Notes From Lollygog By William Samuel First Printed 1968
AWARENESS, LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS ARE ONE
A monumentally helpful point for all of us to "get straight" is the
simple, basic and very gentle fact that awareness-consciousness-is
God's 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 Winter scene outside, that
hears the rustle of pots and pans in the kitchen and gathers in the
evergreen thoughts and feeling of the coming 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, Liz, Lynn
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 these
words 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 the old fears vanishing like the
morning mist before the sunshine.
Our heritage is the life that God 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, and 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 that 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 the 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? 57 feet
6 inches removed from a body-oriented big-wheel 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-things-I-see recipient-of-life, a so-many-year old
male or female, a 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
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 old 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 that God is Being. "Closer than breathing," even as the prophet
said.
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 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!
Seest thou this?" If so, it is time to "be'est us this" and begin to
live the Millennium it is our heritage to be.
ECCLESIASTICISM AND IDENTITY
During the final days already in progress, the dissolution of all
that stands between ourselves and a full knowledge of the Truth will
come. The Light is already here. New ideas are coming into common
focus and old landmarks are being taken away. Cherished notions, oft
the pillars of society, are crumbling with the shifting sand they
stand on.
Everything that appears to hold mankind in bondage will finally give
way. Freedom will out. The New Light is irresistible because it is
God's Light, God's Self-appraisal, God's Self-revelation going on,
and already the only real fact.
As usual, the very institutions whose first purpose was to tend the
New Vine of Life as it broke forth into the garden are now busily
trying to confine that infinite vine to their narrow plots, pruning
every new limb and burning every seed the vine produces. Even as in
days of yore, ecclesiastical pomposity would attempt to regulate and
administer the Light rather than be the Light-and like dogs in the
manger, neither eat the oats nor let the oxen eat. Those who would
labor for love of the Vine, rather than for the plot within which it
grows, oft find themselves alienated by the body of laws developed
through the years to regulate the conduct of the gardeners-the Vine
itself having long been lost sight of by the walls of human
regulation and the caretakers of the plot. However, as appearances
go, those walls are coming down, too, cracked asunder by the same
Vine they would hold to a 5000, 2000, or 60 year old position.
In lighter vein, all of this reminds me of the palatial house filled
with church officials who were constantly giving their poor gardener
the devil. Half of them objected when the gardener turned the water
sprinkler on the other half objected when he turned it off.
Furthermore, those who wanted him to turn it on objected to the way
he did it and those who did not want him to turn it on objected to
the way he didn't do it.
All the while, the poor gardener-and the disorganized neighbors-went
on enjoying the flowers. But as you might suspect, that hardest
working one of all was finally tossed out, or harassed into
quitting-I don't remember which-and at last report the Church's
garden was not doing so well. The free public garden out along the
edge of the woodland, however, has never been so lovely-and no walls
have ever been built there to be removed. The Garden is the very
consciousness that reads these words. Who or what can hold it in
bondage?
William Samuel----1968 |
