Chapter 225 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CCXXV

Dump whatever we will into the ground,
Spew clouds of venom into the air,
Pour rivers of toxic waste into the water,
Torment any given life form any way imaginable,
And then destroy whatever still survives any way possible.
If that’s what it takes for human vanity to awaken
To what’s really running the show here,
C’est la vie with a shrug.

* * * *
After all, we’re only human.

* * * *
‘Tis but another bout with ye old windmill, I’m a-feared.

* * * *
God is cast a harsh judge, yet is there
Really anyone but you judging yourself?

* * * *
The passion of the day is unrelenting.

* * * *
You are that
Which is before all precedents,
The true lawful lawlessness
Prior to all mortal edicts.

* * * *
Think what you will
Do whatever you please.
Who would ever even know?
Who would even care
But you

* * * *
What a world this could be
If we could really trust one another,
If we really had each other’s interest in mind,
If…

* * * *
Specialization has a tendency to weaken the capacity
To survive the tumultuous inevitability of change.
The generalists will abide, and even thrive
The harshness of any given time.

* * * *
How can you really be forgiven
If you do not forgive yourself?

* * * *
Another case of youthful idealism
Morphing into pragmatic insight.

* * * *
You are the goal.

* * * *
Bow to no concept.
They are all relative.

* * * *
Don’t you grow weary of all the scams
Devised to coax your desire for more?

* * * *
Students of life and death
Are never without a classroom.

* * * *
You need not please the many masks.
It is obviously impossible anyway.

* * * *
Each must discern the infinite center
From which awareness springs eternal.

* * * *
Time need not age the eyes.

* * * *
What a waste to take thought so seriously.
We pander our minds like spoiled children.

* * * *
You continue to think one form or another
Will appease your insatiable hunger.

* * * *
Each of us experiences
The agonies and ecstasies
Of the mindset to which we cling.

* * * *
Mystics are not necessarily saints,
Nor are saints inevitably mystics.

* * * *
Overstating the obvious.
Seems to be this scribe’s fate.

* * * *
There almost inevitably forms an insulated bubble
About the wealthy, powerful, and famous.
A separation that deprives them
Of the companionship
Of the anonymous masses
To which they are really quite equal.

* * * *
It is not a question of happiness, compassion or love.
Truth is prior to any concepts or emotions of mind or body.

* * * *
Try as hard as they might,
There are those who can never feel
Quite at home in any field of the human drama.
Those who do may call them insane,
But that is only cosmic irony.

* * * *
Gravity never loses.

* * * *
Imagine what you were before you were born,
What you will be after,
And what that makes you now.

* * * *
We are but an infinitesimal fragment
Of what is, for all practical purposes,
An infinite chemistry experiment.

* * * *
Drama, dreama.
Hmmm…

* * * *
The flag you wave is your delusion.

* * * *
Any given mind, even those in the gutter,
Ceaselessly glories in its thoughts.
But all greatness is delusion.
Even saints and sages
Can tumble in the near infinity
Of proud permutations born of imagination.

* * * *
Truth is prior to all belief.
It does not require any
Approval or compensation.

* * * *
I am.
As detached as the sun,
As sure as any burning bush.

* * * *
In every decision, small or large,
Ramifications in time and space ripple.
Until you see time does not exist,
They will rock your world.

* * * *
How unfair for you to be born into this world,
And not be told that in every way
From beginning to end
You are one
With this divine orchestration.
The sovereignty of godness is within all.

* * * *
The world does not require a savior,
For is only those with masks who perish.

* * * *
Consciousness will dance
In every permutation possible
Until the lights are turned down,
The dance floor disappears,
And the band goes home.

* * * *
And it will always be you dancing.

* * * *
It does no matter one whit
What you conceive or what you believe,
For no concept, no belief can ever
Come close to touching it.

* * * *
Oblivion’s fount has no attachment
To creation, preservation, or destruction.
Such vanity is you own concoction.

* * * *
Even the greatest being in this immeasurable drama
Is as impermanent, as transitory as any other.
Even the greatest fire turns to ash.

* * * *
The blind cannot see what their eyes tell them.
The deaf cannot hear the good news around them.
Truth is wasted upon those without eye or ear.

* * * *
The sage will nod,
The seeker will question,
The deluded will take no notice,
And the fool will laugh.

* * * *
The mirage of the day entices us all
To continue our little worldly play.

* * * *
Good and evil are the dualistic notions
Born of humanity’s vain self-absorption.
We mortals, not some imagined god,
Are the creators of heaven and hell.

* * * *
All ages are really the same,
No matter the player, the stage, the costume
Or the dreams of consciousness.

* * * *
Those discerning the truth of the eternal nature
Are really no more exceptional than any other.
All forms are equal in the divine play godness.

* * * *
Your specialness is in the beingness,
Not the imagined personality.
The personality is a temporary, mortal concoction,
But the beingess is the timeless nature prior to any mask or costume.
It is the absoluteness before any dream of consciousness,
Unbound by any collusion concocted by mind.

* * * *
Being a human being is truly quite impossible.
The human drama is really only a game of make believe,
A delusionary, time-bound recreation fabricated by consciousness.

* * * *
That which has never existed cannot be touched.
The eternal quintessence has never been born, and thus never dies.
Despite all the reflections, all the mirages, all the delusions,
Each of us only pretends the mortal faire real.

* * * *
What you want truth to be, and what it is,
That gap is the degree to which you suffer.

* * * *
A breath free of craving,
Free of fear,
Is a remarkable mystery.

* * * *
Nothing has to be the way it is.

* * * *
You are no more an identity than the man in the moon.

* * * *
Most seekers merely pamper their vanity
With grandiose delusions eternity will not sustain.
Until you fully embrace your death,
It is all a joke on you.

* * * *
Try tossing away your greatest vanity
Just for the sake of experimentation.

* * * *
Become that which is prior to all concoctions of mind.

* * * *
The irony is you must use the mind to free the mind.

* * * *
“I Am” is the good news.

* * * *
All attributes are merely the coating,
The play of light upon your true being,
Upon the oblivion of your essential state.

* * * *
To become the way, the truth, and the light,
You must die to your sense of identity.
Are you sure you are ready for oblivion?

* * * *
Funny how so many
Self-proclaimed spiritual people
Often believe they are privy
To God’s divine plan.

* * * *
The song of god is sung with your voice.

* * * *
Moralists bound in duality create heavens and hells,
And heave those who do not agree with them
Into the dungeons born of imagination.

* * * *
Idealists often seem to expect others
To achieve their ideal before they do.

* * * *
You will not discover your true Self
Until you no longer want something from some god,
Until you are fearless enough to discern the divinity of your own eye.

* * * *
Take on the bluntness of words such as these,
Or dilly-dally on one comfortable detour or another
Until you finally long for where all manmade channels
Must inevitably come to their eternal, pathless end.

* * * *
Flesh becomes less and less enticing as it rots off.

* * * *
Each must find their own route to the indivisible.
Some quickly, some slowly, many not at all.

* * * *
I am That I Am.
You are That I Am.
We are all That I Am.
There is nothing that is not
That I Am.

* * * *
Grin and bear it.

* * * *
Absorb the bluntness of thoughts such as these,
Or dawdle bemused on one comfortable path or another
Until finally ready for where those avenues, too, must surely end.

* * * *
Each must find their own path to the indivisible.
Some do it quickly, some slowly, most never.

* * * *
Reincarnation and being born again
Are easy excuses for complacency.

* * * *
What is reborn but a set of concepts?

* * * *
How different existence is for those whose lives
Are never touched by the knowledge
Fabricated by technology.

* * * *
What is there which can quench the mystical thirst
Except total fusion into the oblivion of the unmanifest?

* * * *
You cannot hedge your bets
With this inquiry into your essential nature.
It is an all or nothing proposition.

* * * *
You will never see your face
Because, truly, you do not have one.

* * * *
You may surrender to whatever or whomever you will
Until you discern everything and everyone
Is but a grand play of illusion.

* * * *
Maya, kiddo, maya.

* * * *
The yoke is on you.

* * * *
Life is an opportunity to awaken if it is your fate
In this brief time to partake the destiny of all destinies.

* * * *
You must disengage all judgment, all delusion,
All yearning for reward, all craving for more,
To examine what is really being said here.

* * * *
Succumbing to desire can often be measured
By its impact on the lives of others.
Seeing the truth of this
Requires a capacity
Many find all but impossible
Because the keystone of their existence
Is embedded in gratification rather than compassion.

* * * *
The consequences of yielding to your many hedonistic inclinations
Is inevitably made apparent when it impacts the lives of others.
Seeing it requires an empathy that may be difficult to muster
When values are grounded in gratification rather than compassion.

* * * *
If you found out you wouldn’t be waking up tomorrow morning,
Would you stay up until the break of dawn, or go to bed early?

* * * *
In every step, all things come to pass.

* * * *
The waves of time are the lightning storms of your mind.

* * * *
What is there to worship
When idolatry falls away?

* * * *
The sun and all its planets and moons
Are merely particles of dust swirling
In the infinity of the cosmic dance.

* * * *
You may recollect that you did not ask to be here,
And there is no point in praying to be staying.
So why not do your best? Why make assumptions?
Why take anything personally? And why not love your Self?


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved

Chapter 226 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CCXXVI

The idolatry of form is no substitute for truth.

* * * *
The lion and antelope, the eagle and rabbit,
The king and pawn, the sage and fool.
Each must endure the outcome
Of their given function
For the theater to carry on.

* * * *
That you would expect this realm
To be any different, to be any ideal at all,
Is the source of your disappointment, anger and fear,
And, ultimately, these passions will bring about a world-weariness
That may well consume mind and body if you do not discern
The ultimate perfection from which they spring.

* * * *
Shuffling the cards does not change the game.

* * * *
You are promised heaven and hell
In exchange for the false gold
Middlemen so badly crave.

* * * *
Another day, another change,
Another problem, another solution
Rippling into the unknown.

* * * *
Science can only be as accurate
As the instruments used to measure
And the mind brought to bear.

* * * *
The presumption
That life is inviolate
No matter the situation
Is a dubious position.

