William Samuel

William Samuel
William Samuel

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

ZEN BUDDHISM AND WESTERN ABSOLUTENESS

"Morning Sunshine"  by Sandy Jones


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

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ZEN BUDDHISM AND WESTERN ABSOLUTENESS

Zen Buddhism and Western “absoluteness” are equivalents. Zen brings us to negate everything but Isness Itself. So does the absolute view.

The second position, the “is not a mountain” aspect of development, as it is lived in the world, is represented in the illustration of Da Shan by the town of Metadelphia and its extreme neighbor, nearby Absoluty. In Absoluty, even the houses have walls that reach the clouds, negating everything pertaining to the senses and allowing no light to break through the non-thought of thought, or thought about non-thought—the “way of negation.” Only Is is, quite beyond the evidence of the senses. No explanation is given in Metadelphia as to why “is-nots”—sin, sickness, and death—continue to seem despite the rigors of absoluteness. One may hear the philosopher say, “I don't have to explain an illusion.”

Just beyond the walls of Metadelphia is the meadow of simplicity. With the help of the Child within, we climb Metadelphia's wall, or pass through it, when we surrender the weight of the egotistical intellectualism performed in the name of a non-existent ego. Beyond the wall one comes consciously to the Child of himself, skipping freely, joyfully, bounding from flower to flower, high place to high place, living the Equation's Balance all the way to the peak of realization—or non-realization, as the Taoist might say. There one learns why Is appears to include “is-not,” and what to do about it. The Child allows us to move on to the third position—the mountain again. This time we see the new heaven and earth. The old views are understood and no longer have the power over us they had before.

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OCCLUDING STATES OF MIND

How we feel about things influences what we see in the world, no question of that. Envy, jealousy, anger, hatred,  greed, lust, fear, insecurity and “love” are some of the occluding states of mind. Who can see the garden's morning blossom when he is frightened for his life? Who can enjoy a birdsong when he's angry?

Well now. We aren't so quick to recognize what these states of mind do to us. There are countless other occluding mental states as well. The engineer's bent for orderliness; the religionist's and metaphysician's predilection for study; the psychic's concern with things psychic; the scientist's examination of cause and effect, all tend to overlook the uncaused and mysterious. They overlook the obvious. The metaphysician's search for meaning behind words overlooks the reasons for the words themselves. The religionist's concern for his organization holds him to that sense of things—which might be out on the edge of things. The organizational metaphysician's loyalty to his group prevents his discovery of balance—if the group isn't the center of things. 

Human science has discovered evidence of a fifth “force” in nature, but to this point makes little connection between the perception of those forces and the human condition itself. Religious subjectivists generally ignore the connection, trying mightily to deny dualism, still unaware of the good reason for its appearance in the scheme of things. He calls half of himself unreal, pretending to ignore tangibility rather than understand it. Human science very nearly touches the limits of microcosm and macrocosm but fails to connect its findings to life itself, unaware that scientific search is an examination of living Consciousness. 

This is the general rule I'm writing here, and there are certainly many individual exceptions to it. Whoever finds the Child of himself becomes an immediate exception. The Child is the Guide, unafraid to move on with his seeking and finding. The Child looks both ways, so to speak, and sees the principles of the objective studies as clearly as those of the subjective. The Child takes us back to the beginnings of the scheme of Life, through the reasons for theology, onward to the reasons for (and examination of) subjective thinking, still onward to a lived, experienced balance for ourselves in the world—thence to confirmation. Confirmation is the provable “link” between tangibility and Ineffability. Much of that link lies beyond the limits of sense, but not beyond the Heart-Child within us. The Child brings us to the victorious end of the human struggle for wealth, health, dominion and power.

The Child leads us straight to Itself. The Child is the Self of us, the soul. The Child is Life itself. The Child is identity made in the image of God. The Child is precisely what the avatars discovered, marveled at and identified AS—none more beautifully than the historic Jesus. 

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Natural human arrogance has us believe we are coming to understand God. Actually, we are coming to comprehend the pure, perfect, unfallen Image of God. That much understood is a quantum move in the right direction. God understands God. Life is destined to understand Life—and is subservient to God.

