William Samuel

William Samuel
William Samuel

Friday, April 7, 2017

Primacy of Now


Artwork by Sandy Jones

Celestial Song 


An excerpt from  A Guide To Awareness and Tranquillity  by William Samuel,  written more than 30 years ago, and remains as flawless, honest and illuminating as ever.
TO DISCOVER REALITY AND UNCOVER TRANQUILLITY WE BEGIN WITH THE NOW.

Now is the only "time" one is ever concerned with. Reader, consider this a moment, because here and now, a magnificent first fact of Truth begins to unfold. It has to do with now; the primacy of now; the allness of now; the absoluteness of now.
When do we see a flower? That is, what time does the seeing take place? I see the flower now, we say.
When do we see the picture of a flower in a book? Now. When do we smell the fragrance of a rose? When do we touch it, enjoy it, experience it? Now.
When does one hear a voice or a melody? When does one experience the occurrence of any event? Now!
Listen carefully: When do we remember the event? When do we reminisce about the event? When do we think about the past? Now; always now!
When do we dream of a future event? When do we plan and calculate concerning future activities? Now. All experience, all activity. All memory of the past, dream of the future, thinking and thought taking are inevitably, invariably "happening" in the now. Isn't this so?
So you see, it becomes evident to anyone who stops long enough to acknowledge it, now is the only time we are ever concerned with. It is always now! We cannot escape it.
Even so, what has humanity done to now? What has man done to this ubiquitous, all-inclusive, ever-present now? He has made it the most infinitesimal part of a great time system. He has sandwiched it between a past that stretches infinitely in one direction, and a future that extends forever in the other. He has relegated it to the merest razor's edge on a sliding scale between a past and a future. Is this not so? To humanity, now—this very moment of Awareness—is so fleeting, so ephemeral and transitory, that one cannot find it on the very device used to measure it. Try to point to now on your watch and it is instantly past, a memory.
Ah, but when do we recall the memory? Now. When do we see the watch? Now. When does one speculate about the fleeting nature of humanity's time? Now. When does one awaken to the fact that he is never concerned with a past or a future except right now? Now! When does one experience? Now. So, reader, when do you expect to discover Reality? When do you expect to experience a "healing" or a "demonstration"? When do you expect to experience completeness and happiness? Now!

THINKING ACTS LIKE A VEIL
Look at a flower. We see it now. We behold its form now. We are aware of the flower, right here, right now; but suppose we think about something else while looking at the flower. Think about that big bill that is past due and worry a little. What seems to happen to the awareness of the flower? We are not as aware of it as before, are we? We are looking at it with eyes that hardly see. It seems fuzzy, hardly noticed, but the same rose is there; the same beauty, the same form, the same grace and magnificent delicacy is right before us to be beheld and enjoyed, but we hardly see it. We are too busy worrying about the bill. We are too busy thinking.
The bill is not now. All that is now is the awareness of the rose. The rose in all its loveliness is now. The bill is nothing more than a memory that is not in this now-awareness unless we choose to put it there.
We see that thinking is like a film spread over the eyes; like a mist that covers the whole face of the land; like a veil; like looking at the flower—and everything else—through a glass darkly.

NOW IS ALWAYS ALL RIGHT!

We view the rose again. It is here, within Awareness which is aware now. The time of Awareness is always now. Right now, Awareness includes a rose. Look at it closely. See it with rapt and undivided attention. Behold with enthusiasm! This is beauty here and now! While so aware, can we be aware of worry, fear or grief in the same now? Are we? Absolutely not! The "return" to "now" is an automatic departure from the not-now, past and future.
As we shall point out in the coming pages, now is always all right! It is filled with beauty, grace and magnificence, containing no sight, sound nor sensation that is not absolutely harmless and altogether perfect. You shall very soon see and understand—even before you finish this volume—now is filled with peace, serenity, sassy and sparkling happiness. It is filled to running over with everything one thinks he needs.
So, as we turn from the memory of the past and dreams of the future—as we turn from thinking—we are neither ignoring Reality (as the world contends) nor burying our heads in the sand to escape the "press of circumstances." Contrariwise, we find ourselves returning to the perfection at hand, to discover anew that now is all that is real and all we ever need be concerned with!
Here "troubles" are not ignored, nor is a home or business neglected. Here we see with the clarity with which the rose is seen when we are not weighted down with fear and consternation. Here we see things as they are, and accordingly, know better what to do.
Have you heard these words?: "Behold, now! Now is the time. Now is the day of salvation. Now I am with you always. The kingdom is here and now. You can tell the signs in the sky but you do not know to test this now. Now are we the sons of God. Now! Now! Here and now! I will never leave you nor forsake you."
Reader, this now, here and now, is a basic fact of Isness, God, Reality. There is no need to be over-concerned with a past or future when the transcendent NOW exists to enjoy and be.
*******************
"BUT WHAT IF ... ?"

Those who have just begun to hear about and ponder the transcendent nature of now are ever anxious to create hypothetical situations and present them to us in the gravest tones to see how "this new way of looking at things" will take care of it. "But, what if such and so . . . ?" they ask, picturing something they think most awful. "Suppose you should see this or that horrible mess, what would you do then?" they ask, to see how we will rationalize or explain away a situation that is not even a part of this now in the first place—except as a harmless dream!
Over-concern with the not-now is a portion of the farcical foolishness that has us so in the habit of overlooking the beauty, wonder and perfection of the moment. Jesus admonished those who questioned Him along these lines to "look on the living One (the now-awareness) as long as you live . . . " He likened their concern about the not-now to a corpse.
Reader, before I found Tranquility, I had to concede honestly that I was ever concerned with the present now-awareness, alone and only. I had to see that all speculation about a not-now was a silly waste, tending to hide the beauty of the moment. It is the business of dreaming, wondering and worrying, so to speak, that appears to present a confused now in need of correction. To stick to the now is to find it perfect, without need of correction—and containing nothing to fear!
When these hypothetical situations are tossed into my lap, I can only ask where is any of it happening in this here-and-now? To those who persist in struggling with the not-now, I say again as it was said before, "You have dismissed the living One—Now—th
at is before you and have spoken about a corpse." (Thomas, Log. 52.)


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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Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Wonderful Mystery


Excerpt from

IT IS POSSIBLE TO SEE GOD'S GOOD IN EVERYTHING
Everything pertaining to the Mystery has to do with looking for good everywhere. The ability to do this is all so very simple and childlike that the old nature of us doesn't want to believe it is even possible. What a wonderful Mystery it is—hidden all these years in simplicity and clothed with childlikeness.
The child looks out to the world for its instruction. The adult turns within and struggles there until, when the Child is found, he looks outward again in new and constant anticipation of GOOD.
It is a strange demand, the intellect insists, to look for good when there is so little good to be seen anywhere. “The world is about to explode. Civilization teeters on the brink of annihilation. Where is good in any of this? I look about and see horror, not good. Look at the news papers and the news casts on television. Is there any good there?”
There is that wonderful statement of Jesus found in The Gospel According To Thomas where he speaks to the ANTICIPATION of good. “The angels and the prophets will come to you and they will give you what is yours.” At first thought, the metaphysician or theologian might argue that the anticipation of good is to deny its presence right before our eyes. It is just the opposite of such denial. It is to look at everything and search for the grand good there.
That good is sometimes obvious. We see it quickly in the long-lost gold ring lying in the garden. It isn't as easy to see it in the gray stone we've just bumped our foot on. The pitfalls and stumbling blocks—the angry politicians, the shouting demonstrators and terrorists—occlude the perception of good there. Or so it seems at first—until we make the breakthrough. After a time of looking for good in the world, we begin to see it everywhere, everywhere. Good comes to confirm itself for those who look for it and seek the wisdom in God's creation roundabout.
Haven't we been proclaiming all these years that God/good is everywhere? And hasn't the mystic been whispering that God is all? All means what it says. If God is all and God is good, there is good in everything—and there is, there is! Make me prove it. I have very nearly found it in everything.
THE ANTICIPATION OF GOOD!
This experience “I” am living has grown into something quite beyond words. No hyperbole here. Exactly the way it is. Simply an explosion of inner Joy and a continuing confirmation of that Joy beyond anything I had ever known except for the briefest moments. Oh, how to say this? And why? I answer the “why” quickly: I write as a marker for my “others” who dream of such joy. It is true! It happens! It isn't just a “dream of desire along the way.” I do not know how lasting in the world's time it will seem to be, but “my” life has been made full.
The other evening at a lovely lady's house one of the guests spoke of going to a concert and suddenly getting caught up in a glorious tingling thrill of joy and delight. Her eyes sparkled as she told of it. Everyone could see her tears of reminiscence and knew what a genuine joy she spoke of. Then she fell silent, her eyes closed, and I heard myself saying, “That's it! That is the joy of the experience everyone calls enlightenment.” Some speak of it as illumination—sparks from the Child within. First we recognize those fleeting moments and acknowledge them for being the Light of Life they are. In so acknowledging them, we are faithful to the pennies of such moments and eventually find ourselves trusted with the dollars of them. Greater moments come. And greater. We look around one day to find we are living in the continual confirmation of the Joy we have faithfully anticipated.
*******************
These words are true and faithful. They tell of a great Joy beyond words. What must surely be one of the wonders of wonders: I have not seen a person who cannot prove the honesty of these concepts for himself and begin to live a New Life and a new marvelous experience.
“The joy of that moment at the concert will expand and expand,” I told the lady, “so that the 'thrill' continues.”
“I don't know if I could stand that!” she said.

 JOY IS OUR HERITAGE, OUR BIRTHRIGHT
We are the children of God, so joy is our heritage! Why should we deprive ourselves of the Inheritance by thinking one must perish in the flesh before God's Kingdom becomes God's Kingdom? “And God saw everything he had made and, behold, it was very good”! That good is right here, right now—even as I struggle to write about it. Good is ours for the anticipation! But that's not the end of the matter; the anticipation and receipt of Truth is only half the joy. There is much to be done with that Truth once we've received it. That is the subject we'll be into soon.



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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Monday, April 3, 2017

The World After The Fact



"Garden" by Sandy Jones 

Celestial Song 

Excerpt from
by William Samuel 

THE WORLD IS AFTER THE FACT
Time, Space, Sequentiality

Many of the world's stories describe the human experience as a mountain climb to light and understanding. Others allude to man's progress as a river's flow to the sea, from movement to rest. All the spiritual books of the world include some kind of tree or seed analogy. We find all of these examples in Judaism and Christianity. These analogies are types of inverted cosmologies, man's return to Godhead.

Now that science has developed the technology to look carefully at the smallest particle—and the largest—and now that we are beginning to see and understand the processes by which the microcosm and macrocosm evolve, we perceive that the cosmology outlined by Moses in the Genesis account is remarkably straight. One might wonder how a man could intuit so accurate a progression of events before a science existed capable of splitting an atom or able to peer outward to the very edges of the tangible universe. 

“And God said let there be light and there was light...” From science's perspective, we see that the release of the free photon (moving light) happened in the first billionth of a billionth of a second after Big Bang. Other such precise parallels can be found can be found between the Genesis account and the cosmology of Big Bang, and no doubt more will be discovered. The reader will find some of them for himself in this work. 

Hoving into view in a different field of science is another cosmological parallel which the cosmologists haven't yet connected to the Genesis account—or even to their own cosmology from other scientific quarters. The scientists who are working with light (laser especially) have discovered the holographic nature of matter. Tangibility seems to be the product of “split light.” Or, to put it another way, the matter we perceive with our senses has its exact opposite—anti-matter. Or, to say it more nearly as Moses did, everything that exists in this universe we walk around in, has its counterpart in a higher heaven and earth that precedes it. One might say, using the language of the Jewish and Christian bible, that matter is image. Image of what? Of another image—possibly, an image of THE Image. What, precisely, is the Image? According to Moses, God's own Self-Image.

Moses used a cosmology that began with God and descended or came down to matter and humanity. Present science has reversed the order of this cosmology and is working, with its linear accelerators, its great telescopes and the mathematics that binds them together, moving in the other direction, backward from the tangible evidence of humanity and matter toward the Genesis Beginning. Science moves relentlessly back up to the moment of creation, presently called Big Bang. 

Listen carefully. The cosmology I have found so meaningful in my own thinking of things is BOTH cosmologies, but with specific rules. Like this: We think TOP-down first. We begin every moment of thought with an Ineffable UNKNOWABLE  which we simply presume exists, the Perfect of Perfects, God, wherein there is nothing that works or makes a lie, wherein there is nothing imperfect, no time, no space, nothing but ISNESS BEING ALLNESS. Then, from that we bring our attention “down” from perfection to perfection's expression here as our personal situation at hand, right here in the people, places and things world where we eat and work and do all the ordinary things of living. We begin our every thought process, subliminally at least, with the consciousness of PERFECTION FIRST—we get in the habit of this—then we come gently to our present state of things in the world to see what we can see.

Next, and simultaneously, we look for the bottom-up CONFIRMATION of ISNESS'S GOOD in our personal experiences and in the world. Sometimes one can find this confirmation only in such places as the holy books of the world or in the marvelous discoveries of scientists as they work their cosmological way upward toward the Original. But, there is always local confirmation of good at hand if we persistently look for it. I say again, I ask those who study with me to think top-down, but, simultaneously, to look for confirmation of God's good in the bottom-up world at every hand—because it is here to see.

Essentially this differs from present religious metaphysical practices in the following way. Rather than constantly deny the reality of matter, we look for the purposes and reasons for its appearance. We see that matter is neither real nor unreal, and it appears in and as our experience for good reasons to be understood.  No wonder the metaphysician is having such an unsuccessful time. It is difficult to understand something one is constantly denying—and can't escape no matter how much he declares it isn't “really happening.” Science is doing better at comprehending the reasons for the appearances than the metaphysician who runs about denying them. Even the rankest absolutist is finally driven to admit he is persistently having having to live in the middle of his denial. Now that we have had a hundred years of looking at it, the denial of matter has accomplished nothing in the world that elevates or helps the quantum scene. The organizations sprung from the first hopes that the denial of matter would be a saving grace are themselves dead in the water, going nowhere, doing nothing—barely taking care of their own survival. They are doing very little tangibly for their own members, much less for their unenlightened neighbors across the street. No new light has come out of the metaphysical movement of the late nineteenth century, as anyone can see. If the light were there, it would be seen. Light can't be hidden.

This work has introduced the Da Shan illustration, the ship and wake illustration and half a dozen others for the purpose of explaining how we see material substance that seems very real to us but is not the final reality. The matter we see composing the universe is the image of the real universe, not the real universe itself. For me, this world of human confusion and anguish, pollution and self-destructive terrorism, as well as this world of human love, light and hope, human courage and stamina, human strength and marvel—this entire overspreading of apparent good and evil—is like the wake of the ship, all correctly present to confirm the DIVINE SHIP'S passage before-in-time.

You see, the things we see are all “following.” That is, they are all “after the Fact.” The light we see is actually delayed in time and space. The divine WHAT exists before the image we see. At this time human eyes are apparently incapable of perceiving the WHAT—but the Heart of us CAN. Even when we look in the mirror, the image we see is after the Fact of the Awareness of Image which perceives the image in the mirror. Even when I look at the body that types these words, the fingers I see (that seem so important in writing this message) are not Me, but a “following” image of the Awareness, within which these words come to be written. Even the body the doctor examined and made grave pronouncements to is not the Body I am, but only the image of it. There is a split billionth of a billionth of a second between the Real I am and the images I perceive within Awareness, even “my own” body. 

Go ask a cosmologist how much happens with physical particles within the first few thousandths and millionths of a second of their existence. Then ask yourself, if so much can happen in so short a time, how much can happen between my own misconception of identity and my corrected sense of identity? How much can happen between my REAL body and my perception of the real body in such a fraction of a second? I can tell you how much! The difference between PERFECTION and imperfection; the difference between seeing a troubled and anguished body one second and feeling a renewed and vital body a split instant later. I know this is true because I have LIVED it true. Now I strive to stay here in this fanciful world of fiction-following long enough to announce the SHIP aboard which we all sail in God's justice and dominion. 

Science has nearly examined the wake of the ship right up to the stern. But science can go no farther than that because of the limits of limited light. However, we, as LIFE, are rightfully aboard the Ship WHEN WE GIVE GOD WHAT IS GOD'S AND GIVE MAN WHAT IS MAN'S.

It is our duty to come to understand just how this is so, why it is so and how it has always been so. Then, we are to tell our others so they can perceive these things for themselves and make them their own, just as this is my attempt to tell you.

Reader, can you see this simple fact of “things following after the Fact”? If so, you have a most marvelous universe of wonder and amazement soon to open itself to you. The entire purpose of the human experience has been to bring Everyman to perceive this.

I have tried very hard to get this book written while I can. I haven't been able to keep the schedule I had hoped for, amazed at the sheer quantity of Light I expected to find words for. I've done the best I could and am confident that “others” who catch the Wisdom spoken of herein will take up where this leaves off—and carry the Equation back to the Home from which it originates.

In many ways I feel like Moses, standing right on the edge of the Promised Land, not quite able to cross the river. I have truly spent forty years in the Wilderness, trying not to make the mistakes of old, claiming no credit for myself, giving none but to God.


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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