THE POWERLESSNESS OF THINGS
By William Samuel (written 1970)
Whenever we are about the business of determining what things are,
why images of perception appear as they do; or trying to find
answers to our questions, there is just one place one can start, and
that is with Awareness.
We begin with this awareness that is reading these words, that looks
out the window at the pine trees swaying in the wind that sees the
slanting rain blow across the dark green of the trees. We begin with
this awareness because Awareness, Life, is the only place we can
begin.
If we begin with the thing itself; the tree, the business, or the
"claim," we are beginning with an image within Awareness, and we
will never find the answer there. If we begin with the image itself,
we can go no higher than the perception of image. If, for example we
begin with a mistake on an arithmetic paper, and we are confused and
confounded by the mistake, we will never get at the answer by
lingering there; will we? Can we ever?
No, we gird up our loins and look away from the mistake long enough
to go back to the principle of arithmetic, wherein there is not the
least possibility of any mistake. There, carefully observing the
principle, we soon find out what caused the mistake, and what to do
about it. No, we do not begin with the problem. We do not begin with
the image within awareness. Even though that very often triggers the
determination to go and find the answer, we must nonetheless turn
away from the image, from the thing, to come back to the principle
which is being the thing. We come home to the starting point, and
the starting point, without doubt, is always this awareness, this
consciousness that is conscious right here, right now. We come home
to this life to find that Life Itself is our identity. And as we
come home to Life Itself, That which is being Life discloses Itself.
That which is being this Awareness discloses itself. That which is
being the wind, the bending trees and falling pinecones; that which
is being this monumental motion discloses Itself, and we find
ourself coming up with the answers.
Let us talk about things for a moment. When we look at a thing, what
do we see? Let us use an illustration. Suppose right here, right
now, we have a lump of gold. What do you see? You see form. But is
there any gold itself in form? No, you can say that gold itself is
being all there is to form, but there is no gold itself in what we
call form. If you touch it you feel something that is solid. You can
say that you see and feel solidness. Is there any gold itself in
solidness? We can put the lump of gold on a scale and see a
measurable amount of weight. But is there any gold itself, any of
the essence itself in weight? No. Because it is a lump of gold, we
see yellow; don't we? But is there any gold itself in what we call
yellow? No. But gold, the essence, is being all there is to what we
call yellow. Yellow lives and moves and has its being because gold
is. And instead of there being any gold in yellow, yellow is in
gold. We might use Biblical language here, and say that yellow lives
and moves and has its being because gold is. You see, yellow will
exist just as long as gold is. And it is as perfect, in every way,
as gold is being gold. Gold might very well say, if it could speak,
"yellow is my color in which I am well pleased."
And speaking as yellow, gold might say, "I, yellow, and my basis in
being gold, are one; yet gold is greater than I." Gold is the
substance and the being of all of the qualities and attributes of
gold. Gold doeth the work, gold is the value.
All that we can see with the eye, here with the ear, touch with the
hand, or taste with the tongue are just qualities and attributes,
and all of them together are not what gold is. They are what gold is
being, but they are not gold itself.
Do you see this? Once again now, look at anything---over there is my
old beat-up typewriter. We see form, we see color, we see shape; and
yet there is no Isness Itself in form, color or shape. All that is
seen with the eye is a grouping of qualities and attributes that we
call, "typewriter."
Every object that is seen with the eye or heard with ear, everything
that is included with what we call awareness, is always only a
grouping of qualities and attributes. There is no power in them. The
power is inevitably in That which is being the image.
I tell you that there is no value, there is no power, there is no
importance in any object that is perceived with awareness. There is
no need to fear or be concerned about anything that you see with
your eye or hear with your ear. I'm quite aware that humanity is
very reluctant to acknowledge this fact, because it is contrary to
all that humanity believes is real, and all that humanity thinks is
important.
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This is the way it is that Awareness, this very conscious Awareness
that right now listens to the thunder, that sees trees and leaves
and little boys and with dirty knees, never sees primordial Isness,
but sees the qualities and attributes thereof. One never sees the
principle of arithmetic. Rather, one sees the signs and symbols that
are the principle of arithmetic made manifest, but not that
principle, itself. There is no audible sound in the principle of
music, and yet we hear its melody through the application of its
laws.
