Cosmic Law Prime

Our topic in this episode is cosmic laws. They are not positive laws at all. They are not made up by human minds. They are not rules. And they are not written down in words.

I will share with you now the cosmic law prime, the cosmic law first principle, which all other cosmic laws serve. And I warn you ahead of time that your left brain will quickly seek to dismiss it as some platitude or nice idea rather than the golden front gate to cosmic laws. This is normal and natural. 

In fact, the enlightened Jesuit Priest Anthony de Mello captured very well just how this kind of revelation works to show us reality as it is without our concepts and judgments. In his book, The Song of the Bird, de Mello retells an old story by a Chinese Zen master. De Mello writes: “Before one studies zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters. After a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters. After enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters are once again waters.”

Transcript

One of the most basic skills of a lawyer is knowing where to find the law — or, usually, the various laws that apply to a particular legal question or problem. That skill requires study, knowledge and practice. Those laws — the ones that humans relate to on a daily basis in their business and personal lives — are referred to as “positive laws.” “Positive” in this sense means not the opposite of negative but rather that these laws are “posited,” or put forth, literally in written words, by the minds of lawmakers, usually a legislative or regulatory body of some sort. Positive laws also are produced by the minds of judges of various sorts who interpret and apply the laws in specific matters before them. Their decisions in those cases, if they happen to be certain types of judges, result in what we call case law, or regulations or rules. 

The reason that’s important in this context is because we can honestly and accurately say that the human laws we live by in our daily lives are entirely “made up.” And, we are 100% correct in saying the laws in civil society are the product of people whose “minds are made up” about the law. And I’m using that phrase deliberately to help us see the truth rather than an illusion about positive law.

That’s a crucial fact to recognize from the standpoint of vital energy and cosmic laws. For one thing, positive laws have no inherent power. They are merely words and cannot hurt you or directly affect your life. They require other made-up structures and procedures to enforce them — law enforcement, the civil and criminal justice systems, etc. These are all concepts made up in our minds collectively as part of what academics sometimes call the "social compact" — basically, an agreement, like traffic rules at an intersection: green means go and red means stop only because every driver of every vehicle agrees that it is so.

Now, our topic today is cosmic laws. And they are NOT positive laws at all. They are not made up by human minds. They are NOT rules. And they ARE NOT written down in words, though of course humans write about them for purposes of discussion and understanding,

Cosmic laws are also self-enforcing — automatically! No human interpretation or enforcement required.

Before we deal with cosmic laws directly, however, let’s look at a close analog, “natural laws.”  Most of us know about the laws of nature. They include physical laws like gravity. If a rock climber loses his footing and for some reason isn’t tethered to a line, gravity automatically kicks in to pull him towards the Earth. It’s not personal. It’s just how the law of gravity, as a so-called natural or physical law, works. And the job of physicists is to understand, define, describe and sometimes explain how physical laws work to define what we call our reality.

Energy plays a huge part in natural or physical laws. As an example, the law of conservation of energy says that energy cannot be either created nor destroyed, but only transformed from one form to another. 

Our sun, for example, powers itself by fusing hydrogen to helium in it core, which then transforms the hydrogen and helium into heat and light and other forms of electromagnetic energy, which in turn powers all life on Earth. Astrophysicists calculate that the sun has converted hydrogen to helium for about 5 billion years, and will burn for about another 5 billion. It’s a middle-aged star. But when it’s done burning hydrogen to helium, it doesn’t just disappear. No, it transforms its remaining energy by expanding into a red giant star that engulfs the inner planets before shrinking into a white dwarf and ejecting its outer layers into space, forming a planetary nebula.

Now, let’s look at how humans have learned to use and manipulate natural laws in order to achieve amazing feats.

Watching a skilled surfer, for example, can be awe-inspiring and beautiful, bordering on miraculous. Consider the German master surfer, Sebastian Steudtner, who rode a giant wave on the coast of Praia do Norte, Nazare, Portugal, on October 29, 2020, that was 86 feet high — a world record! It’s worth bookmarking the YouTube video that captured that unbelievable event. 

