The Return to Wonder - Chapter 263


CCLXIII


Poisoned ground and air and water make for tough going across the world.
Pity the future, inundated by the devastation born of human consciousness.

* * * *
If you comprehend you are the awareness
Prior to all appearances, prior to all constructions,
You wander about with the same discernment as the fellow
Rumored to have said, "Before Abraham, I Am."

* * * *
How convenient it is for the multitude
Only capable of misinterpreting and usurping
The true meaning of those given vision.

* * * *
Reincarnation is imagination gone native.

* * * *
Until they stabilize in consciousness,
Mystics often wander a challenging trail
Because they wander down so many.

* * * *
If you take the concept out of god, the mystery it has ever been must also include you.

* * * *
History shows us the confused results of even the best intentions.

* * * *
What would life be like if you were not giving so much energy
To the ever-present reincarnation of an imagined identity?

* * * *
To be eternally saved, you must take responsibility for your own awakening.

* * * *
The natural state is an abiding aloneness.
It is consciousness that fabricates loneliness,
And its interminable capacity for suffering.

* * * *
Some might label it harsh and sharp,
Others benevolent and malleable,
It is in reality both, and neither.

* * * *
How does one explain irony and paradox to those who have not fathomed
The subtlety of mind to discern the endless permutations
In which they are brought to bear.

* * * *
Mother Nature, in all her glory,
Has innumerable ways to rub you out
If you present her the opening.

* * * *
How is it that you reached this point in time?
Curious, this mystery we so casually call fate.

* * * *
You are life, you are death, every moment.

* * * *
Irony and paradox, yet again.

* * * *
All desire for this or that is ultimately the eternal hunger for the contentment of Self.

* * * *
Doubt what you must doubt to be free.

* * * *
To which now will you choose to surrender?

* * * *
Even the wind must still itself to catch its breath.

* * * *
It takes a great deal of courage
To dissolve the many barriers set before you
By the mythos into which your mortal seed has been cast.

* * * *
If you believe "Love thy Self" means the name, the identity, the personality, guess again.

* * * *
Whether through implausible accident or divine plan,
Here we are, and this is what we have made of it.

* * * *
You are not required to participate
In this worldly theater in any particular fashion
But through your own collusive volition.

* * * *
Those who survive the calamity ahead
Will deal with it as geography and circumstance allow.
Consciousness will ever contend with the demons of its own making.
But for as long as humanity plays out its vain existence,
The foundation of all things will ever remain
The same indelible mystery.

* * * *
An immeasurable dream.
Absolute fantasy that it can be,
Or needs to be, quantified in any way.
What was Eden like before our fall from grace?

* * * *
The innumerable injustices of this world,
As indivisibly and timelessly illusory as they ever are,
Have gone well beyond any rational reckoning.

* * * *
The outcome of any successful cancer
Is the decline and annihilation of its host,
And thus, intentionally or not, itself.
A curious paradigm, indeed.

* * * *
Look beyond your ephemeral portion of time,
And discern the origin of the cosmic play within.

* * * *
Not easy being sane in an insane world.

* * * *
Jesters are ironic witnesses to the paradoxes of the court.

* * * *
Though it is an ineffably remarkable dream,
It need not be the profane nightmare we have made it.
So much to unlearn, and little or no time to recover the original offer.

* * * *
Words, whether spoken or written,
Do not readily translate into clear reality
In an unaware, unawakened mind.

* * * *
The many voices of time echo in your mind.
It is very arduous to still them enough
To discern reality for your Self.

* * * *
Always be extremely hesitant about adopting another's vanity.

* * * *
Wander beyond all desire for power or fame or fortune.

* * * *
The eternal presence of awareness you ever are
Is your comrade, your companion, your lover.
Inattention to the timelessness is a form of death;
Tasteless, barren, desolate, like trees without leaves.

* * * *
If your existence is merely about accumulating this or that, or experiencing that or this,
You have, indeed, entirely missed the real opportunity this inexplicable mystery offers.

* * * *
Grace is the timeless origin.

* * * *
You are the temple, the church, the synagogue, the mosque,
The ashram, the basilica, the tabernacle, the chapel, the house of god,
Or whatever you choose to call that which need not be named.

* * * *
What anyone else thinks of you is of no tangible importance, whatsoever.
Better to wander alone, free and absolute, than to die linked to a herd of fools.

* * * *
Better to awaken for even one moment than to live an existence anchored in delusion.

* * * *
Truth is not about Jesus,
Buddha, Lao Tzu, Mohammed,
Or any other prophet or mystic or seer.
There are no middlemen in the eternal quest
For the only reality that has ever been, or will ever be.

* * * *
What more freeing a message could there ever be,
But that you, sovereign and unassailable,
Are one with all that is and is not.

* * * *
It is your fear born of desire that imprisons you.

* * * *
How attached we human beings are to all our words,
Quibbling endlessly over concepts that simply use different sounds
To articulate what is ultimately the same timeless mystery.
There is only oneness, and in that otherlessness,
There is really nothing to fight about.

* * * *
Those content within do not wage war without.

* * * *
The atoms scientists keep splitting
Into smaller and smaller bits of nothingness,
Is it not clearly obvious that they, too, are really you?
Has not science proven many times beyond a reasonable doubt,
That which, in its early history, it so rationally doubted?
There is, indeed, a god, and it includes you.

* * * *
The warrior dies on the field of battle; the gardener, in the field of harvest.

