Artwork sketch "Ojai Rain" by Sandy Jones

Excerpt from "A Guide to Awareness and Tranquillity"
by William Samuel

CHAPTER IV

The Lollygog Lectures

I love the outdoors, the quiet aloneness of the Southern woodland. Here, leaves cracking underfoot are magic potions that entice the heart to sing new songs and reveal new secrets. As campers, Ruby and I and our three sons, Billy, Paul and David, have spent many hours watching nature's grand scheme unfold before us. Then, from out of this love one day, Lollygog came along!

Lollygog is a little houseboat. We think she is lovely because she lets us camp with all the comforts and conveniences of a floating home—in much higher style than the old days. Ever changing the panorama around us, she slips silently along the still shores of the lake, turning all outdoors into our front yard.

Moreover, Lollygog allows Ruby and me to take others with us for what have come to be called "The Lollygog Lectures"—mornings, afternoons and evenings spent teaching (telling) the wonders we have come to perceive; telling our secrets to those of all ages who come from far and wide to spend a day or two, to those who want to end their search for Tranquility. There are few tree-lined banks or rocky cliffs along the way that haven't seen Lollygog stop there for a spell and heard the laughter of Being being lived aboard.

We keep Lollygog on a picturesque and placid lake not far from our Mountain Brook home. A comfortable motel lodge is nearby, nestled among the rolling, multicolored hills of Alabama. When our guests are not aboard Lollygog gliding in and out of the lake's quiet coves, they are enjoying the happy facilities of the lodge—making new acquaintance with old truths.

The Lollygog lectures have been magnificently rewarding for everyone involved. Many wonders have been revealed, many burdens loosed and let go. Many of the selections in this book have been taken from those talks.

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The reader is reminded again that the separated selections within the chapters are not necessarily related, either in content or sequence. If a selection should seem difficult to comprehend, do not struggle with it but go on to the next. It is important, however, that the gist of each chapter be understood before proceeding to the next. With each subsequent reading there will be fewer mysteries—not only in the words of this book but in the reader's experience as well.

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A LOLLYGOG LECTURE ABOUT THE HEART

There was a man much embittered by a series of personal disasters. They drove him to a virtual renunciation of everything. "What is all this business about a 'good' God being all?" he thought. "How can this be true when the entire world is crumbling around my feet?"

Out of this wonderment—and the answer to it—came the following short play in verse. It commences with the usual venom and vitriol of one grown tired of the ineffectual protestations of theology, but ends with the contrasting soft words of one who has come to comprehend a measure of the Deific Peace.

CONVERSATION BETWEEN A MAN AND HIS CONSCIOUSNESS

(Relating the end of a "dark night" experience)

MAN (with fierce bitterness): Battered about and bitter about it,

I baited God one day. God, I said,

Would that I might feel peace again.

What must I do—or not do—

to stop this come and go, this ebb and flow

between serenity and sadness?

You are here, you say, not far away;

You are closer, you say, than breathing;

You are Love, you say, that bids me enter the Bridal

Chamber—but here I stand now, seeking a sign, begging

a simple sign, that points the way away from this ungodly jungle.

Here I stand with sour stomach, slashing at an

unceasing scene called experience—putrid picture

of poverty and war; your picture, God; you painted it, not I!

Why must I rail so, toil and tear so at the terror

in my intestines? Why must I rattle round like a rat in a rotten tub?

Oh, God, I am tired of a world that so seems to separate

me and mine from a perfection I can only sense is present—and only suspect is real.

Listen to my plea, God.

Give me peace.

Give me release from this seeming situation that obliterates seeing Thee as Thou art!

For Christ's very sake, I would be Thy messenger!

I would be your witness faithful!

I would herald the kingdom—if Thou would but burst through

this miserable maze of mind

and make me more apparently Thine!

Then spake God:

GOD: Now see here! I have nothing to do with your mental mist

of misinterpretation. Your misery is a maze of your own making.

MAN: Then why do you ignore my mist and my misery?

GOD: The Light that is Me is Light,

wherein no darkness dwells; wherein no judgment of evil

exists to enter and work a lie.

Principle does not peer at problems on your printed page.

How then am I to dispel your "two and two are five"

when no such illusion is?

MAN: But "two and two are five" is an evil injustice to be seen corrected!

GOD: Principle is—simply is. It exists unencumbered by and unbeholden to your evaluation of symbols that merely show it forth. It is your judgment that call the shadows good or bad, not Mine! Who ends your judgments? You or I?

MAN: (Slowly and with awakening wonder): Then this that I call experience

either has nothing to do with Isness

or this adventure is not miserable after all, but is

unjudged Being, wholly good, wholly God, Holy Light itself!

At this moment, God—at least for a moment—

I sense the futility of fighting a fable—

the foolishness of trying to perfect a fancied fairy tale

that all the time is perfect.

God is Love, they say—well,

God is Love—

and Love lingers like a blossom that simply blooms

and gives its beauty without regard or regret

for who looks at it and smiles—

or who blunders by in blindness,

staring only at the earth,

blaming it for a bleakness that isn't even bleak.

Now I see—

Love lets me look and let.

Love lets me see the Love I be, and sing—

or pass it by, and cry in agony—dream inflicted.

THE DIVINE DISCONTENT

For all of us there comes a time when we finally get down to brass tacks, living and being the Spiritual Life. Usually, adversity of some sort, health, business, grief, loneliness or boredom, drives us to this decision. Oftentimes it is fear of one kind or another. Perhaps we simply yield to the prodding of others, or to the urge of an intangible feeling within—the "divine discontent"; but whatever the reasons for our action, one fact is certain: the decision that brings it about is very personal. It is an alone experience that takes place within. You know this is a fact.

All have discovered that, from the moment we act on the decision to discover Reality, we begin to find it. The moment we sincerely begin a determination of the Absolute, it continues of its own accord until Reality is disclosed! The acted upon decision to determine fact from fiction is somewhat like pushing a canoe into a river where it is quickly caught up in the silent and effortless flow to a happy and Infinite awakening. It is like putting seed in fertile ground.

"Mr. Samuel, be specific! Exactly what action is required? Church activity? Prayer? Healing? Self-immolation?"

Here is the answer: our first action is the effortless turning within to the Self to listen to the Heart. This is it. This is all! Is this a disappointing oversimplification? Did your erudite nature expect a profound revelation, a metaphysical pronouncement of reason and logic to shake the intellect? Do you, like so many, expect Reality to come forth only from blinding flashes of Light and ecstatic Illumination?

Here is the unadorned Truth, stripped of the ego's covering of abstruseness and intellectualism. Truth is simple. It is always simple. The Truth is easy and uncomplicated. It is tender and effortlessly available. Its location is not limited to the great libraries, nor to universities, temples and cathedrals. Truth, and the honest statements about it, are simplicity itself. It is found within the heart, within the Self, here and now.

For years we have gone outside to teachers, leaders, and holy books, when the entire universe of Truth has been within us all the while. Its confirmation is found nowhere else. Where? Within the Heart! Here! Now!

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 -