Divine Discontent- By William Samuel

Excerpt from The Awareness of Self-Discovery Pg.187-189

By William Samuel

The Illustration of the Bank Robber

Instead of the hurt wife, we have a bank. Instead of the lying husband and daughter, we have a bank robber and his accomplice. The monumental human task of those of us who are called on to hear, tell of, or act on the Real, is to convince the bank (of which we are president) that "God is ALL," therefore, the bank is pure, perfect, invulnerable and incapable of being robbed - and to be convinced of this (or convince them) even in the face of a robber and an accomplice who are tangibly robbing the bank with near impunity, reducing its assets day after day after day while bank examiners are screaming from every corner that a tangible robber is indeed stealing the place blind. "Here are his photographs even while he's doing it!" shouts the lady president.

Where is the bank that is willing to believe its invincibility in the face of such evidence as this? (And where is the writer capable of the words which may induce them to?)

Oh, but this is only the beginning of what we, the bank, are being asked to do! We are being called on to believe an even more ludicrous set of circumstances and then to act on that absurd and unbelievable way-an action for which we have strength enough but to the intellect is appears simply too insane to consider.

Our analogy continues. After the bank has tried every human and spiritual means to stop the robber, it receives a printed message from the robber himself.

In the very face of the evidence of his thievery he has the gall to write: "While you think that you are the victim and that I am guilty, I am telling you that you are incapable of really being robbed, and what you see as robbery is the karmic consequence or 'equal and opposite reaction' of not acting as though you believe your own invulnerability."

Imagine! What an affront to the intellect this guy is! And now his message goes on to add: "Mrs. Banker, if you want to see me stop robbing you, leave me alone! Just watch me coming and going, hauling out sack after sack of our money; and instead of seeing me as a robber, see me as a pure and guiltless symbol of our own attempt to be dishonest, calling itself to your attention!" (Where is the shrewd, planning, calculating, protecting intellect that can buy that?) "First, look on me as just a robber being a robber, incapable of stealing your real wealth-and then act on your beliefs. When I see you believe you are really invulnerable-that is, when I see you acting as though God were all and all-you will see me (and your wealth) in an entirely new light." Then, like rubbing our nose in it, he signs the note, "You friend, the robber."

There is a postscript. Listen with the Heart.

"I know you want to see me stop robbing the bank before you think you can believe that God is Good, but I ask you: how would you know this fact unlimitedly, and know that you know it unlimitedly, until you act on it as though it were true in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary???

"In other words, your 'healing' depends on actually seeing this point of Truth as more important and more valuable than the price you place on all you think you are losing or can lose! In short, Mrs. Banker, this 'awful mess you are in' is not such a mess after all-but it will appear until you are willing to live your professions. Nothing less than that will be acceptable. You must make the supreme sacrifice, willing to surrender everything-and there is no way for you to know whether this is true or not until you have done it."

Show me the bank that can come to understand and act on this grand paradox and I will show you a bank that comprehends why Jesus was brought to exclaim, "Only one in a thousand, two in ten thousand…" and why that Carpenter of Love was forsaken by his every disciple, every one of them, when the chips were down and they were called on to put their professions into practice.

Reader, can you see what courage the woman had? She acted upon her conviction that God is All and the liar was naught but a liar, incapable of destroying her. Is it any wonder that her faithfulness was rewarded as a new view of her husband-first, "…as the grandest teacher of my life!" and then as perfectly "normal" husband about the business of being a good husband?

That lady is a teacher herself today, bringing many to see the same point-and, of course, getting called an awful liar herself, in what comes as the intellectually painful process of her Self-images being seen to know what she knows.

To paraphrase a little: Let him who has Heart to hear this, hear this with the Heart he is.

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