William Samuel

William Samuel
William Samuel

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

The Child Again






This was sent to me by a lovely lady who has studied metaphysics for many years but somewhere along the line  she broke out and found the all inclusive joy of the unbound Child that really does understand and truly Lives.

I am enjoying her joy -- in how she expresses the sweet unfolding wonder of her own genuine Self realization.

This, to me, is a shining example of how profound and yet sweetly innocent and simple this journey of Self discovery really is---when it's real, it feels as if we have come home, returned, made a full circle back where we started; our heart and soul feels free, laughter comes easily, we are as a kid again just catching leaves on a fall day:  



Well the good news just keeps on a comin'! 

Sandy, today I noticed something wonderful. 

Today there were times when I caught myself in a bit of a worried thought or mind just going here, yonder and about and  all I had to do was "remember" the child, that is FEEL it and all is well. It is like the way you described it, It's like "taking a breath" in a way and all changes. Worries drop and there is joy. And it is more like Joy now instead of peace. Joy feels like Peace that is alive and vibrant and LIVING! 

Before what I would do when in a yucky thought process is just sort of try to talk myself through it....
I would say things like "oh here I go again, now why am I thinking like that", "I need to go read or study something to help me with this worry thought", or "why am I still not getting this?!" or I would just begin to allow myself to "observe" it, just "sit" with it...(which never worked for me) ....but NOW....I just have to remember the child. Before I wanted to know WHY I was thinking the way I was. Well for me, it does no good to know the why and who CARES why? Knowing the why never helped me anyway...It would be like looking at a burning house and just sitting there wondering WHY the fire started or just "observing" the burning of the house. Well that does nothing to put the fire out and regardless of the WHY  the house would still be burning. But if I just get the water I can put out the fire. It's like that for me with the child. 

I drop all the questions of the why and get the "water" (child) and the fire goes out. If I just "observe" the fire or "sit" with it that does not put the fire out either. Finding the water is an active thing and so seems to be for me in finding the child. It's an inner type of "work" that is so easy to do. It just seems to be finding my basic nature. More gentle than air.   

Of course maybe there is a time for observing and trying to see the whys. Lord knows I've done my share of it all. But now, at least for me, that path does not work at all. Finding the child does away with the need for any type of "work" that I can do. By Grace it is done for me. 

Sandy I am so grateful I can't find the words to express it! You and William's teachings have been such a God send for me!!! I am blessed, so very blessed!

I love you!!!!
Angie

*****

Oh Sandy, oh Sandy!!

What a beautiful joyous day with the child!! 

I have to share yet some more!!

I have found how the child delights in the small wonders and helpfulness of the world. 

I have been having trouble carving my walking sticks for lack of a good way to secure my work. Just yesterday I was troubled by this....thinking "how am I going to get my caving done?" THEN yesterday evening when that thought came I just dismissed it and expected only good.
WELL....

Today my Dad mentioned using an old workmate bench that he had in his shop. I got it out and took it to my little shop. I set it up and you just can't believe what a PERFECT thing this is. It was perfect height and the way it opens allows for room for the hold vice and lots of other things that I won't go into detail about but let me just say that several things about this set up are more perfect than perfect. I won't have to hunch over the work and hurt my back anymore and it is all just so secure and as I said PERFECT.
As I set this up while very much aware of the child there was just pure delight, joy and such happiness!!
I even began hearing the old children's song I learned in Sunday school that just fit what I was feeling..."I've got joy, joy, joy down in my heart" and it was just like the child I was when I was in Sunday school. SO PURE, so clean so JOYFUL. 


****

Something else to share about all of that....

I came back in from my work shop still so happy and my 7 year old niece was here. I began to share the story and the happiness of what I had just set up in my shop and how wonderful it was going to be to carve now. My little niece "got it" She began smiling with me and her eyes lit up and she said "Wow now you can make two a day! Three a day! No! FIVE a day!" Then we were laughing at what she had said. Then she said "And it won't hurt your back!" I said yes, this is like getting a Christmas present!" Then she laughed some more.   

The joy teaches joy by simply being what it is. Love teaches love by simply being what it is....And Love and joy is us and yet there is "us" that gets to enjoy it! All is really one but in the oneness is the "me" that gets to see it.
The "me" is really one with all and yet there is still a "sense" of it as one that gets to enjoy it all. All INCLUDED in the ONE.

If I try to get rid of "me" I am trying to "break apart" the oneness of this beautiful experience. THAT to me would be separation and duality. If I try to get rid of this "me" that enjoys it all I am separating from ALL. There is no duality. I am One with it all! The "child me" IS "part" of the ONE.
As I feel this joy there is no separation from the "one that feels" and the Joy itself!!
But if I say "there is no one that feels" then I am immediately separating into duality. The "one that feels" IS the Oneness KNOWN!!

Well once again I went on longer than I meant to. But it just bubbled out!

Love you,
Angie




If you would like further guidance in understanding any of William Samuel's work based on Self discovery - you are welcome to contact me, Sandy Jones  -- samuelandfriends@gmail.com - Ojai, California -   








Monday, October 29, 2012

A Course of Action




Artwork "Golden Glories" by Sandy Jones 

A Course of Action in the  Midst of Turmoil  
By William Samuel

Reader, the following is an essay of urgency pertaining to the events of the day and “what to do” concerning them. I have been urged from within to get it written, but it has not been easy to find the words. Even after many revisions I am aware it barely touches the hem of the Light I have been given to see and tell about.
The seed is Here, however—the gist. The discerning Heart, the Single Eye, will find it and ascertain its significance relative to the great crunch soon to be brought to bear against the established ideas of the world—all of them—religious, educational, political, monetary, social, et al—awesome events perhaps, but nothing to be frightened of, nothing that can harm Identity.
As simple, unjudging Awareness, we can watch it all with wonder and excitement like children standing on a high peak surveying the pounding surf below. The storm passes and the earth is refreshed. The Real remains untouched.
The honest action of our daily experience appears to be a quiet middle ground, a delicate balance. Consider, for instance, the cautious balance between not yielding and not contending—or not contending and not yielding.
In the human scheme of things, the refusal to yield to something we have come to perceive as a false authority is accompanied by the world’s moral demand to do battle with that authority and set it straight—always for the idealistic benefit of others, of course. Such action is the product of human “education” and has become the intuitive reflex of a society geared to “progress.” But there is another course of action open to us wherein we quietly refuse to yield to any authority but the Divine, yet remain careful (for our own peace and the benefit of the world) not to overstep that refusal thence to begin contending with the binding, confining false authority.
Of course, the world holds this course in grand contempt. Even the world’s metaphysicians, by and large, attempt to rectify appearances, but our tangible freedom in daily experience will never be found outside this delicate balance between not yielding and not contending.
No, we do not cow before the supposed power of images, signs and symbols, that have no power; we do not act as floor mats nor yield ourselves servants to obey the appearances of the world and its sundry enslaving ideas. But neither do we take those actions that constitute a battle with the world’s pseudo-authority. When this delicate point is perceived and lived (and lived!) our vision of war, rebellion and personal inharmony is ended.
BY WAY OF EXPLANATION
A growing portion of my correspondence concerns itself as follows: (1) “Our children (or grandchildren) are anti-establishment, anti-adult, anti-social and contemptuous of nearly everything conventional. All they are for are mind-changing drugs. What am I to do?” (2) “My organization (school, business, church, body) is woefully caught up in the dictatorial emptiness of old conditioned thinking and would attempt to enslave me thereby. What am I to do, pull up stakes or battle for an improvement in my organization?”
As appearances go, our response to the second question has given rise to the appearances that motivate the first. The answer to the one is the answer to the other—but that answer does not exist out there with rebellious society and its destructive actions, nor with the recalcitrant, dictatorial organizations so many would like to see reorganized to fit a new pattern. It has altogether to do with this action the reader is right here—no one else and nowhere else. One does not have to “pull up stakes” or “battle for an improvement.” There is yet another course of action, a barely seen center ground upon which one may stand and find himself having cleared up both situations for himself at once. As this action-WE-are stops its battle with its “out there,” we see the meaning behind the world’s turmoil and see it without fear or loss of equanimity.
For me it has been helpful to learn the hard lesson that challenging the pseudo-powers of the world does not mean a battle. To challenge the authority of a power that is not God is to stand firm on the single ground of God’s omnipotence, therein discovering the powerlessness of the pseudo-authority—and finding it in the first hand language of my own experience.
To battle with the pseudo-authority in either action or argument is to give it (in my own experience) the very power it does not possess outside my belief that it is a power to overcome, change, heal or, as I am some times tempted, paste in the mouth with a tomato—as if there could be a power besides God! Even then, the battle is with a belief—a personal determination that a power besides God exists capable of binding us and doing us in.
The faltering heart, the swollen joints, the fractious groups and warring nations are the evidence of that fictitious belief. To see the end of the mischief “there,” we end the contention with our own images “here.” Reader, you see this?
It is not the people in our world who must do this. Rather, this consciousness that “includes” those people does it first, then we see our mirrored Self-images doing likewise. We be the lifted up, pristine Awareness smiling at itself here and find ourselves living the Christ of our Self perceived. Self-inclusive universe smiling back from the mirror.
The images of perception, whether they be institutions, people or feelings, are not the masters of the consciousness (Life) reading these words. Rather, institutions, people, feelings have their apparent existence because ISNESS (God) is aware as this awareness we are. Dominion resides where this one exists. To be dictated to by a false authority is to yield oneself servant thereof and sleep enslaved. To let our own images lead us around by the nose just because “they say” thus and so is as senseless as the television set that trembles in fear that one of its images will smash the picture tube. We question the basic authority of the slavemaster by understanding the reasons for its appearance in our affairs.
~~~~~~~~
Yes, lest we be fooled and find ourselves adding to the picture’s agony rather than seeing the naught of it, we awaken to the narrow pathway between the challenge of external authority that would bind us, and doing battle with it. The present rebellion of certain groups within “society” will stop its senseless destructiveness and come out from its subverting, perverting nastiness only as this awareness-being-I ends its own contention with its included images. Within the cause-effect arena of mental manipulation, the appearance of a society being ripped apart by guilt-ridden groups demanding freedom is the inevitable consequence of our own vain effort at mental manipulation—attempts to elevate a mistaken sense of Self up to a Perfection that is already All. He who would try to improve the world, spoils it, as Laotse said.
The time is ripe to stand fast as the witness of the ALLNESS we know to be the Fact of existence. We pull in the insensate reins of contention here-as-I-within before we can understand why our images appear to be going off half cocked in all directions. We live and act the Christ-Comforter we are to our own perception of existence first.
We do not save our world by doing battle with it, tearing it down, burning it up, creating doubt or suspicion, undermining it, healing it, manipulating it or trying to resign from it via a letter of resignation or drugs. We “save” it by seeing it as it is, seeing ourselves as we are, and acknowledging ISNESS to be the basis for all that is, has been, or could be.
WHERE THE AUTHORITY IS
God, the reality being this single and only AWARENESS I AM, is the authority that blooms the bud, scatters the seed and flashes its Cosmic Light around the universe. This authority has never been vested in a human organization, be it a body with organs, a scientific institution, a financial institution, a marriage institution or a smother church. Furthermore, none of us has ever been unfaithful to this Divine Authority being Identity, nor “lapsed from the faith.” How, in God’s allness, can Identity lapse from Itself?
Undoubtedly, organizations (even as the body) perform legitimate, worthwhile services, but those services are abrogated to whatever extent we give the organization power to enslave its members or to whatever extent we claim a position of superiority or inferiority for our own appearances of organization or views of Reality.
Isness, not people, is the genuine authority for individual action. The consciousness that reads these words stands as its own self-evident proof of being, Deity’s awareness of existence. Its relationship to Being is not governed by the man-made laws of any intermediary, no matter how correctly (Divinely) authorized it is or professes to be. The communion between Reality and this consciousness-we-are is not now, and has never been, routed through any external church, philosophy, system, leader, ritual, institution or book—to include the Bible. Intercourse with Reality is direct, as direct as Allness is ever its own sameness. Enlightenment, the “mysterious agreement,” is between IS and AM, the single ONE, Self-evident to and as this Awareness-I-am. My proof of this fact is the Light I live as, and see enlightening my Experience.
When this is understood, we find our Light appearing on the scene via books, institutions, friends and strangers at every turn of the road—and we know when that appearing is our own Within disclosing Itself to us in the language of the moment.
The “authority of the organization,” whatever its appearing, resides in That being THIS consciousness. That which presents itself as intermediary—pope, church, institution, society, bible or canon of ancient law—exists powerlessly in “us” (Me) as images of this awareness-I-am.
“SO WHAT DO I DO ABOUT MEMBERSHIP IN MY COLLEGE (OR CHURCH OR BUSINESS OR WORLD)?”
The Golden Thread of the Absolute exists. We know because we have found it. We feel, know and see the Fact of Singleness—evidence of God’s ALLNESS. We who discern the Thread are come as the savior of our own appearing, the Christ to the Experience we are.


As I see it now, it makes no difference whether we are inside an organization or outside it, provided we do not feel a sense of restriction. Even then, cutting ourselves away does not mean we will find the restriction gone. It is the sense of being an identity capable of being restricted that appears to me as a “me” bound by an ailing body, oppressive organization or a flat pocketbook. The axe at the root has to do with this one’s position, not the “Church’s.” Identity is a matter of SELF determination and in the end, no organization, not even the body, can prevent the discovery.
Therefore, I do not presume to tell anyone whether he should join an organization or leave one. We each follow what seems the Heart-directed course of action. For myself, I once thought the wisteria vine was the most beautiful of all the flowers in the garden. As a gardener, I worked with my wisteria to the exclusion of all else and awakened one day entangled, no longer free to follow the sunlight outside the shadows. For me (though not necessarily for thee) it seemed wise to come out and be separate from that clinging vine because I could neither speak nor write of my own self-unfoldments without violating rules to which I had willingly agreed. So I cut myself away from the organizational rules and found the more distant purview of the wisteria lovelier than ever! More: I found the beauty of the orchid! I found the larkspur, the rose, the dandelion, the sassafras root and the wild woodland outside the regulated boundary of the garden!
Every flower in the garden is ME and I take my nectar from any book or blossom I see I be at the moment. Only those organizations that permit such freedom can survive.
In all fairness I must point out again that my entanglement with the wisteria of old theology was not the wisteria’s fault. A vine is a vine—neither good, bad, right nor wrong—but who can make wisteria into heather or a dandelion into a rose? If there isn’t enough shade beneath the pine, we sit under an oak, but we don’t cut down the pine nor strip it of its limbs. Its shade may be quite enough for the tufted titmouse, the bushy-tailed squirrel or the mercenary who thinks that tree is the only tree capable of dropping an “apple” in his lap.
~~~~~~~~
Which is easier: to play the role of a great crusading contender doing impossible (and miserable) battle with society and its organizations, or to stop playing that role and rest in the happy Already? For myself, I prefer to let pine trees be pine trees and wisteria vines be wisteria vines. If, in blaming the vine for my own entanglement, I should succeed in pulling it up by the roots, what will I have to show for it except a hernia, a sore back and the sight of a wrecked society ripped apart by excessive zealousness?
God’s Phoenix of ALREADY does not have to rise from the ruins of a shattered society. It will appear to, of course, but those who know the forthright way of the middle ground—of the already Infinite—will not be troubled as the dream’s last soliloquy is sounded, as the curtain falls with a crash and the mortal arc lights give way to the Light of the Eternal, sunshine of the Real.
William Samuel-- Woodsong- Notes From Lollygog Oct. 1968



If you would like further guidance in understanding any of William Samuel's work based on Self discovery - you are welcome to contact me, Sandy Jones  -- samuelandfriends@gmail.com - Ojai, California -   








Sunday, October 28, 2012

Welcome To Woodsong




Greetings and welcome to our Woodsong Journal Notes--


Many years ago, William Samuel used to hold some of his talks on board his little house boat Lollygog.  As Lollygog would meander gently down the Coosa River, Bill would share his love for nature and his love for the Truth with anyone and everyone who wanted to join him for the day, or, sometimes, a two or three day jaunt.  

These happy journeys on the river were attended by small groups of folks who longed for peace and understanding and felt that William had some keys to the way to find It. The Coosa River and Lollygog were the perfect setting for Bill to share his message.  He was a wonderful story teller and had a delightful sense of humor.   The guests could listen and learn of Truth, Reality, and God while enjoying a sweet ride along the waters on boat full of laughter, tears, joy and friendship.  

 Bill would also write and publish a monthly letter to send to all those who were interested in being on his mailing list.  He called the letters Notes From Lollygog.  As the years went by, Bill eventually let go his little boat and no longer gave his talks on Lollygog.  

In the 70's William built a small cabin in Mountain Brook, Alabama, which he called Woodsong.  There at Woodsong he would meet with people interested in their own Self-discovery and continued to write and teach.  Once again, he would often teach while out in nature.  He would take his guests for walks, to hunt ancient arrowheads or just to stroll and talk together while enjoying the trees, the dirt roads, wildflowers, bugs and birds.  By then the monthly letters were called  Notes From Woodsong.  Several years later, they become The Child Within Journals. 

I thought, since the Woodsong Journal Notes is a new endeavor, that it would be nice to begin at the beginning.    So, we will post our first blog using William's first edition of Notes From Lollygog October, 1968.  Then, as we go along, I will  shuffle it up.  I’ll use excerpts from his books, perhaps some of the transcribed audio tapes, and his journal notes that span the years.  I'll go with whatever seems fitting for the moment.   

We will have plenty to keep the blog running along, as William was a prolific writer and I have many of his papers both published and unpublished to work with, besides all his books. 

Soon after William passed away, I was made the legal trustee and given the copyrights to all his books, audio recordings and other literary material. 

He trusted me as I trust the Child I Am.  So, here we are, many years down the road.  We will collaborate here, Bill and me and you.  We will create together, we will learn as we go along and we will see where the Child leads us.    
   
 William's words are like a chart that leads to a place where Love reigns and the Child lives. I know the Child that William writes about--It has found me. Through William's words and this sweet grace that washed over me, I found what Bill had been pointing to all along. This divine Self of myself has taken my hand and shows me the way through this world, balanced and flexible, peaceful and strong.  I know you can find this abiding Self knowing as well. You will find your own inner authority, the Light of freedom you are, as you listen and hear with your heart. These are the words of a true Master, a man who tested,  lived and proved for himself the Truth of the words he speaks. 

Don't forget, questions or comments are welcome--We look forward to you participation.  

Enjoy and Much Love, Sandy  


If you would like further guidance in understanding any of William Samuel's work based on Self discovery - you are welcome to contact me, Sandy Jones  -- samuelandfriends@gmail.com - Ojai, California -