People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
James Baldwin
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Hello Val
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When I was a senior in high school I went on a field trip to Washington, D.C. Part of the trip was a visit with one of the Supreme Court Justices, Harold Burton. In his office Judge Burton showed us the files of books on his shelf. They were records of all the disputations, opinions and decisions of the Supreme Court dating back to its very first session. There were pieces of paper jutting out of the tops of many of the books and he explained that every time a former case was entered into the proceedings of the Court he would place a marker in that case for reminders.
Consider that man's library, the libraries of the other 8 judges, the libraries of all the various state and municipal courts throughout the country, the records of the US Senate and House of Representatives, state and local governments, and we find a vast and complex history of the legal proceedings of our land.
And the Unites States is just a mere 236 years old. Imagine what exists in other countries with a conscientious legal tradition, Great Britain for example, which could go back for thousands of years. It seems as though world history is written in laws and jurisprudence, and that a judge could not make a righteous decision without consulting the legal minds that went before him all the way back to the beginning, Hammurabi.
The history of the world is not all written in laws of course, but it is one way we can get trapped into derivative thinking. There are also the unwritten laws: custom, tradition, legend, lore. The human race loves its tractions, religious and secular. Some of those traditions come from ancient legends and superstitions, handed down without much question from generation to generation. But many of them still have a powerful influence on our behavior.
Some people are obsessed with keeping records even when there is no need. Some live their lives by the zodiac or other heavenly influences. Some do what their fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers did, carrying on a family tradition. Some people carry hereditary beliefs with them and others believe there is a genetic streak in a family line that produces their behavior.
I can see how easy it is to move unnoticeably from the dry, sturdy, dependable world of legal tomes to the colorful, mysterious, uncertain world of superstition, completely passing the world of natural law on both sides.
Oh how easy it is to get trapped ! !
DB _Vagabond Journeys No. 1892
Never give up.
Showing posts with label natural law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label natural law. Show all posts
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
What Do You Think
My mind is a garden. My thoughts are the seeds.
My harvest will be either flowers or weeds.
Mel Weldon
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"Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;"
(Shakespeare)
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"Oh, no. Not another acting lesson." Yes, another acting lesson. So pay attention.
One Autumn day I was talking with a young actor, just beginning his career. He was asking me about the acting experience. We were sitting outside and the ground was littered with brightly colored leaves. I picked one up, a particularly beautiful one, and I told him tht in order to be an artist we have to create something as beautiful as that leaf, and that nature does it by the gezillions every year and then just throws them away. The point of the lesson was that art, just like science, depends upon natural law.
When you go to watch a play you are watching a story unfold. And the story is being told through the actions of real live characters. The actor loans his body and his voice to the character he is portraying and those are the things you see and hear. But there is something else, also on loan to the character, which you don't see and that is the actors thoughts, the freedom to think the way his character thinks. You don't see that thought process going on. You only see the results.
There is clearly also a life lesson involved here. It is very difficult to know what the result of our own thinking is going to be, most of the time. The actor knows ahead of time what the result is so he can organize his thinking to fit that unfolding. But for us in real life we can only guess or assume that we are thinking correctly and that our thoughts will bring about a harmonious result. When we get an inharmonious result and end up with something we didn't want or expect we can blame the economy, the weather, other people or "circumstances over which we had no control." After we've spent a lot of time and energy doing that, we inevitably get back to the conclusion that we weren't thinking right to begin with. In the major and minor events of life how we think has a certain effect on the results. The one thing no one else has any control over is the freedom to think for ourselves, no matter what. Some well known writers composed novels in their heads when they were incarcerated in some prison for a long time without access to pen and paper, Other prisoners just disintegrated into weeds.
One of the grand unnoticeable facts of life is that we have the freedom to choose what we are going to think about. But with that freedom comes another fact, that what we think about is planting seeds for a future harvest of either good or bad. That's natural law.
DB - The Vagabond
*************************
My harvest will be either flowers or weeds.
Mel Weldon
************************
"Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;"
(Shakespeare)
------------------------------------
"Oh, no. Not another acting lesson." Yes, another acting lesson. So pay attention.
One Autumn day I was talking with a young actor, just beginning his career. He was asking me about the acting experience. We were sitting outside and the ground was littered with brightly colored leaves. I picked one up, a particularly beautiful one, and I told him tht in order to be an artist we have to create something as beautiful as that leaf, and that nature does it by the gezillions every year and then just throws them away. The point of the lesson was that art, just like science, depends upon natural law.
When you go to watch a play you are watching a story unfold. And the story is being told through the actions of real live characters. The actor loans his body and his voice to the character he is portraying and those are the things you see and hear. But there is something else, also on loan to the character, which you don't see and that is the actors thoughts, the freedom to think the way his character thinks. You don't see that thought process going on. You only see the results.
There is clearly also a life lesson involved here. It is very difficult to know what the result of our own thinking is going to be, most of the time. The actor knows ahead of time what the result is so he can organize his thinking to fit that unfolding. But for us in real life we can only guess or assume that we are thinking correctly and that our thoughts will bring about a harmonious result. When we get an inharmonious result and end up with something we didn't want or expect we can blame the economy, the weather, other people or "circumstances over which we had no control." After we've spent a lot of time and energy doing that, we inevitably get back to the conclusion that we weren't thinking right to begin with. In the major and minor events of life how we think has a certain effect on the results. The one thing no one else has any control over is the freedom to think for ourselves, no matter what. Some well known writers composed novels in their heads when they were incarcerated in some prison for a long time without access to pen and paper, Other prisoners just disintegrated into weeds.
One of the grand unnoticeable facts of life is that we have the freedom to choose what we are going to think about. But with that freedom comes another fact, that what we think about is planting seeds for a future harvest of either good or bad. That's natural law.
DB - The Vagabond
*************************
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Clarified Consciousness 5/03/09
We should free ourselves of the prejudice that rational insight is "mysterious."
Tim Crane
*************
Welcome aboard.
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A mystery is a phenomenon for which we have no explanation. Fortunately for the human race there are people, scientists and philosophers, who will not settle for the "unexplainable." Things happen according to law: natural law and (yes) divine law. And laws are identifiable, measurable and explainable.
One of the most graphic examples of natural law is happening right now in our northern hemisphere. We call it Spring. The farmer doesn't make his crops grow. Natural law does that, but the farmer needs to know and respect the natural law to bring his crops to harvest. I often tell people when asked that the art of acting must conform to natural law. In that case the farmer's field is the actor's mind, but the law is the same. The end result in both cases may seem miraculous, but it is not mysterious.
Great marvels performed by spiritual leaders of the past certainly seemed mysterious but when explanations were asked for by rational thinkers, they were forthcoming. That we can't understand some of those explanations doesn't make them mysterious. It simply means we haven't yet graduated from elementary school.
The ancient prophets knew about divine law and some of them wrote about it. They were not irrational thinkers. How did Moses bring bread down from the sky to feed his followers? What was Elisha doing while he was sitting on a rock making a tempest brew up out of a clear sky? How did Jesus change the water into wine? "I can of my own self do nothing" he said. And "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets." That is, divine law.
There may be many phenomena in this universe that we will never know about, but that doesn't mean that we couldn't understand them if we did know. Some ancient peoples used to worship the rising of the sun, the phases of the moon and other phenomena as gods or acts of god that needed to be feared and praised. Some peoples still do. But that useless, primitive theology was dispelled by rational thinkers uncovering what those phenomena are about and the laws which govern them. Some people still bow down to hurricanes and earthquakes. Why is it that many people don't want to accept the discoveries of the scientific mind as anything but mysterious? To say that it is God's will that the hurricane destroyed one house while it left standing the one next to it is nonsense.
Some pseudo prophets have come forward with their own interpretation of various scriptures but none of them seem to agree with each other. Theories abound in the scientific, philosophical and religious communities, but to accept any of them as facts until they have been rationally proved and their laws discovered is wasteful foolishness.
How far along the trail have we come from the babbling tower? Some have come further than others, but it's all relative, since we are all still in mental and spiritual infancy. But I don't think the human race will progress very quickly toward enlightenment until we stop accepting things as mere "mysteries" and let it go at that.
If this entry offends or insults your religious beliefs I can understand that, believe me I can, but just know that the words here do not come from shallow thinking.
DB _ Vagabond Journeys
__________________
May you see new blossoms today.
*************************
Tim Crane
*************
Welcome aboard.
_____________
A mystery is a phenomenon for which we have no explanation. Fortunately for the human race there are people, scientists and philosophers, who will not settle for the "unexplainable." Things happen according to law: natural law and (yes) divine law. And laws are identifiable, measurable and explainable.
One of the most graphic examples of natural law is happening right now in our northern hemisphere. We call it Spring. The farmer doesn't make his crops grow. Natural law does that, but the farmer needs to know and respect the natural law to bring his crops to harvest. I often tell people when asked that the art of acting must conform to natural law. In that case the farmer's field is the actor's mind, but the law is the same. The end result in both cases may seem miraculous, but it is not mysterious.
Great marvels performed by spiritual leaders of the past certainly seemed mysterious but when explanations were asked for by rational thinkers, they were forthcoming. That we can't understand some of those explanations doesn't make them mysterious. It simply means we haven't yet graduated from elementary school.
The ancient prophets knew about divine law and some of them wrote about it. They were not irrational thinkers. How did Moses bring bread down from the sky to feed his followers? What was Elisha doing while he was sitting on a rock making a tempest brew up out of a clear sky? How did Jesus change the water into wine? "I can of my own self do nothing" he said. And "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets." That is, divine law.
There may be many phenomena in this universe that we will never know about, but that doesn't mean that we couldn't understand them if we did know. Some ancient peoples used to worship the rising of the sun, the phases of the moon and other phenomena as gods or acts of god that needed to be feared and praised. Some peoples still do. But that useless, primitive theology was dispelled by rational thinkers uncovering what those phenomena are about and the laws which govern them. Some people still bow down to hurricanes and earthquakes. Why is it that many people don't want to accept the discoveries of the scientific mind as anything but mysterious? To say that it is God's will that the hurricane destroyed one house while it left standing the one next to it is nonsense.
Some pseudo prophets have come forward with their own interpretation of various scriptures but none of them seem to agree with each other. Theories abound in the scientific, philosophical and religious communities, but to accept any of them as facts until they have been rationally proved and their laws discovered is wasteful foolishness.
How far along the trail have we come from the babbling tower? Some have come further than others, but it's all relative, since we are all still in mental and spiritual infancy. But I don't think the human race will progress very quickly toward enlightenment until we stop accepting things as mere "mysteries" and let it go at that.
If this entry offends or insults your religious beliefs I can understand that, believe me I can, but just know that the words here do not come from shallow thinking.
DB _ Vagabond Journeys
__________________
May you see new blossoms today.
*************************
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