Everyman's WEEKLY Journal #88
© 2014 Rev. David Seacord
November 16, 2014
The Unenforceable Laws of Love
Once upon a time somewhere in the mysterious East a wonderful, wise, and fully enlightened sadhu was walking through a kingdom ruled by a powerful but arrogant and self-important King. It so happened on that day the King and a contingent of his soldiers were also traveling upon the same road toward the sadhu and thus the two were destined to meet. In that kingdom the law of the King was that all men must bow when in his presence on pain of immediate execution. The sadhu, knowing his complete oneness with the Maker of All, remained standing tall as he watched the King pass by. Infuriated upon seeing this, the King ordered his soldiers to halt, and ordered the sadhu to bow to him or be executed. The sadhu answered the King by saying "If all you can do if I will not bow to you is kill me, it proves you have no power." Stunned upon hearing this, the King recognized Truth for the first time, and immediately fell down at the feet of the sadhu, and became his devoted disciple. An ancient eastern fable.
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I have just finished and legally delivered to the Appeals Court in Monterey County California a 47000 word treatise--- otherwise known as an 'appeals brief'. It opens with the above story and throughout it's body there are several more. To write a 47K document required a level of writing focus I had never entered before, and since it was written under a time deadline, most other routines were cancelled or abbreviated, and day and night became irrelevant… I just slept, wrote, slept, and wrote. In so doing, I have discovered what it is actually like to write 'a book'.
In essence, my brief is a defense of God's Laws of Love, and claiming that man's laws must obey God's laws to be valid, which is something that man's law doesn't much like to do. I have challenged the law that was used to ticket me for the act of sleeping in my car miles out into the country as being unconstitutional and otherwise illegal for numerous other reasons.
Some challenging inner territory appeared as the brief was finished and printed. I had to confront that I was swinging a hard punch, and that in some ways that I was uncomfortable with, it was personal. I remembered how I had been the bunt of a few bullies in my youth, and how once, I had grabbed the bully by the front of his shirt and pinned him against a wall and my fist was pulled back to strike him in his face. But I could not hit him. As much as I hated his tormenting, I could not make myself hit him because I knew I would be hurting someone intentionally. My heart refused to let me. All those feelings came back up for me as I made the final preparations to officially deliver this brief. Part of me wanted to 'fold', to just walk away from the battle. I prayed. I resolved to go forward because I knew that if I prevailed, it would lessen the fear that is felt every day by millions of homeless (and many others, also) who are being squeezed by the petty and intolerant laws of our society.
In acting, I prayed for the miracle that the suffering be stopped for everyone involved. My biggest fear was for the Officer who had so angrily ticketed me. What if he lost his job because of this? I didn't and don't wish that outcome, yet I finally realized that I can only surrender that concern, and all such concerns, to the Godness. As I experience that I am guided and surrounded each day, I saw I must also remember he is too. As I experience that in my life there are no accidents, I saw I must also remember there are none in his either.
As I lay in bed after awakening this morning I found myself thinking about the opening story, and suddenly I came to understand that True Law is never enforced. True Law just IS. And when what IS is violated, the compassion of God is to allow each of us to experience for ourselves the consequences. This is how we learn.
As you will read, the stands I have taken and the claims that I have made are strong ones, and may require being pursued to higher courts if denied in this court. I will follow my heart as best I am able in this, though I pray that nothing more need be done. I pray that, as in the story, Truth will simply be recognized and surrendered too.
Below (for the curious) are a few quotes from the brief.
Namaste, and Sat Nam,
David
Quotes from Appellant's Opening Brief, State of California v. Rev. David K. Seacord, Case TR 13- 035932
CoT1. (i.e., Claim of Truth 1) That human sleep, beyond being of necessity an inalienable part of the right to life and thus a fundamental right, is also a sacred spiritual free exercise right of worship, for (whether or not one is aware of it) it is the time of inner holy work, of being healed and rejuvenated, of receiving visions and guidance and dreams from the Creator God. Therefore, beyond receiving fundamental protection under an individual's right to life, it must be given 1st Amendment protection also. Thus, Monterey County cannot broadly prohibit it directly, or use the fact of it to otherwise broadly prohibit related activity made necessary by it.
CoT2. That a human being sleeping is a wholly normal and innocent act unworthy of being criminalized and which should not be socially disturbed unless it somehow actively thwarts another's imminent and clearly expressible need to exercise their lawful rights, and if then, only as minimally as possible. That beyond this, that government has no legitimate interest in regulating human sleep any more than it has a legitimate interest in regulating human breathing.
CoT3. That 'to have a Right' means simply yet absolutely 'to have a power'. That among the fundamental and inalienable rights that are of necessity bound to 'the Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness'1,2 are: a. the right to breathe, b. the right to elimination function, c. the right to sleep, d. the right to eat food (which right as applied must also mean that d1.'the right to receive food offered' cannot be abridged, nor can d2. 'the right to offer food to a rightful receiver' be abridged either), e. the right to drink clean un-poisoned water, f. the right to movement of the body, g. the right to maintain a correct body temperature, h. the right to protect one's life from adverse elements via seeking and finding or creating safe shelter, i. the right to self-defense, j. the right to create a survival livelihood (which, however culturally odious, must of necessity include legal allowance for begging), and k. the right to exist or Be. That as all of these activities comprise mandatory obligations of a human being to it's own body's survival, none of these rights are in any way 'privileges', and as such can never be abridged, and can only be legitimately regulated by government via the showing of exceptionally compelling good cause. That all governments in denial of and non-responsive to these human rights are culpable for the damages that they perpetrate by ill-advisably criminalizing the expressions of these rights instead of responsibly acting to allow, protect, and provide for them as a necessary part of their fiduciary obligatory responsibility for maintaining the public good and peace. That for a government to claim to proclaim 'a Right to Life' (etc) and then disallow these rights necessarily bound to the right to life (etc) is a massive defrauding of all People which makes that government illegitimate. Note: In 2012 the Supreme Court of India (a common law country like the U.S.) expanded the ambit of the right to life by bringing the right to sleep peacefully under it. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Right-to-sleep-a-fundamental-right-says-Supreme-Court/articleshow/12025358.cms
From the 'Applicable Law' section:
Ap/Law 20. OTHER FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS. There exists no valid Law within the United States that lawfully and directly requires free human beings to purchase 'lodging' in order to legally exist in physical bodies during the daily hours of darkness as that would violate all fundamental rights to life, as well as much other law. Relatedly, there exists no valid Law within the United States that can lawfully and directly require that free human beings involuntarily own or use 'money', as that would violate First Amendment religious freedoms, as well as much other law. Relatedly there is no de jure governmental power in the United States that can lawfully and directly make it a crime to be homeless, as again, that would violate First Amendment religious freedoms as well as much other law.