Afterward, Sebastian described what he called “the perfect ride.” He said:

“It was a very mixed feeling of being very tiny and vulnerable, and on the other side very powerful and very important, like you’re performing. It’s basically, you’re going as fast as you can go. You try to control your board. At the same time, you need to know where you are, feel the wave, and it comes down to a very simple and pure feeling which is in that moment, do whatever the board, the wave, my body does and … follow. I don’t lead anymore, I just follow. What do they call it? The flow state? You’re just so focused that you’re just doing. Afterwards, … you’re like why did I do that? How did I do that?”

Without knowing it consciously, he described a central part of what we can call “cosmic law prime” because it is the first principle of all cosmic laws.

Early in my career as a young lawyer starting out, I read a book called, “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.” The author, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, was a Hungarian-American psychologist who became a professor and chaired the psychology department at the University of Chicago.

He had developed a theory of optimal experience that was based on the concept of flow. He defined flow as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

At first, I thought it was perhaps an esoteric idea of an academic seeking to lay claim to something no one else had thought of. But I was curious enough to read his book.

When I first read his definition of “flow,” those words resonated in some deep part of me that I could not access consciously at the time. For reasons I could not then articulate, those words and that book changed me. In fact, I can say they were a catalyst, a spark, that lit a flame inside me that drove my quest to learn, and question, seek truth, and grow in understanding of my inner self.

I’d never really thought about “flow” and “optimal experience.” But I most certainly understood viscerally and intuitively how the experience of it made me feel. And that is a key to understanding cosmic laws — they can only be understood experientially, not in words. You won’t find them written on stones or papyrus parchment or a bathroom wall.

A young German master surfer understood and identified “flow” perfectly after he set a world record for riding the tallest wave.

I will share with you now the cosmic law prime, the cosmic law first principle, which all other cosmic laws serve. And I warn you ahead of time that your left brain will quickly seek to dismiss it as some platitude or nice idea rather than the golden front gate to cosmic laws. This is normal and natural. 

In fact, the enlightened Jesuit Priest Anthony de Mello captured very well just how this kind of revelation works to show us reality as it is without our concepts and judgments. In his book The Song of the Bird, de Mello retells an old story from a Chinese Zen master. De Mello writes: “Before one studies zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters. After a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters. After enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters are once again waters.”

With that long prelude, the 3-word cosmic law prime is this: “LET love flow.” Let LOVE flow. Let love FLOW.

Like de Mello’s retold zen story, the cosmic law prime is both the beginning and the destination of a life lived according to cosmic laws.

So, let’s return to professor Mihaly’s definition of flow as:

1.    A state of being

2.    In which a person is so involved or immersed in an activity 

3.    That nothing else seems to matter

4.    And the experience itself is SO enjoyable that a person will do it even at great cost for the sheer sake of doing it.

And let’s think about Sebastian the surfer who was so completely immersed in that culmination of gravity and the moon’s effect on the ocean to create a gigantic ocean wave that could have crushed him. And what was he thinking about? Nothing. Just “following” was his word. What was he following? THE FLOW of immense energy beneath his tiny surfboard.

Now, what if WE are in a state of flow completely involved in following, or flowing with, the immense energy — not of anything physical but rather, one of the most intense states of being, LOVE, itself. “LET LOVE FLOW!” If you can do that, BE THAT, then you ARE in complete harmony with cosmic law. 

Okay, hold that possibility for just a moment, and then let it go. Don’t think about it. It’s not something to think about because the thinking brain doesn’t have a clue what to do with it except try to reduce it to something that fits within the cultural acceptance. Hold those words like a marble in your pocket that you can reach into and touch as you gaze at a passing cloud, or  watch children playing or a squirrel eating a nut. And later, maybe you can start reaching in and touching those three words when you feel anger or frustration start to rise in you. THAT’s when the real work starts. When your partner or boss is criticizing you or complaining about you, or someone dear to you passes or leaves you, or you feel depressed … It will always be when you least WANT to touch those words – and it IS better to see yourself touching them rather than saying them — that doing so will move you forward, and deepen you, and open your heart. So, repeat those words aloud before you nod off to sleep or before an important meeting, or when you’re scared or lonely, or when something makes you laugh like a child.

 Copyright ©  2023 by Joe Kornowski