| | I thought you might like read something from William Samuel's book "A Guide To Awareness and Tranquillity"
This book has a nice combination of some letters he answers and lots of really interesting subjects that every seeker asks about--chapters on many subjects like "judgement-The Key To Tranquillity" and "Practicality" "Concerning Dualism" "Identity the Center of Being".
Ask me about William and his teaching or make comments on these excerpts -- if you like.
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! When one looks at the television and sees things on the screen, he is not tempted to believe the screen is in one place and images in another. He knows they are one television screen. Exactly so, awareness and the images of perception are all one Awareness.
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WHEN WE KNOW, WE KNOW! There are no words we can read that will convince us of the allness of this now-consciousness; there is no one to whom we may listen or talk who can do more than persuade us intellectually. We know—and we know, we know—only when we find it and feel it within the Heart.
Reader, this will happen for you much sooner than you expect. Your "awakening" is inevitable, irresistible and certain, because the fact is—as you shall see and have been told many times—you are not sleeping to be awakened now. Despite the appearances on the world's stage, you are already all you could ever hope to become. You are already in the Father's house. The nearly unanimous pronouncements of classical theology and education to the contrary, your real Identity is neither sinful nor fallen; you are not a prodigal acting the profligate and wandering in the pigsties of a far country. The Identity you are this instant is Harmony's Now-Awareness being aware. Our heritage, effortless and divine, is to acknowledge this fact! Right now, bring yourself from an over-concern with things within Awareness to Awareness itself. Here you will find that all bodies, all images, and everything Awareness includes, are aspects of your own Identity! Here you will find that you are happiness, completeness and joy itself. |