The melody is not the principle itself, yet the melody exists
because there is a principle of music. Principle is first, is all;
it is one, alone, single, pure.
Obviously, so long as world science is concerned with the tangible
thing, it is not concerned with Being, Itself. And so long as we are
concerned with the thing, with the wife, the daughter, the grandson,
the storm, the threatened business, the bank account---so long as
that is our primary concern, then we are not being concerned with
Being Itself, but only with the measurable qualities and attributes
of Being. But Being, God, Isness, is the Reality, the fact. It is
The Alone One besides which there is no other, outside of which
nothing exists, and because of which all its qualities and
attributes have their being.
It is really very simple.
Let us use another illustration. Suppose an actor playing the part
of Macbeth comes to believe that role to be his own actually
identity. On the stage as Macbeth, he could no more understand the
powerlessness of things than he could rise and fly, and to rise and
fly was not written in the script, so he could not. There would be
no way to tell Macbeth there is no value in the sword, in the castle
or in the soldier. There is no logic, no reason, that will ever heal
Macbeth's troubles. All things, be they objects of sight, sound,
touch or smell; be they thoughts, idea, intuitions, or dreams are
within---within this awareness that is aware right here, right
now.The value and importance are not out there with the thing, but
right here where Awareness Itself is being aware.
The value and the importance and the power are That, the Deific
Isness, the Godhead, which is being Awareness.
Let us say it again. Whenever we are about the business of
determining what anything is, we begin with the only place we can
begin, right here with Awareness. We come to perceive that Awareness
Itself is who and what we are and that we are not the custodian of
Awareness. That is, we are not a container that includes Awareness
with itself. We are not the one who is a manipulator of Awareness.
We are not the one who says, "This Awareness is mine." Rather, we
are Awareness Itself. Right here, right now, this consciousness,
this awareness that is aware, that reads these words, is the
Identity we are. The body, the trees, the wind, the leaves, the
wife, the children are images within Awareness: qualities and
attributes of Isness, just being qualitative and attributes of
Isness.
The one who identifies himself as an ego containing life, the one
who believes that he is the grand custodian of life, the one to whom
God has given life; that one is the great walking, talking,
miserable "Macbeth." That one will never be convinced of the truth
of what we are saying here, because that one reasons from things
back to himself. He looks out at an external universe that he holds
to be "out there," separate and apart from himself. He sees himself
in one place and he sees things in another. He sees multiplicity and
duality.
The one who is the custodian of Awareness will never understand what
we are saying here; but the heart, that which is open, listening,
feeling, recognizes the truth.
We must determine whether we choose to be life, or whether we simply
want to use it. That is, do we want to just be this Awareness which
is God's Awareness of being, already viewing perfection; or do we
want to live on and on as an ego, as an identity who simply wants
this awareness to show him a house full of happiness and a bank full
of dollars? The temptation, for all of us, is to use Awareness. As
we become aware of the all-inclusiveness of Awareness, we still want
to maintain ourselves as the great possessor of It, the grand
custodian of It. Yet, it would seem that we must use the words of
the custodian's vocabulary. That is, we must use Macbeth's words, a
Macbeth who wants to use Awareness to suit his own aims. Macbeth
wants very much to have all of his trials and tribulations ended. He
wants Lady Macbeth to stop worrying about the blood on her hands.
Macbeth wants his calculations to go according to plan. He wants to
know some great truth that will correct all of his trials and
tribulations, but he wants to remain Macbeth. He wants to just be a
very happy Macbeth, a happy container of awareness. He wants this
container to have no problems. He wants only the happy things of a
grand personal experience maintained; or of an unhappy personal
experience changed, helped, rectified, or overcome. He wants to
continue as a happy, healthy, prosperous, acclaimed Macbeth. He is
not willing to let go Macbeth, to just be Life, Itself.
The surrender that the Bible and all of the religions of the world
speak of, the ego that we are to let go of, is just this one that
says, "Life is mine, I am the receiver of life; my awareness, my
life, my consciousness, my affairs, my experience." This doesn't
mean that we never say "my." We are not going to fight that
battle---trying to exclude certain words that appear to imply
certain things in our experience. We simple understand that
Awareness, right here, right now, is the Identity we are; that
never, never have we been a custodian of It. Never, never have we
been the recipient of It. We have played the role of the recipient
of Awareness. We have played the role of the custodian of It, the
director of It, the would-be slave-master of It; but that one was
the "old man" the Bible speaks of; "put down the old man."
Can you see that all of the problems of Macbeth are entirely the
result of his two identities, the real Identity, which is Awareness
Itself, and the belief that he is a Macbeth who is the container of
life? You see he cannot be both. He cannot hang on to just the
"good" aspects of Macbeth's life and carry those within him into the
proper Identity. We cannot take all of the aspects of human
erudition that we love, and all the "good" that we have come to
perceive as human good, into the recognition of Identity as Identity
is. Identity as Identity is requires the sacrifice of the old man
entire. We must let go the old man; but the intellect will never let
us do this. Macbeth, himself, will never let us do it, because the
minute we consider the possibility, the great intellect tells us,
"Well, my goodness, this will be the end of me, I'll lose my
identity, I'll be nothing." This is certainly true, because the old
man and all of his problems will be gone. That one will have been
relegated to the position that it rightfully holds---just a part in
a play.
Ah, but you see Awareness goes right on. It is the same Awareness.
It still sees the same sights, still sees the same tress and bees
and pretty girls' knees. It still sees the beauty that Isness is,
because this Awareness, right here, right now, is the perception of
God. It is God's Awareness being aware. It is God's Life, living.
Oh, indeed, Awareness will be here yet! We let go the container that
worries about the things that he sees. We let that one go, and find
that Awareness is here yet, unconfined, beholding things as they
are. Awareness Itself will still be the Identity I am, unencumbered
now, free now, and not limited to the dark glass purview of an
ailing ass by the name of Macbeth.
What harm can come to us as the result of things? Consider our lump
of gold illustration again. What can yellow do to harm Isness,
Itself? What can form do to hurt Isness, or Reality? No matter what
we are faced with or how threatening it is, the Light that
illumination is ultimately allows us to see that things, the images
of perception, cannot do us in. I tell you that should the roof fall
in, should there appear to be the disintegration of a world in some
sort of cosmic bath of radiation, Awareness would go right on being
aware. Awareness is not confined nor bound by any laws. It is not
bound nor confined by the body that it appears to see out from.
Awareness is God's Self-Perception. Before anything can happen to
this Awareness, some thing would have to happen to God.
We stop seeing ourselves as a great personal ego containing life
within himself, to see that this life, right here, that we are, is
Deity's life. And, what is life for, but to perceive and see? It is
Deity's perceiving, Deity's seeing. Seeing what? What can Deity,
being all, see but Itself? Is sees Its own infinite qualities and
attributes. The trees we see there, the mountain in the distance,
are but qualities and attributes containing no power nor importance,
of themselves, any more than numerals contain power and importance
in themselves. The numerals show forth the principle. So it is that
all of the things that we see are qualities and attributes showing
forth Isness. Isness is the value, the power and importance. I can
tell you, because I know, that Isness transcends the finite tangible
appearing of the thing itself, just as surely as the television
picture tube transcends the measurable images that move about on the
screen. Yes, the screen is being all there is to all the images that
appear there. But there is something that is vast and over-riding;
it is that which we call the television set, which, in the process
of functioning, is being all there is to all that the tube is and
all that the images are.
We have the television set functioning as images; by the same token,
we have Isness perceiving Itself. The perceiving is this very Life,
this very Awareness we are. And the Itself is the qualities and
attributes that Isness knows Isness to be. Consider this. Run with
this. Look on the images that you see as the qualities,
characteristics, attributes of the very self you are. See yourself
as the seeing of God!
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A FINAL WORD
There is a saying in the East that nothing has been read once until
it has been read twelve times. May I suggest that you begin to
reread this booklet at once. Do not put it aside until you have
captured its message. There is a simple and gentle Light within
these pages that will change your life and make all things new. It
can! But it is a message only the Heart can find. Search with the
Heart and you will find it.
Editors note: The ideas outlined in these pages are explained in
detail in the author's major works, A GUIDE TO AWARENESS AND
TRANQUILLITY and THE AWARENESS OF SELF-DISCOVERY. |
