William Samuel & Friends
Sandy Jones
Literary Executor
307 N. Montgomery St.
Ojai, CA 93023
(805) 646-8179
William Samuel & Friends
Sandy Jones
Literary Executor
307 N. Montgomery St.
Ojai, CA 93023
(805) 646-8179
William Samuel & Friends
"A Guide to Awareness and Tranquillity" pp 165 by William Samuel
The Return of Youth
THE PICTURE ILLUSTRATION
Consider a painting on the wall of your room. Do you see it as you did years ago or did you see it more clearly as a child because you were not viewing it through the eyes of worry, grief, fear, boredom and all else that goes with sophisticated adulthood? Would you say the present state of your academic knowledge of color and composition allows you to see the picture more nearly as the artist intended?
One thing is certain: The picture remains the same. The viewing appears changed by the thickening lens of intellectuality.
Suppose an angry man stands before our painting. How well does he see it? We know from our own angry moments of the past that a preoccupation with anger thoroughly limits our view of things. This is why rage is called blind.
Suppose two lovers enter our room. How will they see the picture? "Love is blind" the saying goes, so they may not be conscious of our painting at all.
Surely, passion tends to limit the viewing. The judge's awareness of everything is limited by the judge's opinions of everything.
It is interesting to note, psychologists point out, that even though our angry man and lovers may be unconscious of it, they have very likely seen the picture in perfect detail, which they can recall under certain circumstances. Awareness, we find, is not limited. What seems limited, and is, is the possessor's grip on awareness, the prodigal's knowledge of awareness - limited by the passions that grow out of personal evaluations. Awareness itself simply goes on functioning.
As the possessor subdues his passions (and religion fails in the attempt to show him how), "his" possessive hold on conscious awareness weakens and appears (to him) as a broadening, expanding consciousness which includes an ever greater portion of Wisdom's infinity.
Now hear this carefully: when at last the so-called pseudo-possessor HIMSELF is let go (and no external thing - not even drugs - can do this for us!), Awareness ALONE is left on the field, entirely unencumbered by personality! Identified as Awareness itself - unlimited, unbound by the phantom liar who would hold Identity to a place in space and a bind in time - we soar with the freedom of Omnipresence! And why not? Omnipresence is being the Awareness I am!
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