CCLII
Does time exist, or is it all simply an indivisible, kaleidoscoping, holographic dream,
In which all are witnesses to the same ever-present, unknowable mystery?
Infinitely immense, infinitesimally small, and whatever between,
As played out in the theater of the quantum mind.
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Thought is the thunder of neurons given meaning.
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No matter how many eyes witness this ineffaceable mystery,
Even all combined can never contain its unfathomable nature.
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Light is just light.
Sound is just sound.
Forms are just forms.
The source is prior
To all attributes.
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A rubber band,
Stretched as far as it will,
Manages to return to its natural state.
Why not you?
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Hollowed be thy name.
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The sexual drive, coupled with an insatiable imagination,
Drives many to ever again pursue the highest natural high,
Bewailing vainly that its rapture cannot be a permanent state.
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Phases are you.
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If you truly love your progeny,
How can you abide the direction
This world now so blindly careens?
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The human species has evolved into the most talented manipulators
This magical greenhouse orb in its 4.5 billion years has ever manifested.
So efficient that we are quickly manipulating ourselves right out of existence.
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How fascinating we must be to all those aliens hovering out there watching us.
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As tempting as they so often are,
You need not always submit to those many impulsive urges.
Self-discipline is a most useful attribute.
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Would that you were so deluded.
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Few vested interests ever voluntarily
Relinquish power, status and treasury.
It almost always requires great intention
From outside the given sphere of influence
To compel their transformation or demise.
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The demon born of dualistic notion is you and me
As we have ignorantly chosen to abide in ill-fated, mortal craving,
For the something more that has never been.
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Idealistic notions about humankind are completely meaningless.
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Be as attuned as the circling hawk questing the mouse,
And the mouse, completely still, avoiding the hawk’s gaze.
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In whatever form you may currently reside,
Eternity has always been the same vastness,
The same causeless, indivisibly absolute oneness.
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Contemporary times are an anthropological grab bag.
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If you only take, at some point the larder will be empty,
And violent melees for scraps are never a pretty sight.
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What is personality but adaptation to genetic coding,
Irrigated and fertilized and pruned and thinned and graded,
By the ever-changing winds of time and circumstance.
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Christian babble, Muslim babble, Jewish babble, Hindu babble, Shinto babble,
Buddhist babble, Taoist babble … and every other variety of ist-ism babble.
Babble, babble, babble … nothing but ceaseless, cacophonous babble.
Few able to see or hear anything but differences in shade and tone.
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This could be your last breath, will it be a free one?
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No way out but through the blood alley of consequences; many, many consequences.
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Too dark, too dark, to see clearly now.
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As long as you have good health, you have the greatest wealth this dream has to offer.
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You cannot find what is not there to find.
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Though the young only rarely discern it, sexual union is intended, first and foremost,
As an act of procreation, as the means to the continuance and proliferation of existence,
Toward which too much imprudence is often meted out life-changing consequences.
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You are that mystery that is called by many names across the board,
Yet the mere knowledge of symbolic words and their concepts
Has little meaning outside the context of their hubris.
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The immeasurable mind is a solitary show.
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All is one; how much more of a unified theory do you need?
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If you cannot see the obvious, are you really looking?
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Take the high road, take the low road, take the no-road; what difference, really?
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In childhood, before time began, your dream passed timelessly.
After the existence comes its grand finale, it will again pass timelessly.
And between, the theater of imagination, filled with every possible concoction.
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Someone has to relish entertaining the seething, restless rabble,
Else it may haphazardly occur to them to entertain their own thoughts.
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Regarding truth, be wary of fixed views, even these.
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Always remember that anything can and will be used against you.
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The blessing and curse of existence is the reality we the living must all endure.
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A still mind is a still mind, no matter the movement about it.
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Your aloneness, despite every conceivable distraction, is ultimately inescapable.
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The bitter is an acquired taste.
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Irony and paradox are prerequisites for carefree mirth
Toward this quaint little theater’s abounding absurdities.
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Curious how the nature of the persona seems etched upon any given face and body.
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Even very intelligent people inevitably conjure a variety of very foolish things.
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It is never too late to tack your existence a new direction.
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There are worse forms of madness inner vision can take.
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No matter how gilded the cage, there is no freedom within its bars.
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Language is the means through which life forms
Attempt to communicate their imaginary universes.
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You might think people would care
About the inheritance they leave their progeny,
But, if the state of the world is any indication, it seems not.
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The mind is ever challenged by the constant juggling required to recollect its millstone.
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We are all now-ing alone, together.
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Maybe most cannot discern what is so clearly obvious to you.
Or maybe you are mistaken, as mad as any hatter.
Oh well, oh well, does it really matter?
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Death is an indelible, equal-opportunity, equally-inevitable change-agent.
All thoughts and deeds are washed into oblivion with undying detachment.
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Those who see cannot be stopped from seeing.
Though all destinies are ultimately written in the ever-shifting sands of time,
The indelible mystery of awareness will witness them
Through one eye or another.
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Why is it necessary to confess your sins, your omissions, to another?
Just forgive yourself, and let them go into the abyss where they belong.
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Like surfers waiting for the wave, revolutionaries must bide their time.
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From dust to dust, from oblivion to oblivion,
All existence, all creation, but a dream between.
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After all, it is only time.
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Middlemen are just beggars seeking more than quarters.
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Existence has always been an insecure thing.
Mortality can never be anything less.
Even those who discern the immortal upwelling
Must inevitably succumb to demise one moment or another.
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The ever-kaleidoscoping state of nowness Is an indivisible, sovereign awareness,
That requires no self-serving middlemen to ornately whittle it into one lie or another.
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Another mirage fades into oblivion.
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Alas, truth ignored and usurped yet again.
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Time and circumstance easily forgets that which it is not prepared to see.
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We are all the center stage dreamer in our individual reveries.
No matter the form taken, from beginning to end, there is truly no other.
Your entire existence is truly spent interacting with your Self.
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The only difference between you and any other is an imaginary perspective.
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Across the world the human species has always imagined itself
Far more consequential than it is, has ever been, will ever be.
Never too late for a dash, a modicum, a smidgen, of humility.
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We had best insert some meaningful wisdom
Into our self-absorbed, myopic thinking pretty gosh-darned quickly,
Else the quickly-unfolding future will pay even more dearly than it already has in store.
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Those to whom we are now ancestors
Will surely condemn our time for the garden
We have so assuredly deprived them.
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So much effort, so much busy-ness; to what end, this imaginary theater?
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Drifting, still.
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How ironic, how paradoxical, that so many
Deprive others of well-being, and even existence itself,
That they might exist whimsically free.
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Cancer is defined by one source as the disease caused by
An uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body,
A malignant growth or tumor resulting from such a division of cells,
A figurative a practice or phenomenon perceived to be evil
Or destructive and hard to contain or eradicate.
Hmmm . . .
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It is just a body, a container, a vehicle, a meat machine, a magic carpet,
Respect its needs, and it may permit many varieties of adventure.
Disregard it, mishandle it, and it will hand it back in spades.
And in the endgame, no matter how well sustained,
Things will likely get a little bumpy anyway.
Such is the nature of mortal theater.
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Make time for grace.
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Is Armageddon really any more than vanity’s big-dog pissing contest?
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Who does not really believe they are worth more than the paycheck they are getting?
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The food and drink go down, and within a few hours, a few days,
A variety of things start coming out that are not quite as appealing.
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The truth of it is more than obvious; one merely needs to connect the dots.
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The human drama is long overdue a big-picture infusion.
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What an infinitely cooperative venture this universe truly is.
How ironic how pathetically ill-suited we are to abide in it.
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Remarkable how quickly flesh can melt away into fodder for the next flowerbed.
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In a god-eat-god garden world, a day well-existed
Is a day in which as many creatures as possible survive,
Perhaps even thrive, to endure yet another round of adventure.
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The lines have been drawn and redrawn throughout history.
About time we saw the unfathomably arbitrary nature of it all.
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We have had our fun; time to grow up and face the music.
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All the knowledge in the world does not for wisdom make.
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What has not been usurped?
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The partial mind can never grasp the whole mind in which it partitions itself.
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Nothing is not matter, and does not matter, either.
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Awareness is as close to seeing and being as it gets.
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The future is getting uglier and uglier in every way every day.
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Time is the living death of consciousness.
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To discern clearly is to aimlessly wander the untrammeled pathless.
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Anything can be written and rewritten again and again.
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It’s how we roll.
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Your political clout is only as strong as your base.
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What is any conquest but home invasion on a grand scale.
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The way of war, the way of peace, each chooses in his their own mind.
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Breathe in contentment, breath out contentment.
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Rage on.
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Did it ever begin? Does it ever end?
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The way of life is the way of death.
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The mind will consume whatever notion draws its eye.
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Necessity is the best teacher, followed closely by pain.
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The dysfunctional loop is not easily overridden.
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What is a mind free of all prescriptions?
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Nothing that can be imagined is what it is and is not.
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How can just being, be any sort of goal?
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Now is the timeless dreamtime of all yesterdays and tomorrows.
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Judge, jury, executioner, all in one, one in all.
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Even wisdom is only as deep as illusion allows.
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Security, is there ever enough?
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Yet another one of those many curious things with which vanity is so absorbed.
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True science is not a political subject.
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Ain't nobody askin', ain't nobody tellin'.
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Mindless belief – tedious, senseless, stupid – is the lazy way.
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What you say, what you do, has absolutely nothing to do
With what you really are, or with what you really are not.
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What a relatively small sampling any of us has
With which to measure our ephemeral mortal existence.
For it to bring about an immeasurable inner vision is rare, indeed.
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The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved