CCLVI
Participating in this convoluted world can become a hellish journey
When it forces the contortion of imagination to unimaginable ends.
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How ironic that we believe hell
Is worse than what we already create.
We are the demons for as long as we choose
Dominance over guardianship,
Greed over cooperation,
Conflict over peace.
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We are all children of the same sun.
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What can really be done to alter humankind's insane forays in consciousness?
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Potential is meaningless unless it precipitates into kinetic.
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Countless tortured and extinct life forms, including innumerable human beings,
Would view being treated humanely as a dubious, exceedingly ironic experience.
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It is possible for intelligence and compassion to override genetic predisposition,
But such aptitude is generally not abundant in spirits in whom me-myself-and-I reigns.
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In the midst of hell, wander heaven.
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When it comes to the exploration of reality,
Seek out teachers who do not weave into their teaching
The remnants of delusion and self-interest.
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Parasites, vampires, and other demonic spirits
Find every way to sway many an incautious soul.
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Any given action has potential to create an equal and opposite reaction.
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The quest is to discern one's own voice amidst the many.
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The gold is in your spirit, not your pocketbook.
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It can be somewhat frightening, intimidating, to surrender to the vast unknown,
But releasing in moderate increments gradually builds a tolerance to the freedom.
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Who better knows hell than a repentant demon?
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If all you seek in life is hedonistic and narcissistic self-indulgence
This body of work, and others like it, will likely not be your cup of tea.
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All that humankind believes it is, is herein altered; the bar has been raised.
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Does the egg believe it is the shell?
The ocean, the crashing wave?
The kernel, the chaff?
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The word creates hell; the word unlocks heaven.
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Does your fear control you so much that you eternally condemn yourself?
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When the seed dies, when the patterning dissipates,
What will become of your self-absorbed, willful personality?
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The trick is learning what it is to look.
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Death is a melting pot.
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A pattern is a pattern, none greater, none lesser, in the grand design of all creation.
All manifest life is cast into one time-bound constraint or another,
Into the suffering all sentience must endure.
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For all practical purposes, this world is the only hell there is,
And it is born of the choices of self-absorbed consciousness.
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Whether or not you see it as choice, it is.
Looking forward, free will; looking back, fate.
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Humankind is quickly running out of space to grow up.
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When laws and regulations of a state are too inequitable,
When the weight of bureaucracies are too draining,
When the club of the military is too repressing,
When haves share too few crumbs with have-nots,
When the resources of the land are unfairly distributed,
It is all but inevitable that revolution will rock the foundation.
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There is no other; now is the only time there is.
It is the beginning, and the end, of all things.
* * * *
Those who would lead must always beware the mob's wrath.
History has many a way of making sudden twists and turns.
* * * *
How endlessly absurd that so many believe
One vaudevillian magic trick or another is the sign something is true or not.
The permutations of idolatry are deeply rooted.
* * * *
Surely this personal god, to which so many hypnotically allude,
Prefers intelligent conversation and wit, at least occasionally.
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Is there any previous time, any previous epoch, anywhere across this earth,
That is not considered quaint, old-fashioned, passé, even foolish,
By the arrogant youth of succeeding generations?
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No answer is the answer.
* * * *
Another little in-the-box drama.
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Those who are dissatisfied will ever find a reason to be.
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Do not forget how to play, how to enjoy the simple things.
And if you do forget, or for some reason were deprived of a childhood,
Then journey within to the beginning, and re-learn,
Re-acquaint your Self
With the innocence of your birthright.
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One of the many bothers about growing older
Is how much more predictably tiresome
The human drama daily becomes.
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All any can do with a vested, entitled interest that no longer suits them, is to walk away.
If enough abandon any given domain, surely it is sure to wither on its unwarranted vine.
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We all come, we all go, brief players on an ever-changing stage.
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A mysterious game of hide and seek
In which you are both seeker and sought,
Until you are but that which was sought.
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Anything and everything can be usurped for alternative purpose.
So question anything and everything as often as necessary,
And always be cautious about what is accepted as true.
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Infinitely small, infinitely large.
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What a predicament it is to be born, much less being born as a human being.
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So many ways to die; how wretched to have to choose just one.
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Delusion is much like dust.
It covers everything and requires constant housekeeping
To keep things clean and untarnished.
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Every moment is revolution to the true revolutionary.
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Accept nothing.
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Shade of subtlety are the hallmarks of irony and paradox.
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One must be very cautious, very astute,
When dealing with the potential toxicity of any given pleasure.
More discipline, not less, is required as you age,
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Mother Nature is not a drama queen.
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Prior to everything imagined, everything perceived,
There is a stillness, a fountain, from which all is created.
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Different masks of the same game.
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It is all quite meaningless, but play on.
* * * *
Every tradition, every ritual, every symbol,
Was probably originally just a quaint innovation
That gradually snowballed into its current absurdity.
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There is a tendency for truth to be usurped and distorted in every way imaginable.
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Contrary to common assumption, you do not need to be weighted down by history.
What is more necessary is the courage to live intuitively in the moment.
You do not need to always carry the fabricated baggage
Of personal identity and the arbitrary culture in which it is swathed.
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What is the state of mind when all clinging ceases?
* * * *
Knowledge is its own pleasure, its own intoxicating elixir.
When desire for it wanes, how little is left, how little is truly necessary.
The quest to accumulate transforms back into the natural state of eternal tranquility.
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Organized religions are cultural fabrications
Designed to continue humankind's boundless capacity
To corrupt and enslave the birthright of innocence
Of the those born into its fabricated arena.
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In pondering philosophical/mystical thoughts such as these,
You are exploring a change in consciousness as you now know it.
Success in this inquiry will bring about a transformation,
A quality of mind that is far more expansive.
It is akin to a drop of water
Returning to the ocean of origin.
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Space, the final frontier.
* * * *
Humanity should question what redeeming value
Its continued presence offers this garden world.
Odds are we need it far more than it needs us.
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How much of the key lies in discerning what surrender implies.
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You are the unicity, the indivisibility, before all heart and mind.
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When you face your death, when you die to fabricated identity, you will never die again.
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You are the stillness before all storms.
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When you discover what you really are,
You will see what "That I Am" truly implies.
Once you discern clearly what you really are,
Though you may at times lose sight,
You can never really forget.
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Any given mind is likely resistant to change.
The natural detachment of earth and wind and water and fire and ether,
Are not without arduous simplicity mastered.
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So many mouth empty words like love and freedom and true and eternity,
Without ever coming close to discerning the depth the concepts truly imply.
* * * *.
If you had never been born,
If you do not wake up tomorrow,
Would you, could you, ever really care?
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Is consciousness even possible without one biological sensory transmitter or another?
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Is humanity intelligent enough to survive itself?
Is a bet on which only one taker can collect.
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God has never been a concept.
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Back in the good old days of empires built upon unadulterated ferocity,
Conquest was forthright in its self-absorbed quest for power and wealth and glory.
Now it is cloaked in euphemisms of politics and religion and commerce,
Yet ever with the same vainglorious ends and means in mind.
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Arbitrary might makes arbitrary right.
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Any given genetic line is a survivor of a long trail of savagery and destruction.
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If you concern your Self too much
With the nightmare humanity is manifesting,
It may well propel you into one padded room or another.
Who with any insight into a larger vision would create this purgatory?
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Many might well argue that a bad dream is better than no dream at all.
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Humanity's notion of manifesting its destiny out into the cosmos
Would be a tragedy other worlds will hopefully not have to suffer.
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Freedom is not merely an idealistic concept.
It is a quality of sovereign beingness
That no other can touch or sway.
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Discern death not as the body's termination,
But as the dissolution of a fabricated identity.
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There are an exceedingly predictable set of rules in this quantum theater.
Not playing by them brings about exceedingly predictable consequences.
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Keep remembering until you never forget.
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Gazing at a wall or a busy street, is there really any difference?
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You are a patterning of your mother’s and father’s genetic lineages.
Intuit the pattern’s trail through the evolution of your ancestry
Until you reach the origin of all life, and prior to that still.
Discern that the nowness of any given moment
Has never ever been in any way different
Than the one you right here, right now, abide.
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The play of consciousness is written on every face, every body, every mind.
* * * *
Those who create endless division and rancor play a hellish game.
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Instead of viewing Self via your personal body-mind,
Discern the body-mind via the impersonal Self.
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Cut through all the crap, and find the pearl.
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Let the gods double-double-toil-and-trouble with all their judgments.
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Boggling how simple it all is, if you manage to lose your mind.
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Dust you ever are.
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People come, people go, vanity rules.
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All boundaries are born of imagination.
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It does not need to mean anything.
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For far too many, enough is not an option.
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To be born is to die each and every moment.
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There is no copyright to wisdom.
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Every birth a new universe; every death an end.
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Nothing doing.
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What circus calls you?
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The joy of imagination is that you don't have to go there.
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The ever-present is, well, ever-present.
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Truth is the filament in every moment's birth and death.
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Wisdom has no bounds.
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The race of nothing to nowhere.
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It all is nothing more than a dream of mind.
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Define good, define bad, if you can.
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There is nothing to do, so do it well.
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Artificial intelligence for an artificial world.
Artificial intelligence for an artificial world.
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Die to everything but the awareness you truly are.
* * * *
Once again the deadline is postponed.
* * * *
The flesh is weak, and daily weaker.
* * * *
It is a journey into that which is prior to mind, prior to heart,
Prior to all concepts, all forms, prior to even awareness itself.
A journey into that where all paths that never began never end.
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The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved