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Excerpt From A Guide To Awareness And Tranquility By William Samuel AWARENESS IS BASIC Awareness is the common denominator woven through all else that is called experience. Surely, all we know about everything comes to us by way of consciousness, Awareness. Every sight we have ever seen, every sound we have ever heard-every dream, every idea, every anything from the infinitesimal to the infinite-has been noted by way of Awareness! ******************* AWARENESS IS SINGLE How many "Awarenesses" have we been concerned with during our lifetime? This one only. Everything, including that which we call the Awareness of mother, husband, daughter, friend, or humanity comes to us within (and as) this single Awareness that reads these words. This Awareness is the only Awareness we have ever known. There seems to be a time in our spiritual development when we awaken (sometimes very suddenly) to the wonderful realization that this conscious Awareness, right here, right now, really is all-inclusive!-that no "thing," no object of perception, no idea, thought or feeling is external! Indeed, they are everyone included within this Awareness-I-am! Though we may have heard these words thousands of times before, quite of a sudden, when the intellect is relaxed, the Heart-within declares their simple, inescapable factuality. We discover their significance. Just as we perceived that now is the only "time" we are ever aware, we begin to comprehend that Awareness is single, only and all-inclusive. ******************* AWARENESS IS ALL-INCLUSIVE Dear reader, have we ever been conscious of anything that was not included within this Awareness that is right here? Have we ever said "you" to "another" without addressing an object of perception that appeared within and as this Awareness? Have we ever seen a sight or heard a sound that did not come to us as this present consciousness? What is the smell of a rose, the taste of a berry, the feel of a rock if it isn't the Awareness one is? Are not all the arts and sciences, the figures and events of history with all their stories, every sprig of grass, every grain of sand, every star in the heavens, everyone included in and as this Awareness, being "I" right here, right now? Of course! This is a simple, though seldom perceived, fact of existence. We live alone, so to speak, as an all-inclusive Awareness of existence. Friends, relatives, trees, mountains and the throngs of humanity who keep us company are actually aspects of this Awareness we are. They are images, objects of perception, ideas within this consciousness-I-am. We are concerned with this single Awareness, alone and only! ******************* A LETTER ABOUT THE SIMPLICITY OF AWARENESS Dear David, Awareness is not here and the tree there. The tree is seen within Awareness, just as all sights are. The sound of the wind is not in the tree there. The tree, the wind and the sound are here, within this Awareness that is aware right now. An island or a continent, whether seen with the eye, or thought of as an idea, is included within this here-and-now consciousness. So is the "sea" that surrounds the island. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, the mountain, bird, tree, Mary, Bill, George Washington or Next-Door-Nelly are not images out there, not entities separate nor apart from us. Do we see people and things differently when this point is understood? Not immediately. The tree looks just as it did before-so does Nelly-but we comprehend that they are not separate nor apart from the Awareness-I-am. They never have been. We perceive that they and this Awareness are one and the same! Indeed, they are the Awareness I am! I will never forget when I first came to understand this. Picking up a pen, I wrote: NOW I look across the way and see a
tree-that tree is ME! Inspect this idea for a time; you will find it is absolutely true-and very simple! ******************* LETTERS TO ONE JUST BEGINNING THIS STUDY Dear David, We "begin" with this now-awareness, but the beginning must be a new and genuine redetermination of Isness. We start from scratch, but this is not being done until our previous beliefs, ideas and cherished opinions are loosed and let go. The practice of humanity, the intellectual temptation, is to carry them with us to see if our new discoveries coincide with our old ideas. No, we let go everything and start again like new babes, with the first and basic fact about which there is no uncertainty-the isness of this present now-awareness. All else must go. Without regard or regret, without fear or consternation, we stand in a void, naked, childlike, innocent. As this now-awareness, empty of the ego, we open our eyes and awaken! David replies, "This sounds as if I will lose my identity. I certainly don't want to do that. As a matter of fact, I am searching for identity." Dear David, When we begin with Awareness we find we
lose nothing that is real, most certainly not the Identity. Rather,
we let go the notions of an identity we have never been. We lose the
unhappiness, loneliness, lack, poor health and fear inevitably
associated with a misidentification called "the old man," his
intellect, his cherished common sense and his high opinions of
himself. So, we shuck the old ideas and let them go,
David. We bring attention back to this real and present fact of
Awareness. Awareness is a fact; we know it; we are it; nothing is
outside of it. Here, we discover the true Identity! |