we do not know they are all…all…interrelated and because of that interrelatedness which love put here an instantaneous freedom is always there awaiting the insight. Look.


An American Indian living here now bears a grudge. He or she bitterly resents what the white Europeans did to their way of life. Some organize to change things around this issue, to set things right. This is political. Some changes are made but the issue remains just as strong as before. And other tribes, large nations and small, every where on Earth are currently mistreating their neighbors right now as if we  have learned nothing from the past. Why?


We do not ever look at the big picture. We work on the little pictures of many problems, one at a time, as if we do not know they are all…all…interrelated and because of that interrelatedness which love put here an instantaneous freedom is always there awaiting the insight. Look.


You may ask, “If I agree to look at the interrelatedness of all my troubles at once what will happen to me?” Or, you may ask, “How can I look at the interrelatedness of all my troubles at once?”  I say you are once more refusing to look at the whole scene and will do nearly anything to keep from looking. Look. If you have the insight you will have changed all of mankind in a great way instantly! You will have introduced a blast of real freedom to humanity. Look. Somebody please look. Won’t you?


Friday, August 26, 2022

 What Am I To Do?


A young teenaged boy tells his father, “Daddy, I have been thinking about my future and what is best for me to do to have a future I want. And, I have decided it is best for me to go to college and get an advanced diploma which will enable me to get a much higher paying job because it costs an awful lot these days to live well and I want to live well. It will cost even more in a few years. So, it is very costly for me to attend college. I will need a loan which means I will be in debt for quite a few years after college. But I think it is a far better thing to do than to get a low paying job now and be stuck in a poor lifestyle all my life. Do you agree?


The father was silent for a little while then spoke to his son this way-


“My boy, I have listened carefully to what you tell me you think to be the smartest thing for you. Now, I want to ask you to consider just how reliable your thinking is and whether you want to follow your best thinking in a life plan for yourself. So, it is important to find out if there is any other approach that is superior to thinking. Is that not so?”


The boy was confused by his father’s response but said, “I guess that is possible but I really doubt it. I must do what I think is best or just gamble. I want a good life, Daddy.”


Said the father to his son, “ I see what you mean. I did that very same thing when I was your age. I regret it. For that reason I wish to encourage you to find out for yourself whether there is a better way. However, if you go the way you have described and do what you think to be best I will support your decision as far as I am able but if things turn sour for you remember I suggested you look to find if there is a completely different way to live and check it out then. What do you say?”


The boy was pleased his father was so kind to him in the matter so he said, “Father I would like to hear more now about the “other way” to go. Will you tell me more? I do not wish to regret one day that I did what I thought to be right.”


The father spoke thusly,” Son, I suggest that you ask yourself whether there is an intelligence available to you that is superior to “thinking”. We all think. It is my view that thinking is quite a limited tool and is good for what it is good for and terrible as the master of a life. I discovered in me as a fact that a much more reliable intelligence is there. It comes from a perfectly still mind having no thoughts at all. But, Son, it will do you no good to accept what I say. It must come from your own investigation so it is your truth. It was that way for me. Nobody could teach me the truth. It is in me. Its is in you. 


However, I do want to give you this- what I depend upon is that for me to live today fully engaged in the moment that I am in doing what I naturally am drawn to do now, what interests me now, from within a still mind that is not concerned about time and is open to the whole of life is going to be the most reliable course to follow. Does that make sense to you? If so, dig into it and find out. That is a real education! You have told me your God is money in that it alone is going to provide a good life. I will go so far now to say to you that rather than deciding to go into debt just now find another person who needs help today and help that other person, not because he is worse off but because he is you.


“Huh?”








Thursday, August 25, 2022

 It Happens This Way


I tell you it happened to you this way.  It happened this way to me. 


I was born. New. Empty of all thought.  As a new-born, life observed the things around the body gathering sense data, storing it in the brain as memories with no limited language involved as every animal does. Sometime in the first year words began to be spoken from memory of sounds spoken to the baby by older humans. Through repetition a language made by humans was learned. Everybody was doing it.


At a critical moment the idea was introduced that later would be called “time”. I was taught to think in terms of time. I got it that there were present people of different ages…and that I was going to “grow up” in time. I was asked in many ways “what do you want to be when you are older”? The effect of this verbal dance was that I built in my brain through memory a fiction that there is a separate “somebody” inside the body who has a “future” and a scheme began to teach “me”  how to make plans for that fictional character I learned to call “I”  and “me” and “myself”. Others called me by a “name”. “Johnny” was assigned to the “somebody” I was supposed to be. 


The important thing is that nobody pointed out that by mastering the game outlined above was I actually going to limit that baby who took the first breath to a life as a stupid, angry puppet manufactured by human beings out of what was originally a quite amazing living creation of an unknown beginning. The human teachers who molded “Johnny” did not point this out because  they had been limited in the same stupid way themselves as robots managed as  pieces of property belonging to a bunch of organized nut cases. It all boils down to the fact that “we” who call ourselves “humans” have made a world that is terrible…horrible… and “we” are all to blame. The inmates are in charge! Anything we do without first making a complete change in ourselves is doomed to make things worse and worse. That is the fix we are in. Do not agree or disagree with this. Find out!