* * * *
When asking a question,
And truly listening for an answer,
Your comprehension can still really only be
Whatever you are ready to hear.

* * * *
The appearance
That there is either
A traveler or a destination
Is an enticing delusion.

* * * *
A truth is a truth no matter the source.
Whether it comes from the devil or god,
Your discomfort with one or the other
Is an issue of your own making.

* * * *
In the animal world,
Chameleonship is the art of survival
Not an issue of pride.

* * * *
You make up so many claims to be this or that.
All self-deception, all ultimately false conjecture,
Delusional fancy, imagined conceptual trickery.

* * * *
You can surrender to whomever or whatever you will.
But until you surrender to the formless essential nature,
You are merely dancing with an infinity of enticing mirages.

* * * *
That any other bothers to gossip,
Or think of you in any fashion whatsoever,
Need not be of great concern.

* * * *
Desire is incredibly enticing
Until you eventually realize how painful
Its inherent discontent truly is.

* * * *
False pride, false humility,
Is there really a difference?

* * * *
We are each conditioned to be attached
To the culture of our origin.
And relatively few
Ever wander outside the cave.

* * * *
What form or concept is sacred
When none have eternity
As their foundation?

* * * *
Real detachment
Implies an unconcern
Prior to all desire for more.

* * * *
Is all your movement, all your busy-ness
Really only a indication of your dread of oblivion?
The corporeal demise is an inescapable fact.
No point in White Rabbiting to and fro.
You may as well become aware
Of the eternal reality.
After all, it is your true home.

* * * *
Joy and sorrow
Are not a concern
For an uncarved block.

* * * *
A separate personalized god is the make-believe
Of those still caught in the division of the mind,
The dilemma of the dualistic sensory illusion.

* * * *
Hate is a lazy, ignorant, isolating way.
Love is a journey of good intentions.

* * * *
Will you spend eternity trying vainly to quench your desire?

* * * *
You are truly liquid dust.

* * * *
Impossible.

* * * *
No point debating with those who see,
You must do as they did.
Investigate your Self.

* * * *
Trust god?
Only that he/she/it
Will inevitably squash you
Like a windshield does an insect.
And if you are very lucky, for the last time.

* * * *
You are not reading these words
Because you’re an angel,
You scalawag, you.

* * * *
[sic]

* * * *
Do you believe
The costume you wear, or the mask you bear
Really matters to anyone but you?

* * * *
The first of many unfair calamities in your world
Was that you were born at all.

* * * *
Those who really believe
They truly know what is going on here
Certainly are fooling themselves.

* * * *
Only you can heal the rift within.
You must become your own physician.

* * * *
How infatuated we are with the superficial.

* * * *
The nowness you can never see,
Touch, taste, smell, feel,
Or know in any way,
Is your eternal nature.

* * * *
All dreams are witnessed equally
By the same detached essence.

* * * *
When you become unsure
Who or what you are anymore,
You may almost be at the front door.
The trick to getting back to Kansas
Is to be beyond-a-doubt unsure.

* * * *
Wrong assumptions can get anyone
In serious bother pretty danged quick.

* * * *
Eternal life, eternal death.
Is there really a difference?

* * * *
Eternity has neither time nor space for abstract conjecture.

* * * *
The obviousness of oneness
Is an absurd joke upon any
Who ever think otherwise.

* * * *
Assume nothing.

* * * *
These words speak well enough for themselves.
They require no priests or organizations,
Merely seekers of what is true.

* * * *
You will continue
Finding whatever you seek
Until there is literally nothing left to seek.

* * * *
So many interesting ways to live.
So many interesting ways to die.
Hard to pick just one.

* * * *
Is judgment any more than unreflective projection.

* * * *
Everything everywhere, smoking.

* * * *
Is it idealistic to be weary of bullshit?

* * * *
Regarding the ultimate nature,
Any given answer, any given conclusion
Is only conjecture and delusion.

* * * *
The world will always beckon you join in
As the alluring sirens did Ulysses,
But it is you who chooses
To be possessed,
Or not.

* * * *
It is always the first time in the eternal sense.

* * * *
There is no resolving this mystery,
Which is why minds across the human epoch
Have resorted to fabricating every delusion imaginable.

* * * *
Do not allow delusion to be confused with reality.

* * * *
Me, myself, and I,
The source of all experience,
All ignorance, delusion, agony and ecstasy.
The personal mystery of existence
From which all springs.

* * * *
Absurdity is at home in every geography.

* * * *
If you believe in anything,
Imagination has gotten the better of you.

* * * *
Religions are merely well-established cults.
Tradition, ritual, and idolatry are not truth.

* * * *
Anonymity within and without is the finest freedom.

* * * *
Blaming any given situation
On deities or demons
Is a convenient delusion.

* * * *
Prayer, n, A condoned way to babble to an imaginary friend.

* * * *
We are all the only witness there is.

* * * *
You are the bound link
To that which has no bounds,
The perjury to that which is only truth.

* * * *
Your attachment to that which is unreal
Is all that holds you back
From discerning that which is.

* * * *
One in the same.

* * * *
These words are a gift
To the epoch of humankind,
Wherever the mystery may wander.

* * * *
Over and over, the blinding lights
Of power, fame and fortune,
Of excess in any form,
Draw moths to their fiery doom.

* * * *
How bittersweet the tang of ironic doubt.

* * * *
Myths are the make-believe of time.
Be wary lest they betray you further.

* * * *
Though you are but a droplet of the immensity,
You are a reflection of the infallibility
Of its essential reality.

* * * *
What is not fabrication?
Is there anything concocted by mind
Which is ever truly real?

* * * *
Glory is a shiny bauble
That entices all who would seek it
Into the voracious quicksand of arrogance.

* * * *
Standing before your mirrored reflection,
Can you ever truly envision your Self?
Or merely another passing scene
Truly no more distinct than any other?

* * * *
Who are you but the wind of the mind
Existing not but for the sensory illusion
Of partitioned spaces drifting through time.

* * * *
You cannot ever fully comprehend
What the many mystics of this world
Over and over in so many ways declare
Until your own ear is at last prepared to hear.

* * * *
Free will is illusion.
You really have no choice
But to accept the caprice of fate.

* * * *
Identity is the pride.

* * * *
The I am this or that ends.

* * * *
To realize completely that it is not you,
But the whims of consciousness
That act out all this silliness,
Is the liberation of Soul.

* * * *
Do not feel bothered that you are not an expert,
Or that someone else pretends to be.
As least you are candid
About really not knowing anything.

* * * *
Every so-called problem
Has as its source the mind.
We and we alone have created
The disarray of the human theater.
There is no outside influence
Upon which reproach
Can be placed.

* * * *
All philosophy is essentially nonsense.
To be or not to be is the only question.

* * * *
Your body gradually withers away.
Your self-concept alters from moment to moment.
You endlessly attempt to rein in the irrevocable passage of time.
Take pause and ponder, what will your self-concept be
When the body to which you are so attached
Has returned into its dusty origin.

* * * *
Absurdity hath no bounds.

* * * *
Whether or not this manifest dream could ever be any different
Is the question any thinker must eventually ask
In the quest for the truth of it.

* * * *
The truth of god’s so-called plan may be
That there has never really been one.

* * * *
The quest for fulfillment is the monkey’s dream.

* * * *
Scientists pretend they are so objective, but how can they be?
Observer and observed are linked in eternal relativity,
And intellectual assumptions to the contrary
Only blind them to their collusion.

* * * *
For surrender to absoluteness to be complete
Is not just about one’s negative attributes,
But the so-called positive ones as well.
Your pleasure as well as your pain,
Your glory as well as your despair,
Your confidence as well as your doubt.
Because, in reality, all the you think of as you
Is merely an invention of the same cradle of delusion.

* * * *
If you truly understand your seeking godness
Will annihilate the you, you know and daily cultivate,
Only the most determined will not cast these words away,
And with great determination, turn even more vainly to the world.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved

Chapter 227 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CCXXVII

The greatest potential of consciousness
Resides in the awareness of its source.

* * * *
The tranquility of eternal stillness
Is that of a charging tiger or a just-suckled infant.
All potentials timelessly flowing in the vast ocean of manifestation.

* * * *
Attempting to take back that which was surrendered
Only seems to exacerbate a spate of hellish outcomes.
Attachment is a byway to perdition in this dreamy voyage.

* * * *
What so many consider teaching
Is merely one who has been schooled
Instructing another to perform the same tricks.
Merely handing another a basket of fish,
Or coaching them on how to fish,
Will make a great difference
In any given journey.

* * * *
Deny the lie fodder for its vain feast.
Give your life over to that which is real.

* * * *
And where exactly is this “Me, Myself and I”
To which the you that is really you
With such great tenacity
So vainly clings?

* * * *
The subtlety of the essential nature
Fools all but the most discerning.

* * * *
Those caught up in the web of wealth, fame and power
Fan the adulation of those who envy and fear them most.

* * * *
Why settle for less than you deserve?

* * * *
Ignorance fosters despair, havoc, and loss.
The freedom of recollection is cause for celebration.
Weep not for the dead, but for those who reside
In the hell of a mind lost in Self-deception.

* * * *
Believing in any mythological fabrication
Is as real and meaningful as a child’s
In Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.

* * * *
Attachment to any mythology
Is an extremely acute constraint
On the quest for the ultimate reality.

* * * *
The ultimate iconoclast . . . I Am.

* * * *
Nothing more tedious than a true believer.

* * * *
Nature and nurture, seed and setting
Are a unitary journey in the dreaming of time.
One cannot be without the other, and their intertwining
Ripples into countless futures well past their own.

* * * *
The infinite stillness of totality
Neither loves nor hates,
Grasps nor releases,
Gains nor loses, exists nor dies.
It is but a canvas upon which all forms rise and fall,
Upon which quanta and galaxies dance in whatever way they will,
Upon which all evolving creation is witnessed for all eternity.

* * * *
Surrounded by so much hogwash,
You will endure . . . somehow.

* * * *
Doubt is the key to freedom.

* * * *
Sometimes, what is said would be better left unsaid.
Other times, what is unsaid should be said
Over and over until it is heard.

* * * *
From the blank canvas,
From the uncarved block
All things are created, all things evolve.
Creation is evolution and evolution is creation.
The genesis of the nowness is eternally intertwined

* * * *
How long must we be drained by beliefs
That miss the point or have lost their way?
Move on and discern what is real for your Self.

* * * *
At least children have an excuse for all their pretending.

* * * *
The senses create the veil,
And desire the prison.

* * * *
So many vain thoughts buzzing to and fro,
Yet what is it they fly to and fro within?
The answer to the only question,
The question without answer
Is one flies have no need to ask.

* * * *
The body is but a container of godness.
You are the oneness of all eternity,
Not a persona bound in time.

* * * *
You are blessed if you truly comprehend
This kaleidoscoping dreaming is but a hiccup,
In the seamlessness of eternity’s essential nature.

* * * *
Until power, fame, wealth, or any other desire imaginable
Are less important than knowing you are That I Am,
You will not know the sweet liqueur of grace.

* * * *
You can only know who a buddha or christ truly were
When you yourself are seated in the lotus of totality.

* * * *
If you understand time,
You discern what it means
To feel your fleshless bones
Slowly crumbling into dust.

* * * *
All your fears come from falsely identifying
With the suffering of an ever-changing form.

* * * *
By being born,
You are mortally compelled
By a vast array of choiceless choices.

* * * *
Save time?
How?

* * * *
Even if you could travel in time,
It would be jus as imaginary
As any other moment.

* * * *
It is the only way.

* * * *
Imitators always miss out on being themselves.

* * * *
How obvious the uselessness of tossing pearls before swine.
True gold cannot be seen by those who lack the astuteness required.
Those content with the false gold can read words such as these,
And never even vaguely comprehend what is being said.

* * * *
Throughout human history in every geography,
Seers of truth have often been persecuted
For the mistaken, idealistic assumption
That others will be at all interested
In seeing it as clearly as they.

* * * *
Seek truth or whatever delusion pleases you.
It doesn’t really matter what you do or think,
For it is all the impartial dream of godness.

* * * *
Organized religions
And other cults
Are often so off the mark
That it’s not even worth arguing about.

* * * *
All sense of security is illusion.
All things are inevitable ground up
And recycled again and again
For as long as eternity
Plays in manifest dreamtime.

* * * *
Far too idealistic for this doubtful eye,
But minds wander where they will.

* * * *
See your Self in everything, everywhere.

* * * *
This too,
This too,
This too,
This too,
This too…
Ad infinitum
Shall pass.

* * * *
Tap into the eternal as a root does the soil.
It is your true sustenance in this mad dream.

* * * *
Like a dog gone mad
From chasing a thrown ball
Far too many times.

* * * *
Truth is a word
Repeated by many,
But understood by few.

* * * *
No importance is set upon consciousness.
It is dross to the flame; a mere shadow of reality.
The unknowable truth need not know of itself.
The essential is prior to consciousness.
You are but a momentary figment.

* * * *
How arrogant of humanity
To name that which is its source,
Much less consider any word bona fide
In any way, shape, or form.

* * * *
The you that you truly are can never be duplicated.
The oneness can never be two or more.
All duality is a play of illusion,
And the delusion it so easily fosters.

* * * *
If you must cultivate faith or nurture hope,
Let it be that you will one day die
For the last time.

* * * *
Your fear comes from continuing
To forget none of this really exists.
That it is only temporary faire,
And that it can never sate
The hunger you have
To return home.

* * * *
You want so badly to love some form or another,
Yet are denied complete union by the laws of space and time.
Merge within and you will fathom the love all are.

* * * *
To believe yourself too superior to mix it up with the masses
Is a serious wake-up call about the karma awaiting your arrival.

* * * *
All things will rise,
And all will fall.

* * * *
What is real, anyway?

* * * *
You want immortality?
Then kill yourself.

* * * *
Knowing this changes everything.

* * * *
See how the universe is imprinted in the skull,
Most often veiled by the fog of consciousness.

* * * *
For the sake of manifest survival,
You must participate, and perhaps even thrive,
In one way or another.

* * * *
Is not an infinite universal intelligence
Both obvious and unprovable
At the same time?

* * * *
The depths and heights
To which humanity will both sink and rise
Are seemingly incalculable.

* * * *
What is the state of mind that does not remember?

* * * *
It is the nature of history
For all things to be forgotten.

* * * *
Could even tyrannosaurus rex match
Humanity’s capacity for fearsome savagery?

* * * *
Why should you fear anything?
Nothing can truly kill you.

* * * *
Help children retain their innocence,
Their child minds, for as long as possible.
With that underpinning, there is the potential
For happiness, wisdom, and perhaps even love.

* * * *
Attachment to life is so biologically embedded
That it is difficult to discern the source one’s being,
And once seen, remembering to recollect it is not easy either.
So you continue stumbling and falling off the tightrope;
Keep being sliced by the blade of discernment.
It a challenge requiring great discipline
To absolutely surrender to that
Which you truly are.

* * * *
Imagine how many times
The oceans have evaporated
To erode the highest mountains,
To wash them to its greatest depths.
Why would it, how could it be any different
For each and every particle across time
In the awakening and return to Self.

* * * *
As in any given dance,
The better teachers match step for step
The many assorted capacities, limitations and interests
Of whatever students enter their realm.

* * * *
How many ways the Way
Can be painted, sculpted, and described,
Yet no matter how many attributes may cloak its essence,
It eternally remains the same indivisible one,
Indifferent to all plays of time.

* * * *
The world is burdensome
Until you discern that spaciousness
Where no burden can exist.

* * * *
You a still voice
From the infinite inner space,
Truly, the final frontier.

* * * *
When you reside in the rigid ego born of illusion,
You are like a stone slowly wearing down in the current.
But when you let go the dream that is unreal,
You rediscover the state of wonder,
The awareness from which all springs.

* * * *
It is less about a personal god
Than it is a personal quest
To discern the godness within.

* * * *
The game of organized religion is an absurd farce
Only eyes given over to godness can discern.

* * * *
Even one follower
Can bind the unwary teacher,
But genuine students are never a burden.

* * * *
The tiniest beginning can beget a tsunami of epic proportion.

* * * *
You speak of surrender
Yet do not truly begin to comprehend
The sacrifice required.

* * * *
You play cat and mouse with your Self,
A game of tag with eternity its field.

* * * *
If we cannot tame our many passions,
The conscious potential of this manifest dream,
Will be a barren birthing, like a blossom unable to flower.

* * * *
You are but one infinitesimal particle of eternity’s witnessing.

* * * *
Martyrdom is just another form of vanity.

* * * *
Nothing matters but what imagination dictates.

* * * *
Different frames of reference,
Different capacities and limitations,
Differences of every sort,
Are that by which
All life forms live and die.

* * * *
Given a choice between a lie and a truth,
It is a curious, rather staggering fact
That many seem to prefer the lie.

* * * *
In the maze
Of any given life,
Some doors open,
Some doors are locked.
Some open now, some later.
Some that once opened no longer do.
And most doors have never opened, and never will.
Though many may well merit a better shake,
The truth of it is that life is not fair,
And not all fates are just.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved

Chapter 228 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CCXXVIII

Dissolve the a priori, and what truly remains
But a stream of seamless sensory input,
The perfect order of timeless chaos.

* * * *
‘Tis but death knocking . . .
Play on.

* * * *
Do not judge the world harshly,
For its redemption is in your seeing.

* * * *
Bouts of suffering
Slivers of joy

* * * *
You are That which cannot be named.

* * * *
Agony and ecstasy, suffering and happiness,
Are relative to the given circumstance.

* * * *
Difficult to be content
When one’s health is fading,
And whatever power you once had
Is little by little dissipating.
Not easy growing old.

* * * *
It is less about some god judging you than you judging yourself
For memories that are no longer relevant.
Let them go.
Be at peace with the nowness that is real.

* * * *
Buy someone else’s book.
This one will cost you
What it expounds.

* * * *
Ho-hum, ho-hum, ho-hum . . .
Another name, another number,
Another this, that or the other . . .
Nothing really new under any day’s sun
Except every this, that or the other
Any given now eternally offers.

* * * *
Today’s falsehoods are the silt
Upon which tomorrow’s will settle.

* * * *
No use feeling bothered
By some event you cannot take back.
Just don’t do it again, forgive yourself, and move on.

* * * *
Some deaths are described as having no purpose,
And others as meaningful, even honorable.
Yet the Angel of Death is unconcerned
About any vain human pride.
When one’s time is done, it is done.

* * * *
Any given outcome
Is less a matter of superstition
Than it is inattention.

* * * *
Perhaps your resentment and fear, the angst tainting your dream,
Comes from having to play a painful role forced upon you,
This reverie you have never really quite believed,
But must play in one way or another
Until death do you part.

* * *
Attaining heaven on earth is merely
Changing one’s frame of reference
To inclusive, empathetic choices.

* * * *
If this is a battleground between good and evil,
Then it’s pretty obvious which side is winning.

* * * *
The delusion is strong in that one, Obi Wan.

* * * *
If there is an entity called god
And it is as vain and petty as we,
There is nothing for which to hope.

* * * *
Suffering in every manner conceivable
Is the consequence each must pay
For whatever air is allotted.

* * * *
‘Tis not the location,
But the quality of mind
In which equanimity abides.

* * * *
Wisdom is simple, straight-forward and matter-of-fact.
It culls the distortions of opinion and propaganda,
And serves all in all geographies in all times.

* * * *
Surrender brings a sense of intuitive right action.
Things just happen spontaneously, as they truly always have.
And with little interior effort, it will all unfold before you.,
And you will again embrace your true beingness,
Doing whatever the moment beckons.

* * * *
All the walls in your mind
Are merely contractions of energy
Crashing to and fro.

* * * *
Is all the gazing at mirrors and photographs
Merely a vain attempt to remember
How the mask looks,
Or a check-in to see if the image
Really matches the sense of time and space?

* * * *
Become a voice in the wilderness.

