WILLIAM SAMUEL

Woodsong

Hello everyone, this is Bill Samuel in Mountain Brook, Alabama, coming to you at the beginning of the new holiday season—the new holiday season—every day is part of the holiday season. Christmas really is all year long, isn’t it? Some day, we’re going to have a Christmas month and a Thanksgiving month and a new beginning, a New Now month and our holiday season will last three months instead of three days.

Well, my mail lately has been concerned with basics and I’d like to perhaps discuss them just a little bit. We’re all interested in the secrets of life and when one seeks the secrets of life, the secrets of the universe, the secrets of science or of arithmetic or of God or of anything, in reality he is searching out for vistas of his own identity. Those who know this are the ones who find the true answers and all the answers they find are invariably simple, not complicated, not arcane nor abstruse nor mystical.

Those who do not know that the search for truth is really a question of one’s identity, inevitably find their answers in the more complicated places and ways of their own making, until such time as they are struck by the enigmas of the black holes. The experience of mankind presently is growing more frustrating every day. Human pressures are mounting on every end. As various segments of humanity find themselves unable or unwilling to keep up the frantic pace or longer battle the self-imposed frustrations, the man-made lids are beginning to pop off and when will it end? Well, apparently not until a mis-identified mankind is forced out of his misidentification in a self-wrought and necessary Armageddon. But you and I are not waiting for the world out there to awaken. We leave the unawakened world, the struggling world behind, we let it go, we rise above it, so to speak by the simple willingness to put God first and let God, Isness, Presence, Ineffable, Allness or whatever else you want to call It, allow that ineffable presence to be the all and the only of us. Now, this is not an impossible task, it isn’t even all that hard to do. It is only from the standpoint of a judgment maker that it even seems necessary, much less a difficult job to be undertaken.

The fact is God already is the All we are. It is not difficult to stop judging everything after it’s been discovered that judgment is the cause of most of our apparent suffering. It isn’t hard to stop cherishing the things that the world calls valuable when it is found that they have no value. It is not impossible to stop feeling a sense of personal responsibility when there is no real personality, no real identity to feel responsible, not a real one. Friends, when the final statement concerning God is made, however it’s made, well, it will be supremely simple. When the last words about reality are written, whoever writes them, they will not be an academic presentment or a mysterious metaphysical maze requiring much musing, meditating, and persevering study. When finally it’s made clear to humanity what it must do in order to come out and be separate from its frustration, I know this, the doing will not be difficult. It will not be an arduous path to follow, neither will it be a step-by-step overcoming. It will be neither a putting off nor an awakening, not even an awakening, though, of course, it is difficult to speak of it, to use words of it in any other way. When the final statement is made it will be an utter simplicity, a childlike simplicity that excludes no one and no thing. The last instruction for a doing will be a quiet simple, undemanding demand for no more effort at all. The simplicity of reality, deity, isness, ineffable presence, or whatever you want to call it is the effortless being of total perfection which is here now already the exclusive fact of existence. At the moment, mankind believes the knowledge of God is limited to a very few, if any. According to the religious systems of the day, the blessings that a knowledge of truth bestows upon suffering humanity, and those blessings are experienced only by those who belong to this or that secret order or church, or who have studied this or that philosophy or by those who overcome, who struggle, who strive, who content, who demonstrate, who experience illumination and all that bunk. Or, who take drugs – hocus pocus…hocus pocus…we leave and let go the human sense of things, the judged sense of things and happily discover that we also leave complexity. We return to the deific identity, Awareness Itself and find ourselves in a garden of tender simplicity where there is no concern for good or evil, where there is no talking serpent who makes us give values to everything. Things that are seen are simply seen and they are seen without a critical analysis and they are seen without a misevaluation.

Here experience and awareness—awareness and experience are one activity. Belong to whom? To me, to a me-sense? No, no, a one activity belonging to the ineffable presence, God. Here, awareness is God’s Self-perception. Therefore, it’s God’s responsibility.

