Artwork "Blue Vase" by Sandy Jones

ABOUT HEALING

Part 4—Discipline

From Woodsong Notes 1984

By William Samuel

One can’t touch the surface of a subject as important as DISCIPLINE in these few pages. There is what “discipline” IS and what it is believed to be. There is what it DOES and what it is believed to do. There is how discipline is lived and how the good folks in Happy Hollow tell us it should be lived.

How is one to get all this straight? I can’t begin to tell one how to do that. At best, I can write as clearly and honestly as possible of a lifetime of CONCLUSIONS—for what that might be worth to my subjective Selfhood “out there.” This paper deals very briefly with that. Be forewarned. This is not a light paper. It is part of “the hard teaching.”

One looks around his world (our own subjective Selfhood!) and sees the disciplines mistaken for the goals. See how the form of religion has become the end. “Healing” has become a goal. Healing and good works have become hooks from which a manipulative BELIEF has arisen in the world and its churchdom---something to dangle in front of the hopeful and lure them to a particular study. The promise of a carefree life of nothing but sunshine, roses and fulfilled wishes to be the inevitable fruits of the study of Truth is not only twisted but very nearly immoral. Those who tell us that “healing” is the certain MEASURE of spiritual progress may lure new members to the fold but at the other end of that stick are those who call themselves guilty and unworthy when their study doesn’t solve every problem. Elderly metaphysicians are often the most disillusioned of all, having been told time and again that if they understood the Truth adequately they would have no problems. We only slowly awaken to the utter nonsense and insidiousness of that. Healing happens and healing is wonderful, but it is neither the goal nor full purpose of our Study. The discernment of God is our goal. We are examining the Ship, not it’s wake. We are looking to the Projector and its Light, not the holographic image of our beliefs. Furthermore (listen) we are not disinterested in the comings and goings of the images either. Appearances are NOT to be ignored. We are directly involved in apprehending them correctly—not manipulating nor changing them. The final discipline involves the correct apprehension of IDENTITY and passing that clear perception along to our world as quickly as we can. THIS is the portion of “the discipline” metaphysicians appear to know so little about. ( The whole of this is for a book.)

The “divine Discipline” is not something ELSE to be added to our busy affairs. It is happening already, albeit unrecognized for what it is and does. To perceive the Discipline’s PURPOSE puts everything into a new light. Therefore, “what the real discipline is” is worthy of our earnest contemplation.

Listen. Every time the Truth enters our affairs, it comes to EXPLAIN something, doesn’t it? That is, each time the “Glimpse” arrives, it throws new Light on a matter that was seen only partially before. Something is seen in a new Light and more nearly understood. Clarified. Simplified. Isn’t this so?

Remember when first we glimpsed the subjective nature of our experience, how it SIMPLIFIED so much? Remember how the dawning Light of Oneness came to clarify and SIMPLIFY so many things that had been confusing before? What wonderful joy when we understood that the image in awareness didn’t have power of its own to make us love it or hate it! It simplified our affairs tremendously to end many of our unnecessary judgments.

Well now—the dawning knowledge of the “REAL discipline” also makes many things clear in time. It reduces enigmas and begins to move our affairs toward a single course of action to be lived wholeheartedly!

Contrary to belief, we don’t have to choose between ten thousand possible disciplines in order to be about the REAL discipline. We are already LIVING it. Listen: the “belief and dream of Life in matter” is ITSELF the activity the ancients called the Divine Discipline. We are not only (apparently) living it, or dreaming it, if you prefer, we can’t escape living it until we’ve done what it demands. Among those demands is to awaken to and ACCEPT the rightful Identity. Whether we like it or not, or say it is real or not, a dream or not, an illusion or not, we’ve EVERYONE been saddled with the Discipline—the BELIEF of life in matter—with which we wrestle and writhe as it shapes and molds our willingness to ACCEPT the Divine Identity—Awareness (Life)_. That Life (we discover line upon line, precept upon precept) is NOT encumbered nor bound to a bucket of blood and a sack in space led around by its nose, beholden to false prophets and false appetites.

The poetic justice of it all! No one can ignore The Real Discipline. It can’t be escaped. Everyone is living it whether he likes it or not. The Discipline is impartial. “Everyone” faces the taskmaster—saint and “sinner.” Saint sees it one way but walks through it all, escaping nothing REAL. Sinner drinks his beer in the afternoon, reads his salacious magazine and snores in drunken sleep. Both have been given a mysterious Microcosm of the Universe to lug around like a dead weight and to peer out at Oneself unrecognized, a point in time and space looking at other points in time and space. The discipline is 150 pounds of pulsating flesh that hurts when it is kicked and purrs when it is stroked. Both sinner and saint must feed that mass and flush its mess every day, everyday, day after inescapable day—and bathe it, powder it, protect it, fear for it, fight for it while it grows ever so slowly less sensitive and more helpless—on and on and interminably on, facing this crises and that, suffering or singing, helping or hurting, never knowing whether the one who lives “out there” is a contender or friend, and slowly, if one chooses, or suffers sufficiently if he doesn’t choose, begins to comprehend that “out there” is a reflection of “in here” and commences to DO for “out there” as the Light suggest he should, and in the doing, awaken to receive MORE to give to his world and help lift it up and LIVE or follow the old identity’s pathway into death and dust, reaching for another bottle to comfort and soothe or another pursuit to numb and forget and another friend to cut down. That’s “The Discipline.”

All the other disciplines—meditation, contemplation, prayer(!)—are WITHIN the real Discipline and are secondary to LEARNING from the Real discipline. My good friends of so many years, we are not living the Discipline for nothing. This Life isn’t a fluke. There is Something Wonderful behind it all—else everything is ludicrous and God a cosmic joke.

All human activities are disciplines within The Discipline, symbols of the Symbol, as words are symbols of symbols. Oh, this is many too many words to say that the human experience is the ultimate discipline—but (here is the purpose of these words) the knowledge of this COMES WITH HEALING ON ITS WINGS and a new fearlessness of the Spectre. Even though the metaphysician-we-are doesn’t like to hear it, the things we’ve read about the “human experience” being a refinement by fire like the purification of gold are TRUE—are TRUE. For the just and unjust alike. For the Seeker and one who doesn’t look at all. Even for the gentle mystic who denies the world is happening. What could be more just that that?

“Yes, Samuel, suppose I buy that for the minute. Tell me the proper way to LIVE the discipline of life. Tell me what I am to do to see the real—to be the saint who is able to get through this mess without so much trouble. Can you tell me that?”

I can tell you what I am doing, I reply. But words are not it. One can see what I am doing, but the sights are not it. The SEEING is it.

“Dammit! Don’t talk to me in riddles! Tell me what to do!”

I can tell one what I am doing, I reply again. Those words are not it. One can see what I am doing, but those sights are not it. What perceives these words within ITSELF is IT. The SEEING is it.

Meanwhile, whether we beat our chests and pound the table or not, like it or not, BELIEVE it or not the discipline goes on and we either lean to get BEYOND simple coping or we don’t. We either believe our Identity to be naught but a physical body or we awaken to the Fact of AWARENESS as Identity—and that Awareness, God’s. But either way, the discipline continues and the mess of mass grows weaker, it’s days begin to blur and fade and from the pits of the past comes the Spectre. Ever closer. Ever closer.

Either we believe identity to be naught but the body or we awaken to the Fact of Eternal Awareness as LIFE which DOESNT grow weary, or aged nor weak nor senile and helpless AND LIVE OUR FEARLESSNESS. Either we rediscover the ageless Child Within and mount up as Eagles again, sing again, laugh again, even as the old identity does what ever the body does when it falls away, or we go down in fear with that body—to another death, and emptiness. Which is pretty much where most of our “out there” stays—tending their little affairs, sipping afternoon cocktails, whispering the latest nothing, combing their dead hair on their dead heads. Or (listen, listen, if that seems senseless!) we see “all those people” one’s own infinite possibilities to whom we reach out and embrace and give of our substance and our Light as we come alive to/as the eternal Child. (Now, PLEASE. Read this AGAIN!)

My friends, there has been a great wave of new interest in this work. I am proud to be a spokesman to my Greater Selfhood—and I am full of gratitude for your encouragement and incalculable help.

Rachel and I, perhaps with not much time to do it, are at work on * a Summation of sorts. It will be a comprehensive and thorough metaphysical work----in the words and illustrations that only such a life as I’ve lived could ever write. Just as the life (awareness) that greets the sun and reads these words isn’t NOTHING, our many experiences haven’t been meaningless either. My years with a Taoist “Master” in China, my years of warfare and pillage, soldier and businessman, father and teacher, home maker, practitioner and writer, Seeker of Truth, and so many things else, have not been for nothing. But for Something Wonderful. What I have found is marvelous indeed—but the Marvel of All, is the power that lets you and me tell It, show It, point to It so It can be SEEN and UNDERSTOOD by the Heart of Myself. YOU are the Heart of Myself—Child of God, just as I-Identity is that for you.

My first book was published by myself and so must the last. Those who have been helped by “my ways” of writing may wish to join Rachel and me in this activity. It costs a great deal to publish a book nowadays—especially one worthy of the Truth—even when we do all the work ourselves. I will need and appreciate your support, in any way you may offer it.

If your Heart suggests it, DO IT. It is for our SELF we act.

William Samuel,
Woodsong 1984

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 -