Religionists understand words like these, but old in-line scientist and metaphysicians struggle with them. Life is God, some of them say. Well of course, but God is more and that lies beyond the limits of thinking. Thinker, thinking and thought are one, but thinking and thought are subservient to Thinker. By analogy, the television set and its functioning are one television set, but the functioning is within the set—and so is the picture, subservient to the Whole.  
If you would like further guidance in understanding any of William Samuel's work based on Self discover you are welcome to contact me, Sandy Jones - samuelandfriends@gmail.com - Ojai, California -   




Thursday, December 24, 2015

The Grandest Gift of All

"stars" by Sandy Jones 

WOODSONG NOTES    By William Samuel

THE GRANDEST GIFT OF ALL

Words are waiting to be strung in a new order, a new rhythm, a new sequence never written exactly this way before.  Something soft and wonderful sings in the heart of us.  Something NEW and inwardly different is happening this season.

Read the words that follow and listen to them softly. Something marvelous will happen for you.  Why not?

This is the season of It.  Everyone wants to know about It, but only It can tell of It.  It is the authority.  Everyone wants It and has been searching for It but we all overshoot the mark until we are ready to appreciate It.  At first, we didn’t know It when we had it.  We still have It and don’t know it—because, to the undisciplined intellect, that limiting and arrogant half of us, It doesn’t seem big enough or good enough.  It doesn’t fulfill the lofty intellect’s expectations.  Oh, but It is it anyway.

Something happens and It walks onto the tangible Stage.  It is a Wonder.  It has been called many things, but names only disguise It.  What is this Something that happens?  We’ve all had intimations of It.  We were born with It.  We’ve everyone experienced It somewhere along the line.  We may not have recognized It when It happened, but in retrospect, we remember the exhilaration and the softness.  We remember It.  It shaped our lives whether we were conscious of it or not.  It came when we were children, perhaps reading or listening to stories. We have been searching for It again, ever since.  It happened at our mother’s side as she worked in the garden, and we still find comfort in gardens.  It happened in the mountains, and the mountains forever hold us in their arms.  It happened while we frolicked with playful animals and we love animals to this day.  This marvelous experience of It, early in our lives, has us searching for It again, the rest of our days.

When IT happened, the Child of us was alive and well.  The Child within us was lively, nimble and alert, clapping hands and laughing.  Now, here we are, reaching out for that Same One IT again.

What is It?  Listen, listen: It is a tiny moment of sweet inner lightness and delight.  It is a moment of relief from the world’s heaviness.  It is an instant of recognition and weightless surveillance of the scene.  It is a flawless moment that lets us say, “Hey, this is a fine minute!  I feel all right!  I feel good!  I feel joy!  Everything is all right!”  That’s It.  That goodness and lightness is IT!  That’s what It is.  Unfortunately, It’s no big event to the intellect of us, yet its recognition and acknowledgment is the most brimming inner understanding anyone will ever acquire—and the heart of us knows this is so.  It’s the grandest thing one can imagine, because, in the midst of It, suddenly everything IS all right—including the universe and all therein, including our own most personal experiences and our interface with everyone.  That’s all right too.

The Marvel of Marvels begins as a tiny, mustard-seed of sweet, innocent peace.  The conscious perception of this is the Big Bang of the Future, awaiting the world.  When we recognize It, and acknowledge It, It grows and grows.  It comes back again, large, and more apparent.  It returns, again and again, at other unexpected moments, still larger—until it grows into the Tree of Paradise wherein the angels play.

We have all needed someone in our personal life who recognizes It and says, “That’s it!  This is IT!”  The It I write about is the purpose of all the human disciplines.  It is the objective of the philosophies, all the religions and secret societies intended to bring us to Light.  When they are successful, they bring us to this tiny moment wherein we finally recognize It for what it is—peace, simple peace.

The inner delight we feel, even as we read this, is It.  Here It is!  Right here as the awareness reading these words.  It hasn’t gone away, you see.  It never left us nor forsook us.  We are It.  It is us.  It is me and thee and everyone.  And, It is still right here, a tiny moment of peace in the world, ready to explode into the New World and make all things new.

Now, Woodsong friends, we can stop overshooting the mark.  The mark has always been a simple peace within, a feeling of quietness, a moment of lucid light wherein we finally stop missing It and say aloud, in exultation, “This is it!  This is really It, this moment of peace.  Everything right now is all right.  No bill collectors now.  No sons and daughters fussing now.  No one giving us the devil right now; no on berating us; nothing intruding on this holy moment.  No guilt right now.”

Ah so, when visitors came to Woodsong looking for the mystical conclusion of a lifetime of searching, they found It, right here as themselves.  Here It is.  If I could write It, I’d give It to the world for an eternal Gift.  But It can’t be given.  It can’t be taken.  It just is.  It is the Pearl of great price.  It is all that is real.  It’s here available and acceptable to everyone equally.  When we are ready, finally ready to appreciate and acknowledge It, we let go a little, we realize a little, and in a moment of giving up, in a moment of surrender of old ideas, in a moment of letting go some of the silly preconceived notions about What It is and where It is, here It is, pouring in on us and out of us with infinite blessings!

Was It here all the while?  Yes, yes.  Why didn’t we see It?  What matter!  It is here now!  What a wonder It is, so close, so present, yet, unseen, unaccepted, but looked for and longed for, available in the twinkling of an eye, by letting go a moment, and acknowledging It with childlike gratitude.  It is a realizing, a soft and gentle look around the scene.  It is a smile and a sigh of relief.  It comes with healing and Peace on Its wings.  Not a peace the world understands, but we understand because we feel it.  We know it.  We acknowledge it.  We clap hands in a moment of freedom and thanksgiving—and Something synergistic happens.

Hey, you didn’t know It was this simple did you?  Here It is.  The heart of us already knows the truth in these words.  The heart inside feels something stirring.  That stirring is IT!

You thought it was religious?  You thought it was metaphysical?  You thought it came with a knowledge of all wisdom?  You thought everything would change and be healed?  You thought it would be something else, but It is more likely what we don’t expect.  It is always MORE THAN WE COULD HAVE IMAGINED!  Intellectual expectations are good, but clinging to a personal idea of it caused us to miss the mark.  We wanted the blinding Road to Damascus experience.  Now, we are ready!

It is a the joy of all-rightness.  It is the recognition that Life is Good and that Good is God.  That God is good and that good is everywhere, whether we stop to see it or not.  It is hidden in simplicity and clothed in childlikeness. It isn’t recognized by the pompous and mighty.  It isn’t seen by worldly merchants, the greedy, the envious, the rich, famous or powerful.  It is seen by the child-heart of us—the heart that has had enough of the distorted world and is ready for better things.  It is seen by the simple, the meek and mild-mannered.  It is seen by the troubled because they are ready to put their troubles down.  It is seen by any and all who are willing to admit Its presence, Its simplicity and nearness.  It is with us right now, only awaiting our acknowledgment.  If we bring It forth, we live.
                                            Joyful Living!
                                                                                 William Samuel
                                                                    Woodsong on the Hill December 1988

Jesus observed:  “Heaven is even now spread over the whole face of the earth but men perceive it not.”

There IS an incredible beauty and perfection “spread over” the whole face of everything—an astonishing beauty BEING ever “thing”—over all that’s seen, all that’s heard, all that’s thought.  Yet, nearly as incredible, this monumental Beauty is virtually unseen, barely recognized, seldom acknowledged.

Oh, but it is here!  It is here this moment, awaiting the merest acceptance, awaiting the shedding of intellectual skepticism, awaiting acknowledgement without condition—without intellectual thought about how it is SUPPOSED  to appear.                      


Season’s JOY from William Samuel



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



Tuesday, December 22, 2015

The Glass Pyramid

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THE GREAT GLASS PYRAMID

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

Years ago someone wrote that all the people on earth, if assembled in one place, standing side by side, would occupy a square mile of land. They would certainly cover more land that that today, but let us use that square mile for the sake of an illustration that will make a point. Imagine that all humanity is brought together into a great glass pyramid whose four corners cover a square mile of earth. The people are standing jammed together like young people at a rock concert inside the great crystal pyramid, all facing the center.

