The Awareness of Self-Discovery by William Samuel

CHAPTER 6

Unpossessed Awareness

Once upon a time there lived a working man who detested coffee. His wife did not know this, however. He had never told her. She loved coffee very much and took great delight in packing a Thermos of the stuff in his lunch box every morning.

He always carried the box and Thermos to work, but being a frugal man, brought them home again in the evening, the Thermos of coffee still untouched. Then, to save a penny, and because his wife loved coffee as much as he detested it, he poured the java back when she wasn't looking. He was excused the evening coffee on the grounds that it kept him from sleeping well.

One night the wife dreamed that her husband was unfaithful to her. The next night she had the same dream. It angered her, but she said nothing. A week or so later the dream happened a third time, causing her much jealousy and anguish.

"It is true," she thought. "It must be true. The worm is unfaithful to me!" So, she set out to avenge herself. This she did by putting a pinch of arsenic in his Thermos every morning until she killed herself.

At the husband's trial of acquittal, the judge said, "It is always the same. Those who believe the dream murder themselves."

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The primary prop upholding the dream is the belief that the awareness (life) reading these words is the personal possession of an ego, a personality, a selfhood separate and apart from Single Isness. The flat-earth belief has been foisted upon us that we are the recipients of life and the religions of the world are busy perpetuating that belief by having us worship a bestowing, life-giving god that doesn't even exist.

Are these athiestic or "Communistic" statements? They are not! Not even remotely. We are not proclaiming the non-existence of "God." We are about the happy business of disclosing that the very life reading these words is the Life that God IS, Reality IS, Isness IS. We are pointing out the Light which reveals that life (Life) is "God," closer than fingers and toes, closer than breathing. A single, divine, all-inclusive awareness is who and what we are already — and we do not have to go begging and importuning our way up the leg of an imaginary god via the rituals and procedures of a world that is included within awareness.

Since when is the Deific Awareness of Being dominated by that which it includes within Itself? By analogy, the tail is wagging the dog, for St. Peter's sake; the images on the screen are pulling the television set around by its tubes; the dream is whipping the dreamer to death. Oh, but for a purpose. His growing nightmare awakens him!

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Thank you for your great letter, dear Rebecca ...

...It is apparent that yours is a happy home. You have noticed too, that lightness is appreciated wherever love is tangibly apparent. I have always wondered about the staid presentations of Truth—the restraining dignity, the whispered utterances, the voices that never wavered from the sonorous and saccharine when all the while the Love I felt was bounding like a free-spirited colt turned to new pastures. Love breaks forth in tender tones, certainly—and in a serious, dignified manner if that is what appears appropriate at the moment—but the Joy Truth is, appears unfettered and free to me, unbounded by convention, incapable of becoming the tool of a dignitary. It laughs and teases like a child. Tall though they are, my stately pines dance in a storm. So do your majestic redwoods. And so do you and I and all the unencumbered and unpossessed.

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A monumentally helpful point for metaphysicians to "get straight" is the simple, basic and very gentle fact that awareness—consciousness—is God's Self-perception in action, not the personal tool of an ego. In our work here, awareness, consciousness and life (Life) are synonymous terms. Awareness is the action of God, the activity of Mind, the Life that God is. Indeed, the consciousness presently reading these words, that perceives the scene outside, that hears the rustle of pots and pans in the kitchen and gathers in the evergreen thoughts and feelings of the Season, is the living that God is, the awareness that Mind is, the all and only perceiving of Deity going on. This consciousness right here and now is the life divine that never ends—the awareness of God.

There are not two awarenesses, one that belongs to Bill, Mary, John or world, and another somewhere afar off, marvelous and mysterious, that belongs to God. All there is to "mortal mind" is the now-to-be-discarded notion that the consciousness reading this page belongs to a finite personality with a responsibility for "his" experience. Consciousness, awareness, "seeing," "perceiving"—or whatever else it may have been called—is GOD'S responsibility and God's consciousness in action.

Conscious of what? Of all there is to be conscious of: the infinity of all that God, Reality is. THIS life we are is God's own Self-appraisal, God's Self-seeing, Self-knowing, Self-being.

Reader, listen softly: awareness and life are one. Relax for a moment and admit the simple, gentle Fact that All is all, hence the consciousness that even now surveys this printed page is the goal of the sages from time immemorial, the LIVING that God is, the Life Divine that neither begins nor ends. See this! Comprehend this! Admit this. Rest here and find old fears vanishing like morning mist before the sunshine.

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Our heritage is the life that Isness is. Who could want more? Who needs more? What a delight to discover that this seeing, this hearing, this feeling, this visioning, this listening, this delighting HERE AND NOW is the all and only action of God being God.

What can happen to this consciousness, the Life-I-am, the awareness I am? Naught but what can happen to God. And what can happen to Singleness, Omnipotence, Purity, Perfection? Nothing, nothing! I tell you the seeing of these words is God's eternal Self-witnessing in action, already here, already now. No wait. No struggle. No suffering. No testing or waiting through the pendulum's dark swing in order to find a measure of relief at the other end. The struggle has only to do with the fruitful, but not necessarily easy, task of letting go the old view of oneself as a possessor of life, as the grand custodian and manipulator of experience.

EXAMPLE

Look outside at the sleeping tree there. Who sees the tree? Bill or Deity? Does a body do the seeing or does awareness, consciousness, life see it? What sees the tree?
Consciousness? — or a body-centered custodian of consciousness? Where is the tree. Fifty-seven feet removed from a body-oriented ego-container of awareness, a judge who likes or dislikes what he sees? — or is the tree within awareness? Is the seeing of the tree the activity of a separate-from-the-thing-I-see recipient-of-life, a so-many-year-old male or female pump filled organism who looks out through bloodshot eyes and answers to the name of Bill? —or could it be that it is Deity being the "seeing"? Indeed, isn't it just possible that Isness, Reality, God, is the seer "seeing" and being the seen? Could it just be that "seeing" itself is the identity "we" are? Could we be Life itself rather than the recipient of it? Indeed we can! We are!

But lordy, lordy, what this does to the old theological concept of a bestowing God. What this does to the theological view of a man born in sin, a recipient of Life—or to the oft expressed metaphysical view that Self-ignorance, via its own effort, must lift itself up to Wisdom. We awaken to find the great gulf twixt God and man has gone. God is no longer remote. We are no longer a fawning, cringing recipient of Life, worshiping a non-existent Bestower. This life right here is it. This living, this seeing, this being is the IT which God is being. "Closer than breathing," even as the prophet said.

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Reader, there is nothing difficult nor abstruse about this view of the universe. We shall all grow into such a view—the world shall-and it is coming rapidly. It comes gently and easily if we lower the walls and relinquish the old concept. It comes with a wall-cracking, bud-bursting blast if we insist on continuing with the wall building ego role of yore—a role that may seem personally delightful but has been a near-fiction from the first; a role apparently calculated only to give us the present wherewithal to speak with authority and be effectively about the Father's business of removing the restrictions and tending the New Garden that Now is.

We awaken with joy to find that it really has been the Father's pleasure to give the kingdom to us. We find Mind's action of Self-appraisal to be our Identity. Mind knows Itself as Itself, and this life we are is that knowing going on!

"Seeist thou this?" If so, it is time to "be'est us this" and begin to live the Millennium it is our heritage to be.

RESPONSIBILITY

For a very long time (as time goes) the deep study of Western metaphysics had me feeling guilty for all that appeared "bad" in my experience. The sins of the world were heaped upon my shoulders, because it seemed to me that I was the personal author of all that appeared as my experience. Well, the lights of the world have never intended to convey such a sense of personal responsibility.

This consciousness is finally discovered to be God's Self-awareness for which God is responsible, and for which "we," as humans, have no responsibility whatever. "We" do not have to live "our" Awareness. God does. And, despite many, many "absolute" pronouncements to the contrary, the awareness that presently includes these words is not being all there is to "God." Rather, God is being all there is to this awareness—and there is a vast difference of confusion, wild goose chases and agony between these diametrically opposing (but subtle) view points.

So we gird up our loins to be this NOW-awareness for which God is responsible, not "us" responsible. As "explosion" takes care of the "sound" of the explosion, exactly so, God's Awareness of all God is takes care of "awareness."

To say this again: Awareness, life, is not being all there is to God, but God is being all there is to Awareness—and as awareness, we have nothing of ourselves to do except be the faithful witness we are and stop the business of playing the hypnotic role of an independent actor. You see this, I feel it!

Just last week someone told me, "God and God's awareness are a clear duality." Not so! A television set and a television set's functioning are not two television sets. The misery of the Absolutist's role we play is the attempt to make the functioning into the television set. Individual identity is not God. Rather God is being Individual Identity. Awareness-I is not God, Reality, Isness, etc. Rather, Isness is being this here and now awareness I am!

In the words of the illustration: The whole TV set is being its own functioning, but the functioning is not being all there is to the set. The set is responsible for the functioning. God, Isness, Reality, All, is responsible for what presently appears at hand, so we do not have to waste our time looking ahead, or "upstream." We buckle up the armor and do not do it.

Instead, we enjoy the picture, the chair, bird-song, child or whatever is presently within awareness, knowing Isness, God, is responsible for it all, not an independent big cheese "me." We let go the "me" and find I.

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 -