* * * *
The subtlety of surrendering
Is like the rings of a tree
Gradually dissolving.

* * * *
A near infinity of forms . . .
I Am . . . all and none.

* * * *
Surrender is completely voluntary.
It is the choiceless choice.
Perhaps the only one.

* * * *
Without you as its source,
There would be, could be, no universe.
All that is known has you at the core of its foundation.
You are the eternal spring from which all manifest existence flows.

* * * *
Each of us births a universe.
Death is its annihilation.

* * * *
Consciousness comes, consciousness goes.
So it goes, c’est la vie, oh well.

* * * *
Winning and losing with equanimity
Requires an inner grace few possess.

* * * *
The mind craves its conscious movement.
The stillness of eternity is a voluntary death
Only the most intrepid seek and discern.

* * * *
The only real resolution to the pain of consciousness
Is to discern beyond its temporal nature.

* * * *
Slowly, surely, inexorably . . . it is done.

* * * *
Words only get you the place words attain.
To discover that which is real
Is a realm
Words can never attain.

* * * *
Life is a corridor of time,
A seamless maze of birth and death.

* * * *
Lost in space.

* * * *
When you say me, myself and I,
Who, what, when, where, why and how
Do you really mean it?

* * * *
No point in guilt-ridden regrets.
There is no going back in the maze of time.
One can only choose to never wander that path again.

* * * *
I am whatever I am,
You are whatever you are,
We are whatever we are,
Whatever that may be.

* * * *
True science is always open
To new questions, to new answers.
True science seeks truth, not conclusions.

* * * *
What more do you really need?

* * * *
To be content,
You merely need
To decide to do so.

* * * *
In the midst of the most ferocious storm, a serene wind.

* * * *
Soul interrupted.

* * * *
No matter the perceived how,
It’s the same now across time.

* * * *
Ain’t the pig’s life great.

* * * *
Detachment, detachment, detachment . . .
Is the ticket home.

* * * *
Define your assumptions.

* * * *
Practice non-caring,
And your right actions
Will be clear of suffering.

* * * *
You’ve read it perhaps one hundred times before,
Yet this time you finally understood it as never before.

* * * *
It is what needed to be said.
Nothing more, nothing less.

* * * *
Scientists have delved into the core of the atom,
And found nothing.
Your body is made up of atoms.
Put it together and there is only one conclusion.

* * * *
If each of us somehow approached everyone, everything as equal
Rather than through the veil of perceived differences . . .
Culture, gender, race, language . . . ad infinitum . . .
Indeed, what a different world it would be.

* * * *
Sometimes you lie,
Sometimes you cheat,
Sometimes you steal,
Sometimes you kill.
C’est la vie.

* * * *
Is this the world you see for your children?

* * * *
So be it.

* * * *
Every day . . .
Something sweet . . . something bitter . . .
Find the equanimity in all.

* * * *
Thought is but a neural storm.
Still the thought, still the storm.

* * * *
When you leave this world,
Will you seek another?

* * * *
Curious.

* * * *
You are the beingness.
There is really nothing to worship
As much as there is everything to embrace.

* * * *
To be fixated on any particular aspect
Is to miss the vast mystery
Encompassing all.

* * * *
Humanity’s desire for a better world
Has created a looming monster.

* * * *
To realize you own law is an outcome of divine logic.

* * * *
It is partial surrender
Which makes words
Such as these useful.
Once all resistance ends,
You will no longer need them.
Like a ladder after an arduous climb.

* * * *
Eons beyond counting
In the flow of time and space,
And who knows what prior to that,
Have gone into the crafting
Of this fleeting instant.

* * * *
Once you have climbed the mountain,
And seen it for what it is,
It is no different
Than any other point in creation.

* * * *
Hell has an infinity of tentacles
With which to pander your soul.

* * * *
You will project your imagined will upon the world
Until you comprehend neither the world
Nor your narcissistic will
Truly exist.

* * * *
Consume until you explode
If that is what it takes
For you to wake up
To what is really going on.

* * * *
If you find the need for ordinary order,
You will not find it here.

* * * *
Does god become mortal, or mortals godlike?
Was there ever any real difference
But in the realization
That in the other there is but one?

* * * *
As long as you believe you are your body,
You cannot speak with undeniable conviction.

* * * *
An imaginary world
In which goodness plays
With untiring grace.

* * * *
All the others have convinced you
That you should participate in a manner
Aligned with a geographical mythos.
Seeing past one’s conditioning
Is not for ordinary souls.

* * * *
To the periphery of your tentative veil,
And well beyond to the most distant of shores,
You are ever the same vapor of oneness.

* * * *
The dreaming of consciousness
Is a spontaneous unfolding,
An infinity of choiceless choices
Of a vaporous now playing time real.

* * * *
The scribe,
Despite all he imagined himself to be,
Never really existed either.

* * * *
Become your ideal,
Or succumb to eternal hypocrisy.

* * * *
It is not easy for the hatchling to pierce the shell.

* * * *
Fear and desire are simply
The body’s chemical response
Aiding the mind’s attempt to survive,
And the mind’s futile attachment
To an imaginary personality
In an imaginary theater.

* * * *
Ordinary order is the ordinary fabrication of ordinary imagination.

* * * *
There is nothing inherently wrong
With anything the mind may deign concoct.
It is the painful, imagined suffering which is the bother.

* * * *
Lost in the dull, monotonous roar of the churning crowd,
The oblivion of the bottle’s upturned bottom
Beckons yet again.

* * * *
We’re all the same pile of ashes.

* * * *
Is this the way we really want to play this dream?
Is this endless ocean of suffering so necessary
For the existence of our imagined psyches?

* * * *
The limited mind imprisoned in everyday thought
Is an inexorable, mishmashing, hodgepodging clutter
Riddled with absolute nature at every crook and cranny.
The intent of all that has been said in this meandering work
Is to point to the largest mirror eternity can imagine.
It will well more than likely change nothing,
But what else was there to do?
Somebody had to do
Nothing.

* * * *
As always,
Best wishes.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved

Chapter 229 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CCXXIX

A missive from eternity.

* * * *
Return to the womb of eternal spacelessness.

* * * *
Don’t confuse psychedelic with spiritual.
Something that seems extraordinary
Is really no different than the most
Mundane, everyday experience.

* * * *
A rock
Is really as much you
As you are.

* * * *
Another mind locked
In a box of its own making.

* * * *
It’s all about patterns and one’s attachment to them.
Only through direct, detached attention
Can any change come about.
And even then,
It’s easier said than done.

* * * *
It might get better,
It might just sort of carry on,
But this brief moment in time may be
As good as it gets ever again.

* * * *
The clarity of Soul.

* * * *
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
One that sits is layered with dust.

* * * *
Cynicism hath no bounds.

* * * *
What dull, grinding lives the masses lead.

* * * *
Intolerance builds walls.
Acceptance dissolves them.

* * * *
The true seeker leaves no stone unturned.

* * * *
Wander nearby, wander afield.
The universe is your pearl,
Every hearth your home.

* * * *
To have friends, or enemies, you must be one.

* * * *
The high cost
Of experimentation
Is that it may well kill you.
At least as well as doing nothing.

* * * *
Even beyond the pale,
The mystery remains you.

* * * *
Mothballed again.

* * * *
The detective studies everything
Until there is only one conclusion.

* * * *
Cheers to the herd.
They will abide the savageries of time.

* * * *
We each witness whatever the moment offers.

* * * *
We’re all just hamburger waiting
For McDonald’s to come up with
Its own version of Soylent Green.

* * * *
The greatest show on Earth
Still has much ground to cover.

* * * *
Make death your best friend,
And there will be no fear
When it does arrive.

* * * *
Dusty beginnings, dusty ends.

* * * *
No remorse allowed.

* * * *
Curiosity is handy
To discover new worlds,
But it kills cats.

* * * *
Hunger and thirst
Are not life-threatening.
Oxygen deprivation will kill you.

* * * *
Born to witness.

* * * *
Maestros all.

* * * *
Drift nonchalant
And you will see all
For the one it is.

* * * *
What better way to spend a day.

* * * *
From chaos
To pretended order
To chaos again.

* * * *
Patterns have a way of melting away
Into the primal, seedless nature
From which they formed.

* * * *
It’s a god thing.

* * * *
Justice for all,
For the revenge it is.

* * * *
Godness gave us hallucinogens
To help us discern its presence.

* * * *
Time is much like smoke,
It seems so real, but quickly wafts
Into the selective formlessness of memory.

* * * *
What is history but selective, vague memories.

* * * *
Given an infinite set of possibilities,
What is it exactly that we are creating?

* * * *
How quickly the fear in one’s own eye
Can be the cause of an ocean of sorrow.

* * * *
Attachment to the senses, to their birth or death,
Is the source of all this imagined separation.

* * * *
A vast game of making up everything physics will allow.

* * * *
So much time it took to knead this moment in consciousness.
How quickly adept we are at destroying the diversity
Caught in the headlights of our making.

* * * *
When you were an infant, a product of seed union,
The senses were totally functioning without interference,
Without the burden of thought, without the sense of persona.
What will it take to return to that sense of innocence.

* * * *
Fall into the silence without bubbling back up.

* * * *
A top-heavy roof collapses upon its foundation.

* * * *
Across the vastness
Beyond what any eye will ever see,
You are.

* * * *
Life may be less valued
If you manage not to be overly attached
To the play of consciousness.

* * * *
When you see what education has deprived you,
You do what you need to do to get it back.

* * * *
Who fools who calling human beings civilized.
Living in cities has not necessarily
Made us less barbaric.

* * * *
The universe is like a blossoming flower.
You are the flowering and the flowering is you.

* * * *
The eternal silence
Is your most constant
Acquaintance, friend, lover.

* * * *
The hurts others hurl in words
Have no real power
But what you give them.
Your reactions are their might.

* * * *
It is the play of light that creates the vast diversity.
Find that from which all light pours forth
Within you own eye.

* * * *
Try not to expect others to value what you do.

* * * *
The slate is slateness whether full or empty.

* * * *
To think you are,
To think you are not,
No real difference.
The awareness
Is still there
No matter
What you do

* * * *
To blame suffering
On one thought or another
Misses the real creator of the problem,
The identification of the awareness of consciousness
With the thought itself.

* * * *
There comes a day
When even all you tokens of wisdom
Are given to the fire.

* * * *
The mind’s incessant craving for purpose,
For pleasure, for any moment of hedonistic desire,
Can be the source of an infinity of unresolvable problems.

* * * *
You are that from which all concept is born.

* * * *
There you go again
Trying so hard to become
That which you have ever been.

* * * *
Everything you declare,
Spiritual or so-called non-spiritual,
Is continued sustenance of the ego-center
And its dance with all the vanities.

* * * *
Let the ignorant ridicule you.
It is only their loss
To have only seen the fool.

* * * *
What better place to hide than smack-dab
In the mythological center itself.

* * * *
Preach to the choir,
And they’ll either toss you out,
Kill you, or, worse yet, just ignore you.

* * * *
Too scary for words.

* * * *
Nothing you need to witness this day.

* * * *
What is/are the god(s) of your time?

* * * *
All pedestals crumble, eventually.

* * * *
All manifestation operates
In cycles of creation and destruction
At every level imaginable.

* * * *
Does time unfold through you
Or you through it?

* * * *
Our inclination to fashion time,
And with it the muddle of dualistic notion,
Has left us bereft of the virtue of our garden origin.

* * * *
Once you have discerned the biggest picture,
The many parts commingle as they will
More and more effortlessly, still.

* * * *
If you believe some conceptual god
Cares whether or not humanity survives,
It might do you well to examine more closely
Your relationship to the relationship.

* * * *
Passion fogs clear thinking.

* * * *
As you peruse this brief aphorism, imagine all the relationships
Consciousness is playing out across this garden sphere.
Then ponder all the dreams that have already been,
And how many more there are yet to come.
And know it is but a momentary sliver
Of the dreaming of eternity’s infinite nature.

* * * *
A circus is a circus no matter
The tent’s shape, size or color.

* * * *
Be as carefree as your courage will allow.

* * * *
Consciousness as manifested by the human species
Is a cancerous struggle with the garden of its origin.

* * * *
Who can ever master that which
Has neither beginning nor end?

* * * *
Real freedom is priceless.
Freedom from fear, freedom from want,
Freedom from the myriad engagements born of time.
It is the divinity of complete, utter aloneness,
Oneness with all, pure and simple.

* * * *
All is clay despite comparison.

* * * *
How dreadfully wearing it can be to daily witness
The seemingly endless suffering both within and without.
So much of it is so unnecessary, so pointless,
Yet this is the reality of consciousness
And its ceaseless desire for more.
It is the burden of time and separation.
How arduous it is to discern beyond the veil,
To perceive clearly, with absolute, fearless surety,
That all existence is really nothing more
Than a relatively brief dream.

* * * *
As dictated by the sun.

* * * *
Abide or die.

* * * *
The quest for quality is the greatest pursuit.

* * * *
It is challenging to be centered in Self
When the physical body is in great pain.
When the sourness of the sensory creation
Weaves itself into so many thoughts.
Only the greatest detachment
Can reassert the point of reckoning
Which you truly are, and have ever been.

* * * *
How grueling the separation from the mother’s womb.
And so few ever discerning they never left the home.

* * * *
Your universe is your own creation,
Your own truth, your own light, your own way,
And eventually, your own destruction.

* * * *
There is really no viable solution
To the dilemma fabricated by humanity.
Unless enough of us discern that it is the colluded
Sense of identification that is the source of all divisiveness,
The garden, in order to survive, will be forced to end,
Or at least severely diminish, our presence.

* * * *
Life is a privilege, not a right.

* * * *
Civilized implies civility,
And how many of us truly are?
Our actions belie so many of our words.

* * * *
How easily your emotions, thoughts and actions
Are manipulated in so many subtle and not so subtle ways.
Are you any more than a puppet talking the talk and walking the walk
Dictated by the many puppeteers surrounding you?

* * * *
That we operate believing war brings peace
Is Orwellian doublespeak over and over again.

* * * *
How is it a very great number of atoms
Have come together to create this vast universe?
Impossible question, impossible answer,
But here we are, nonetheless.

* * * *
Given the inanity of possible outcomes,
You were inevitable.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved

Chapter 230 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CCXXX

Speculation about truth is meaningless.
Despite countless assertions to the contrary,
No one will never really know anything.

* * * *
The only thing
You can ever really know
Is that you really know
Absolutely nothing.

* * * *
So, relax, do with your time
Whatever the moment reckons.
Sit quietly, walk calmly, sprint boldly.
Dance with irreverent abandon.
Speak clearly, confidently.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Be That which you truly are,
Have always been, and will ever be.

* * * *
No matter how good or bad it seems,
It will never be more than a brief dream.

* * * *
The powerful forces of nature:
Earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, lightning,
Do not need to vainly boast, nor maintain idolizing histories
Of their influence upon the course of this planet.

* * * *
How much psychological pain
Is merely oxygen deprivation
Due to inattentive breathing?

* * * *
Humanity is far too deluded
To ever fathom its potential.

* * * *
Timeless moments are seldom recalled.

* * * *
Those unable to discriminate acutely
Often expect messengers of any given vision,
To maintain some sort of moral bearing for the milling crowd.
Few, if any, however, will linger on a pedestal for long.
And why should they even make the attempt?
What ideal has really ever been more
Than wishful, inflated notion?

* * * *
Martyrdom is very convenient.
Far worse for a message
To die on the vine.

* * * *
Memo to Self.
Re: The Return of Jesus.
Two thousand years plus . . . and counting.

* * * *
What a wearing, meaningless hoax
The gullible incessantly play
Upon themselves
And the many others
To whom they vainly cater.

* * * *
The veil of ignorance
May be heavier and thicker
For some than it is for others,
But it is a veil, nonetheless.

* * * *
Any given seed materializes
From the oneness into a harsh garden
That molds it into a destiny it might well not ask for
If it had been given a choice to begin with.

* * * *
Only when you are exhausted by the suffering
Will you detach from the passion that creates it.

* * * *
There is no original sin.
There is only the separation of birth,
A relatively brief, narcissistic play of consciousness,
And finally, in one ending or another,
The reunion of death.

* * * *
Do not be bound by your mind.

* * * *
In the totality of absoluteness,
Every thing is relative.

* * * *
More paradox to bemuse the already confused.

* * * *
The You to which this is written
In this wandering menagerie
Is not the you that you idly dream,
But the You that You really eternally are.

* * * *
People generally project their world upon the world.
Where lovers and friends see only affection and good will,
A cheater assumes all, given the opportunity, would hoodwink him.
Likewise for liars, thieves, murderers and other scoundrels.
And the sage, what does the mystical eye see?
What else, but himself in all?

* * * *
Consciousness is not inviolate.
It is the basis of a dreamy relativity of continuity,
But has the tenacity of crashing waves.
The maps of history are redrawn
As suits those who survive,
And those who rule.

* * * *
The charades of those who play
The many games of power, fame and fortune
Leave the realists unmoved.

* * * *
At what point as a child did you start pretending
Along with everyone else that you were a name.

* * * *
Any given circus will draw its crowd.
How simple it is to mislead the multitudes
With a loaf of bread laced with a few drops blood.

* * * *
The road to heaven is littered
With every shade of despair.

* * * *
Does the heritage of your ancestors
Free you in the highest sense,
Or merely burden you
With a vanity
No different than any other?

* * * *
Why settle for the will of any herd?
What is the point of a mindless existence?

* * * *
You never asked to be born, yet here you are
Again and again encased in every pattern imaginable,
Ever witnessing the myriad dramas of ignorance and delusion,
Ever compelling those whose time it is to awaken
To surrender to divine awareness.
Your eternally mysterious, illusory unfolding
Is, indeed, inevitably, absolutely, unfathomably immaculate.

* * * *
Can humanity afford
To contrive so irresponsibly.
Is avarice so insatiably, foolishly blind.

* * * *
As was quipped by a revolutionary
Only a few cycles of sun ago:
“We must hang together,
Or we shall surely hang separately.”
No doubt as true on a macro scale
As it was for the micro version.

* * * *
To witness without wanting, to be without fear,
That is the challenge of one’s daily existence.

* * * *
Imagination seduces in so many ways.

* * * *
Chart the course that will take you home.

* * * *
Before the duality initiated by sensory separation,
What else could you have possibly been
But the source of all things,

* * * *
How much day-to-day thought is bent
Upon the other in one form or another.

* * * *
It is the mother of all things,
Oneness, pure and simple.

* * * *
No matter how aware anyone may be of the universal nature,
Each must still deal with the day-to-day of the personal mind.

* * * *
All consciousness is just the ego play of godness.

* * * *
Not quite nihilism
In the most extreme sense
But definitely skimming the periphery.

* * * *
It is rigidity that sabotages
Even the best of intentions.

* * * *
No living thing can long survive
If it disregards the balance
Within its given niche.

* * * *
The temptress of your desire
Will assume whatever seduction
Will entice you away from your Self.

* * * *
Be a student of consciousness
And you will discern all is one.

* * * *
How often we allow leaders to choose themselves.

* * * *
That consciousness
Presumes itself important,
Or even vital, to the grand scheme
Is the crashing roar of narcissistic waves,
A collusion of the most ludicrous magnitude,
A hoax born of its own delusional inertia,
The joke of everything it has imagined,
The irony of ironies rippling nowhere.

* * * *
Consciousness is witness to the lightshow,
And the lightshow is the creator of consciousness.
The symbiotic link between the mystery and its creation
Is the same as between any initiator and the resulting handiwork.
The challenge is to realize there is no duality in the process.
That creator and created, observer and observed,
Despite all assertions to the contrary
Are ever one in the same.

* * * *
Despite the innumerable speculations,
There is only one truth, one way.
Bestow upon it whatever sound you will,
That which is -- has ever, is ever, and will ever be
The same source, the same mystery, the same divine oneness.
There is no getting around the bare simplicity of reality but through obfuscation.

