{"id":3796,"date":"2011-12-15T09:52:15","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T14:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=3796"},"modified":"2011-12-15T09:52:15","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T14:52:15","slug":"at-the-bottom-of-lincolns-barrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/12\/at-the-bottom-of-lincolns-barrel.html","title":{"rendered":"At the bottom of Lincoln’s barrel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In his 1860 autobiography, Abraham Lincoln wrote that he studied law with \u201cnobody\u201d. In an 1855 letter to Isham Reavis, a would-be attorney, he offered this counsel: \u201cI did not read with any one. Get the books, and read and study them till, you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing.”<\/p>\n

By Lincoln’s own account, he made himself a lawyer by studying Blackstone\u2019s Commentaries<\/em> \u2013 the first attempt to bring together the whole corpus of English common law \u2013 by candlelight. \u201cBegin with Blackstone’s Commentaries,\u201d he advised another aspiring lawyer, John Brockman, in 1860. \u201cAfter reading it carefully through, say twice,\u201d move on to other law books.<\/p>\n

And how did the cash-strapped young Lincoln acquire his personal set of Blackstone? Through the kind of coincidence that must have reassured him that there is something at work behind the surface of events.<\/p>\n

Lincoln had just gone into the grocery business, struggling to maintain a country store in a hamlet of fifteen log cabins. \u00a0<\/strong>In his own words:\u00a0\u201cOne day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not want it, but to oblige him I bought it, and paid him, I think, half a dollar for it. Without further examination I put it away in the store and forgot all about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome time after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel, and emptying it upon the floor to see what it contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone\u2019s Commentaries<\/em>.\u201d He had plenty of time to read through long summer days when the farmers were busy with their crops and he had few customers.\u00a0 \u201cNever in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln later remarked that this was “the best stroke of business I ever did in the grocery line.” \u00a0We see how an act of spontaneous generosity was rewarded, and feel that hidden hand behind the surface of things that can change a life, and shape great events, beyond the calculations of the everyday mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his 1860 autobiography, Abraham Lincoln wrote that he studied law with \u201cnobody\u201d. In an 1855 letter to Isham Reavis, a would-be attorney, he offered this counsel: \u201cI did not read with any one. Get the books, and read and study them till, you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,25,8],"tags":[842,843,844,845],"class_list":["post-3796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coincidence","category-conscious-living","category-synchronicity","tag-abraham-lincoln","tag-blackstones-commentaries","tag-dreams-of-lawyers","tag-legal-dreams"],"yoast_head":"\nAt the bottom of Lincoln's barrel - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/12\/at-the-bottom-of-lincolns-barrel.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At the bottom of Lincoln's barrel - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In his 1860 autobiography, Abraham Lincoln wrote that he studied law with \u201cnobody\u201d. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3796"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3799,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796\/revisions\/3799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}