A CONVERSATION FROM SOME YEARS AGO. 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 Alabama. Present were a physicist, a mathematician, a Christian Science practitioner, a venerable Roman Catholic nun with a scholar's knowledge of Christianity's origins, a young Buddhist monk and a Rabbi newly moved to this country from Europe. I was delighted to have such a diverse group, and not a little amazed that they had heard of this one hidden in the backwoods of the Southland.
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 world 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
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 Tennessee after working in a mill town during the hard days of the war. When he returned to the mountains, he knew what blue sky really is and what a frisky thing a squirrel is and what beauty actually is. When he got back to his clean, unspoiled hills, his "was beautiful" memory turned into an "is beautiful" now again, and he began living the beauty that had gone unrecognized until he lived the ugliness of war.
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. Butterfly Publishing House publishes audio CDs, DVDs and the writings of William Samuel. Visit the William Samuel and Friends website for more information. Our thanks to Sandy Jones for making these valuable works available.
Buy from Amazon.
*
Articles & Excerpts List | William Samuel page | Self-Discovery Portal
© 2000-2024. All rights reserved. | Back to Top