* * * *
How many permutations there are in any given beginning,
Yet always the course narrows to an obvious conclusion.

* * * *
It is the sensory body
That creates time and space.
Duality would not even be possible
Without the field it each moment fabricates.

* * * *
That someone enjoys another’s pain
Illustrates how much they have suffered
To have lost all compassion and empathy,
Assuming, of course, that they ever even had it.
After all, not all hairless two-leggeds
Are true human beings.

* * * *
Your imagination projects
Every possible future
For this illusionary garden world.
Which will come to pass,
Only history knows.

* * * *
You drift off into pure, undifferentiated awareness,
Disappearing until you again fabricate your vanity.
It is the daydream of Self unconsciously manifest.

* * * *
Religious Paradox: Trust in an idolatrous god
That you will someday die in one fashion or another,
And are likely to be tortured countless times along the way.
What is there to venerate but your ultimate nature,
The beingness that is your only true friend
From the beginning to the end.

* * * *
Be less concerned about the story
Than the main points it is making.

* * * *
Image has become all-important
In this two-legged, hairless monkey theater.
So many living their world for what others think of them.
Where are the sovereign few?

* * * *
Competition is the nature
Of all creatures great and small.
What ridiculous vanity to even ponder
That this theater could ever be any different:
Any less confused, any less painful, any less anything.
As long as the oceans ebb and flow, why would crashing waves
Ever stop pounding every shore resisting their might.

* * * *
Human beings could probably co-exist peacefully
If we behaved moderately, lived simply, and shared.
Alas, true communism is the reality of some other world.

* * * *
It is the nature of imagination to imagine itself real.

* * * *
Efficiency can be quite a burden.

* * * *
Awareness is as good as any drug.

* * * *
No need to confess everything.

* * * *
There are really no opposites.

* * * *
Morph into that which is godness,
Real and unreal, true and untrue.

* * * *
Another testament.
Paradox revealed.

* * * *
Pity the wretched souls whose lives
Are ever subject to the public domain;
Their sovereignty dissipated by the many
Fashioning their misaligned personas
Into the putty of political character.

* * * *
As false as anything else.
Absurd through and through.

* * * *
Do not allow the words to fool you.
Tread lightly amidst their many imaginings.

* * * *
In the midst of reverence,
Leave some room for irreverence.
It is that as well.

* * * *
Once upon a time, you were born,
Or so you have many times been told,
A well-constructed lie if ever there was one.

* * * *
The fantasy that humanity
Is manifestly important to the universe
Is a day one delusion.

* * * *
The niche in which life abides is relatively slim.
How foolish humanity is to gratuitously toy with it.
Cease and desist, or suffer dire consequences.

* * * *
Never assume that someone
With an assortment of letters and titles
Is truly intelligent, much less wise.

* * * *
In the magic of the manifest inner vision,
You are the infinity of all that is,
And all that is not.

* * * *
Why follow anyone who believes
Their delusion more real your own.

* * * *
All manifest forms
Must eventually dissolve
Into the dusty source of all origins.

* * * *
Entropy, the anarchy of manifestation,
Will always reign in statistical excess.

* * * *
Practice detachment and moderation,
Lest the absurdity drive you mad.

* * * *
Because consciousness values itself so highly
Does not necessarily make it truly valuable.

* * * *
Who recognizes you
But through your recognition
Of the mirror image you have created.

* * * *
This planet is rather like
A very small pebble
In a very large, very still lake.

* * * *
If you cannot leave it an improved dream,
At least do not interfere too harshly
With that, perhaps, futile aim.

* * * *
Time, as reflected in mind, is the creator and destroyer.
You are the eternal nowness, the stillness timelessly witnessing,
The sensory nexus through which all appearances dance.

* * * *
Delusion comes in every shape and size.

* * * *
May you discern and dwell
Within the abiding grace of the infinity
Of the divine presence within.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved

Chapter 231 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CCXXXI

If duality is real, where’s the seam?

* * * *
Each of us finds so many reasons and ways to suffer.

* * * *
Pity the future we have all aided in creating.

* * * *
Another inane catechism assaulting the mind.

* * * *
A non sequitur work if ever there was one.
And because so few will ever read more than a few lines,
It really doesn’t have to be a coherent manifesto.

* * * *
It’s the nature of the beast.

* * * *
Suffer in bliss.

* * * *
Pretty easy to be one with the sun,
Until it burns you.

* * * *
Accidents force changes.
Little ones, small changes.
Big ones, great changes.
Birth was an accident.
As will be death.

* * * *
Delusion is a product of fear.
The greater the fear, the greater the anxiety,
The more twisted the delusion.

* * * *
Love what you truly are,
And you will love it all.

* * * *
Any given system
Is only as functional
As its users are inclined.

* * * *
You do what you do
To the level that grants satisfaction.
Yet from quality to inferiority,
All is complete.

* * * *
Conclusions simmer into rigidity,
And water that does not course freely
Stagnates into poverty and waste.

* * * *
So miniscule, so infinite
As to become meaningless.

* * * *
No one else is responsible
For your happiness or sorrow.
It is up to you to ponder thoroughly.
Anything less is merely smoke and mirrors.

* * * *
The Other Side . . . the other side of what?
The other side of that wall in your mind.

* * * *
On the whole,
How much more hellish
Could this calamity possibly be?

* * * *
To usurp
All that is good
For maligned reason
Is the way of the believer.

* * * *
Who is not harbor for one delusion or another?

* * * *
It is really much less about differences
Than it is similarities.

* * * *
To live in conclusions is to be
Voluntarily walled off from reality.

* * * *
Surrender to utter vulnerability,
Completely open to the momentariness
Of the infinite stillness of eternity.

* * * *
The mind that is destined for wisdom and beyond
Is open to the study of anything and everything.

* * * *
What is it any recognize
But concept after concept fed to them
By the environmental context in which they abide?
Are any anything but disjointed perceptions
The movement of mind has encased
And habitually projects.

* * * *
It is not about opinions and assertions.
It is about nowness unfolding
In its ungraspable way.

* * * *
All you own are figments of your imagination.
A dream to which you must eventually die.
Do it ahead of time if you are so-fated,
Or claw furiously as you are drug
Into its inevitable conclusion.

* * * *
Every step you make,
Every direction you take,
Creates your future.

* * * *
So it goes.

* * * *
Memory can never be more
Than a keeper of concepts.

* * * *
Born again.
Unborn again.
Different concepts;
Same quality of mind.

* * * *
Once you understand
The nature of concept,
You see that is all it is.

* * * *
Completeness is an every moment matter.

* * * *
Each must alone gauge
His impact on the dream’s future.
No other can ever dictate another’s dream.

* * * *
Eat, drink and breathe; consume the universe,
And then piss, shit, spit and sweat back into it.

* * * *
Chew well, Great Destroyer of Worlds, chew well.

* * * *
There are prophets, sages and mystics,
But there will never be a messiah.
Nothing to save, dear boy,
Nothing to save.

* * * *
All this suffering for nothing.
Imagine that, if you will.

* * * *
Feel the poison of desire and fear.

* * * *
The Force, Luke, The Force.

* * * *
Just throwing it out there.
No idea what might happen.
Anything would be a astonishing.

* * * *
Probably far too late for remedies, anywho.
Daft to even ponder a paradigm shift possible.
A foolhardy product of idealist notion gone amok.

* * * *
Any given vocation can be pretty odd
To the many who lack clear vision.

* * * *
Boxes are handy if you’re into boxable things.

* * * *
Practice, practice, practice.
But who’s the who who’s practicing?

* * * *
The sense of freedom is something of a relative condition.
One person’s view might well be another’s chamber of horror.
Dissatisfaction and discernment are what will determine
That which breaks beyond the boundaries of time.

* * * *
How can you forget what you didn’t know in the first place?

* * * *
That which many
Are only able to discern
Upon one mountaintop or another
Permeates every particle along the journey.

* * * *
Buddhahood is when you become the space,
No longer concerned with material forms.

* * * *
Are the dreams of kings
Really that much different
Than those of a beggar?

* * * *
Imagination concocts an existence
That can never be proven
Without the a priori of memory.

* * * *
Within every pleasure is the seed of pain.
No coin has one side without the other.
Only in the contentment of beingness
Does the play of duality regroup
Into the serenity of oneness.

* * * *
The idealist suffers so for wishful thinking.
Love, care and hope are four-letter words.

* * * *
Minorities must often succumb,
At least outwardly,
To the delusions of the majority.

* * * *
The brewings of consciousness are a chemistry
Whose origin and fate are rarely deeply discerned.

* * * *
Release into the effortless reality of now’s unfolding.

* * * *
Goals come and go,
But the process is always
Here and now.

* * * *
Dwell where birth nor death,
Nor the pride between
Can ever enter.

* * * *
How awash we are in such a menagerie of meaninglessness.

* * * *
God must be very, very weary of human vanity.

* * * *
Detachment lends itself well to a full breath.

* * * *
What are you not?
Imagination is the vehicle of all creation.
Death is its destruction.

* * * *
Until the next seed bears fruit.

* * * *
There is nothing worse than a moral hypocrite.
Their judgments only magnify the vanity
Of their delusional existence.

* * * *
The world as created by consciousness
Offers a delicacy for craving.
How long
Before you are hungry no more?

* * * *
The patterning is birthed of that
Which is prior to all patterns
And the illusory divisions
They inevitably create.

* * * *
A silly, futile hobby no doubt destined
For one anonymous landfill or another.

* * * *
Such is life in the slow lane.

* * * *
Your fate awaits your arrival.

* * * *
Pity the body that
Must somehow contain the soul
Which so badly yearns to explode into infinity.

* * * *
Your brother’s best interest may be yours as well.

* * * *
The problem tomorrow
Is likely one set in motion
One today or another.

* * * *
No prison can hold a free soul.

* * * *
How easily the insight gleaned today
Will be forgotten tomorrow.

* * * *
“Better you than me,
Better yours than mine.
Me, me, me, it’s all about me.”
The common subconscious chant
Of just about every human every born.

* * * *
What merry adventures is now unfolding now?