* * * *
It is not about me, it is not about you. it is about what we truly are, and are not.

* * * *
We are all different universes sculpted of the same Way.

* * * *
Every fate a preoccupation.

* * * *
Odds are, god's will, will very coincidentally, resemble your own.

* * * *
Imagine that.

* * * *
The inner demon raises its malevolent, dysfunctional little head
Again and again and again in the darker corridors of consciousness.

* * * *
There are things that you understand that others do not,
And things others understand that you do not.
Knowledge and insight are like that.

* * * *
Any teacher that burdens you with dogma,
Or seeks your approbation or servitude in any way,
Should be left in the dust of your wanderfest.

* * * *
Any given earnest seeker
Will eventually discern the same Way
Every other earnest seeker ever has or ever will.
All else is naught but sensory distraction of quantum vibration.

* * * *
Be true to thy Self, and it will be true to you.

* * * *
It is the resistance that creates the havoc.
Surrender to that which is prior to all choice.

* * * *
The many faces and costumes and names
Given to the innumerable idols of human invention
Are ever masks of the same faceless, indivisible mystery.
There is really no other but through the potpourri of imagination.

* * * *
To fearlessly discern death is to be free to fully live.

* * * *
All that reverence for what ancestors are rumored to have said and done,
All that absorption in this desire-laden-fear-ridden tradition or that,
Only magnifies and perpetuates the same limited paradigm.

* * * *
The many who follow will only change the course humankind has vaingloriously set
When they carefully choose their leaders instead of them picking themselves.
Genuine, judicious, wise leadership is a selfless service to the one in all.
Nepotism and cronyism and favoritism shall have no station there.

* * * *
This is idealistic only to those many who do not see.

* * * *
Seeking wisdom is a fool's end.

* * * *
Aloneness is the sovereign sanctuary.

* * * *
Seek out mirrors who are authentic agents of the absolute.
They will freely reflect that quantum reality which all truly are.

* * * *
All forms are little more than temporary twists and turns of limited perception.

* * * *
Imagine a world in which there is mutual respect for all by all, and then make it happen.

* * * *
Despite the apparent forcefulness perceived by the mammalian mind,
Volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, nuclear explosions, big bangs, and the like,
Are but peaceful currents in the timeless, indivisible, cosmic unfolding.

* * * *
Even many thousands of years ago,
Anyone with a keen sense of how things work
Could postulate the fall humankind must inevitably endure.
The observation: What goes up must come down,
Has been around a long, long time.

* * * *
Random breeding begets random outcomes.

* * * *
Buy, possess, sell, toss, recycle, over and over again, until death do you part.

* * * *
Despite what the many mirrors about you might reflect,
Despite what all those caught up in the sensory world might believe,
Despite the fact that the masses are all but clueless
About what there is to truly comprehend,
It is not you who is insane.

* * * *
No other beast
Can match the venomous barbarity
Humanity daily wrecks upon all creatures great to small.
To be treated humanely can, indeed,
Be a dubious fate.

* * * *
Unless you enjoy an endless game of hide and seek,
All the forgetting and remembering stimulated by the sensory theater,
Why would the real you ever again choose to separate
From that which is prior to all wombs.

* * * *
All creation ‘tis but the blink of the eternal eye.

* * * *
There is a direct correlation between surrender and joy.

* * * *
If there truly is some sort of supreme being
Witnessing and judging this dream
Play out its little drama,
That appears to be all it is doing.
An absentee landlord if ever there was one.

* * * *
For every moment of creation,
There is an equal moment of destruction.
Destruction is merely the other side of the whirling coin.

* * * *
The world needs leaders who can move beyond the polarization of partisan politics.

* * * *
It is really too simple for words.

* * * *
Tomorrow’s children will flower upon the eternal mountain, as have we.
They will endure as the choices available allow, as have we.
They will witness the sensory play, as have we.
Nothing new under any given sun
But that every moment is indivisibly anew.

* * * *
Existence is about phases of an arbitrary nature, and though every moment is unique,
Minds weave all into imaginary continuities that have no basis in reality, whatsoever.

* * * *
Yet another middleman.

* * * *
The Four E’s: Experience, Explore, Examine, Enlighten.

* * * *
Surrender to the isness; become totally untamed.

* * * *
Some women want forever and a day, and will slice off your balls to get it.

* * * *
How can you ever be more than you are right here, right now?

* * * *
A stain across the world.

* * * *
As you look through those eyes, are you witness of time, or witness before time?

* * * *
Another measurement few if any will give a flying hooey about.

* * * *
For all eternity, for all time, two very different states of consciousness.

* * * *
Sand is gold and gold is sand in the indivisible dust storm of eternity.

* * * *
Epiphany serendipity.

* * * *
Born anonymous, live anonymous between, die anonymous.

* * * *
The hunger! The hunger!

* * * *
And it's too late, baby now, it's too late​, though we really did try to make it

* * * *
Hope is dead. Long live hope.

* * * *
Born alone, live alone, die alone.

* * * *
Bunk.

* * * *
Dust and shadows.

* * * *
What’s your tribe?

* * * *
Get over yourselves, people.

* * * *
Back to the future.

* * * *
Field notes from my Self to my Self.

* * * *
Drift alone, sovereign, indivisible, free of all constraints.

* * * *
You were born attached to nothing more than an umbilical cord.
The challenge when you depart is be attached to nothing at all.


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The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved