The Awareness of Self-Discovery by William Samuel pp. 61 - 65
UNPOSSESSED AWARENESS
The primary prop upholding the dream is the belief that the
awareness (life) reading these words is the personal possession of
an ego, a personality, a selfhood separate and apart from Single
Isness. The flat-earth belief has been foisted upon us that we are
the recipients of life and the religions of the world are busy
perpetuating that belief by having us worship a bestowing,
life-giving god that doesn't even exist.
Are these atheistic or "Communistic" statements? They are not! Not
even remotely. We are not proclaiming the non-existence of "God." We
are about the happy business of disclosing that the very life
reading these words is the Life that God IS, Reality IS, Isness IS.
We are pointing out the Light which reveals that life (Life) is
"God," closer than fingers and toes, closer than breathing. A
single, divine, all-inclusive awareness is who and what we are
already-and we do not have to go begging and importuning our way up
the leg of an imaginary god via the rituals and procedures of a
world that is included within awareness.
Since when is the Deific Awareness of Being dominated by that which
it includes within Itself? By analogy, the tail is wagging the dog,
for St. Peter's sake; the images on the screen are pulling the
television set around by its tubes; the dream is whipping the
dreamer to death. Oh, but for a purpose. His growing nightmare
awakens him!
~~~~~~~~
Thank you for your great letter, dear Rebecca…
…it is apparent that yours is a happy home. You have noticed too,
that lightness is appreciated wherever love is tangibly apparent. I
have always wondered about the staid presentations of Truth-the
restraining dignity, the whispered utterances, the voices that never
wavered from the sonorous and saccharine when all the while the Love
I felt was bounding like a free-spirited colt turned to new
pastures. Love breaks forth in tender tones, certainly-and in a
serious, dignified manner if that is what appears appropriate at the
moment-but the Joy Truth is appears unfettered and free to me,
unbounded by convention, incapable of becoming the tool of a
dignitary. It laughs and teases like a child. Tall though they are,
my stately pines dance in a storm. So do your majestic redwoods. And
so do you and I and all the unencumbered and unpossessed.
A monumentally helpful point for metaphysicians to "get straight" is
the simple, basic and very gentle fact that
awareness-consciousness-is God's Self-perception in 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
scene outside, that hears the rustle of pots and pans in the kitchen
and gathers in the evergreen thoughts and feelings of the 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, Mary, John
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 this page
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 old fears vanishing like morning mist
before the sunshine.
~~~~~~~~
Our heritage is the life that Isness 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, 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 the 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 a 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. Fifty-seven feet
removed from a body-oriented ego-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-thing-I-see recipient-of-life, a so-many-year-old
male or female 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 it just
be that "seeing" itself is the identity "we" are? 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 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, worshipping a non-existent Bestower. This life
right here is it. This living, this seeing, this being is the IT
which God is being. "Closer than breathing," even as the prophet
said.
|