Let me say that again. In this realization, Awareness is God’s Self-perception going on, therefore, it’s God’s responsibility. We feel the weight of the world taken from our shoulders, we rejoice with a new joy and we recall the promise of old: “come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

Deity, or the ineffable or Godhead or Presence is a paradox to man who cloaks his measly little bit of wisdom with an aura of profundity to impress others and to feed his own insatiable ego. But to those sincerely interested in ascertaining reality or the Presence, there is an area of breakthrough available, a place of breakthrough.

Now listen, listen…where is it…where is it? We are in the fertile center of that area the very instance we stop playing the judge, the great evaluator and of course, in order to stop being the judge of Awareness we stop doing the me-sense, the great owner of Awareness, the one who says: “this Awareness is mine”. Here, in judgeless being, human tribulations are rooted out, smothered, returned to their native nothingness and in their place grows a burgeoning tranquility, a grand tranquility that exists where the elations and depressions of personal judgment seemed before to hold sway.

God is not a complexity far off and unavailable. The Presence, the Ineffable is available or else Presence would be a plum pluckable only by the plucky few who have the wherewithal to plough through many an ancient volume of forgotten lore, volumes of witchcraft and transcendental bunk and even those scholars only touch the hem of Truth’s garment.

Reader, Presence, Ineffability is felt as an—well, how to say—felt as an enlightenment, as a breaking through, as a lifting, as a gentle rest, as a rolling up of the scroll, as the lessening of a load, as peace and happiness and these words are but poor sound to signify the simplicity of God, not the complexity of God, not the mysticism of God, not the grand metaphysical paradoxes of Truth but the tender simplicity of the Presence. Happiness comes with the letting go, not of taking on, by ending concern, not developing more.

The unencumbered, those who live just as gentle Awareness Itself, like children, enjoy the now without worry over yesterday or tomorrow or next year. Our children joy in fragrances and colors and moving things. Their sweet simplicity is why the world is so wonderful to them. Their enjoyment of the now is why the flip of a cricket or the silent plop of a pudgy frog is a momentous event. Credulous innocence is their entry into every activity with gusto and it’s also why their imaginations run so freely from fancy fairytale to wondrous dream, why the sounds they hear seem so sharp, sights so exciting and air so crisp and filled with all it’s filled with.

This childlike simplicity appears to become veiled by the processes of education. Growing up is to become brainwashed, conditioned and accustomed to playing the pseudo-identity, adult, adulterer, chief evaluator and judge, me-sense. Ah, but the unencumbered, the sweet gentle unencumbered with the freedom of angels remain unconcerned with the world’s evaluation even while remaining hyper aware of everything in the universe. Oh, reality isn’t lost sight of, there’s no sticking the head in the sand. Our simple childlikeness continues. Our alertness remains undimmed. Who doesn’t speak to the innocence of youth? Who doesn’t wonder at the idyllic credulousness of childhood. Who hasn’t longed for the exhilaration and exuberance of youth again, for the health, happiness and carefree excitement of childhood and who hasn’t heard the Christ saying: “except your become again as children…” Listener, you can become as a child too and do it without appearing foolish, without ignoring home and family, without withdrawing from society. We become childlike in the most effortless way imaginable as we stop making vain and unnecessary evaluation, as we stop trying to be the possessor and the owner of this Awareness and live this instant, this instant called now.

Let me talk about identity just a moment. Identity, who we are, what we are…Identity, I-identical. The search for truth, in essence, is a search for the real identity, the genuine identity. Ultimately, the search for that genuine identity is a search for God because we find out that God is the only identity on the scene.

Let’s come back home to right here, right now, which inevitably, includes a me-sense, the me who is listening to a tape recording, or the me who is talking into a microphone in the process of making a tape recording. The me-sense, what is the me-sense identity? The me-sense identity is the one we’ve lugged around with us from the beginning. The me-sense identity is the one that never knows what to do. The me-sense is the one that does too much or doesn’t do enough, that eats too much or doesn’t eat enough, that exercises too much or doesn’t exercise enough, that says the right thing or the wrong thing, that makes the right investment or the wrong investment, that stands up when it should sit down and sits down when it should stand up. The me-sense identity is the one that’s a few days and full of trouble.

Well, what about this me-sense? Well, one thing we know about the me-sense is that it is, it seems, wrapped up in a body that has two feet and two hands and a head and eyes and ears and all that sort of thing. The me-sense is contained within a body that goes by a certain name: Bill, Rachel, Mary, John, Jesus. The me-sense seems to be limited in time and space, it always occupies a point in time and space. The me-sense always says: “I am here and you are over there”. The me-sense is bound by time. It says I was born on such and such a date, I will probably live so many years. I am at present so many years old and the me-sense says: “My well-being hinges on how well this body feels, how well it is attired and how many dollars it’s got in the bank. The me-sense is a few days and full of trouble. It never has enough dollars, it never has enough happiness, it never has enough friends. If it has dollars, they’re lost, if it has friends, they’re fickle. If it does have time on its hands it doesn’t know what to do with it and if it doesn’t have time on its hands it wishes it did. The me-sense is always concerned about the body-sense and how I feel. The me-sense looks in the mirror and says, my, my my, I’m getting old. The me-sense says “oh my, another wrinkle, another gray hair!” The me-sense says: “Oh, how time is flying, here the holidays are on us again.”

Well, what about this me-sense? The me-sense says: “This life that is mine is made up primarily of consciousness, awareness. I am aware”, the me-sense says: “I am aware, at the moment, of listening to a tape on a tape recorder. I am aware at the moment, of making a tape. I am aware, at the moment, of sitting in my study here, listening to the buzz of yon refrigerator, hoping that the furnace doesn’t turn on and drown out the sound, hoping that the dogs won’t bark outside again and mess up another tape.” The me-sense says, I am aware of people, places and things. The me-sense says, “I am aware of a body in time and space.” This is what identity is to the me-sense, a body in time and space that is so many years old, that has had this experience or that one.

Well, now what alternative have we for identity? As we began here with the me-sense, one thing we have to be absolutely positive about is that Awareness is. Aha…there goes the furnace, it just turned on…

We were talking about the me-sense which isn’t much to talk about, but let’s define what the genuine identity is right here at the moment. The me-sense says, “I am aware” because if the me-sense couldn’t say, “I am aware”, the me-sense wouldn’t exist at all because Awareness is absolutely essential for life. As a matter of fact, the me-sense says awareness and life are synonymous terms. I am aware, I am alive. This living is awareness going on and it all belongs to me, as the words of the song go, it all belongs to me. And who is the me? To the me-sense, me is the one who owns this awareness that is aware right here, right now, listening to these words.

Now, when the answer to identity has been found by what we call the lights of the world, the prime movers, the founders of the great religions, the mystics, when identity has been discovered, lo and behold, a strange thing happens. Awareness is retained and the me-sense that owns awareness is seen for the idiocy and the nothingness it is. Let me say that again because, folks, as I sit here and talk to you now, I have no papers before me to read, I have no notes to work from, this comes from the Heart I Am. When identity is discovered, awareness is retained. The me-sense is let go right here, right now. Awareness listens to the words on this tape recorder. Awareness is, Awareness sees, Awareness feels. All the seeing that has ever taken place has taken place within this Awareness right here. All the hearing that has ever taken place or ever will take place takes place right here within this Awareness. We can’t get outside this Awareness to make certain that any hearing takes place anywhere else or that any scene takes place anywhere else or that any feeling takes place anywhere else.

So, Awareness then is basic but, as I say, the me-sense is let go. The me-sense, the one that says, ‘this is my awareness’, who is this one that says “this is my awareness”, who is it? Is it the body? We say, well, yes, yes, of course, it’s this body—awareness belongs to this body. But has that view of life accomplished anything? It seems to have brought the world to the brink of absolute destruction. It seems to have been searching for happiness for the 10,000 years past but having now none it grows old and weary and aches and says, “my time is short”. The me-sense that is a few days and full of trouble has been disparaged by all the lights of the world. We’ve been told to let it go, to put it off. So, the me who says, ‘this is my awareness’ is just a concept. Who says it belongs to the body because the body is included within awareness. The only place one is conscious of a body is within awareness. Without awareness there would be no consciousness of the body. Where do we see the fingers and the toes, where do we see the face in the mirror? Where do we see the protruding belt line or the sagging bust line but within awareness? Awareness is the primary and that which it includes are its qualities and attributes.

Awareness is the primary and that which it includes are its qualities and attributes. So the me-sense then is a fiction, a fraud from the beginning, and we can, this moment, right here, even now, as we listen to the tape machine making strange clicks in the background, we can, even right here, let go the me-sense. And what does it leave? It leaves awareness on the scene. We retain awareness and let go the me-sense.

I have a letter here that seems applicable at this moment. The gentleman writes, he says: “Dear Mr. Samuel, I enjoy your philosophy.” And he goes on to say but he would like to have a very practical answer. He says, please be practical, tell me exactly how this awareness business is applicable to me and how it relates to my daily affairs. Tell me how it should feel to me. Then he asks this question that I would like to answer for everyone. “Am I supposed to feel the same when I’m working as when I study and meditate?” Well, let me address that. Am I supposed to feel the same when I’m working as when I study and meditate?

Now, listen gently, please just listen gently with the heart. When one takes hold of awareness to be his identity, that is, as we understand that awareness itself is identity and that we are not the possessor of awareness, that we are awareness itself. Now, if we do this we begin, and I must say that it’s a slow beginning but it’s a consistent, persistent beginning that continues. We begin to experience a practical and tangible and very obvious absence of anxiety, of fear, of the old human consternation and apprehension and especially, there is a lessening of human desire, that is a desire for anything other than a knowledge of the truth itself. This feeling of equanimity remains, I guess, in this—and I don’t know what word to use except motiveless—this is the tang that the oriental has given it but awareness remains in this motiveless state for just a time…for just a time…and then it slowly blossoms into quite a new dimension that has an entire new sense of sensations that I don’t know how to describe it except to call it peace—my peace. I can in no way describe this peace. I’ve tried. I don’t think anyone can describe it but I can tell you how we go about our daily affairs with it. Our daily affairs seem to have a new vigor within it. We find ourselves with new insights. We find ourselves filled with new ideas continually coming and they’re not ideas that just benefit us as an individual but they are ideas from which the whole world can benefit.

Now, what do we do about our daily affairs? We continue, just as always, to make a living but we somehow do it now without the old interferences of worry and frustration and vain desire and there is less family disharmony. You know, we still see trees and flowers and things, our children still appear to go through all of the growing pains. We still have to discipline, if they appear to need it and yet all we do, all we see, all we experience when we live as awareness itself, begins to be experienced within some atmosphere of peace, of satisfaction, a sense of all-rightness, a sense of peace and tranquility, and we find ourselves knowing the meaning of things that we’ve never known before. We find ourselves watching others and knowing their motives even before they speak. And we find ourselves knowing what to do, what to do about most of the situations that present themselves. If not immediately, then eventually, just as if a voice behind us saying “this is the way, walk ye in it”. When you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left, indeed living a just simple credulous childlike awareness we are.

We’ve all heard about the old man who is to be put off. Well, the old man and the me-sense, are the same one. The old man is simply that one we believe ourself to be when we consider ourselves a point in time and space to whom awareness and life has been given. We let that one go and we take life, awareness to be what we are. And dismiss the concept of ourselves as the one who owns it, as the one who contains it within himself. And it seems to me that it is well to repeat that we are always concerned with one awareness, this one right here. When we speak of the personal judgement of this one or that, we’re not talking about the judgment and the opinions and evaluations that the world out there makes, we’re talking about those that are made right here as this awareness called one’s self. It’s this awareness called “I”. When we speak of the old man we are not talking about the mis-identification of our friends and relatives or the people down the street or about the incorrect opinions that they appear to have of themselves, we’re talking about the mis-identity only we can presume ourselves to be right here, right now, ourselves. To put off that one is not for others to do. It’s for me to do right here. Others have nothing to do with it. The picture of the world, including others, is all right here and now, this awareness being I, and not another.

