CCLXIV
For all you have taken, give back to the garden whatever you have to offer.
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Beneath the innumerable masks and costumes of all creation,
Discern the same indivisibility you are, have ever been, will ever be.
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A perspective too vast for imagination to more than momentarily fathom.
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We all reside somewhere in the statistical array.
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Be aware of history in such a manner as not to be weighed down by it.
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Discern that which has no space for any division.
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Resistance is futile.
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Everyone wants to believe they are beautiful; what makes you think you are not?
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Serve the one in all.
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The power of your light is limited only by the vision with which it is shined.
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Why do you allow leaders to unjustly dominate you?
Why do you accept false visions clouded by vanity?
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Human must learn to tend the garden, else a barren weed patch it will become.
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Any history is often devised from of a very dubious collection of random perceptions.
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Death is the easy part.
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Your true wealth is eternal awareness.
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If you spend your relatively brief existence
Trapping your consciousness in conceptual boxes,
You will never recover the innocence eternity freely offers.
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Martyrdom can be a very harsh way to get remembered in the history books.
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Amazing so many are satisfied with a lifetime of numbing sermons
When the real church is outside waiting for a long and tranquil stroll.
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Compromising your integrity is rarely done without consequence.
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To abide among the many,
All the while recalling you are the indivisible,
Is a moment-to-moment challenge.
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What will you do about your insatiable lust when your genitalia turns to slime?
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Those spots you see floating around in your eyes are really holes in your universe.
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Practice surrender until there is nothing left to practice.
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Forget yourself; remember your Self.
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Same clay, a different day.
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Once you have discerned this, what else is there to do?
Who is left to enjoy the drunk, but the drunkenness itself?
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Laugh at the madness and absurdity you once believed so real and important.
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Narcissus only had a pool of water to admire his striking face.
How many humans do not more than a few times daily
Catch themselves in one reflection or another?
No creature ever born of any garden
Has ever with its own eyes
Directly viewed its ever-changing face.
Will you ever stop recycling your imagined reflection
And discern the faceless nature that truly resides behind all veils?
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Madness abounds.
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Throughout the play of time, those who see
Have attempted to help others awaken to the greater reality.
Why so few do is a question without answer.
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Another unsolvable mystery in a universe already chock-full.
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Only quantum knows.
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The same clayness, the same building blocks make up all forms.
Indivisibility is the truth of you and every other.
Any lesser view is a lie.
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What need for the triviality of vanity on the infinite scale of your true reality?
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Is the quest for joy just another neurological, narcissistic pleasure?
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How shallow all philosophies, all religions.
Discern the difference between belief,
Which is a confused blend of fear and hope,
And knowing, which is simply being fearlessly aware.
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The real you is indestructible; so what's to save?
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Those who assert a spiritual hierarchy is the way to eternal salvation
Are plying the gullibility of fear and the desire for continuity.
They are the illusion that you must see through
To comprehend the ultimate reality
That you truly are.
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Work it, baby.
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A new context in which to reflect upon all things eternal.
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Those who preach hell and damnation reside in their own delusionary underworld.
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Whether on mountain or valley or desert or sea,
Whether in countryside or city, whether inside or outside,
Whether surrounded by silence or explosive noise,
You are whatever you are, wherever you are,
As you have ever been, will ever be.
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Words are the conceptual tools consciousness employs
To survive, perhaps even thrive, in its imagined sensory sea.
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But for our nimble minds,
We are really not all that different
From any other creature great to small.
We all eat, we all shit, we all struggle to survive.
But for thumbs and such, where would we, could we be?
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Do those hands and feet really belong to you?
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You will seek out teachers and guides until you no longer need a helping hand.
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Awaken to your Self, the friend and lover within.
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Without the impressions perceived by consciousness,
There would be no awareness, no time, no pleasure, no pain.
That which is reality must witness and endure whatever life is given,
Until through death's portal it returns to the void from which it was crafted.
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The human drama is as meaningful to the totality as fog is to the sun.
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There is not one portion of your existence to which you can really hold fast.
Every single perception, every single memory, is the delusion of imagination.
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Whatever you believe you are in this mortal game,
Of its decline and demise you can be quite certain
In a perhaps-maybe-sort-of-depends kind of way.
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How would you ever know how alone you truly are
Without the advent of this conscious dream inspired by the senses?
The separation of birth is the origin of all suffering.
Death will mark its conclusion.
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Some have called birth the original sin.
Surely, no infant can truly be blamed
For being brought into this garden
Without any voice in the matter.
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What an insufferable load of silliness history has dealt you.
What would it have been like to be out alone in the wild,
Earth and wind and fire and water your only teachers.
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You are far more lonely out there than you will ever be within.
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It is attachment to the sensory shell,
And the innumerable thoughts about it,
That creates the suffering of identification.
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Can you want nothing from anybody or anything?
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The personality any other believes is you does not really exist
As anything more than an illusory figment of their imagination.
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You have temporarily aligned with the given body as an identity.
It shackles you into a time-bound set of perceptions.
Clear, fearless discernment is required
If you are ever to recalibrate your true nature.
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The infinity of the womb is prior to all imaginings.
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It is a deep loneliness that inspires desire and fear and anger and sorrow.
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Superstition is a drowning weight cast by the mind bound in ignorance.
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Immature reasoning does not for truth make.
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We all play out our vain little functions
In this vast theater of absurdity and delusion.
As big or small as any given role may appear to be,
Every part is equally critical for the dreamtime to carry on.
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What madness time in mind invokes.
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Declare peace within and without, and a momentous quietude unfolds.
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How long will all the true believers wait for Jesus to return?
One thousand, two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand years?
Before they finally face the reality that it just ain't never going to happen.
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Without your awareness, this universe, as only you imagine it, will cease to exist.
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What is the body but a puddle of protoplasm
Hemmed in by an exterior of dead skin cells.
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No one can lead you, no one can help you,
Discern the source of awareness at the core of your being.
Those who have regained it can only point it out.
The journey is entirely up to you.
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In any given moment,
All the suffering wrought by imagination can be forever transcended.
Such is the nature of heaven.
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Everyone trying so hard to make their mark,
Which often ends up being an anonymous stain.
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The only thing barring anyone
From union within in any given moment
Is the vain attachment to an imaginary existence.
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Check your assumptions at the door.
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Has it not always been this way?
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We are all driven by a life force
Too strong for most to even comprehend,
Much less begin to overcome.
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We are all an infinitesimal slice of immortality
Playing out a brief delusion in a mortal theater.
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Assuming he ever existed, whoever Jesus was,
Whatever he really did or did not do, really does not at all matter.
He died many moons ago, and he is not coming back.
So sorry, deal with it, move on, get real.
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Existence is but a brief journey of mind.
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The prophet of doom may be worth heeding.
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Seriously, folks.
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Mortal players and the immortal indivisible are different only in appearance.
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One can attempt to ignore one's calling,
But it is not the nature of destiny
To be easily dismissed.
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The five senses weave an enticing dream.
Complete liberation while conscious in the world
Is perhaps the greatest challenge any existence offers.
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Those who oppose you at any level are among your greatest teachers.
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For whatever reason,
The call of vanity and ignorance
Is inherent in human beings around the world.
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Be kind to your dream.
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The only moon, the only sun, are the ones orbiting in your mind.
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We have allowed the inequities of the innumerable voices to rule our world.
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Real discipline is natural, without thought or calculation.
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Forge your own trail; be sovereign in your own way in the return to indivisibility.
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Fearful people wander in boxes built of dogma.
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Disloyalty is weaver of many a rough road.
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It matters not.
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Yet another mind-made thing pretending it is more.
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A little slice of forever, whatever that is.
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When were you taught to feel lonely?
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The list grows daily longer.
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Another layer of dust reminding you of your fate.
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The other is a shadow in your thoughts.
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Consciousness measures, awareness streams.
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The Devil may care.
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Consciousness ebbs and flows; awareness streams.
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It is the thought that counts.
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To be free and simple and serenely at ease is not as easy as it sounds.
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Nothing to assert, nothing to defend.
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Another truth for the propaganda mills to ignore.
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All for nothing, nothing for all.
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The dead are not dead; the living are not living.
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Is there any label that does not fit to one degree or another?
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Dice it, slice it, anyway your please, the pie is ever whole.
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Eternity does not care.
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Ethereal awareness, ephemeral consciousness.
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To live as if it is not happening,
To abide in the emptiness of eternity,
Is the every-moment challenge of any seer.
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Enjoy for the seamless moment
The bliss prior to who, what, when, where, why, how,
In which you discern what you truly are.
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Forget for a moment
What you believe you look like.
Your name, your thoughts about everything.
Discern the quietude in the abeyance of consciousness,
And linger in that tranquility for as long as the contriving mind allows.
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
It is that simple for those who see.
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The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved