William Samuel

William Samuel
William Samuel

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Awareness and Identity



Excerpt from "A Guide To Awareness and Tranquillity" 
 by William Samuel 
LETTERS TO ONE JUST BEGINNING THIS STUDY

Dear David,

  We "begin" with this now-awareness, but the beginning must be a new and genuine redetermination of Isness. We start from scratch, but this is not being done until our previous beliefs, ideas and cherished opinions are loosed and let go. The practice of humanity, the intellectual temptation, is to carry them with us to see if our new discoveries coincide with our old ideas.

  No, we let go everything and start again like new babes, with the first and basic fact about which there is no uncertainty—the isness of this present now-awareness. All else must go. Without regard or regret, without fear or consternation, we stand in a void, naked, childlike, innocent. As this now-awareness, empty of the ego, we open our eyes and awaken!

  David replies, "This sounds as if I will lose my identity. I certainly don't want to do that. As a matter of fact, I am searching for identity."

Dear David,

  When we begin with Awareness we find we lose nothing that is real, most certainly not the Identity. Rather, we let go the notions of an identity we have never been. We lose the unhappiness, loneliness, lack, poor health and fear inevitably associated with a misidentification called "the old man," his intellect, his cherished common sense and his high opinions of himself.

  So, we shuck the old ideas and let them go, David. We bring attention back to this real and present fact of Awareness. Awareness is a fact; we know it; we are it; nothing is outside of it. Here, we discover the true Identity!

  When one looks at the television and sees things on the screen, he is not tempted to believe the screen is in one place and images in another. He knows they are one television screen. Exactly so, awareness and the images of perception are all one Awareness.

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WHEN WE KNOW, WE KNOW!

  There are no words we can read that will convince us of the allness of this now-consciousness; there is no one to whom we may listen or talk who can do more than persuade us intellectually. We know—and we know, we know—only when we find it and feel it within the Heart.

  Reader, this will happen for you much sooner than you expect. Your "awakening" is inevitable, irresistible and certain, because the fact is—as you shall see and have been told many times—you are not sleeping to be awakened now. Despite the appearances on the world's stage, you are already all you could ever hope to become. You are already in the Father's house. The nearly unanimous pronouncements of classical theology and education to the contrary, your real Identity is neither sinful nor fallen; you are not a prodigal acting the profligate and wandering in the pigsties of a far country. The Identity you are this instant is Harmony's Now-Awareness being aware. Our heritage, effortless and divine, is to acknowledge this fact!

  Right now, bring yourself from an over-concern with things within Awareness to Awareness itself. Here you will find that all bodies, all images, and everything Awareness includes, are aspects of your own Identity! Here you will find that you are happiness, completeness and joy itself.

A BIT OF ZENNESS

  I saw a little boy looking at a tray of donuts in the bakery window. His eyes sparkled and his thoughts were an excitement that moved his lips to half-spoken words.

  I saw an old man looking into a cake box at a gift. His eyes sparkled and his thoughts were an excitement that brought a smile to his face.

  I looked into a mirror on the wall and saw a little boy and an old man watching me. They heard me wondering to myself, "How strange that I should see their images in the mirror instead of my own."

  But then, it isn't strange really. The Isness being the cake and the tray of donuts is the same Isness being the little boy, the old man and the mirror on the wall. Is not the Awareness of them all, the selfsame Identity being me?

A LETTER ABOUT READING BOOKS

Dear Mary,

  With whatever I find myself reading—just as you now find yourself reading this letter—I have found it wise to be very, very wary! Why? Because our old arrogant, egotistical nature seeks out sustaining agreement with itself and its distorted opinions. The habitual, unregenerate intellect of us all is seldom interested in aught but shoring up its forged and fraudulent foundations. When it finds a line or a paragraph that agrees with its view of Reality, it says, "Ah hah!" and underlines the words. When it finds an idea repugnant to its already established concept (usually something that tends to demean, diminish or finish the high and mighty ego), it grunts and writes "Bosh!" in the margin. How often we are amused by these notations at a later reading!

  When a book is successfully communicating, one may not be as impressed with the same words at the end as at the beginning. Insights are nearly always expanded upon re-reading, and very often the boshes of the first reading begin to make sense with the second.

With kindest regards,

P.S. Mary, no two artists paint the sunshine alike, but it's the same sunshine. Take the words of this book and substitute your own familiar expressions for my unfamiliar ones. It will not be long until you grow into the spirit of the new work and find yourself quite certain of its message.

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FAITH

  "Faith" is the world's designation for that which operates between the intellectual acceptance of Truth and the Heart's declaration that says "It is so!" The Singing Heart speaks such that we know "without mental reservation or equivocation"; then we are enabled to act from the standpoint of knowing instead of faith. The Christ-Heart's declaration lifts faith from a concern over the accuracy of philosophies, the exactness of words or the integrity of people, to the certain knowledge of Isness itself. The Heart is the spokesman for Isness, and this Awareness we are is the faith-full witness.

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NOW IS TRANSCENDENT

  Now transcends the past and the future. Why? Because now is the "time" of tangibility; now is the time of experience; now is when Awareness is concretely aware. No matter how awesome, magnificent or poignantly personal a memory may be, and no matter what it contains, the thought about it is taking place now and this makes the nowness of now transcendent. No matter what wild scheme we entertain, no matter how beautifully we construct a dream of the future, all the scheming and dreaming is taking place in the now, and this makes now transcendent, quite above and beyond time's past and future. Sharp, fearful dreams and the rough memories that appear to be their causes are smoothed by this transcendent now when we let it!

  Now is the common denominator of Awareness, just as Awareness is the common denominator for all experience. The two are intertwined in such a way that they are not two at all, but an inseparable one. Because the nature of Isness is singleness rather than multiplicity, we come to equate nowness and awareness as one. Now is not a time-frame wherein experience happens. Awareness is the action of Deific Mind and, as such, is not at the mercy of past experiences. This now-awareness is in no way beholden to human chronology.

  Philosophy, religion and education make an effort to understand Reality, but Reality (Deity) stands in confident selfbeing, already knowing itself. Deity's "knowing" is forever beholding, comprehending and apprehending itself as itself. Here there is no need to learn or to understand anything; here is simple, natural, normal being.

  Notice the fine line here: to determine Identity, to seek Self-knowledge, to strive for information academically, esoterically or by any other means, is to be the old man still, the misidentity making the effort to understand the identity of another he calls God.

  On the other hand, to rest in the infinite Self-knowledge of Being knowing I am forever beholding, knowing, comprehending and apprehending the Divine Self who is being this Consciousness, is to live the Identity I am!

  This is not to say that all I am aware of is a dream; not at all. This is to be continually Self-aware. This is to joy in Spirit being all one perceives. This simple action taken marks the end of evaluation, the "last judgment." This is the Sabbatical Rest.

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 -   
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Me Again



51
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TO FIND BALANCE IS TO FIND IDENTITY


To find BALANCE is to find Identity—and Identity leads the way to God. 

Surely ten thousand books have been written over the centuries about identity—what it really is and how to find it. Essentially, the world's holy books are about identity, the “real man” made in the image and likeness of God.

There is little doubt among thinkers that the world view of identity isn't the correct view, and most would agree much more is to be understood. The problem, as always, is exactly how one goes about discovering his true identity. “Don't tell me about Identity,” a letter says, “tell me what to do to find it.” What follows is a “what to do.”

Just as the inner Child leads to Godhead, so balance leads to the Child. The balance is to the child what alphabet is to writing. We learn the alphabet before we write. We learn about balance and live it. Lo, the Child is discovered and the Child leads straight to Identity. Heretofore, we have really been looking for the true nature of “the old man.” That one isn't identity and never will be. We find the Child, and then we know the Child is the real Identity. The we set out to understand the Child of ourselves.

When one has found the balance, he has found himself. One is the point of balance between all “the five trees in the midst of the garden.” Where is the balance between inside outside if it isn't this very Awareness I am? The inside passes through this Awareness to the outside and returns from the outside and passes through Me again.

Where is the balance between above and below? Right here as Awareness, midway between microcosm and macrocosm. And where is the balance between male and female? Here as Awareness. Certainly not here as this body. This body appears more male than female. That body seems more female than male. But, upon careful examination, the balance IS found within the body physical, the body being both male and female but tipped bodily one way or the other. Between the extremes of gender lies Awareness, this consciousness of being, perfectly balanced Identity which is being all there is to both male and female.

And so it is with all imbalances. The balance is found right here as Awareness, Identity. When the ancients said one's aim in life was to “Know Thyself,” they were exactly right. One finds himself, Identity, and finds he is the balance between Spirit and matter, first and last, inside and outside, above and below, objective and subjective, the macrocosm and microcosm. He will also find (slowly) that his Self, as Awareness, precedes all tangibility in time. Awareness is prior to the body we seem to be looking out of. 

One finds the divinity in himself before he sees it in another—and when he has actually found it in himself, he sees in in all others. But of course, we think we see it in others long before we see it in ourselves. A letter is here from a lady who is certain she has found God living in a commune on the West Coast, and she would have me agree that he is God. People are all the image of God, but not one image is God. God is God and people are life's confirmation, life's “image” as that image appears on the tangible scene. The godly man confirms God more obviously than do the warrior and thief, but to the godly, the sinner is as much the image of the Image of God as the saint is.

Beware the man who says “I am God” or permits others to say that of him. Perhaps the only thing more sinful than proclaiming oneself to be God is to allow others to call him God. Certainly one of the great measures of the man Jesus was his honesty on this score. Were Jesus on television this minute, he would say exactly what he said two thousand years ago: “When you see Me you see the Father, for my Father and I are one, but My Father is greater than I.” And, of course, people would still call him God and good and he would say once more, “don't call me good. Don't call any man good. There is none good but God. Don't call me master, either. I am not your master.”

No genuine “master” lets anyone call him master. If I were to look up and suddenly perceive that I am, indeed, the Perfect Image Itself, the First Born of God, God's only begotten Son Himself, I would yet be image and nothing of myself. Image is image. Image is nothing of itself. Image is without real power of authority except it be given to that image by Godhead. GODHEAD is the Name, the Authority and the Power, and not even the Son of God Himself dares claim it. Inasmuch as Jesus the man made these honest and identical statements, that image appears Christly and extremely honest to me. 

It is when we become nothing that we become the door to Something. The best door is the empty place without an impediment. The Window that allows the Light is the place where nothing is. 


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 -   
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Center of Identity



Excerpt from "The Child Within Us Lives!"
 by William Samuel 

Related Papers 

52
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ONE MORE PAPER ON BALANCE

We hear little on the subject of balance in our religious or metaphysical study, which is something of a surprise considering the absolute necessity of finding and maintaining it. One doesn't have to look far in the scientific, religious or metaphysical scene to find evidence of woeful imbalances among people. 

We must conclude that since our return to a conscious knowledge of Identity is much like a mountain climb wherein we're busy confirming the Truth of Identity, then the climbing is integrally concerned with balance. If we lose it, we fall away from the Center of Identity into the chaos of imbalance. But there is more than one balance to find and maintain in our search for Truth. There are several of them, each necessary in various places in our climb to confirmation.

The first balance is the karmaic teeter totter between cause and effect, good and evil—just as much the province of science as religion. This, the first balance we really become aware of, is like walking a plank across a chasm. Living morally and honestly, one maintains his balance and doesn't topple into the reactive world of negative effects of punishment. It is the “go and sin no more” balance—and is absolutely basic. It is part of the “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” ethic.

Beyond this linear, karmaic balance is another, “higher” on the scale of things. It is the balance we begin to maintain between the inner and outer world—the inside/outside equation. We see the “image/thing” and strike a balance between the thing and the thought or feeling, the subjective basis for the image. This is the province of metaphysics. 

Prior to (or simultaneous with) the metaphysical inner/outer balance is the hierarchical or cosmological equation. This is established consciously when the “below” of human authority is surrendered, precept upon precept, to the divine Authority “above,” to which is given all power and importance until such time as the Above—the Ineffable—becomes all in all to us and the “below” of us lives self-surrendered. When the surrender is made in actual fact, the new balance of things eventually brings us to DO what is demanded of us. This, the reader knows, is the discovery that Awareness is God's, not man's. It is the discovery of the real Identity—and the actions that accompany that revelation. This balance is also part of the “Golden Rule.”

I hastily mention the male/female balance here. The discovery of awareness as Identity mandates the acceptance of male and female equally. Awareness is as much female as male, as much male as female. We stop thinking of ourselves in terms of gendered man or woman, but as Life, Awareness—which is being all there is to the appearances of either gender. This balance is lived in the world as an equal appreciation for men and women. The Lights of the world have been as thorough in their instruction of women as of men; it has been the organizations that followed them that began the discrimination and lower status of women.

Overspreading all these balances, and going on continually everywhere in nature, is the divine Balance and its Equation—the very living process by which tangible life gives and receives, receives and gives, in-breathing and out-breathing, passing the Light of Life onward to those within and without—and receiving from the “outside” and allowing it to pass along to the Within. This is the divine Balance and its Equation—spoken of with such simple eloquence by LaoTse, Buddha and Jesus, among other—and misspoken in countless words of lesser truth by half-prophets who have never heard of the mystic's Equation, nor dreamed it existed. The Equation comes with the Child, the Comforter that leads to all peace. Our living It, consciously or otherwise, is the open door to the Kingdom. The Equation lived is the forgiveness of sins (imbalances).

It is not the imbalance of too much action (like one who oversteps himself on the karmaic plank and falls into sin) that is half so fatal to the metaphysician as the non-action of doing nothing. Intellectual and spiritual pride evoke a catatonia, a state of non-action in the world which assails one in later life. I see old seekers hanging onto their plateaus of understanding (Absoluteness being one of the stickier wickets) where one grows thick, opaque and stubborn, unable to break free, wondering what happened to his Truth when he needs it most. On these wickets one finds himself assailed by depression, ennui, hopelessness and/or mental imbalances capable of dragging him to his tangible, human finish. There is no escape from this deadliness by making positive affirmations of by declaring that “God is all!” The escape comes with LIVING the Equation again—the balancing Child-ACTION of GIVING and RECEIVING once more as we did when we were children and when we were new students of Truth. We allow the Equation to work its magic in our affairs again; we pass the Glimpses along to others (giving God what's God's)—to receive therefrom. We give our tangible goods to those who need them (giving the world whatever we can give of our substance) to receive therefrom.

The Balance and its Equation have been in operation from the first breath we've drawn on earth. It is the Real. It is where Identity has always been in Fact—standing atop Da Shan, Kwangse's mighty mountain, the entire world under its (our) feet. The Balance is the point of exchange between inside and outside, above and below, objective and subjective, male and female, God and man. It is, so far as I have been shown, the final Balance. In this world of images I have seen no one get to the Balance of things without LIVING the Equation. Here, the metaphysician is last. This tangible echo in the world—this material body and its affairs—doesn't get to the top of the mountain by merely claiming that Balance for himself, as metaphysics poorly expressed leads one to believe he can. Yes, it is true that a divine, perfect Balance is the eternal fact of Being—but here in the world of holographic imagery, we LIVE the balance with our “others,” and this experience ultimately CONFIRMS the Fact of Balance in our comings and goings, right here among the nuts and bolts of the tangible scene.

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The idea grows so quickly (and devilishly) that, as seekers of truth, we know something that others don't. Just as quickly comes the vainglorious idea that there is no one with whom we can discuss these ideas. El poo poo! The match struck in the dark corner of Da Shan's face has sufficient darkness to dispel. How the darkness is dissipated dawns slowly for us until we find one who has been given the Equation, along with the means and courage to tell us of it. These living persons are rare, but there is a written record of many of them. 

Listen, listen. WE ARE ADMONISHED TO PASS ALONG THE LIGHT we've grown to perceive TO OUR ENTIRE SUBJECTIVE SELFHOOD! (“Preach ye the gospel to all the world!” said the One.) Our work isn't finished until we do. “When you make the two one ... the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner ... then shall you enter the Kingdom,” has been the admonition from the first. We LIVE the Primal Balance consciously in our daily affairs and see it tangibly reestablished (for our confirmation) in our personal experience, the world. This is to see “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” 

Of all people within this experience-I-am, my metaphysical selfhood appears to understand least of the great responsibility that comes with the Truth. We have a mighty work to accomplish before we are done with the human drama and leave the slopes of Da Shan. These ideas haven't been given to us for nothing. Every one who reads these words is capable of living The Equation. 

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Not everyone will write a book about the Truth, but everyone is “THE Book”' to himself and can help make certain that one is written—an honest representation of his own. Those who helped Paul write to the early churches are surely participants with him now, and he couldn't have written without their help. Most metaphysicians who have withdrawn from their organizations in the belief they have a singular new track to follow appear to be doing from very little to absolutely nothing to help their Pauls and Johns, their Marys and Marthas. But, to help is to live the Equation and participate. As we do, we find the Truth as valuable in our affairs as we have been willing to give it an actual value in our own experience of the world. That is how the Equation works. If the Truth isn't working in our affairs, we have stopped giving to it. If the world is giving us nothing, we have stopped giving to the world. Many who have withdrawn from their organizations hear these words and are aghast and angered. Why? See how little they have given to their world.

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Surely, the primary reason I have spoken directly of “the Equation” only to those who were living it when they came to study here (and not one word about it unless they were) was to avoid the stigma so quickly given to all who speak of “giving and receiving”—no matter how honest their reason. No doubt there were those who must have thought the twelve baskets of food collected after the Sermon on the Mount was the selfish intent of the Preacher. Our intellectual period (metaphysics) is the labeling time in our affairs when we're so prone to divide singleness into levels of attainment, degrees of truth and error, shades of honesty or dishonesty—or into an absoluteness that tries to ignore the world of tangibility. I recall the charges made in high human places that Goldsmith and his kind were mercenary and “in it for the money,” when no such thing was true. No wonder the mystics swore their initiates to secrecy concerning “the hard teachings,” upon the penalty of death. Initiates were forbidden to speak directly of “The Ratio” or “The Secrets.” They needn't have been. The least mention of the Equation brings one's personal world to thunder and shake, and whoever tells of It makes himself a sacrifice, not always willing. 

We are told that there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, nothing covered that will not be uncovered. Now I speak directly about the Balance and its Equation. I have waited in this human experience until the human charges can make no difference to me. Now it makes no difference how I reap the world's trash or treasure. They are the same, no more real (or unreal) than anything else in my world. I have waited until everyone can see there are no human motives in this statement of the final covenant—and never have been.

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We are told that every human imbalance (sin) is “forgiven” with the simple living of the grand Balance and its Equation, whether it is intellectually comprehended or not. With all my heart I know this is true. I watch the simple and childlike who live the Equation grow old with grace, dignity and peace, their bodies may appear to anguish, but their hearts still romp with angels. I see those who do not live it—though they have attained to mighty places in the hierarchies of intellectualism—wither and die without a trace of Joy, without anything done for their world. God reveals the secrets of the Living Equation to children and hides them from the worldly.



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 -   
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