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The Next Big Step

--------------------------------------------------- © Copyright 1999 by John L. Waters. All Rights Reserved. --------------------------------------------------- The Next Big Step, TNBS, and That's Not Bull Shit, is the integration of free flowing body movements with music, art, writing, and with the reasoning mathematical mind. When I say TNBS, I really mean it. That's Not Bull Shit. But it takes me a bit of time to explain The Next Big Step to you. So dear reader, let me begin. Take a clipboard and sit in a chair. Relax your body and you mind. Take a ball point pen in each hand and let your muscles and bones lead you to express what is in muscles and bones to be expressed. Don't try to draw the image of something you visualize or see in front of your nose. Just let the notes of your body trumpet be blown out through your body, by using the instrument consisting of two ball point pens and the clipboard well stacked with paper. When you are done with the first piece, just take it out and draw on the second sheet. In time the floor will be littered with sheets of paper which have lines upon them. The free movements of your body will have been recorded for all time. Or at least for a few moments. This is long enough to get a good look at these recordings. Pens and paper cost a lot less money than movie film and a movie camera. And a whole classroom of kids can engage in this exercise, without having to use up a lot of camera film and camera time. The message rolls out of your body. You feel your right hand and your left hand moving in concert, like the hands of a trumpeter blowing notes on his trumpet. "Yes, but!" You say. "But art isn't taught this way." And so what do I sound like, some kind of nut? The best I can do is repeat what I said at first, that The Next Big Step, TNBS, and That's Not Bull Shit, is the integration of free flowing body movements with music, art, writing, and with the reasoning mathematical mind. Let me say also that the ideas which come out of this are ideas which come freely as your mind relaxes its guard, so that you may get an idea that you've been waiting for a long time to receive. You just couldn't get the idea because your mind was too tightly constrained. You were suffering from a kind of mental constipation. As you were able to relax, the big idea was able to be excreted by your brain. So this is my big idea. about TNBS and That's Not Bull Shit. I repeat this because in the past some people have asserted that very thing. But mind you, this is one of my own brain children, this theory about balancing the right hand and the left hand, and the right brain and the left brain, with the help of your muscles and your bones. That is, you have an active body. I show you how you can integrate your active body with your brain and get a more active mind! This can be a help to you if you are working on some problem which is hard to solve. By working your mind harder by using your body more, you can get more ideas than you ever could get before. Try this and see if it works for you! But don't get the idea that I am God or that God is you, or that God is your body, or that God is behind this! Psychotic people get that idea, because they don't understand this theory. So yes. I am presenting you with a new theory of genius and insanity, which looks at the body as the bridge between dullness and wizardry. The slow person just has a poor connection between his mind and his body. The intelligence is there, but you just can't access it or use it. When the connection is made by some fortuitous event, you feel invigorated and inspired, and you can't explain the change. You think that maybe an angel has touched you or that you have become one of God's messengers. In ten minutes the spell may be over. Or you may become the next sage of the age. In past ages the sage could not explain the source of his wisdom. So the vast majority of humans lived in utter darkness. Now do you see why this is The Next Big Step for the evolving ape? We rise higher up the DNA spiral staircase which leads to heaven. We rise above the drug experience, which makes a person feel high without being able to remain high without losing his brains entirely, or at least his dinner. We rise high enough to retain our food, and retain our rational intelligence, but we rise above the bickering and the battling of savage beasts. This is the next imperative, above and beyond the well-publicised territorial imperative of Robert Ardrey. The Next Big Step, TNBS, and That's Not Bull Shit, is the integration of free flowing body movements with music, art, writing, and with the reasoning mathematical mind. You have only to come and visit me in person, and I will treat you to a show of universal intelligence. I will take you around from place to place and I will show you how the language of pure mathematics is expressed in all things natural and man-made. I will show you spirals, parabolas, straight lines, circles, and a host of sinusoidal functions. And with the pens and paper I will produce without conscious effort scores of other functions which a mathematician calls