The Child Within Us Lives! by William Samuel pp. 179 - 192
ILLUMINATION
"Line upon line, precept upon precept..."
AFTER THE POND EXPERIENCE
Dear Bill,
I have finally reached the place where I desire only for Christ to
take this life and live it.
My knowledge of the Christ is on the surface. I want to feel and
realize Christ as what I really am. I long to have a transforming
experience. So far, understanding has come drop by drop, although I
must admit it is coming faster now, almost a tiny stream.
Didn't you have a spiritual experience at the pond?
Love, Linda
Dear Linda of the soft voice,
Are you ready to read this?
Trusting the heart, we'll begin. Listen carefully: The Truth comes
to us line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a
little. It is supposed to unfold that way and no other way! The Road
to Damascus experience has become a fanciful dream. "But when you
see your images which came into existence before you, (which)
neither die nor are manifested, how much will you bear!" Jesus, the
Christ of history, asked his disciples. (Gospel According to Thomas,
Nag Hammadi Library) We do not desire a "pond experience." We need,
rather, to go about it another way. Wonderful as the metaphysical
messages have been, they have been poorly written when they lead one
into desire.
The Light is happening around us constantly to be recognized in
small ways. When we are faithful to the small Glimpse, we get more.
We are honest to the smallest glimpse first, tested with it, tried
with it, examined with it-and then we get another.
As you write your Glimpses in your journal, you are taking the first
step toward getting (giving) MORE Glimpses. Be FAITHFUL to that, a
little each day. In our next communication we'll take that to its
next step and write about Glimpses themselves.
WHAT I LEARNED AT THE POND
The Melody of the Woodcutter and the King is the story of the day I
first learned about the plasticity of tangibility. That was the day
I really saw the dominion I could lay claim to right here in the
world. That account is familiar to those who have read it, but not
many know the rest of the story unless they have been here asking
specifically about illumination.
The "pond experience" was my first conscious insight into
"contradistinction," though I didn't understand that at the time.
One doesn't know much about subjectivism until he has perceived the
matter of "contradistinction" and gotten it straight. We really have
to get it straight before we can get further along.
The pond experience was certainly what the religionist or
psychologist would call a "peak experience." Those experiences are
often explained away as psychological quirks-or fleeting dyspepsia.
Nonetheless, they happen frequently, awaiting our recognition. That
morning, after I bent myself down to drink the cold water, I stood
up and saw a new and different world. I saw "a new heaven and a new
earth" spread over everything, and while I don't always see the new
one now, I have never had the same view of the old.
That morning, those years ago, when I looked around at the new view,
everything was dancing with light. In particular, I remember
standing transfixed. The pond was blinding. The black man plowing
the field beside the little lake glistened with light. So did the
mule pulling the plow. And the birds following behind, pecking in
the new turned earth, were little darts of feathered light, flashing
from place to place. The man's sweat ran down the reins, a river of
pure light that dripped little orbs of fire onto the ground. I
looked at the new scene and the wonder of it without any feel of the
earth under my feet.
Very slowly, and in ongoing amazement, I continued my journey
through the field to the mountain beyond-another half a dozen miles
with a hard climb at the end. A strangely effortless event. I seemed
to walk without walking. I went slowly and stopped often but can
remember very little of events along the way except for a brief
conversation. I stopped to talk to an old man who sat on his porch,
leaning back in a cane-bottomed chair, his feet on the porch rail.
He was carving something with a pocket knife. He looked at me
strangely, as though he wasn't sure who I was-and I remember
thinking he certainly WAS looking at a new person, one he had never
seen in all his life. From that country house, the climb up Double
Oak Mountain began.
But, hear this, Linda. There is a point here which seems most
important to those looking for the experience of "illumination."
While the pond event was happening for me, I saw clearly that such
an event hadn't happened sooner only because I had carefully
excluded it from my experience. How? By limiting expectation to
something spectacular. By yearning for Paul's experience of being
blinded on his way to Damascus. Either my studies had been
deceiving, or I had allowed myself to read the need for such an
experience into them.
As I walked up the mountain that day, I marveled again and again
that all this had been available from the very beginning if I had
simply acknowledged it when it had happened in the many small ways
before. I knew then: I had ignorantly blocked the Flow of Light.