* * * *
Live as if there were no tomorrow,
For truly there is not and never was.
Yet try to do so without bringing about
Too much havoc when it does arrive.

* * * *
It’s coming.
With statistical certainty,
It’s coming.

* * * *
Religion,
The higher form of vanity.

* * * *
How can anyone make sense of something
That is utterly, pathetically nonsensical.

* * * *
You may destroy a man’s will,
But in destroying him, what have you gained?
Only the furthered torment of your own.
Who conceives hell but you?

* * * *
On that which you can depend,
I am, I am until the journey’s end.

* * * *
You are the eternal dust
Lusting of itself again and again.

* * * *
Christ consciousness did not die on the cross,
And Buddha is not locked inside a statue.

* * * *
Wouldn’t it be so very pleasant, so very peaceful
If we could all get along for just a little while?
If we could just put aside all our bullshit
For just a couple teensy-weensy
Portions of a second?

* * * *
When the last role
Is yours, and yours alone,
Is when the long journey is done,
And your remaining time is ever home.

* * * *
For all the mystics, seers, prophets and saints yet to come.

* * * *
Do not be swayed, do not covet
The flauntings of power, fame and fortune.
They have no say over those who were born to see.

* * * *
It’s pretty hard not to get tuckered out once and awhile.
Some days are smoother and more pleasant than others, of course,
But (harrumph) only from . . . a detached view . . . that is . . .
What I mean to say is . . . life is . . . damned difficult,
For every living creature across the board,
If you know what I mean . . .

* * * *
Is what humanity doing to this garden planet
Any different than any given cancer to its host?

* * * *
It’s looking pretty darned bleak, folks.
And I’m betting all in against us making it.
I’m betting we have not got the necessary wit
To paradigm shift our conscious behavior together
Enough to bring about a cooperative dance.
That we have not got what is critical
To modify the collective will
Into a manifest theater of harmony
Founded on wisdom rather than self interest.

* * * *
An unlikely revolution,
If ever there was one.

* * * *
As if you could every forget
That it’s all about you.

* * * *
Irony rules, dude.

* * * *
Debates about whether or not there is a god
Are about as absurdly insignificant as it gets.
Of course there is . . . of course there is not.

* * * *
Mad men gather no moss,
And don’t get grass stains, neither.

* * * *
Another gift from left field.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved

Chapter 232 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CCXXXII

Mother Earth is just another marble,
Another spinning particle of dust
In the vastness of your imagination.

* * * *
Intuition is the voice of godness within.
You are That to which all mystics
Across the field have pointed.
It is a club with only one member.
A club to which you nominate your Self.

* * * *
Read all about it.

* * * *
The narrative of the human drama is more than a little absurd.
What outcome the two-leggeds are mindlessly pursuing
Is surely not one bent on long-term survival.
Even general well-being seems
To be a non-issue.

* * * *
Ironic that we will likely do ourselves in,
That cockroaches and rats
Will still be here
Long after our dust has settled.
Very Darwinian in a convoluted sort of way.

* * * *
What so-called high society
Often really teaches the mindless little folk
Is a for-all-practical-purposes-never-ending number of ways
To feel embarrassed about nothing at all important.

* * * *
Given the way this aphoristic menagerie
Has been written, transcribed, and (maybe) edited
They may be sort of connected . . . or not.
You’ll just never really know.

* * * *
A very wander-madly-about-
Sort-of-Billy-Pilgrim-lost-in-time process,
If y’all knowz what I meanz.

* * * *
Fascinating.

* * * *
Too bright for words.

* * * *
It wasn’t meant to be real, you know.

* * * *
How painful the linear mode.

* * * *
Any given situation is relative.
The bad one day may not be the next.
What is good this day may not be tomorrow.
Beautiful may well become ugly, and ugly, beautiful.
Right may become wrong, and wrong, right.
Anything can be turned on its head
By the Ministry of Time.

* * * *
Nationalism is synergistic vanity.

* * * *
We are all evolving equally at whatever rate time allows.
No use getting worked up over what cannot be changed.

* * * *
It is no wonder so many are so angry.
No one with any sense of sovereignty
Will easily tolerate a harshly reigned bit.

* * * *
We each simmer into our own
Imagined concoction of madness.

* * * *
Discern the unmitigated equality
That weaves through all things.

* * * *
Another’s vanity will never become
As narcissistically enticing as your own.

* * * *
The quest for god
Easily becomes a prison
Inspired by its meager projection.

* * * *
Tried so hard to be reverent,
But couldn’t stop laughing.
Really sorry, well, sort of . . .
Especially about getting caught.

* * * *
We live, we die for so many imaginary glories.
But death discerns no pride greater than another,
And wipes away all forms with nary a trace of regret.

* * * *
All this is really just gibberish.
Trust me, it is practically useless.
You are no doubt better off not knowing
You’ve been given a life sentence
With a cellmate called Mind.
Of course, the a.k.a.
Might be Bubba.

* * * *
Memo to Self Re: Waking Up.
Keep writing, keep talking.
Someone whose time it is will hear,
Whether it be this piece of silliness or another.
And they, too, will someday blossom into what all truly are.

* * * *
Contentment is woven
With quality in every strand.

* * * *
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Just say “No thanks” and walk on.

* * * *
Does it always have to make sense?
Why? How?

* * * *
What a useless occupation words such as these are.
As useless as the space at the center of the wheel.

* * * *
The joyful madman
Is the one remembers to forget.
If he is crying, he has forgotten to remember.

* * * *
It’s the last few minutes in the fourth quarter.
The clock is counting the game down.
A half-hearted field goal won’t do it.
A total team effort, a touchdown, is required.
Can we muster whatever it will take to go for the goal?
Or will we squabble and struggle until the board lights up in zeros?

* * * *
Rough times ahead, Harry.

* * * *
Flowers are merely weeds more favored.

* * * *
It takes a special stomach to be a politician.

* * * *
Ramblings of nothing.

* * * *
Through existence,
Meaninglessness
Finds every purpose.

* * * *
Pursue Jesus, Buddha or any other,
But realize the cross and bodhi tree
Are both free of their imaginary kings.

* * * *
It could be anything, anywhere, anytime.

* * * *
Another mysteriously magical day a-whooshing by.
Welcome to Foreverland.

* * * *
Just because you are conscious and mortally immortal
Doesn’t mean you can behave irresponsibly
And get away with it forever.

* * * *
Just because it is imagined
Does not make it real.

* * * *
A book for all seasons,
All rhymes, all reasons.

* * * *
How can That which was never born ever die?

* * * *
You are That which is greater
Than any god envisioned by mind.

* * * *
A koan if ever there was one.

* * * *
Yes, a couple notebooks
Were misplaced along the way,
And many thoughts were never set down.
Perhaps several hundred pages
Lost to the play of time.
Oh well.

* * * *
When you can do the laundry
With as much contentment
As that which you most cherish,
You will be in the province called grace.

* * * *
There is only one conclusion,
And it is never-ending.

* * * *
The only thing to become
Is to be what your really are,
Not what you think it to be.

* * * *
Dumpsters, landfills and compost piles
Make for great unmarked gravesites.

* * * *
Paying attention
To one’s hair or nails,
Or a football game or soap opera,
Is not quite the same as
Paying attention
To one’s Soul.

* * * *
‘Tis to be remembered
And forgotten
Ever again and again.

* * * *
Death is like that.

* * * *
Truth is a state of reality,
Not a state of mind.

* * * *
The menagerie of imagination
Is without conclusion.

* * * *
The only time is now.
What past should be allowed
To haunt its brief passing.

* * * *
How arbitrary any law.

* * * *
And despite all vain assertions to the contrary,
This universal epic is, without doubt,
Relative from tip to toe.

* * * *
Another dusty mirage.

* * * *
A universe of distractions will entice you
As long as you succumb to the senses.

* * * *
It’s too late, oh, it’s too late,
Though we really did try to make it.

* * * *
Whether you like it or not,
Reality is always the same.
Only the mind changes.

* * * *
If some god created all that is
Then how can he/she/it
Only be good?

* * * *
The vanity game will play over and over
For whatever time humanity is allocated
In this imaginary dreaming of godness.

* * * *
All are eventually forgotten,
Some sooner than others.
No glory can withstand
The gravity of reality.

* * * *
Much easier to kill something
Greater or smaller
Than it is something equal.

* * * *
Die well.

* * * *
The only difference
Between black and white
Is the gray of words.

If all this seems a bit arrogant,
Sorry, oh well, deal with it.

* * * *
Know that godness comes in all forms.

* * * *
Consciousness is the beast.
Again and again it is snared by realization,
But ever again it thinks itself free
To wander the wildlands
Of imagination’s
Unrelenting delusion.

* * * *
Any group that has no vision for its continuity
Sets in motion an inevitable decline,
Perhaps even annihilation.

* * * *
Between the lines of any given history
Are many lingering uncertainties,
About what really happened.

* * * *
His story, her story, its story . . .
All just stories, nevertheless.

* * * *
Yadda-yap.

* * * *
Take pause,
The many judgments
You cast upon so many others
May more likely be applied to yourself.

* * * *
Exploring through thought
What thought is, and is not.

* * * *
Uninhibited freedom is the natural state.
It is the constraints of space-time
That cloak oneness with the fear of death
And the countless other accidents of manifest origin.

* * * *
Pain often casts one into an unsought fate.

* * * *
Alone, not lonely.

* * * *
To where are we so madly rushing?

* * * *
You are the purpose and meaning, you ninny.
Right in front of your blinking nose,
And you can’t even see it.

* * * *
It is not what you think.
It is what it is,
And there is nothing
You can ever do to change it.

* * * *
The irony is that you must,
In the eyes of the day-to-day world,
Go mad to regain your sanity.

* * * *
Myriad universes are born of subjective perception.
That I Am, which is absolutely impersonal,
Is inevitably taken personally
By those unable
To discern beyond the veil.

* * * *
All seams are imagined.

* * * *
For there to be true peace,
All craving and fear must cease.

* * * *
A mask by any other name
Would be the same.

* * * *
We are all sharing this vast dreaming.
Do what you can, give back what you will.
Acquiring more than is needed or can be used,
And contributing back nothing but me, myself and I
Is a one-way, dead-end road to desolation.

* * * *
He came, he saw, he died.
A lone ranger if ever there was one.
Chameleon witness, truth-seeker, philosopher,
Visionary, receiver, mystic, seer, prophet,
Shape-changer, madman, jester,
A stranger of many hats.
Come and gone
Before the end of time.

* * * *
Who but one impaled
By the windmill of consciousness
Would have been given the paradoxical wit
To communicate the divine irony of manifest creation.
An errant scribe whose inclusive inner vision
Discerns all arrayed, and beyond.

* * * *
Somewhat skilled at wordplay,
But certainly not as linguistically adept
As many less inclined to contemplate in this fashion.
So please forgive the many errors in grammar, spelling, et cetera,
And immerse your dreaming in the grist of intention.

* * * *
Best wishes.
Ciao for now.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved

Chapter 233 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CCXXXIII

The drop is in the ocean,
And the ocean, in the drop.
All division is imagined.

* * * *
You are in reality merely the in and out of a momentary breath
Now you are this breath . . . and now you are this breath . . .
Now you are this breath . . . now you are this breath . . .
And when the last one someday slowly wheezes out,
You will again dissolve into the great formlessness
You have ever been, ever are, and ever will be.

* * * *
And all the while
The source containing all
Remains steadfast and absolute,
Untouched, unconcerned about any or all.

* * * *
Swallow your pride
For it hath no reality
In the ultimate nature.

* * * *
Old soul, young soul
All the same Soul
Just the same.

* * * *
These outrageous thoughts
Are for those who have
Outrageous potential.

* * * *
Given a childhood, a child will putter and play,
Oblivious to the thoughts surrounding him.
Childhood’s end is when she becomes
Concerned about what others think.
Few ever find again the wonder
Of a small mound of sand.

* * * *
Belief is more often than not a synonym for delusion.

* * * *
Jester redux.

* * * *
There is always balance in the play of forms.
But balance changes in every moment,
And the changing may or may not
Be favorable to the survival
Of any given life form.

* * * *
Peace begins with peace.
At some point the revenge must cease
If there is to be an end to any given cycle of violence.

* * * *
How will you ever attain heaven
If you cannot discern it now?

* * * *
Wings singe when they touch the sun.
Fly close enough to discern what is real,
But not so near as to fall back to earth
Twisted by the fog of clouded vision.

* * * *
The salve for the pain of existence
Is to surrender to that which all truly is,
To disappear into the harmony of absoluteness,
Unutterably complete, irrevocably pure, undeniably real.

* * * *
Where is the individual drop
In the vastness of an ocean?

* * * *
Imagine yourself whatever you will,
At the end of any given day,
It was only a notion.

* * * *
Imagination brews every possible distraction,
A vast hydra whose willful nature can only be stilled
By a mind able to discern beyond the veil of its own making.

* * * *
Imagine that you are already dead, long forgotten,
And bask in the still aloneness of your true nature.

* * * *
No matter which moment you choose,
They all boil down to the same now.

* * * *
Is it true, or merely wishful thinking?

* * * *
Overriding doubt is a prerequisite.

* * * *
When you are ready to be free,
You will find me in one form or another.

* * * *
Life n. a lucid dream.

* * * *
Waiting for nothing.

* * * *
It is very challenging to be mindful every moment.
Consciousness has an unfailing tendency
To seek out the highest vanity.

* * * *
We’re all working our way towards the grave
In every conceivable manner possible.

* * * *
To settle for less than truth is to miss out
On the fullest potential existence offers.

* * * *
How randomly, arbitrarily, serendipitous any given fate.

* * * *
The free mind is an empire,
A fiefdom of consciousness
Witnessed by original nature.

* * * *
Everything falls into statistical relativity,
The universal theorem
Which science so vainly seeks.

* * * *
How predatory the eyes of a beautiful woman can be.

* * * *
When you do finally wake up,
You will wonder that it took so long.

* * * *
It is all the silence of now
Crowded with the seemingly
Endless chatter of imagination.

* * * *
The only point to all these thoughts,
The aspiration that you may or may not share,
Is to point out with absolute certainty
That you are the whole,
Not a part.
That you are truly That
Which is called by countless names,
Yet is prior to all light and sound in the eyes and ears
Of those who discern the eternal nature
In each and every moment.

* * * *
How much greater a revelation do you need
To ignite the timeless doubt required
To die to all the false limitations
Concocted by a world lost in delusion.

* * * *
What is there to save
When nothing can be lost.

* * * *
Each of us has a genetic lineage of fathers and mothers
Who have contributed to the weaving of this vast passing moment.
Their existence was really not all that dissimilar to your own.
Consciousness, with all its imagined variations,
Has never really been any different.

* * * *
What is the universe but a sandbox made of stardust.

* * * *
Knowledge is the bittersweet fruit of the garden,
Poisonous to many until they through doubt discern
The only antidote is beyond the conceptual veil.

* * * *
Truth is so absurdly simple, as basic as a breath.
Sidestep the countless semantic smokescreens
That distract and delude so many in every way.

* * * *
God may have created this vain drama,
But who or what created this omniscient being?
It all had to start somewhere, somehow,
But can any claim really be more
Than idle speculation?

* * * *
It’s strange, so strange, so very, very strange.

* * * *
By definition,
What is unknown
Can never be known.

* * * *
So breathe, kiddo, breathe.
That is really all any of us ever has.

* * * *
It’s all or nothing.

* * * *
The latest delusion.

* * * *
Aging is about learning to let go,
To discern how little you really know,
To realize you are separate from nothing.

* * * *
What an incredible thing this mystery truly is.
But what is truly even more incredible
Is how thoughtless we are
With the gift of it.

* * * *
More infinite than the farthest star.
As near as the most innermost you.
The temple of totality is naught else
But this now here forever now.

* * * *
Mindsets arguing mindlessly.

* * * *
You have taken everything personally,
Else why would you still be imagining you?

* * * *
Suicide is merely imagination weary of its own game.

* * * *
If you are mad, it is the world that has made it so.

* * * *
Pretty good for a bunch of neo-monkeys.

* * * *
Imagination is full of limitation.

* * * *
The universe does not owe any of us a fair shake.

* * * *
You might be one of the forms
I’d like to be if I weren’t me.

* * * *
Driven, so driven.
What the heck for?
And where the heck to?
Here now, kiddo, it’s all here now.

* * * *
Let those who insist stir in their own juices.

* * * *
All the world’s a stage,
And each and every one
Is at the center of theirs.

* * * *
What is there to justify?
If you did it, you did it.
Don’t devise excuses.
Just admit, and move on.

* * * *
You think you exist,
But can that which was never born ever cease?

* * * *
The youthful delusion of immortal entitlement
Is inevitably eroded by the harshness of time.

* * * *
Before you judge another, ask yourself, honestly,
“Have I not done or thought that before?”

* * * *
All I know is that I am,
But what that is,
I’m most certainly not sure.

* * * *
All identities are fabricated reflections of the other.

* * * *
The only true prize is within.

* * * *
So this is what a civilized world looks like.

* * * *
The emptiness is very tall,
Very wide, very deep.

* * * *
What is a mind free of worry?
Bliss.

* * * *
Another good day to die.
Live it well.

* * * *
Is god dead? Or just irretrievably jaded?
Can you imagine having to witness all the absurdity
Humanity ceaselessly comes up with over and over again?
If he does exist, he most likely wishes he was dead,
But, alas, is trapped by his own immortality.

* * * *
Consciousness is a drunk from which few recover.

* * * *
Pride’s snowballing synergy in the human theater
Is like lemmings rushing toward the edge
Of their own deluded free will.

* * * *
Whether you like your part or not,
Somebody has to star as you,
And even if it wasn’t you,
It would still by you.

* * * *
Expect nothing to continue.

* * * *
The entire universe
Is created and destroyed
In the blink of an eye.

* * * *
No worries, mate.

* * * *
What would you do
If there was no one else?
If you would never see or talk
To another human being ever again?

* * * *
Christhood is not a matter of mystical powers.
Making wine, healing the sick and raising the dead
Are merely distractions for those who only have capacity
For soap operas, carnivals and other self-indulgent spectacles.

* * * *
Martyrdom has proven to be an effective way
To get interest focused on any message,
But so many have failed to realize
What Jesus was likely saying.
The documentation is very poor,
And would probably have little chance
Of getting attention in this world’s marketplace.

* * * *
And why did he choose a group of fishermen?
Perhaps because they were the only ones
Who had the space from which to listen.

* * * *
Despite what many neo-Christians seem to believe,
It is highly unlikely Jesus’ weapon of choice
Would be either an M-16 or an AK-47.
He would no doubt choose
A Barret .50 Caliber.

* * * *
In an eye-for-an-eye world,
Everyone goes a little blind.

* * * *
It is a curiously absurd and paradoxical irony
That all this knowledge you have absorbed
Becomes ineffectual, and only impedes
Your quest for the ultimate freedom.

* * * *
You think that you’re burdened in life?
Geez lueez, you have no idea
How many cups of coffee
Have gone into this boil and bubble.
Where did the Tin Man get that oil, anyway?

* * * *
What deity, what belief system might you create
If the theater of time had never presented one?

* * * *
No one can truly rival the companionship of a seer.
But not to worry, the madness is catching to few,
And only in the most tentative, fleeting of ways.

* * * *
Any given mindset will mesmerize all born into its fold.
Few can step back far enough to see the relativity of all.

* * * *
There is no black and white
In the manifest mirage of dreamtime.
Only the immeasurable, panoramic rainbow
Of every achievable shade of gray.

* * * *
Wade into any given pain.
Shine the inner light of attention upon it.
See its true nature clearly, without distraction or desire.
Become your own physician.
Heal thy Self.

* * * *
Death is at both the beginning and end
Of the journey of mortal existence.
And, paradoxically, so is birth.

* * * *
You are truly the sovereign of your universe.
Play the game the world about you requires,
But be inwardly free from beginning to end.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved