William Samuel

William Samuel
William Samuel

Monday, May 26, 2014

Concerning The Role of The Teacher





The Awareness of Self-Discovery    By William Samuel   

CONCERNING THE ROLE OF THE "TEACHER"

The idea has long been prevalent in the "East" and is growing elsewhere that the only way to the "release of Enlightenment" (illumination, Satori, Awakening, etc.) is at the hands of a personal teacher. Certainly the teacher, guru, minister, etc. is a grand help, and to deprive ourselves of their services when they can appear to help would be foolish, but the belief that one must assume the role of a student seated at the feet of a teacher is misleading and defeating.

"Ye shall all know me " is the statement, and the knowing that knows "Me" is our Identity, already established, at hand, here and now. Ultimately, the Self's Self-communion must be seen to be direct and so practiced.

This does not mean there is not a time when a church, Bible or teacher does not serve a happy, meaningful purpose in our affairs—or that they must all be forsaken when we find they do not have the same relevance the world gives them. the bloom that finds itself separate from the bush and cuts itself away in an act of intellectual independence, only finds itself dependent on a vase of water instead, and its petal last no longer than the one on the bush. Genuine enlightenment allows us to see the world for our own view it is and without having to contend with it blindly. This is the bloom that does not have to lash out at anything when it discovers its real Identity. Further, this is the bloom that seeds and finds its own beauty next season where this season's weeds are a tangle of contradistinction.

AWARENESS INCLUDES ALL SYSTEMS AND TEACHERS

Question: Mr. Samuel, Is it really possible, as you say, to steer a course that encompasses all philosophic systems and all teachers of those systems, including the "bad" ones?

Yes. How? By viewing systems as we view "images" within Awareness. By viewing teachers and groups as we would view blossoms in a garden—as we would look on a scene outside our study window.

I look outside and see a fence surrounding the pool. If I wished to grow eloquent I could wage a wordy war against "bad" fences which exist, as appearances go, to restrict or prohibit—but they exist as things of beauty, too, and as something for a morning glory to climb. Right now I look outside and simply see a fence being a fence. Any judgmental criticism would be foolish SELF-criticism. 

Why would it be self-criticism?

Because Awareness and all it includes is who and what I am. It is self-criticism as surely as looking at one of my fingers and condemning it for not being a thumb. 

If someone asks me what I think about fences, it becomes the sensible thing to answer this question. But let my answer be honest! The one who asks is not other than an image within this Awareness-being-Identity—an aspect of the very Identity I am. Condemnation of the fence at this point would compound itself as both an I-like and I-dislike judgment of my own, creating its attraction and revulsion with which I would have to contend. Then I would be likely to see the question-image having to fight the same battle because of my judgment of the fence. Our stated and written words, therefore, must be as honest always as we know how to make them—and it would be best in many instances to limit our conversation to yea, yea, nay, nay, as Jesus advocated.

Now listen carefully. If, in looking out my study window, I see a vagabond hound entrapped within that fence, struggling to be free, and he barks to me telling me of his plight, it would be the wise thing to go and open the fence gate, loosing the mutt and letting him be on his way to explore the universe. 

But in doing this, I do not have to condemn the fence or tear it down, do I?
"Mr. Samuel, your symbology is beautiful, but what if I look outside my study window and find my son entangled in a briar patch filled with drugs, poison ivy and snakes? If the only way I could free him entailed hacking away at the snakes and briars, wouldn't I hack away?

Your question is here and now even though the situation you speak of is not. If such a situation presented itself to this here and now, I would do all that appeared necessary to release my son or anyone else—to include hacking at the entangling vines, if this is the only way it seemed I could free my vagabond son. It happens, however, that the judgless view of the universe brings experiences with it that require ever less hacking, attack-experiences with it that require ever less hacking, attacking, criticizing, condemning, killing or maiming.

The situation you present is hypothetical, you see. Where is any of that going on here and now? Out there is the fence around the pool just being a fence around the pool and the birds I see inside are not entrapped.

Now, some who come here appear entrapped by sundry philosophies which entertain certain ideas as "correct" and exclude other ideas as wrong, bad, evil, etc. There appear to me like fences being fences. People join groups of their own volition ordinarily. Like the vagabond hound yonder, they explore for a time and then travel on to more interesting areas to smell out and enjoy.  If they come to us asking for advice while appearing to be entrapped by this or that conditioned thinking, this philosophy or that institution—if they appear to be doing something to their obvious detriment—we do and say what appears to be the HONEST, HONEST release from their predicament. But you see, we do this only for those who come to us asking questions and seeking our help. We are not in the business of getting images to do as we think they should. We are not trying to end the appearances of all conditioned thinking out there. We end our own dishonesty—and find ourselves with ever fewer personal reactions to contend with. 

We stop saying this teacher or religion is right and that one is wrong. we view them as flowers in the garden. If a bee comes to us and says he is encumbered by yellow pollen, we would tell him the pollen comes from the sunflowers. Or if the centipede appears to be roasting alive, we would lift him from the hot stone in the sun and place him on the cool earth nearby. But, you see, I would only know how to do this by virtue of the fact that I had had my nose in a sunflower and had walked barefoot on the hot stone myself. I would not hurl invectives at the sun, nor cut down the sunflower.


Excerpt from "The Awareness of Self-Discovery"  By William Samuel



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 -   

Posted by at 2 comments:

The Phantom Of Fear





   The Awareness of Self-Discovery         By William Samuel 


 CHAPTER 9
  
The Phantom Of Fear

Dear Mary,

Concerning fear, listen with your Heart!
The images on the television screen may appear to shake, jump, roll and crack asunder but their gyrations do not, cannot, do anything to the screen. Can they?

Our Identity is the screen of life, "within" which the images of people, things, events, etc., appear; but those events cannot do anything to this Identity we are no matter how much they quake or threaten to!

"Seest thou this?" The consciousness that even now reads these words is the "screen" and the images included within it can do nothing to it or for it.

So do not be frightened. Words are just words; threats are just threats, sights are just sights—all powerless. Power ever resides as God, Reality, Isness which is even now being this awareness-we-are, this Life. 

Reality is in no way self-destructive. The Identity we are is the very self of Deity—and there is no need for fear.

Have we not heard that "love casts out fears?" Have we not also heard that "God is love" and that God is all? Isn't All all? To be frightened is to disavow God's existence—and even a shadow cannot disavow the substance that produces the shadow.  Unless God is frightened of Himself, fear is illusory—
Well, God is not frightened and fear is senseless foolishness, powerless to bind us. We are not bound by fear, Mary, and you do not need to act as though you are.

————————

Dear John,

To the point quickly:

I am aware of your fear and the depth of it. Furthermore, I'm aware of the sundry pictures that present themselves as the causes of fear and how very real they seem. But I am also aware, whether anyone on this earth believes me or not, that those appearances do not have the authority in themselves to cause us to panic. Our fear, like our grief, is often self-induced self love—unadulterated selfishness about a separate self that doesn't even exist in Truth.

Does the real Identity agonize? Does the perfect Identity run around in a panic? It does not!
Is the only Mind in all existence afraid of losing an aspect of Its own Self-awareness? Is Mind fearful it will forget something Mind knows Mind to be? If Mind is not afraid, who is?
If you say you are, you have the wrong you. That's the one to stop playing the role as.
We do not make progress out of strife. It only seems that way because the strife (fear, consternation, morbid depression and grind in the belly) is like a dam that blocks the flow of Unfoldment within (and as) itself. When the block is lifted momentarily, the accumulation rushes out into conscious awareness. Only that impostor, who lives the belief of the block, views his agony as a means of discerning his harmony—though it surely appears to be the only way we can find it so long as we are still struggling to be that unenlightened blockhead striving after a healing.

————————

Right now, right where you are, there is nothing that needs to be healed. The old nature of us believes there are appearances to belie this, but if we are going to react to those appearances as if they were an imperfection, then we do not really believe that God is ALL. Do we? How ALL is YOUR all?

Come home to your own "feelings" and insist on the "feel" of equanimity. In truth, we do not "feel" because of the sights and sounds of awareness; rather, sights and sounds appear as they do "because" of feeling. Find this sense of peace first. Experience follows suit.

————————

"Son" is an idea included within consciousness. There are no diseased ideas. The very one you tangibly see, hear, talk to and love is seen (heard, felt) within the consciousness presently reading these words. Consciousness is God's action of Self-perception and God is quite responsible for all it contains and for perceiving it perfectly.




Excerpt from  "The Awareness of Self-Discovery"  By William Samuel 
Available on Amazon 



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 -   
Posted by at 2 comments:

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Illustration of the Incubator



Artwork "Enchantment" by Sandy Jones 


Excerpt from 
The Child Within Us Lives! A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics

 by William Samuel

 ILLUSTRATION OF THE INCUBATOR


Related Papers 73 --  Illustration of the Incubator    By William Samuel 

What do we know about Light? Virtually nothing. About God? Still less.

Let me make a parallel illustration that suggests why Everyman knows so little and may one day learn so much. Instead of people, imagine chickens. Instead of the world, imagine a great incubator with the light turned on perpetually and with us chicks scratching around looking for (or not looking for) comfort, first, and the meaning of Life, a distant second.

Let's pretend that an incubator hour is more like a decade, and that for nearly eleven thousand years we chickens have been speculating about the nature of Reality, wondering which version is right. During our long search, the thinking chickens among us have concluded that our well-being has something to do with light. (It might be interesting to note here that the scientist chicken and the religious chicken have apparently opposing ideas. The scientist speaks about the light he can measure; the religionist about the Light of God that can't be measured.)

Well now, how do we stand in the great incubator today? What do we chickens really know about Light/light? There is a precise parallel here. What did we know of childhood when we were children? What does a fish know of water or a bird of air? What do those who have been in the light without realizing it know about the light?

Over the chicken-millennia, thousands of religions have come and gone. Four primary philosophies remain today, one for each corner of the incubator. In the corners are great organizations with grand gurus representing different points of view such as Eastern, Western, Jewish, Catholic and, now that science has found metaphysics in its quantum mechanics, we need to add another corner to the pyramid. Each view insists its way is the best way; some say, the only way. The chicks in the south are diametrically opposed to those across the way. The Eastern view is opposite the Western view. One can imagine how these differences arose by recalling the Illustration of the Pyramid. (See THE GLASS PYRAMID) We remember how those along the north wall see Polaris in a different overhead quadrant than do those near the south wall, and must necessarily describe its relationship to the pyramid differently. The four corners have a common root, but that is about all. Ah, but science has the world's attention. Religious metaphysics hasn't kept up in that respect.

Organizations, using this authority or that, have encouraged us to judge the other views as less enlightened than our own. It is difficult to believe that one claiming enlightenment would call another view heathen because that view sees the North Star at a different angel, but of course, many do. The struggle between science and religion seems unending, science presently dominating. 

In search of the true message, some chickens, like me, have gone to every corner of the incubator and to half the religions—only to become more confused. The subjective East doesn't jibe with the objective West, and neither really knows what the other is talking about, but each seems certain of what the other is not talking about. For that matter, the traveling chick learns that virtually no one who calls himself “metaphysical” knows what metaphysics is. 

Most of us chickens have no concept about the light that warms us, much less about the Light standing behind that light. We know what we've been told in our own little corner of the incubator—by our parents, our leaders and their holy books, our schools and organizations. Like the chickens, most of us think primarily of our comfort, self-satisfaction and ongoing titillation—which carefully includes the way we make a living. It is said that less than ten percent of the Western world is religious, though one doesn't have to be religious to have a concern for and interest in Truth. Still fewer concern themselves with subjective thoughts such as these, so we wonder what marvel brought the holy books into being or impels anyone to write these things to so small an audience. Yet through the years there have been correct words to guide us to the Light within.

