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#2974 - Friday, November 2, 2007 - Editor: Jerry Katz
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An excerpt from The Child Within Us Lives, by William Samuel. The oldtimers to nonduality would be familiar with William Samuel, but some you the newer folks might not. Here's a chance to meet him. He published back in the 60s and 70s. You can buy his books at www.williamsamuel.com. Also at the website you can read more excerpts and other writings by Samuel. The contact there is Sandy Jones, a nice woman who is absolutely dedicated to William Samuel's work.
A CONVERSATION
FROM SOME YEARS AGO, by William Samuel
I was speaking
with a group of theologians and metaphysicians who were hearing
of the Child within for the first time, as may be the case with
the reader. The talk was intended to put a finger precisely on
WHAT the Child is. My guests did not know that. I have often
thought of this as the "incredulous group" because they
were so astonished to hear what followed. One gentleman in
particular was angered that he had come so far to listen to such
"nonsense." The essence of that talk is printed here is
some detail because everyone present eventually found the Child
and the marvel that comes with it. Now, years later, I know that
such agreement doesn't always occur so quickly. Perhaps this
particular choice of words had something to do with it.
We were sitting
outside under the loblolly pines of
The talk begins:
Good morning, everyone. This morning, if we can, let's put aside
all our studies of Truth. Let's put down our theology, doctrine
and metaphysics for a time. There is something much simpler and
more important I'd like to talk about; something much more basic;
something that is absolutely fundamental if we are to go all the
way with our spiritual comprehension.
All right? Have
we put aside "religion" for the moment? Science?
Physics? Our over-concern with those complex things causes us --
at least it caused me -- to overlook Something Wonderful. That
Something Wonderful brings us to understand new things about time
and space; to see that we aren't as bound by time as we thought.
Are you ready?
Listen gently.
There is a Child inside us. It lives. Vigorously. It is as
youthful as ever and it hasn't lost a thing to time. What's more,
that Child is capable of resurrection and emergence right out
here into this world of trials, tribulations, space and time.
Let me say
something about this. We all know how much the worlds wants to
know of this wonder -- the Child within -- unable to find very
much said or written about it. The Bible has something to say
about "the Child," but the churches don't. The
subjective groups don't mention it at all. But the Child I'm
talking about is not solely a religious or theological child, but
the very kid-we-are that is still deep within each of us, just as
it was when we were child-children.
Yes, there is a
Child still living in each of us. We've heard this before, but no
one has gone into much detail. No one has written the really
helpful things. For instance, who has told us that the Child is
all that is real about us? Who has told us that all this
grown-up, grown-old and grown-tired-of-the-world business isn't
true and isn't the way things are? Most mention of this mystical
marvel is poetic fluff and stuff that rings true in the heart but
isn't sufficiently explained to grasp intellectually and
practically. Ah, that's it. The intellect of us doesn't
understand about the heart and the Child, so it relegates them to
another world.
Well, since no
one seems willing or able to tell of the Child within to the
grown-up, grown-sophisticated and grown-old leaders of the world,
I will. I have found the Child-I-am and I know what it is.
Actually, so does everyone, deep within. but the trick is to
reach that "deep within" and get to the Child so we
feel it and know what it is.
(Pause) Hear his
mystery: We are the Child first, then we are the not-child and
then we are the Child again.
(Pause) We were
Child-children first. Those were the days we dimly remember when
fairy tales were real and Aesop's fables had their place in our
thoughts of animals and forests, cabbages and kings, princesses,
knights and frogs and first stars to make our wishes on. Do you
remember how you felt when you were a child-child? Would it
surprise you to know you can feel that way again? Well, you can!
(Interruption)
Dr. Scott, you needn't look so surprised and shocked. You've come
all this distance from your university to hear what I've found,
so you may just as well relax and hear this old soldier out.
You've listened for two minutes, and the look on your face
suggests you know everything to follow. That's the way the
intellect works in the world. We run our projections along a line
and expect them to unfold that way. But, doctor, are you quite
sure there might not be something new to come out of this? I
think you will see there is.
Back to our youth
in time. That was the time of our closest encounter with the
Original Child. We were Child-children then, and the inmost Child
of us was happy even if the human view of childhood was
miserable. The human view at this now-moment includes a nearly
infinite number of possibilities, and we are not stuck to just
one line of unfoldment in time and space as most of us think. The
Original Child's view may seem lost to us today, but it isn't.
"William, we
all know of the advantages of childlikeness and the foolishness
of childishness."
Please hear this:
I am not talking about childlikeness. I am talking about the
Child itself. I am certainly not talking about childishness --
this is the furthest thing from that. The Child we are speaking
of right now is the inner Child when we were young, lived by the
outer child, by this husk of flesh. Now we are to find that inner
part of ourself again because it plays the final, integral part
in our search for the Real. At the moment, just take my word for
that. We are not searching for childlikeness and humility. We are
looking for the Child itself. That Child is the Real of us and is
capable of taking us consciously back to Reality. Nothing else
can. Nothing else will.
Subjectively
speaking, I've found that the inner Child includes this body,
this old bastard, within it -- for good and perfect reason. We
will talk about that later.
Now listen
gently. As children we heard about adulthood and learned the
advantages that growing up and growing old were supposed to
proffer. Like everyone in the world since the beginning of time,
we bought that bill of goods. We longed to be big children
because they could stay up late and go places and do things
little folks couldn't. Furthermore, the thing called
"time" assured us, we believed, that the adult would
come and the child pass away. So, quite by divine plan, we locked
ourselves into a sequential, unfolding world "time,"
and the burying process began. With shovel after shovel of
adulthood and adultery, we buried the real Child under a mountain
of worldly sophistication, education, judgmentalism,
self-importance, guilt, age, debility and thoughts of approaching
death.
Now, here we sit
under the loblollies and look around. We groan, rub the stiff
joints and wonder where the years have gone. Whatever happened to
that little child's view of things? It has gone, we think,
without our really finding the Truth, without having done much in
the world, and without even thinking there might be Something
Else besides the relentless march of time that buried the Child
in the first place.
We seem to think
the Child we were lives only in memory, don't we? Oh, but the
wonder is, Dr. Scott, the ageless Child still lives within us,
untouched by those accumulated experiences and pains along the
slopes of Da Shan, great mountain of seeking and finding. The
Child doesn't give two hoots in hell about physics, metaphysics,
theology, cosmology and the various schools of whatever the world
gives us to study in and about. The Child is untouched by guilt
or by the suffering of age. He hasn't lost his memory. She hasn't
lost either her grace or energy. There are no years lost to the
locust and that original little boy and girl of us is untouched
by time. The Child within us lives, by God. Lives!
Doctor, you are
watching my old friend Abraham wipe tears from his eyes. Do you
wonder if perhaps the Rabbi, with all his years and scholarly
knowledge of the Talmud, isn't hearing and feeling Something deep
within himself this moment?
Listen, listen:
Where do those tender feelings come from? Can you guess? It is
the Child that brings tears of insightfulness to our eyes. The
Rabbi feels the Child! THAT Child we feel within us is our
faithful Guide up the final worldly slopes of Da Shan's peak.
That Child brought us together today to hear of Himself. But the
Child of us must be recognized, acknowledged as living, and
called for if we are to feel its presence returning within us.
Some of the goop
heaped on our human backsides is guilt. Most is the anguish of
time and what time is believed capable of doing -- and expected
to do. Much of our consternation has to do with lack or lost
faculties -- the dimming vision, slow reflexes, empty pocketbook,
failing memory and zip; but all of that is the great pile of
lessons learned which we have allowed -- via Divine Plan -- to
hide the Original Child whom we have been deluded into believing
we left behind years ago in time! Yet it is that same Child
within that gives us the lessons of time and space and makes them
bearable. The injuries of those lessons aren't real in the
absolute sense of non-time. It is the CHILD that is real -- and
the Child that is miraculously untouched. What's more, and what's
important here -- the very purpose of our gathering -- the Child
can return! It can make a comeback! We give it a hand and lift it
up and put it back where it was before the burying began. the
Child lives and is still present to live US and walk with us
through the events of the world -- straight home to full
Self-discovery.
Ah, yes. What
seems so interesting is that the simple, the troubled and
uneducated are going to find the Child and believe It before the
sophisticated and religious folks do, before the metaphysicians
do.
My friends, this
isn't dream stuff we are talking here. At this late stage in the
world, too much is at stake for metaphysical word games,
philosophical and religious half-truths and psychological
upmanship. We haven't much linear time left to stand atop Da Shan
in conscious living fact. So we are talking absolute reality now.
Truth. Fact. More than that, we are saying something that
everyone is going to find is true for himself, all alone, if only
when this physical body stops responding to his every whim and is
put aside in the experience the world calls death.
I'm here this day
to declare for a fact that one doesn't have to await the death of
the body to find the Child-heart within himself, lift it up from
the distant path and out of the binds of time, and become that
one again. That gentle Child within is quite willing to reanimate
and revitalize the present body we seem to think we are
struggling and dying in -- and bring the Child's wisdom and
knowledge of Reality back to our conscious recognition once more.
LISTEN to me
carefully. We are still quite capable of seeing and feeling with
all the unencumbered joy and delight we felt as children.
Absolutely! Still. Right here in the world. No matter how old and
how lost we think we are.
Pollyanna must
come to mind as one hears words such as these, as if this were
her final stand in our affairs. This time let's grab her. If
she's the Child, catch her quickly. "The wise man will not
hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of
life...." Those were the words of Jesus. Isaiah told of the
Child; Jesus identified as the child he found himself to be. We
are to do the same.
(Pause) I doubt
that many will want to understand these things until all their
attachment with self-importance and adulthood has passed. Just as
a soldier who has thrown grenades and fended bayonets understands
what fear is and what peace is, youth doesn't understand the
Child until it has put it aside, buried it and lost all trace of
it for a time -- thence to miss it and need it -- then,
fortuitously, at a moment like this, come home to it again. Do
you hear that? Come home to it again! Indeed, this is the purpose
of adulthood, the struggling human experience and irrevocable
move toward death in time.
It's like the old
man who went back to his home in the hills of
Well now, listen
closely again. We've lived our adulthood to total frustration for
nearly eleven thousand years of human time, time and time again,
to no avail. So now, finally, we look within, find the child
still alive, uncover it, listen to it, follow it -- and that
Eternal Child of God within, the Christ of us, takes us straight
up the mythical mountain to the peak where we become that child
beyond time, in living fact for all our world to see and
understand and do likewise.
No. This is no
Pollyanna tale being told here. This is a truth for everyone, old
and young. These words sound one way to the intellect, but they
feel quite another way to the listening, non-judgmental heart
within us -- and then, sooner or later, perhaps this day, the
feelings come to confirm that it's true and to make it alive and
real, despite our sophistication and human importance, despite
the gnarled fingers, stiff joints, dimming vision and painful
memories. Despite them and despite the world of time and space.
Ah, then -- a miracle for some of us who choose -- instead of
them.
You see, religion
has missed the mark ever so slightly. It has us awaiting a linear
Christ in time, but the Christ Light is closer than that. It is
not only within us. It is us. (Pause) Did you hear that? It IS
us. When we find that out, we comprehend clearly that the linear
Christ of time CONFIRMS the Child that we are.
Metaphysics has
said nothing about the Child whatever, has it? Subjectivism, for
all its looking within, misses the Child entirely -- and the
Child's Equation. There is a good reason for this, as we shall
see later.
Excerpted from The Child Within Us Lives! A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics, copyright ©1986 by William Samuel. All rights reserved.