continuous functions. These are just the graphs of these functions. The functions themselves are defined by equations. Do I sense a bit of fear in you, dear reader, as your eyes parse the word "equation"? If you feel upset viscerally, it is because of poor teaching at some point along in your schooling. You came to associate fear and sickness with mathematics and the mathematical mind! All that is rubbish now. and The Next Big Step, TNBS, and That's Not Bull Shit, is the integration of free flowing body movements with music, art, writing, and with the reasoning mathematical mind. Just think of a frisbee in flight, if you will, and you will see the spinning movement of the frisbee as it arcs above the ground from the hand of its messenger to the hand of its receiver. The frisbee itself is spinning like the stars of a galaxy spin around the galactic center. Trillions of atoms in the frisbee are as stars in a galaxy, spinning around the galactic center. The path of each atom is basically a circle, and a circle is defined by a mathematical equation. So what is to fear? Children enjoy playing frisbee. The flight of a baseball is parabolic. Every time people play catch with a ball, they are masters of the parabola. Why then should confusion and fear fill the air inside of any classroom where parabolas are studied? Again, it is just poor teaching. The SPIRIT of nature hasn't been felt in either the teacher or the teacher's pupils. Well, maybe SPIRIT isn't the best word. But it's the inherent nature of a stone, or a ball, to travel in a parabolic flight when hit, dropped or hurled. And every piece of matter is quite the same in this regard. A tree or a car will travel in a parabolic flight if hurled by a giant. An adult can demonstrate by using a toy car, or a small potted plant. the demonstration can be further enhanced by using models of cars and plants made out of cookie dough or candy. As children try to make the catch, the lesson will penetrate farther into their soft and mushy brains. You may perceive by now that TNBS is the next big step in education and you may also perceive that The Next Big Step, TNBS, and That's Not Bull Shit, is the integration of free flowing body movements with music, art, writing, and with the reasoning mathematical mind. Now let's consider the flight of a pen in space as you write with it. As you sit writing with a pen, the earth is travelling thousands of miles an hour around the sun as the sun is travelling thousands of miles a second around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Humans exist on a celestial merry-go-round. But we aren't conscious of all this mighty movement. Movement, however, characterizes everyone and everything. So let's look at the motion of the ball point pens we are using to draw with as we are using both sides of our body to draw with. As our hands and fingers move in grace, the pens trace out curves executed in grace. The grace we feel in our bodies is indicated by the grace in the curves we draw with our pens. As we come to feel more grace in our bodies, the curves we produce become more graceful and more continuous. So it is really continuity which we feel, and the connectedness of each point and each moment. As we come to feel more connected and more graceful, the grace in our bodies increases and our art, our music, our thoughts, and our movements all become more connected, more graceful, and more continuous. We come to feel continuity more and more. In time we have magnified our sense of continuity and connectedness. We have magnified out sense of SPIRIT in nature. In short, we have come to understand mathematics better, and the spirit of mathematicians. The thing is, that the brain is evolved to respond to every part of nature. This includes the sounds we hear, the objects and colors we see, and the weights we bear. We delight in the sounds of wind in the trees. We delight in the flight of birds, and the humming of bees in a flower garden. The senses of nature delight us because humans evolved in a wild, natural state. For millions of years the brains of our ancestors were functioning at peak efficiency in wild nature. This is why nature delights us, when our brains are healthy and our senses aren't jaded. What happens is that people get diverted and distracted away from what is healthiest and best for young developing minds and brains. And the farther away nature is pushed by well-meaning but ignorant parents and teachers, the harder this is on young, developing minds and brains. The conditions which encourate and stimulate young brains to develop to maximum potential are being rejected and inferior conditions are being pushed in their place. The adults don't understand what is happening. The living device which nature has perfected through millions of years of evolution is being exposed to harsh, even toxic conditions by adults who do not understand evolution at all. The Next Big Step, TNBS, and That's Not Bull Shit, is the integration of free flowing body movements with music, art, writing, and with the reasoning mathematical mind. 5:14 PM Sunday, August 15, 1999

John Waters




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