A compendium of field notes from the unknown ... Dedicated to all those fated to ponder the mystery from which all things small to great are equally created
Chapter 192 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
CXCII
Rest assured that nothing will happen.
* * * *
Life is about exploring the irony.
* * * *
So much poured into any given lifetime,
Yet ever as empty as a cup after the last sip.
* * * *
What does the world really offer
That is worth all the suffering?
* * * *
There is no schism but in consciousness.
Melt into the awareness of beingness,
And you shall witness all creation.
* * * *
Somebody had to write it,
And fate chose you.
* * * *
What an odd mystery that every drop has a destiny
That must eventually melt back into the abyss of totality,
Both remembered and forgotten for all eternity.
* * * *
Nourish your real Self
However inclination plays out
In the ground of your brief span of time.
* * * *
What lights the fire of your consciousness?
* * * *
No one can truly be privy to your universe.
You are very much alone, no matter
The crowd stirring about.
* * * *
From choicelessness,
An all but infinite set of choices.
* * * *
What can exist beyond all mortal dreams?
* * * *
Death whittles away at every form.
* * * *
Imaginary life, imaginary soul, imaginary everything.
* * * *
The sweet nothings of oblivion whisper in every ear.
* * * *
How will you respond when death bids you home?
* * * *
From birth you were conditioned
To play this silly little game.
* * * *
Funny the challenge it is to realize
How few choices one really has.
* * * *
History shows us again and again
The limitation of the human potential.
* * * *
Why battle reality?
* * * *
The usual cover-up.
* * * *
Dust is a great equalizer.
* * * *
The only thing
From which the world needs saving
Is the human species.
* * * *
Time is the source of all addiction.
* * * *
The wind challenges you to stay.
* * * *
Deep or shallow, same ocean.
* * * *
No direction home.
* * * *
Another interesting assumption.
* * * *
As many as there may be living,
Many more have died along the way.
* * * *
The garden is but eternal.
It is consciousness that harvests
The fruit of good and evil.
* * * *
Without compassion,
Any serious discussion of ethics
Is meaningless yabber.
* * * *
Watch yourself from far distant shores,
As you would a stranger you’ll never meet.
* * * *
Browse your universe.
After all, it’s all you.
* * * *
From beginning to end,
And before and after, as well.
* * * *
As much as can be known
Of that which is unknown.
* * * *
Remember forgetting, forget remembering.
* * * *
Science is only as complete as the questions it asks.
* * * *
The ocean chatters away in the crash of every wave,
But does all the noise really mean anything?
* * * *
Discipline is never easy.
That’s why it’s called discipline.
* * * *
Same old barbarity.
* * * *
Believe you me,
The world will continue on just fine
Without you.
* * * *
Just another organism
Fated to endure a brief existence
In the eternal puddle of time.
* * * *
Love should never be uttered, just felt.
* * * *
It’ll never be this cheap again.
* * * *
And suddenly, you saw your way
As clear as a full moon on a crisp night.
* * * *
Enslaved by insatiable desire,
The masses voraciously consumed
Until there was nothing left
Worth consuming.
* * * *
You know you are losing it
When you can’t even remember
What you were trying to remember.
* * * *
The whole thing is so crazy
That it’s really not worth worrying about
Who’s more or less crazy.
* * * *
Imagination is not ultimately real,
No matter how you believe it so.
* * * *
If humans were immortal,
Would time exist
In quite the same way?
* * * *
All the dreams of the universe
Need not play upon your own
But through your own consent.
* * * *
An imaginary universe
Founded upon the time-bound delusion
Of the senses, and the mind into which they ever feed.
* * * *
You cannot be responsible for more than a reasonable share
Of the drama this play of consciousness is acting out.
A detachment from all manifest distractions
Is more than a little inevitable.
* * * *
Many, perhaps most, argue the differences.
But, in truth, it is all very much the same.
* * * *
Will you ever reach the point
Of indifference to the personal context,
The awareness prior to all attachment and delusion,
The awakened state of being that liberated seekers call home.
* * * *
Consciousness is born upon the waves of sensory perception,
The impressions of an existence, a persona, imagined
Within an impermanent movement of energy.
You wander through a vague present,
Cataloging it as experiences,
But in reality your recollections
Are entirely subjective, based solely
Upon your particular perception of reality,
Which is but the fusion of craving and aversion.
* * * *
So many incessantly vying for attention from others.
* * * *
Only so much time left.
* * * *
The gravity of eternity draws all home.
* * * *
Even doubts are more thoughts
Wandering about as they will,
And you, believing them real.
* * * *
How terrified we are of our aloneness
That we fill the moments with every sort of activity
To keep at bay the eternal emptiness of the essential nature.
* * * *
The dike will not hold forever.
* * * *
Fate is an end born of choiceless choices.
* * * *
A student of the relativity.
* * * *
From beginning to end,
All just smoke and mirrors.
* * * *
Don’t you grow weary of measuring everything?
* * * *
The womb of all things is a mystery
Only awareness can truly fathom.
* * * *
Felling a sense of mystery
Is especially challenging
To those so sure of everything.
* * * *
It is not a matter of becoming anything.
Rather, it is paying attention to everything.
* * * *
Women: an interesting experiment,
But not necessary in the day-to-day.
* * * *
If you gave the breath
Even a pittance of the attention
You give your monkey mind of thoughts,
How tranquil your existence would be.
* * * *
Discern the dreamtime of eternity
As often as your time allows.
* * * *
You are lost in your universe
Until you find your Self.
* * * *
The truth is as nebulous as time.
* * * *
One way or another,
In these words you will find your Self
If it is your time to do so.
* * * *
Fair is that to which we agree is fair.
* * * *
To steer a course, there must be a captain with a vision.
* * * *
Beneath every evil soul
Was once a child
As innocent as any.
Forgive them for being you
Twisted beyond human recognition.
* * * *
We are each our own demon
As well as an angel of redemption.
* * * *
Who is not the paradox of hell and heaven?
Demons of anguish and angels of redemption.
* * * *
Within these many pages
Is a sense of life’s countless ironies
Seen in day-to-day mix of any given existence.
* * * *
Lord, please feel free
To take all your true believers.
We’ve had quite enough of their vanity.
* * * *
The club is nearly out of our hands.
What will we do?
* * * *
Never let a defeat keep you down.
* * * *
We all have skeletons beneath our cultivated facades.
* * * *
Waking up to the ignorance
Binds one in a different way.
* * * *
It only matters as much as you believe it does.
* * * *
Old souls were never born.
* * * *
How vain we have made god.
* * * *
Who know how many times, how many ways,
You have already tripped the traps
Death has set for you?
Alas that the last laugh
Will not echo in your ears.
* * * *
Maybe Jesus will come back next year.
* * * *
The you that you pretend to be
Is not the you that you truly are.
* * * *
Decipher this, and you will earn eternal vision.
* * * *
And humankind imagined that godness could,
Or even would, be encapsulated by any form.
* * * *
Without the contrasting mind,
There would be no duality.
* * * *
Another idea whose time has long passed.
* * * *
What a serious jester you play.
The trick is to discern the art
Of laughing at your bones.
* * * *
What an amazing thing that that little ball of fire
Has radiated such an amazing dream.
* * * *
We’re all skewered at some point.
* * * *
A mystery born of breath.
* * * *
Time can be a fine liqueur or a deadly poison.
Its transcendence is not for the meek of spirit.
* * * *
Your tribe may not include your family.
* * * *
Even a caged bird longs to sing.
* * * *
We like history, real or imagined.
* * * *
A mirage built of flesh and bones.
* * * *
The mistake was caring for something
That did not, could not matter.
The dream of time requires no investment.
* * * *
As transitory as this silly dream is,
The body is much more eternally content
Than the unremitting monkey mind
That stampedes it through
So many tortures.
* * * *
Habit and instinct are the means all creatures abide
Whatever physical niche they have been cast.
In the human paradigm, this includes
The all-but-infinite complexities
Of a sizable psychological component
That has created the madness we now witness
As the myriad variations engage one another for survival
At an unprecedented, unresolvable, agonizingly imaginary level.
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The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved