The Basics- By William Samuel

Transcribed excerpt from audio recording title

Woodsong #12 The Basics

By William Samuel

Woodsong #12

Hello everyone, this is Bill Samuel in Mountain Brook, Alabama, coming to you at the beginning of the new holiday season-the new holiday season-every day is part of the holiday season. Christmas really is all year long, isn't it? Some day, we're going to have a Christmas month and a Thanksgiving month and a new beginning, a New Now month and our holiday season will last three months instead of three days.

Well, my mail lately has been concerned with basics and I'd like to perhaps discuss them just a little bit. We're all interested in the secrets of life and when one seeks the secrets of life, the secrets of the universe, the secrets of science or of arithmetic or of God or of anything, in reality he is searching out for vistas of his own identity. Those who know this are the ones who find the true answers and all the answers they find are invariably simple, not complicated, not arcane nor abstruse nor mystical.

Those who do not know that the search for truth is really a question of one's identity, inevitably find their answers in the more complicated places and ways of their own making, until such time as they are struck by the enigmas of the black holes. The experience of mankind presently is growing more frustrating every day. Human pressures are mounting on every end. As various segments of humanity find themselves unable or unwilling to keep up the frantic pace or longer battle the self-imposed frustrations, the man-made lids are beginning to pop off and when will it end? Well, apparently not until a mis-identified mankind is forced out of his misidentification in a self-wrought and necessary Armageddon. But you and I are not waiting for the world out there to awaken. We leave the unawakened world, the struggling world behind, we let it go, we rise above it, so to speak by the simple willingness to put God first and let God, Isness, Presence, Ineffable, Allness or whatever else you want to call It, allow that ineffable presence to be the all and the only of us. Now, this is not an impossible task, it isn't even all that hard to do. It is only from the standpoint of a judgment maker that it even seems necessary, much less a difficult job to be undertaken.

The fact is God already is the All we are. It is not difficult to stop judging everything after it's been discovered that judgment is the cause of most of our apparent suffering. It isn't hard to stop cherishing the things that the world calls valuable when it is found that they have no value. It is not impossible to stop feeling a sense of personal responsibility when there is no real personality, no real identity to feel responsible, not a real one. Friends, when the final statement concerning God is made, however it's made, well, it will be supremely simple. When the last words about reality are written, whoever writes them, they will not be an academic presentment or a mysterious metaphysical maze requiring much musing, meditating, and persevering study. When finally it's made clear to humanity what it must do in order to come out and be separate from its frustration, I know this, the doing will not be difficult. It will not be an arduous path to follow, neither will it be a step-by-step overcoming. It will be neither a putting off nor an awakening, not even an awakening, though, of course, it is difficult to speak of it, to use words of it in any other way. When the final statement is made it will be an utter simplicity, a childlike simplicity that excludes no one and no thing. The last instruction for a doing will be a quiet simple, undemanding demand for no more effort at all. The simplicity of reality, deity, isness, ineffable presence, or whatever you want to call it is the effortless being of total perfection which is here now already the exclusive fact of existence. At the moment, mankind believes the knowledge of God is limited to a very few, if any. According to the religious systems of the day, the blessings that a knowledge of truth bestows upon suffering humanity, and those blessings are experienced only by those who belong to this or that secret order or church, or who have studied this or that philosophy or by those who overcome, who struggle, who strive, who content, who demonstrate, who experience illumination and all that bunk. Or, who take drugs - hocus pocus…hocus pocus…we leave and let go the human sense of things, the judged sense of things and happily discover that we also leave complexity. We return to the deific identity, Awareness Itself and find ourselves in a garden of tender simplicity where there is no concern for good or evil, where there is no talking serpent who makes us give values to everything. Things that are seen are simply seen and they are seen without a critical analysis and they are seen without a misevaluation.

Here experience and awareness-awareness and experience are one activity. Belong to whom? To me, to a me-sense? No, no, a one activity belonging to the ineffable presence, God. Here, awareness is God's Self-perception. Therefore, it's God's responsibility.

Let me say that again. In this realization, Awareness is God's Self-perception going on, therefore, it's God's responsibility. We feel the weight of the world taken from our shoulders, we rejoice with a new joy and we recall the promise of old: "come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest."

Deity, or the ineffable or Godhead or Presence is a paradox to man who cloaks his measly little bit of wisdom with an aura of profundity to impress others and to feed his own insatiable ego. But to those sincerely interested in ascertaining reality or the Presence, there is an area of breakthrough available, a place of breakthrough.

Now listen, listen…where is it…where is it? We are in the fertile center of that area the very instance we stop playing the judge, the great evaluator and of course, in order to stop being the judge of Awareness we stop doing the me-sense, the great owner of Awareness, the one who says: "this Awareness is mine". Here, in judgeless being, human tribulations are rooted out, smothered, returned to their native nothingness and in their place grows a burgeoning tranquility, a grand tranquility that exists where the elations and depressions of personal judgment seemed before to hold sway.

God is not a complexity far off and unavailable. The Presence, the Ineffable is available or else Presence would be a plum pluckable only by the plucky few who have the wherewithal to plough through many an ancient volume of forgotten lore, volumes of witchcraft and transcendental bunk and even those scholars only touch the hem of Truth's garment.

Reader, Presence, Ineffability is felt as an-well, how to say-felt as an enlightenment, as a breaking through, as a lifting, as a gentle rest, as a rolling up of the scroll, as the lessening of a load, as peace and happiness and these words are but poor sound to signify the simplicity of God, not the complexity of God, not the mysticism of God, not the grand metaphysical paradoxes of Truth but the tender simplicity of the Presence. Happiness comes with the letting go, not of taking on, by ending concern, not developing more.

The unencumbered, those who live just as gentle Awareness Itself, like children, enjoy the now without worry over yesterday or tomorrow or next year. Our children joy in fragrances and colors and moving things. Their sweet simplicity is why the world is so wonderful to them. Their enjoyment of the now is why the flip of a cricket or the silent plop of a pudgy frog is a momentous event. Credulous innocence is their entry into every activity with gusto and it's also why their imaginations run so freely from fancy fairytale to wondrous dream, why the sounds they hear seem so sharp, sights so exciting and air so crisp and filled with all it's filled with.

This childlike simplicity appears to become veiled by the processes of education. Growing up is to become brainwashed, conditioned and accustomed to playing the pseudo-identity, adult, adulterer, chief evaluator and judge, me-sense. Ah, but the unencumbered, the sweet gentle unencumbered with the freedom of angels remain unconcerned with the world's evaluation even while remaining hyper aware of everything in the universe. Oh, reality isn't lost sight of, there's no sticking the head in the sand. Our simple childlikeness continues. Our alertness remains undimmed. Who doesn't speak to the innocence of youth? Who doesn't wonder at the idyllic credulousness of childhood. Who hasn't longed for the exhilaration and exuberance of youth again, for the health, happiness and carefree excitement of childhood and who hasn't heard the Christ saying: "except your become again as children…" Listener, you can become as a child too and do it without appearing foolish, without ignoring home and family, without withdrawing from society. We become childlike in the most effortless way imaginable as we stop making vain and unnecessary evaluation, as we stop trying to be the possessor and the owner of this Awareness and live this instant, this instant called now.

This is a small part transcribed from William Samuel's audio tape Woodsong #12

If you want the transcript or the audio cd please email: sandy@williamsamuel.com

Return To Archives

William Samuel & Friends
Literary Executor Sandy Jones
email us at sandy@williamsamuel.com