T5. DISCUSSING THE UNDERLYING QUESTION OF PRIVACY. In the Appellant's view, one of the most important real issues being forced into healthy public debate by the current level of homelessness in America (which in large part Monterey County Ordinance 14.18 was written as an attempt to regulate) is correctly the right of PRIVACY. In other words, as more and more people enter homelessness, there is less and less public opportunity to find privacy, especially in populated areas. While this issue is clearly tied to concerns for safety, there are other views to consider, one that being that this issue is more deeply and correctly seen to be a function of societal immaturity, for it is easily observable that in other cultures of greater longevity and often much greater population density than America that the right to privacy has been successfully redefined and upgraded to allow for peaceful coexistence. Generally, in my experience, this is a function of a higher level of interpersonal respect, which I suspect is achieved because of the greater intimacy that most of these other cultures live in.
For instance, during my spiritual pilgrimage to India in 1976 as a man of 27, after puzzling about it for a while, I realized that the reason that the rural countryside felt so 'open' was that there were no fences between properties. In fact, what was there instead were boundary marking walking pathways which were used extensively by all the people to access their personal fields and other lands and other villages. This balance of interests allowing right of way passage along the borders of individual properties produced many wonderful benefits to that society beyond the sense of landscape openness--for through its increased social interactivity, it greatly facilitated the ability of the community to know itself as each other, or, as a whole.
Consider also that in the Scandinavian Countries there is, protected by law, what is known as 'Everyman's Right'. It is the right to tramp across the open tundra at will, with the only limitations being a. no fires, and b. to not camp within 150 meters of a residence unless invited. Does this not make excellent common sense? Of course we all wish to feel safe and have some protection from the unknown.
This fear of the unknown is one of the prices mankind has paid for choosing to enter Mind--the self-aware intelligent mind--for that Mindfears the unknown future and attempts to defend against it. That no other animal fears future or past things as we humans do is easy to observe and self-obvious.
In any event (back to Everyman's Right) the 150 meter rule reveals the connection between privacy and safety, and offers an insight that could be of value if incorporated into any proper law replacing the current Ordinance 14.18. For would anyone claim it is 'unconstitutional' to rurally require that, without invitation or emergency, one should not use the right of way in an overnight manner within 150 yards of the entrance to a private home? I doubt it. It is both easy to do, and the courteous thing to do--to give appropriate space to others, that they may feel safe.
“As ye do unto the least of these, ye do unto me”. Jesus of Nazareth
T6. THE TRUE NATURE OF THE CONTROVERSY. However consider further, conversely to India and similar densely populated regions, that in America the disease of mentally unhealthy isolation is rampant. Few would dare walk a two-sided private fence line, for our understanding is that it is the forbidden territory of trespassing. Yet because of attitudes such as this territorialism and fence building, we are kept isolated from each other to a much greater degree than is either necessary or mentally healthy.
The current societal war to criminalize (i.e., not in my back yard) either actual homeless presence or the compassionate responses to it is in truth a struggle for our society to mature, as other older societies have already, into a healthier degree of interpersonal intimacy.
In other words, this battle is a manifestation of a resistance to the inner calling of Love bearing the message that we need awaken and recognize each other as 'a oneness', and to further recognize that yes, we ARE our brother's keeper, and our best societal choices are found by acting according to the dictates that Love puts upon our hearts.
In this writers view those advocating for homelessness criminalization are in general attempting to stop or return time to an imagined past ideal moment without truly dealing with the current societal breakdown situation. In other words, if we as a society would chose to 'Love one another' as ALL faiths teach, homelessness wouldnaturally disappear.
Therefore in this writers view, such denial-of-Love-based criminalization is exposed to be a selfish and ego-centered act of irresponsibility by lawmakers responsible to all of society, in favor of shredding for personal gain the societal agreement (or covenant, if you prefer) that we would all honor that all of us were created equal, and it is a continued rejection of one's heart-knowing of our fundamental interconnectedness, and is fundamentally related, in my view, to 'the root of all evil', the highly addictive love of personal significance (status) via the accumulating of wealth, power, domination, and privilege. In other words, the have’s who want to ‘be somebody’ in what the raggae prophets call ‘Babylon’ are willing to steal power and life from anyone of lesser egoic strength. At the bottom of this power theft lie the homeless, serving America as a reminder of a Truth that America does not wish to see... that the land of the free has, for the most part, swallowed the love of money wholesale and is now an obedient prostitute for it.
It is axiomatic that all such motives are repugnant to the intention of any 'of the people, for the people, by the people' legitimate government.
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Rev. David Seacord
Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag
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