Excerpt from The Awareness of Self-Discovery
by William Samuel

CHAPTER 4

Imagination, Reality And Judglessness

When an oppressive situation is at hand and tranquillity appears to be threatened, there are many things we can do that will "heal" the situation—and quickly. For instance, we can open the doors of imagination to the real and beautiful.

This requires an act of strength because our every intellectual tendency is to NOT leave the scene of misery but to hang in there and do battle with it. Anything less is called intellectual cowardice and labeled "escapism" by the world. But we let go the apparent scene long enough to let imagination carry us back to the Principle wherein no inharmony exists. Soon we touch an area of gentle relief within ourself and we can be certain we will shortly be lifted up, out of gloom, into the atmosphere of the Absolute.

This journey of Awareness is helped considerably if we write it into words as we go along. The act of writing carries us more deeply into the Within where tranquillity is.

Here is an example of such a journey:

THE LIVE OAKS AND THE MOUNTAIN COVE

Once I lived beneath the massive oaks of the Mississippi coast. Those oaks are there yet. Even this instant when an oppressive situation is attempting to make me yield to it, I know those giant trees are there, mighty monarchs, massive and green, festooned with flowing moss. Yellow flickers, wax wings and cardinals dart among them. Gray squirrels scamper along their high branches jumping with measured grace from limb to limb. This very instant that scene is one of peace and tranquillity. The air is moist and sweet there. A gentle peace holds the scene in silence.

Now I see a winding road that skirts a mountain cove. Hickory, sycamore and pine line the field below. Crisp mountain air bathes the scene and bees hum past in swift arcs carrying the day's pollen to the hive and home. A deer peers cautiously from the woodland and drinks from a cool stream at his feet. The scene is just a scene being a scene—tangibly "there" in that mountain glade; intangibly "here" as a sparkling pristine vision in the Mind's eye that Awareness is. "Here," I see, is merely the "place" the outside becomes the inside, the inside, outside.

Awareness is the Mind's eye, the Mind's ear. It is the whole (holy) gamut of perception. Awareness is Mind's function functioning—for which Mind is responsible.

Ah, but here is the point I have been so slow to perceive, so reluctant to admit. MIND is responsible, not the ego-me. For how many years have I played at being God, custodian of Awareness, manipulator of the sights and sounds that comprise this Identity-I-am? What wonders are mine each time I make the sacrifice and come out from the custodian's role to let Mind be this functioning I am.

What does this have to do with the mountain cove or the trees along the Southern shore? It has to do with the consciousness of the trees and fields, the oceans, the Pleiades and the stars in far places. It has to do with this Identity-I-am, God's Self-cognizance.

OUR TENDENCY TOWARD DUALISM

We are wont to have a vague Spiritual universe to dream and talk about—a universe wherein no imperfection exists and one to which we may appeal to rectify the malappearances in our tangible world. We are eager to have a visionary heaven, yet the place where we expect to see Harmony's evidence is ever in the here and now of tangibility. All this while we are looking at Harmony's very trees, stones and desert places, calling them dreams, calling them unreal, trying to heal them. We would have a dualism despite ourselves—a real and an unreal, a heaven and an earth, a truth and an error, an above and a below.

"He who has ears to hear, let him hear," said Jesus. "When you make the two one. When you make the above as below, the first as the last, the inside as the outside..."

We do not discard the scene at hand in some grand metaphysical sweep, calling it all unreal. We turn from it—but we turn only long enough to see it is not the scene that lies, but the judge of it, the liar we play when we separate ourselves from Awareness (the Identity we are) to play at being God, the director of Awareness. Images within the scene have neither the value nor the authority the liar gives them.

I look out and see that Heaven is this very Scene at hand!
The agony that began the exercise of imagination turns out to be something else. Tranquillity lets me see what—and act accordingly.
There is much power in this message. If you will, you can feel it. How much MORE is the Life of YOU!

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 -