Chapter 189 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CLXXXIX

What a momentary mystery all existence.
How audaciously so many pass through it.

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Of what use is a big pile of gold if you have no life?

* * * *
How will you make it through the dying process?
The same as you have every other moment
In this illusive play of consciousness.

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Sometimes nature changes
As quickly as a ray of light,
Others as slowly as rock.
It is the ironic paradox
Of the Way in all things.

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The lost tribe are those
Who see the mystical union
In which there is no other.

* * * *
Do not allow time to enslave you.

* * * *
Real is as real does.

* * * *
The demons you imagine real and true
Will entice you in to passionate reactions
That will torment you for as long as you allow.

* * * *
Once, in one den of iniquity or another,
A colleague exclaimed that without passion,
One would be dead.
Exactly.

* * * *
How often we use others to decry out own failings.

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Do you really know what you want anymore?
Did you ever?

* * * *
Sometimes you go to the firestorm,
And sometimes it comes to you.

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Phases, blazes, hazes.
How obscure it all seems,
And on and on and on it goes,
The dream, eternally one.

* * * *
No demon cannot change his heart
But through the bitter resolve
To hover in eternal hell.

* * * *
What can you buy or steal
Which is truly yours to own?
We all borrowers be.

* * * *
This writer’s bent is solitary confirmation.

* * * *
Barren are they who use others to their own selfish ends.

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You always want more,
But does it ever really make you happy?
Or merely distract the discontent?

* * * *
Has there ever been a grouping
Free of political correctness?

* * * *
If you do not enjoy suffering,
Find your way out of the maze.

* * * *
Freedom knows no partial detours or remedies.

* * * *
How challenging to be serenely detached.
The senses repeatedly draw the mind into illusion,
And you endure the imagined consequences ever again,
Such unending futility and suffering this irrational world tenders.

* * * *
You need not suffer for a world you cannot change.

* * * *
Attachment to time is the veil’s foundation.
It makes fools and cowards of its minions.

* * * *
One day you just wake up tired of this world
Telling you where you can and cannot take a pee.

* * * *
Freedom is not lost.
It is given away.

* * * *
How does one view it?
As what it is, or as what it is not?
Perhaps as both and neither,
Or maybe and maybe not.

* * * *
What illusion can ever truly bind you again?

* * * *
Those who weep for the dead are dead as well,
For they neglect their eternal union
With that never born.

* * * *
Personal existence is a calamity
To which death and resurrection
Into eternal life is the only recourse.

* * * *
Desire takes the breath away.

* * * *
We are all blind to one thing or another.

* * * *
It is each and every breath
That gives you continuity.
Thoughts are as ephemeral
As fine sand on a windy beach.

* * * *
When the flames of doubt are fanned,
There is no telling what the fire will consume.

* * * *
Sometimes too much honesty creates distrust.
Dogmatic moralists wear the welcome mat thin.

* * * *
Is there anything more tiring
Than a superior human being
Bent on convincing you of it.

* * * *
You are the unmanifest whether manifest or not.

* * * *
There is a choiceless sovereignty
In knowing there is nothing to know,
That ignorance is the oblivion
Of the unknowable way.

* * * *
Back into time.
You have already done everything
You are doing.

* * * *
All dreams are the oneness played out
On the diverse screens of sensory input.

* * * *
Fortunately, life is just a temporary calamity.

* * * *
Waves crash and crash again,
Yet the ocean never feels
Their birth and death.

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You will never impress the others enough,
And once you succeed even the smallest bit,
You will be ensnared by the many expectations.

* * * *
All true religions leads to the same home.

* * * *
You seek loved ones,
Yet find only partial love
When you do not love
The oneness in all.

* * * *
Prior to concept, and the endless
Measurements born of thought, there is no time.
That, simply put, is what sages across this garden call eternal life.
To take thought to its origin is the ending of time,
The deathless oneness from which
All creation originates.

* * * *
Amazing how timeless nature is.
Wander about any of its countless forms,
Desert, mountain, ocean or valley,
And the clock fades away
Into the reality of dreamtime.

* * * *
Unlikely anyone would ever find your body
Even just a hundred feet off any forest trail.

* * * *
Prepare yourself.

* * * *
It appears we have come to destroy creation.

* * * *
Out in the dreamtime of nature
You could be at any point in your life.
It is the mirrors, the photographs,
And the reflections of others
Which cast you into age.

* * * *
It certainly won’t matter
What any other thinks of you
Once they’re dead,
Will it?

* * * *
Paradise is a very, very dangerous place.

* * * *
You’d think they’d at least leave a few places untouched,
Just so the future would have something to look at.

* * * *
Floating along in the middle of the stream
Gives you options to get out
On either side.

* * * *
What proof can you really offer
That anything ever happened?

* * * *
Illusions die hard.
Patterns change slowly.

* * * *
You are your world.
Why shouldn’t you be able to play in it?

* * * *
Is it new,
Or did you just not see it before?

* * * *
Who would bring their children here?

* * * *
Interesting things sometimes arise
When you’re not told
You can’t do something.

* * * *
It’s called a hustle because you have to.

* * * *
You will know it’s true if it is.

* * * *
Some heads are so full of bullshit,
They can’t see any more clearly
Than a fish in a muddy stream.

* * * *
Look beyond your genetic reference point.

* * * *
The highest order is chaos.

* * * *
Saying “pure joy”
Is about the same
As saying “fresh fish.”

* * * *
It’s all about hunting grounds.
Get to know your mountain.

* * * *
Just another hollow goal

* * * *
In heaven there is no other.

* * * *
Funny how even the darkest pain fades
Through distraction and fading memory.

* * * *
It takes time to create hell.

* * * *
Funny how time can come back to haunt you..

* * * *
You’re just a mix of everything, aren’t ya?

* * * *
Have you come to condemn?
Or perchance, to understand?

* * * *
Why get pushed out of shape
By somebody else’s agenda?

* * * *
The only way
You’re going to pass a test
Is if you take it.

* * * *
You never know when they’ll hook you up.
So find a baggy or blow your head off
While you’ve still got a chance.

* * * *
Amazing how stuck a mind can get sometimes.

* * * *
Can’t blame a bee
For sniffing around a flower.
We all follow our nature.

* * * *
All patterns are locked in the mind
Through the binds of imagination.

* * * *
What, exactly, do you believe
You’re really holding on to?

* * * *
Stoplights are great equalizers.

* * * *
It would probably be easier
To grab onto a wisp of smoke.

* * * *
Don’t you see the ripples coming?

* * * *
The more you have,
The more that can go wrong.

* * * *
God is merciful if it suits the devil’s ends.

* * * *
Looks like you’re not much of a promise.

* * * *
We’re all talking to ourselves.
Most people just have the ability
To keep it to themselves,

* * * *
Destiny raises its ironic head again.

* * * *
Sometimes, if possible, it’s nice
To just let things be a surprise,

* * * *
Dealing with the way things are,
Generally seems to be much less painful
Than always wishing them even just a little different.

* * * *
Every bubble thinks it’s universe real,
But what lies out beyond the Jacuzzi?

* * * *
To believe any word
Can truly encapsulate anything
Is probably one of the greatest delusions.

* * * *
How tiring the predictability can be.

* * * *
A compendium of love and hate,
And every emotion conceptually between,
For whoever bothers to even glance
Through its far too many pages.
Who knows where it will take you?

* * * *
There isn’t much to get really troubled about,
But let us all acknowledge that we all do
Many times every day in every way.

* * * *
Amazing to witness
What happens to some minds
As they play out their time.

* * * *
Despite all the “God and Country” propaganda,
Jesus has about as much to do with the Marines
As he did with the Roman soldiers who tortured him.

* * * *
No use impressing those not worth impressing.

* * * *
Innocence is the natural goodness
Of an uncorrupted, timeless mind.

* * * *
Diplomacy is the art of vain purpose.

* * * *
Just another high-powered, egotistic loser.

* * * *
Just the way things are.
No use whipping yourself
Too badly about it, eh what?


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