The Child Within Us Lives! by William Samuel pp. 389 - 393
ILLUSTRATION OF THE INCUBATOR
What do we know about Light? Virtually nothing. About God? Still
less.
Let me make a parallel illustration that suggests why Everyman knows
so little and may one day learn so much. Instead of people, imagine
chickens. Instead of the world, imagine a great incubator with the
light turned on perpetually and with us chicks scratching around
looking for (or not looking for) comfort, first, and the meaning of
life, a distant second.
Let's pretend that an incubator hour is more like a decade, and that
for nearly eleven thousand years we chickens have been speculating
about the nature of Reality, wondering which version is right.
During our long search, the thinking chickens among us have
concluded that our well-being has something to do with light. (It
might be interesting to note here that the scientist chicken and the
religious chicken have apparently opposing ideas. The scientist
speaks about the light he can measure; the religionist about the
Light of God that can't be measured.)
Well now, how do we stand in the great incubator today? What do we
chickens really know about Light/light? There is a precise parallel
here. What did we know of childhood when we were children? What does
a fish know of water or a bird of air? What do those who have been
in the light without realizing it know about the light?
Over the chicken-millennia, thousands of religions have come and
gone. Four primary philosophies remain today, one for each corner of
the incubator. In the corners are great organizations with grand
gurus representing different points of view such as Eastern,
Western, Jewish, Catholic and, now that science has found
metaphysics in its quantum mechanics, we need to add another corner
to the pyramid. Each view insists its way is the best way; some say,
the only way. The chicks in the south are diametrically opposed to
those across the way. The Eastern view is opposite the Western view.
One can imagine how these differences arose by recalling the
Illustration of the Pyramid. (See The Glass Pyramid.) We remember
how those along the north wall see Polaris in a different overhead
quadrant than do those near the south wall, and must necessarily
describe its relationship to the pyramid differently. The four
corners have a common root, but that is about all. Ah, but science
has the world's attention. Religious metaphysics hasn't kept up in
that respect.
Organizations, using this authority or that, have encouraged us to
judge the other views as less enlightened than our own. It is
difficult to believe that one claiming enlightenment would call
another view heathen because that view sees the North Star at a
different angle, but of course, many do. The struggle between
science and religion seems unending, science presently dominating.
In search of the true message, some chickens like me have gone to
every corner of the incubator and to half the religions-only to
become more confused. The subjective East doesn't jibe with the
objective West, and neither really knows what the other is talking
about, but each seems certain of what the other is not talking
about. For that matter, the traveling chick learns that virtually no
one who calls himself "metaphysical" knows what metaphysics is.
Most of us chickens have no concept about the light that warms us,
much less about the Light standing behind that light. We know what
we've been told in our own little corner of the incubator-by our
parents, our leaders and their holy books, our schools and
organizations. Like the chickens, most of us think primarily of our
comfort, self-satisfaction and ongoing titillation-which carefully
includes the way we make a living. It is said that less than ten
percent of the Western world is religious, though one doesn't have
to be religious to have a concern for and interest in Truth. Still
fewer concern themselves with subjective thoughts such as these, so
we wonder what marvel brought the holy books into being or impels
anyone to write these things to so small an audience. Yet through
the years there have been correct words to guide us to the Light
within.
As for the disputes about what the light of the incubator is (or
what the Light beyond the light is), the grand gurus learned long
ago that it is infinitely better, for their own sakes, to let the
chickens debate the meanings of the words in the holy books rather
than delve into the nature of Light/light. Leave theology to the
theologians, they say. Debate invites schism and schism is hurtful
to the organization and its power. Reader, what DO metaphysics,
theology and philosophy reveal about Light? Light is, after all, one
of the things so close to us we don't notice it or really know what
it is. The Light of Life can't be seen with mortal eyes. It can't be
touched. What do people really know about the Light of Life? Like
the chickens in the incubator, almost nothing. Only that It IS-and
because It is, we are. One can get a powerful argument from
philosophers and metaphysicians that even this much isn't certain.
Yet, there is an event that will surely bring every chicken to know
about light immediately! When a great storm one day pulls the
incubator's plug for a moment and everything goes dark, THEN every
chicken in the place will know what light IS from experiencing what
it is NOT. In the twinkling of an eye, the apparent ABSENCE of
light-and the panic of that absence-will bring everyone to a full
consciousness of light. Even those drinking beer, flapping the
levers on pinball machines and watching their latest videos will
know-from the least of them to the greatest-that light is an
integral part of their well-being. And those who are meditating or
pinching their noses in prayer, imploring Light to be more Light,
will become acquainted with It also.
The Light of Life is just as close to us as the light in the
incubator is close to the chickens. We were born into the appearance
of time and space with/as It, and we have grown up with It whether
we are aware of the fact or not. Light is here, unheralded and
unnoticed, living us, supporting and warming us-the very spark of
Being Itself. The Child of us IS that Light, here and now.
Strangely, for each of us individually and all of us collectively,
life must be threatened and common disaster loom before we are
willing to be earnest. The religions of the world have so cut and
dried the believer's approach to theology, cosmology, cosmogony,
debate and discussion (from fear of schism and disloyalty), that one
doesn't learn until the end of his personal affairs that the grand
gurus in the corners are no longer spokesmen for anything resembling
the Original Message; that these servants of the "living Word"
have-in the name of the printed word-dismissed the Living Child
within themselves. The Biblical Apocalypse says these churches will
have served their purposes in the final days of time. Perhaps so.
When we see the bickering and warfare that passes for religion,
metaphysics and "love"-Christians torching other Christians in the
name of Christ-one only wonders when the destruction will be over.
There are unnoticed Lights in the world-religious and otherwise
-individuals working diligently, able in marvelous ways to walk the
precarious pathways beyond religion and metaphysics-no longer
beguiled by the organized bewilderers. There are those who have
climbed the barbed walls of orthodoxy and found the Child of
themselves again. Those who have found the Child are able to tell us
how to find the same Child within ourselves. They tell of the Self
within, how to find Its Equation for living, how to receive It and
how to give It. We seek these people out and listen to them.
The light in the world incubator has begun to flicker and flutter. I
am reminded of the Carpenter who said the day would come when there
are two are in the field, one taken up and one left behind. Two on a
bed, one lives and one dies. Five in a household-three against two
and two against three. Perhaps I have been shown some of these
things because I know such days will come in the world's "time" if
only when the individual faces his own transition. There will be
those who are frightened and those who are not; those who will know
what to do and those who won't. The unafraid will have found the
BALANCE between inside and outside, above and below, first and last,
male and female, objective and subjective.
These people may or may not be familiar with the words of the
historic Christ Child, but they will know those words are true and
faithful, having found the Child themselves.
The Child takes us to the Balance quickly. The Child tells of the
Equation wherein life prospers with security, grace and decency. The
Child takes us to the non-spatial place of Identity where we
EXCHANGE the things Above and give them below, not theorize and talk
about them endlessly; where we pass the reports from outside and
give them inside. Those who stand on that High Ground will be (are)
the final harvest and final seed of the Tree of Life.
"What about the rest of us, William?"
A good question. Who are "the rest of us"? What happens to our
friends in a dream when we awaken? They were never more than the
dream itself, the powerless straw dogs about whom LaoTse speaks.
They are, until they find the subjective idea, the dead burying the
dead, that Jesus spoke of. It is up to us to get THIS one I AM and
its subjective world straight within ourselves. This one that reads
these words gets his world straight. Then, "all mankind will be
drawn unto me."
It is said that "Whatever is bound on earth is bound in heaven. What
is freed on earth is freed in heaven." Could it be we take our
subjective world with us, forgiven or unforgiven, freed or still
bound? "You can't take it with you" has been the world's belief for
so long. I often take my day's adventures into the dream at night. I
often awaken to more clearly understand the things I've been
dreaming about. Who is to say we can't leave the image of the Image
to return to the Image? The essence of the Nag Hammadi Library says
exactly that; subjectively understood, the Holy Books of the world
say that-and now, agnostic science is looking at infinite
possibilities and infinite dimensions, finding universes within
universes, not unlike the New Jerusalem John foresaw.
My unseen reader friend, we have things to get straight, to
understand and to DO in the days ahead. Let's get on with it while
we can. |