This experience was the breaking of the dam. Instinctively, I knew
my entire life would have been further along if I had only
acknowledged the Light of Life in the many ways it had already
appeared!
The absence of my conscious recognition and acknowledgement had
deprived me of so much. What I'm trying to write here is that the
experience of "illumination" is happening all the time in small
ways, to be seen and appreciated. The traumatic events like Paul's
may be more a matter of our awful ignorance of God's grace than our
achievement or attainment of wisdom.
Well now, my wonderment at the time was enormous. I floated, it
seemed, to the top of Double Oak Mountain and began setting up camp.
I remember gathering firewood for the evening warmth and preparing a
place to sleep. Then, as the sun went down, the unexpected "lesson"
began. I was nudged by the "equal and opposite" of the human day's
experience.
Elation slowly gave way to a strange, unexpected and growing sense
of hopelessness. (Where has It gone!?) I found myself with an
inability to DO anything. (What's to DO?) I watched the sunset, arms
around my knees, and saw the stars emerge one by one. I didn't move.
Finally, I couldn't move. The evening chill descended and I wondered
why the hell I didn't light the fire. Try as I might, it seemed
senseless to try or even move. I couldn't bring myself to bend down
and light the wood that would have warmed the evening. (Dear God,
where has the Joy gone?)
By midnight, cold and shaken, I was thinking of the hopelessness of
"mortal life" and thought it would be better to hurl myself from the
mountain than see the world again as I had seen it before the
experience at the pond. By early morning, in complete anguish, I was
quoting to myself that the darkest hour is just before the dawn-and
noting, for the first time I can consciously recall, that if it
weren't for the stygian darkness all around, I wouldn't be conscious
of the stars. With that, some relief came, and in a few minutes the
dawn was breaking. Never had a morning been more welcome. I was
still sitting with my arms around my knees-frozen into place by
now-but this time I knew another morning was on its way. I was
grateful for even the hope of it. I think this was a time I really
understood what the ancient sunrise ceremonies were about-and
Easter's rebirthing!
A new world had been revealed in the morning of a spring day. The
chimerical nature of the old world was seen in the afternoon. That
night, in the cold and dark of a human night, only a meager memory
of the Light at the pond remained. In the place of Joy, desolation
and depression had descended. My confidence in the old world had
been smashed during the day; yet, in the dark of night, there was
only a fading memory of Something Wonderful to take its place, and,
as I looked at the stars, I was aware of my human nothingness and
emptiness. Though I didn't know it then, I was coming to discover
the nature of learning.
As all this was happening, I knew the reasons for it perfectly
well-the reasons that Light must come to each of us "line upon line,
precept upon precept, here a little, there a little." My friend
Linda, it is important that we acknowledge the smallest blessings
and are faithful to those pennies of Truth, first. Remember the
verse in the Bible about being faithful to pennies so we can be
trusted with dollars?
Our excessive yearning after a grand illumination is a
self-defeating exercise that occludes a view of the constant
blessings going on around us all the time. Now I know-and tell my
others-that we are faithful in the small ways if we are to be
trusted with the grand View from the peak of Da Shan, the world.
Even then, when we have been tested and proven and carried aloft "on
the wings of Love" to that High View, that View's confirmation in
the world still comes "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a
little, there a little."
Linda, if you can find another who has had the View, ask him if
these words are true! Better still, live the pennies and see for
yourself!
WHAT DID I LEARN AT THE POND
AND ON THE MOUNTAIN THAT NIGHT?
I learned that the ebbing, flowing light of this world is tributary
to a greater Light that doesn't move. Perhaps the photon is an IMAGE
of True Light, but the True Light, changeless and unmoving, is the
"Light of the Father." The image is just an image of an image of an
image.
I learned that the human experience is a holy Lesson going on and
one is to learn it, one way or another.
I learned that I live and relive experiences until I see the good in
them. When I learn to thank God for the lesson learned, I am taken
to yet another View on the mountain.
Thus, I began to learn the principle of contradistinction which
suggests that everything but the Light of Life itself is an image,
positive or negative, of Something Greater. That everything points
first to its contrary, thence to the Balance between, thence to the
Something Beyond, transcendent and immanent simultaneously.
I began to learn the meaning of emptiness-the old self, the
me-sense, naughted. Beyond this, there is the new Self to be!
You are very much loved, Bill
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