Well now, how would each person describe what he sees as he looks up? Each one would see the four quadrants of glass coming together at the top. Let us suppose they can see the stars beyond, including Polaris, the North Star, whose position remains constant, and are asked to give a description of the North Star's location. The people along the south wall of the pyramid see the star in one quadrant; those along the north wall see it in another. Those who stand in the east side of the pyramid make different measurements to plot Polaris than do those in the west. As a matter of fact, every man, woman and child would have a slightly different version of the North Star's location, relative to the great glass panels that come to a point above. Each person represents a unique point of view.

Next, suppose that certain creeds and dogmas about the star's location developed through the centuries. The East-side view of things would certainly differ from the West-side view—similar to the differing religious views in the world today. Further, most people are too busy with family and other affairs to look up and measure for themselves, so they have grown to accept whatever idea is popular in their own locales. Can't we see from this illustration how religious ideas, all pertaining to the same God but seen through the eyes of differing cultures, have developed during the centuries before worldwide communication linked us all together? Man's personal views of his relation to Godhead are not unlike the pyramid-people's views of their relation to the North Star. Religious ideas generally refer to the Same One, but have their own sets of proofs for validity. And, in truth, every statement is valid, so far as its measure goes. Isn't it strange that some of the world's religions can perceive this difference and allow for it, while others stand like staunch old pines in the wind, refusing to give any other views an inch, claiming their own perspective is the only valid perspective of the Ineffable?

Can the reader see that all eyes pointing toward the top represent individual “points of view” and “lines of thought”? If so, let me show in a simple way how powerful subjectivism is—and, remember, subjective thinking is the new wave of things to come for mankind. 

One person, having learned the top-down method of thinking and comprehending—the very basis for subjectivism—is like a person who has broken away form the masses and climbed to the top of the pyramid. His view is like a great eye at the top of the pyramid looking down at everyone looking up. The top-down view includes all the bottom-up views within itself almost simultaneously. The top-down view is quantum, whereas the bottom-up view is individual. Such is the advantage of subjectivism and its comprehension that the world exists within Awareness! Subjectivism is to human thought what quantum mechanics has  become to physics. (Today we see the leading edge of science on the brink of discovering the “subjective idea.” They have found the experiment tied to the awareness observing the experiment. It is a start! Science will discover the power of subjectivism before religion does, it appears—and even before the metaphysicians who claim to know it already, but don't know what to do with it. We guess the scientist will know because his arithmetic will suggest, insist and cause him to “prove.”)

Does the Eye at the top quarrel with the opposing views at the bottom? No. It understands the basis for the differences of opinion—and understand the holistic reasons for mankind's behavior. Oh, but the top-down view would certainly object if one of the groups along the eastern or western wall went to war against its opposite numbers, in the name of creed, dogma and holy book.

We discover the child within. The Child takes us (more or less) quickly to the top of the pyramid to the View that includes all views within Itself. Down on the sandy floor of the pyramid, extremism in the defense (or promulgation) of anyone's holy book and/or bottom-up view of the Ineffable, causes men in black to make strange utterances in the name of localized views of God and to call for holy wars that could destroy civilization. On the floor, one hopes that won't happen. From the top, one sees that something must happen among the warring, unloving throngs to call attention to the Child's top-down View that understands and forgives. The prophets have all said to look up willingly—or be forced to look up in an awful Armageddon.

Two thousand years ago, Christianity came along to say, “Let that mind be in us which is also in Christ...” (the subjective view of things), but see how Christianity's dogmatic creeds are warring among themselves. Whatever happened to the Child's View that Jesus and other gave their lives to tell about?

We get the top-down view and live it on the sandy floor of life, right here in the objective view of things. How? We find the Child within ourselves and run with it. We publish peace (our own knowledge of this Child within) as we have been admonished to. We finally understand the exclusivity and arrogance of unyielding creeds and dogmas that discourage the individual's climb to the top of the pyramid. We see why the objective views have labeled subjectivism “silly solipsism.” And, subjectively, from the top, we see that “one with God is a majority.” The world unfolds within the subjective consciousness.


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




Saturday, December 12, 2015

Christmas Light

"Ojai Christmas" by Sandy Jones 
www.woodsongjournals.com

NOTES FROM WOODSONG
by
William Samuel


MORE ABOUT LIGHT

Dear Reader, hold onto your hat!  The world scene and its history have never been the WHOLE of Truth’s light.  For each of us, it is certain the half-truth that lies in the human concept of time and space will soon be exploded.  The knowledge of LIGHT discloses the cosmic mystery. 

It is the holiday season and its special Light of Christmas again.  How quickly the years pass, each with its memories.  It seems that time marches on irrevocably.  “The moving finger writes,” the poet says,  “and having writ, moves on.”  But now, in the December of a measurable span, we begin to hear science saying things about time that only mystics have said:  that time isn’t an absolute; that time is relative; that time is only applicable to certain limited areas—even time’s movement in one direction may, under certain circumstances, be reversed!  These ideas are presently emerging from science’s examination of the nature of simple light—sunlight, candle light, laser light, all forms of the same light that even now illumines the words on this page.

Sitting here considering what to write about light/Light and how to present it, I’m literally overwhelmed by the task I’ve set for myself.  There is so much to say about Light but nearly all of it defies the telling.  What can I present in the space of a few pages of a subject whose roots permeate all experience on the earth, embracing everything we have ever thought and done?  For each of us, our entire personal history has had but one purpose behind it:  discovery of the Light of the Eternal.  

This is so and I KNOW it is so with a conviction I’ve never known before.  No hyperbole here.  We move an inch toward the discernment of Light and Light rushes a thousand miles in our direction to disclose itself and its already present secrets.  The Light of Life comes with a conviction so staunch that neither sensual nor intellectual testimony to the contrary can deny it forever. 


But how to write of Light?  There lies the problem.  It INSISTS on paradox, analogy and parallel.  There is a metaphysical inversion at the place of perception (Awareness) and until that inversion “happens” for each of us there is little conscious  understanding of the perception.  But the grand and paradoxical wonder is, no conscious understanding is necessary!  The Truth is the truth is the Truth whether it is understood by a fumbling sense of humanhood or not.  From the Truth’s standpoint, there is no fumbling sense of humanhood—albeit there seems to be, and continues to seem so even when its impossibility is finally understood. 

Thence, one continues to address the chimera in whatever terms seem capable of lessening is distortion—perhaps even removing them.  It seems to me, the sign of this in one’s “personal experience on earth” would be a statement of word and deed so well done that no doubt could possibly remain of the Ineffable and its only-ness.  Where are the words that can to that!?  Words alone can’t, but Light can!

I have battled with the limitation of words for years, it seems, but it is precisely this struggle that has brought me to understand things about Light I could not have fathomed otherwise.  The limit of words is precisely analogous to the limit of ordinary light.  We use one to gain insight into the other and to explain certain features of it—not much different from the physicist’s use of arithmetic to understand the action of particles. 

In another parallel, I first understood how slow moving sound waves could be made to create a three dimension image of an image—then used that information to deduce that moving light would do the same thing faster and more clearly.  Matter is an image of an image, reduced to time and space.  The reduction to time and space is not the Original Image, but it says something about it.   To know the Original, we examine its images.  To understand Light, we examine light.  To examine light is to learn, almost serendipitously, whatever information it includes in the moment of time.  Jesus used this logic when he made the simple statement, “Know what is before your eyes, then that which is hidden will be revealed there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed; and nothing covered that will not be uncovered.”  But again, an intellectually bewildering paradox presents itself: One finds the most direct way to understand time and space is to go to Godhead and Its Self-knowing (Light!) wherein neither time nor space exist as real. 

Reader, don’t you dare be frustrated by this mess of words.  (More will come clear with the next reading.)  WE ALL COME TO “UNDERSTAND” EXACTLY AS WE ARE SUPPOSED TO!  Just because the chickens in the incubator do not understand light doesn’t mean they are not bathed in it continually.  If, for some reason the incubator light flickers for moment, every chick in the bunch will KNOW it has been standing in the light.  Our fears are the flicker. 

Christianity addresses the “metaphysical inversion” in the most direct way.  It puts it in terms of turning around and looking in the opposite direction—repentance.  Yes, we turn from total absorption on the world scene and its history to look in the opposite direction, toward First Cause, within Godhead.  Doing that, one quickly happens on the solipsistic paradox that perceives other “turn arounds” happening simultaneously: inside/outside, above/below, firs/last, male/female and finally (?) Light/light.  Jesus spoke of these also but all he had to say about them was not included in the Bible.  It was no easier to write of these things then than it is now. 


Cosmologically speaking, to understand light takes us back to the very beginning of space and time.  On the first day, the first recorded words of God said, “Let there be light:” and there was light.  Present cosmologists of the scientific variety have reversed the order of creation, so to speak, taking their view of the created world of matter back to its first moments, discovering that everything is, indeed, made of light.  Every element that constitutes the universe is light-in-motion which has been slowed or arrested into specific patterns by an unknowable “super implicate order” whose domain exists beyond the limits of time and space, hence beyond the ability of science (intellect) to understand.  Scientists have taken matter back very nearly to its “beginning” in space and time.  How near?  In the June, 1983 National Geographic (p 710) we read that science’s confirmation of Big Bang “has taken it back in time to a tenth of a thousandth of a millionth of a billionth of trillionth of a trillionth of second”!  And at that moment, the entire universe of matter (millions of trillions of huge stars et al) “was compressed into a space many times smaller than a single proton of an atom.”  How about those apples?  Such conclusions are as close as the intellect can come to comprehending something from nothing and time from timelessness.  These things have been given much publicity in recent issues of prestigious publications to which the reader may refer. 

In the days ahead, we will read much of the wonders of light and things it is capable of accomplishing.  Perhaps this Christmas someone may send a beautiful card to you with an intricate pattern cut into it by light itself.  Oh, for that matter every photograph we have ever seen has been etched by light.  Every card we have ever held is made of light slowed into form by the grandest cosmic mystery of all—spaceless, timeless Light of light. 

What is light?  Science doesn’t know.  Scientists can measure it and they know some of the things it will do.  But exactly what it is remains as much a mystery now as it was to the ancients who must have marveled at the stars and marked the passage of the moon through the night skies.  Now, at last it is becoming known that light is the MEASURE of the Universe and the energy of that action.  There is no division between “spiritual” light and “material” light for there is no matter in light.  Light has no mass.  Yes, ALL light is spiritual, albeit limited—because it is not ALL there is to Illimitable Being, to Godhead and its Self-knowledge as Awareness, any more than words can be all there is to the image they describe.  The light we see is the measure of measureless Implicate Order, Godhead. 

Measure means “knowledge of” or “information about” something—so, in the simplest, most direct way, light is the measure of Godhead, information of the Ineffable.  Information to or for whom?  For GOD’S own Self-knowing.  The awareness that reads these words is the perception of light/Light going on, God’s Self-knowledge HAPPENING.  The WHERE is in (and as) awareness, the WHAT is knowledge of the qualities and attributes of Godhead, as well as knowledge of the qualities and attributes of awareness.  Awareness (life) lives and moves and has its being WITHIN Godhead—Wisdom itself, Life itself, immortal and eternal! 

This Season marks the timeless Moment when immaculate awareness comes to free us from the mistaken worship of the graven IMAGES of limited light in order to recognize the “FATHER of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” 

So we sit loose and enjoy.  As God’s Self-satisfaction—Contentment—we are free to do just that.  God’s light is enfolded within the awareness that sees Christmas lights twinkling, that watches the evening sky with starlight gleaming. In the same way the “words” are “information,” just so is light unfolding the wisdom and knowledge of God within us.  Who is “us”?  SELF-AWARENESS of the Infinite Eternal.  

Life runs in Light because Life is that light.  The searching soul that struggles to see, skirts the edges of shadows, plumbs the darkened valleys of hidden hills and measures the forms of opaqueness.  But for each of us, in each one’s time, the experience examined, the shadows searched, leads us to the Light, the Light to the Godhead.  The shadows are gone, having let us see SO WE KNOW WE SEE the immeasurable allness of Light.   


        Joyful Holiday to you all, William Samuel (1983)




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