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 195 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
CXCV
We reside in the purgatory between heaven and earth,
Between sublime and absurd, between angels and devils,
Between bliss and horror, between godness and Eden.
* * * *
‘Tis a world of fallen angels.
* * * *
Your aloneness is a sovereign issue.
* * * *
What headline will your death get?
* * * *
Truth is as nebulous as the workings of the mind.
* * * *
Once it falls away,
The veil never stays up
Quite the same way it once did.
* * * *
Is free will a fluke of evolution,
Or a determined result of divine origin?
Who knows, who cares?
* * * *
It must be you.
* * * *
The sense of limited presence
Is solely the result of the energy,
The food body and its sensory reality.
When the body falls away, it will again melt
Into the unconstrained timelessness,
The eternal without attributes,
Without the existence
Born of imagination’s eye.
* * * *
Words are like clay in the way they mold into concept.
* * * *
Life is a temporary state of knowing,
A brief, impulsive conspiracy
Of unknown origin.
* * * *
When you stop recognizing yourself,
You will be your Self.
* * * *
Can push know what it is to pull,
Or pull to push?
* * * *
You were told that it matters,
And you believed them.
You had no reason no to
Until you wandered outside their box,
And suddenly, truth, reality was a lot more confusing.
* * * *
Ripples tell of an event, but are not the event.
The event is a mystery, and the ripples an echo.
* * * *
You are the source of your dreamy universe,
Free to participate, or not, as you choose.
* * * *
Cause is not effect, nor effect cause,
Yet each sustains the other,
And renews all.
* * * *
You are the primal cause personified.
* * * *
Humanitarians care about humanity
In an abstract, ideological, impersonal way.
Other humans are more notion than flesh and blood.
* * * *
Funny how some people’s avenue to power
Is threatening others with their god’s revenge.
* * * *
You’ve never really done anything before.
Now is always the first time for everything.
* * * *
Reality is so simple.
Knowledge can never attain
The pot of gold at the rainbow’s end.
* * * *
Analogies and metaphors have a way
Of being applicable to so many ends.
* * * *
How responsible can you ever be
For what any other might think of you?
* * * *
The newborn has yet to discern
The limitations inspired by time.
* * * *
Mind shields itself with every form of imagined concoction.
* * * *
Each devises his or her own sense of success and failure,
And lives and dies with the reckoning etched of imagination.
* * * *
The mind imagines a continuity that does not exist.
Yet even discerning this as a fact prior to mortal dispute,
Does not entirely free one from the shackles of material drama.
* * * *
Time can be fragrant like a blossom
Or annoying like a mosquito.
Attitude ranges the conscious spectrum
Despite the ceaselessly vain attempts at consistency.
* * * *
Language may articulate it in myriad ways,
But is akin to the spokes of the wheel
Pointing to the empty center.
* * * *
Each plays out a perceived, choiceless role.
* * * *
The burden of time cannot tarnish any
But for ardent clinging.
* * * *
Water is the liqueur of the gods.
* * * *
The maintenance
Of any right or wrong
Is a personal projection.
* * * *
For drama to fabricate,
There must be consciousness,
And a determined sense of otherness.
* * * *
A total misunderstanding,
For which your forgiveness
Is humbly requested.
* * * *
All the wisdom ever gleaned
Is as important as a gnat’s ass.
* * * *
Who is not enamored in one way or another
With the mask and body that the genetic lottery has spun?
It is an endless attachment that absorbs godness into such vain pursuits.
* * * *
If god’s creation includes both heaven and hell,
How is it possible that he and the devil
Are not one in the same?
* * * *
Any given universe is precisely
What conviction inspires.
Attitude is all.
* * * *
Some are made to couple,
Others to single.
* * * *
Is there such thing as too much humility?
* * * *
All ways share equal legitimacy
In the oneness of infinite possibility.
* * * *
To understand the nature of goodness
Is to perceive without doubt
That nothing is not.
* * * *
We have all been brainwashed in one way or another.
The only question is, how much of the wash
Are you willing to wash away
In the pursuit
Of the ultimate freedom?
Attachment to imagination is the crux.
* * * *
What has all that glory truly done for you?
* * * *
One moment the veil drops away.
The next it is created anew.
On and on the play flows in the mind,
The continuity of space-time’s sensory illusion.