Seest thou this? The fabled last judgment, the great fabled last judgment takes place here, right here as I be awareness – I, instead of the continued possessor, the owner of it. As I live as simple credulous, childlike gentle awareness and not the possessor of it, the grand custodian of it.

Once upon a time we looked out on experience and we saw it divided into a good and evil world. We took sides, we chose to fight with the right against the wrong and we took up the cudgel and, as valiant soldiers marching to war, we undertook to slay the dragon and to heal the world. We shouted to our universe, “this is the way, walk ye in it”. Well, now, the circle is nearly closed, we see that all we see is precisely as it should be. We see that the letters of education, even as they appear, are neither right nor wrong, good nor bad, material or spiritual or real or unreal, a dream or any such thing. What are they? Why, they are perfect images just being perfect images, isness, am-ness, I-ness being Isness, being exactly what they are.

But who am I? Who am I? Why, nothing of myself. Awareness is being aware of all that God is mindful of. And his awareness right here, right now, is busily perceiving the infinity of present being. This is who I am, this is what I, Identity am and what I’m doing, nothing else. And awareness, the consciousness listening to these words is the self-same awareness, the self-same awareness, God-awareness, and none else. Comprehendest thou this? Of course you do, of course you do.

Years ago, someone wrote that all the people on earth, if they were assembled in one place standing side-by-side would occupy only a square mile of land. Well, they would certainly cover more land than that today but let’s use that square mile for the sake of illustration to make a point. Imagine in your mind’s eye that all humanity is brought together into a great glass pyramid whose four corners cover a square mile of earth. Now, these people are standing jammed together like young people at a rock concert inside the great crystal pyramid and all of them are facing the center.

Well, now, how would each person describe what he sees as he looks up? Well, each one would see the four quadrants of glass coming together at the top. Now, let us suppose that they can see the stars beyond, including Polaris, the north star whose position remains constant and these people are asked to give a description of the north star’s location. You got that, everybody inside a big glass crystal pyramid, they’re looking beyond, they look up, they see the North Star and they’re asked to describe its location.

Well, those who stand in the east of the pyramid would make different measurements to plot Polaris than do those in the west. As a matter of fact, everybody down there, every man, woman and child would have a slightly different version of the north star’s location relative to the great glass panels that come to a point above them. Therefore, each person within this glass pyramid represents a unique point of view.

Next, suppose that certain creeds and dogmas about the star’s location have developed through the century. The east side view of things would differ, would be different from the west side view, similar to the differing religious views that we have in the world today. Further, most people who are too busy with family and other affairs to even look up and measure for themselves, so they have grown to accept whatever idea is popular in their own locals. There’s an eastern pyramid view of thought, a western, a northern, southern view of thought.

Well, now, can’t you see how religious ideas all pertaining to the same Polaris, the same God, but seen through the eyes of different cultures, have developed through the century. Well now, we have worldwide communication that is linking us up and we’re beginning to see these strange differences, that the Moslem has a point of view, that the Christian has a point of view and the Jew still another point of view. Man’s personal views of his relation to Godhead are not unlike the pyramid people’s views of their relation to the North Star. Religious ideas generally refer to the same one, to the same God, to the same ineffable but each one has its own sets of proofs for validity and in truth, every statement is valid, that is every statement about Godhead is valid so far as its measure goes. Isn’t it strange, some of the world religions can perceive this difference and allow for it while others stand like staunch old southern pines in the wind, refusing to give any other point of view an inch, claiming that their own perspective is the only valid perspective of the ineffable.

Oh my, just recently, a storm blew through here and it twisted so many pines’ tops right out, staunch unyielding points of view. We see that all eyes pointing to the top, looking up at this pyramid, all eyes pointing to the top represent individual points of view, individual lines of thought.

Now, let me show, in a simple way, how powerful subjectivism is. Now, the new wave of things happening in the world now is this subjective view. Subjective thinking is the new wave of things that is to come for mankind. Now, one person, just one person down there having earned the top-down method of thinking and comprehending, which is the basis for subjectivism, is like a person in that glass pyramid who’s broken away from the masses, and he’s climbed up on top of the pyramid, he’s up at the very peak now. His view is like a great eye at the top of the pyramid and up there he’s looking down at everyone who’s looking up. The top-down view includes all of the bottom views within itself, almost simultaneously. That is, if everybody is looking right up at the point of the pyramid and there is a great eye there at the top looking down, the top-down view includes all of the bottom-up views. The top-down view is quantum whereas the bottom-up view is individual. Now, this is the advantage of subjectivism and its comprehension that the world exists within awareness. Subjectivism is to human thought what quantum mechanics has become to physics. Today we see the leading edge of science on the brink of discovering the subjective idea. They have found that the experiment is tied to the awareness that observes the experiment.

Well, that’s a start. Today we have science backing in to God, discovering God and afraid to admit it, afraid that their own colleagues will criticize them for admitting that they have backed into a totally new, marvelous top-down view of things. Science will discover the power of subjectivism, I think, before religion does. And certainly before so many of the metaphysicians who claim to know it already but they don’t know what to do with it. We guess the scientist will know because his arithmetic will suggest and then insist and then cause him to ‘prove me nigh herewith’.

Well, now, does the I at the top quarrel with the opposing views at the bottom? No, it understands the basis for the difference of opinion and it understands the holistic reasons for mankind’s behavior. Oh, but the top-down view would certainly object if one of the groups along – let’s say the eastern or the western wall, went to war against its opposite numbers that are on the other side, in the name of the creed or dogma or holy book. So, what do we do? We discover the Child within ourselves and that Child takes us more of less quickly to the top of the pyramid, to the view that includes all views within itself. Down on the sandy floor of the pyramid, extremism in the defense or the promulgation of anyone’s holy book and/or bottom-up view of the ineffable causes men in black to make strange utterances in the name of localized views of God and to call for holy wars that could destroy civilization.

Now, on the floor of the pyramid one hopes that won’t happen but from the top one sees that something must happen among the warring unloving throngs to call attention to the Child’s top-down view, that understands and forgives.

Well, the prophets have all said to a man to look up, to look up willingly or be forced to look up in some kind of a personal anguish, personal Armageddon. Two thousand years ago, Christianity came along to say, ‘let that Mind be in us which is also in Christ’, which is the subjective view of things. Just look how Christianity’s dogmatic creeds are warring among themselves, not just Christianity but all of the religious views. They’re all warring among themselves. Whatever happened to the Child’s view that Jesus and others gave their lives to tell about. We get the top-down view and then we live it down on the sandy floor of life right here in the objective view of things. How do we do that? Well, we find the Child within ourselves and we run with it. It’s the Child within ourselves that breaks away from the mass and climbs that glass pyramid and says, “I want to see what everybody is looking at, I want to go and see it for myself.’ We find that Child that’s in us. It’s here, right now, and then we run with it. We publish peace - that is we tell people of our own knowledge of this Child within just as we’ve been admonished to do. We finally understand the exclusivity and arrogance of unyielding creeds and dogmas that discourage the individual’s climb to the top of the pyramid. We see why the objective views have labelled subjectivism silly solipsism and subjectively, from the top, we can see that one with God is a majority. And so the world unfolds within, subjective consciousness within this divine awareness that is us right here right now, listening to and being these words.

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POSTED BY: Rose Burrows

e-mail: dozenrosesca@yahoo.ca