As for the disputes about what the light of the incubator is (or what the Light beyond the light is), the grand gurus learned long ago that it is infinitely better, for their own sakes, to let the chickens debate the meanings of the words in the holy books rather than delve into the nature of Light/light. Leave theology to the theologians, they say. Debate invites schism and schism is hurtful to the organization and its power. 

Reader, what DO metaphysics, theology and philosophy reveal about Light? Light is, after all, one of the things so close to us we don't notice it or really know what it is. The Light of Life can't be seen with mortal eyes. It can't be touched. What do people really know about the Light of Life? Like the chickens in the incubator, almost nothing. Only that It IS—and because It is, we are. One can get a powerful argument from philosophers and metaphysicians that even this much isn't certain. 

Yet, there is an event that will surely bring every chicken to know about light immediately! When a great storm one day pulls the incubator's plug for a moment and everything goes dark, THEN every chicken in the place will know what light IS from experiencing what it is NOT. In the twinkling of an eye, the apparent ABSENCE of light—and the panic of that absence—will bring everyone to a full consciousness of light. Even those drinking beer, flapping the levers on pinball machines and watching their latest videos will know, from the least of them to the greatest, that light is an integral part of their well-being. And those who are meditating or pinching their noses in prayer, imploring Light to be more Light, will become acquainted with It also.

The Light of Life is just as close to us as the light in the incubator is close to the chickens. We were born into the appearance of time and space with/as It, and we have grown up with It whether we are aware of the fact or not. Light is here, unheralded and unnoticed, living us, supporting and warming us—the very spark of Being Itself. The Child of us IS that Light, here and now.

Strangely, for each us individually and all of us collectively, life must be threatened and common disaster loom before we are willing to be earnest. The religions of the world have so cut and dried the believer's approach to theology, cosmology, debate and discussion (from fear of schism and disloyalty), that one doesn't learn until the end of his personal affairs that the grand gurus in the corners are no longer spokesmen for anything resembling the Original Message; that these servants of the “Living word” have, in the name of the printed word, dismissed the Living Child within themselves. The Biblical Apocalypse says these churches will have served their purposes in the final days of time. Perhaps so. When we see the bickering and warfare that passes for religion, metaphysics and “love”—Christians torching other Christians in the name of Christ—one only wonders when the destruction will be over. 

There are unnoticed Lights in the world—religious and otherwise—individuals working diligently, able in marvelous ways to walk the precarious pathways beyond religion and metaphysics—no longer beguiled by the organized bewilderers. There are those who have climbed the barbed walls of orthodoxy and found the Child of themselves again. Those who have found the Child are able to tell us how to find the same Child within ourselves. They tell of the Self within, how to find Its Equation for living, how to receive It and how to give It. We seek these people out and listen to them. 

The light in the world incubator has begun to flicker and flutter. I am reminded of the Carpenter who said the day would come when there are two in the field, one taken up and one left behind. Two on a bed, one lives and one dies. Five in a household—three against two and two against three. Perhaps I have been shown some of these things because I know such days will come in the world's “time” if only when the individual faces his own transition. There will be those who are frightened and those who are not; those who will know what to do and those who won't. The unafraid will have found the BALANCE between inside and outside, above and below, first and last, male and female, objective and subjective. 

These people may or may not be familiar with the words of the historic Christ Child, but they will know those words are true and faithful, having found the Child themselves.

The Child takes us to the Balance quickly. The Child tells of the Equation wherein life prospers with security, grace and decency. The Child takes us to the non-spatial place of Identity where we EXCHANGE the things Above and give them below, not theorize and talk about them endlessly; where we pass the reports from outside and give them inside. Those who stand on that High Ground will be (are) the final harvest and final seed of the Tree of Life.
  

Excerpt from "The Child Within Us Lives! A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics"  
By William Samuel   

Available on Amazon



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 -   


Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)