* * * *
Death is the flower of freedom.
* * * *
Sounds good, anyway.
* * * *
Sure, it’s all pointless, but isn’t it rather ironic
How you enjoy certain parts of the pointlessness?
* * * *
You think anybody really has a choice
To be anything other than what they are?
* * * *
Management folks who sign the paychecks
Tend to get a lot of tolerance, even approbation,
For their many eccentricities and abusive behaviors.
* * * *
Are you a who?
A what?
A where?
A when?
A why?
Or a how?
* * * *
A-nothing we will go.
* * * *
Torn between heaven and earth,
You suffer the purgatory of continuity.
* * * *
Imagine a newborn child
Who has yet to develop a sense of self.
What an incomprehensible journey
Every human being wanders
From cradle to grave.
* * * *
From nothing to nothing,
And really nothing
All the while.
* * * *
Has there ever been
A species as cruel and harsh
As that which regard themselves human?
Do not confuse the instinctual savagery of other life forms
With the brutal calculations of the human mind.
* * * *
Seeker and sought are the same.
Only the mind bound in the absurdity of consciousness
Asserts the delusion of separation.
* * * *
What is it that holds one back from ending it all.
Suicide really is the only philosophical question.
* * * *
Do you realize how often
You use a history you don’t really know
To rationalize an existence you have no need to justify.
* * * *
Assumption, all.
* * * *
Consciousness is not ultimately real.
It is the brief, ever-changing recreation of energy
That dissipates as soon as the host container disincorporates.
* * * *
When the filament is no more,
Where goeth the light?
* * * *
Wander beyond all the stories born of time’s theater
Discern the nothingness, the unfathomable
Prior to all words and deeds.
It is there that you will at last be free
Of the prison born of temporal consciousness.
* * * *
It is not easy, but standing aloof, disinterested,
Is the key to discerning your true homeless home.
* * * *
A man with a grain of sand
That no one else sees or values
Is a pauper to all but him Self.
* * * *
Let the silly god be the judge.
There are healthier things
To do with your time.
* * * *
Take away the assumptions,
The judgments, the measurements,
The calculations, the fabrication,
The personality, the knowing,
And what could possibly be left
But the still silence of awareness?
* * * *
Can consciousness be without duality?
Doubtful in this world.
* * * *
Seeking credit for your acts,
Even if you did them, and did them well,
Tends to corrode the future.
* * * *
Better to cultivate loyal opposition
Than vengeful adversaries.
* * * *
Ironically absurd.
* * * *
You can only know
The theater of light and shadow.
Of the mysterious source,
You know nothing.
* * * *
What innocently ruthless concepts numbers can be.
* * * *
We create gods that cater to our vain whims.
* * * *
Who are you to judge any one?
* * * *
Humanness is both baneful and noble.
It is the duality of consciousness
Which must ever be.
* * * *
Angels and demons come in all flavors,
And can at times be difficult to distinguish.
* * * *
Chaos is an order to which dis- does not apply.
* * * *
Everything has its time,
And in the end
There is nothing to remember.
* * * *
The subtlety of nuance is infinite.
* * * *
Any true experiment
Requires accurate control of variables
To avoid the taint of speculation.
* * * *
Fate is the sculpture of free will
And so many currents
Beyond any one’s control.
* * * *
Let all the Very Important People
Move ahead and tailgate each other.
* * * *
Why do some feel so much freer than others?
* * * *
You are under no obligations
To anything or anyone
But through your own collusion.
* * * *
Duped again.
* * * *
It is whatever you know,
Which, by the way, ain’t much.
* * * *
In the garden of good and evil,
It is easy to forget.
* * * *
May you find peace in eternal life.
* * * *
Are your sure you really want to be free?
All for nothing? All or nothing?
* * * *
So many hooks dangling
In this mysterious garden.
* * * *
Fourth-dimensional logic.
* * * *
Amazing what suffering so many endure to continue living.
* * * *
Nothing personified.
* * * *
An opportunity to invent your Self.
* * * *
Another case of mistaken identity.
* * * *
Is knowledge really anything more
Than assorted permutations of belief.
* * * *
First, there is a mountain,
Then, there is no mountain,
And then, a mountain again.
* * * *
Guilt and shame are the fabrication
Of minds who probably are and should.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved