CCVI
Tear up and toss the scriptures.
Let no so-called holy book deprive you
Of the sovereignty of your own sacred vision.
* * * *
Moderation and contrast
Heighten the little pleasures
Of the monotony of daily living.
* * * *
It is challenging to work the path backwards,
But it shows the relativity of moving forward.
* * * *
You are the time machine, meaty as it may be.
* * * *
Do cockroaches ever bother about world events,
Sports trivia, weather reports, or Hallmark holidays?
And yet they will likely be around long after we are gone.
* * * *
Time has never been what you imagine it to be.
* * * *
But for all our vain notions,
Is the body really anything more
Than an energy-filtering unit?
* * * *
Sometimes you feel very old,
Other times very young,
And sometimes, when time ends,
As if you were never born and will never die,
The immortal Soul in the truest sense.
* * * *
How isolating the arrogance of will.
* * * *
If you must advocate, advocate That.
* * * *
Pride and passion do not for serenity make.
* * * *
Our intolerance of diversity
Is gradually making us intolerable
To the natural order of this chaotic mystery.
* * * *
“If some is good, more is better”
Is not the motto for those
Subscribing to moderation.
* * * *
There is a random synchronicity to it all.
* * * *
Be attentive to your own vanity
Before you judge harshly another’s.
* * * *
We are all born of the same mystery;
Infinite, unconstrained, immaculate.
* * * *
Move beyond the narcissism
Of the realization that you are godness.
So is everything and everyone else.
Let a serene humility blanket
The daily awareness.
* * * *
Most end up doing with their lives
Whatever they can stomach.
* * * *
The antichrists get control of the pulpits
And doublespeak non-followers
As being against god.
* * * *
It’s a god eat god world.
* * * *
Brahman cannot know Brahman.
Brahman can only be Brahman.
* * * *
Any given war is made up of many battles,
The last of which usually carries the day.
* * * *
The divine plan?
To wake up.
* * * *
Though many are called, few are chosen
To consciously witness the play in its entirety.
* * * *
What constitutes any given life
But a bundle of vague recollections?
* * * *
So do cockroaches envy us living outside the wall?
* * * *
Is god a he, a she, an it,
Or all and none of the above?
* * * *
Is life pain punctuated by pleasure,
Or pleasure punctuated by pain?
* * * *
Do calendars and clocks rule your existence?
* * * *
Humanity’s window of opportunity is shrinking
As we grow too many for the home we share.
* * * *
Can devoting one’s heart and mind
To the insatiable material world
Ever be satisfying for long?
* * * *
To fashion a lucid dreaming,
All one needs is a bit of time and space,
And a smidgen of light to discern the truth of the matter.
* * * *
Day after day passes,
Each giving way to the next
As the body ages in its play of time.
But does one’s psyche grow old and bitter,
Or remain young and innocent?
Will you die to time
And attain eternal salvation,
Or age harshly in hellish self-absorption?
* * * *
A solid, irreversible mistake
Is often a great lesson.
* * * *
True goodness does not concern itself with reward
Any more than pure evil is cowed by punishment.
* * * *
There is no more.
This is as good as it gets.
* * * *
How many problems are really due to oxygen-deprivation?
The best way to resolve many a sour situation
Is with attentive breathing.
* * * *
Measure your life in whatever fashion you will,
It is ever a microcosm of imagination’s limits.
* * * *
That god is just and merciful
Is an imaginary assertion
With no basis in reality.
* * * *
Taking god personally is a grand delusion.
* * * *
So many aspiring to be all-powerful
Rather than just clearly understanding
The essential frailty of manifest existence.
* * * *
You will not be the first to awaken,
Nor are you likely to be the last,
So following without following
Is the challenge before you.
* * * *
You are the flowing river of existence ever one.
The rigidity of the mind is the denial of this very basic fact,
And the arrogance of this pride is its limiting factor.
* * * *
Realize that much of what is written herein
Is analogy, metaphor, parable, image, concept.
Little of which should be taken literally.
Explore the subtlety of words.
Climb them as you would a ladder,
And when you reach where they lead,
Push the ladder away and reside on high.
* * * *
All is denied in the same breath in which it is acclaimed.
* * * *
You are the architect of all inner torment,
Whether it be fear, guilt, shame, sorrow
Anger or hate, it is all your own doing.
* * * *
Don’t you feel sorry for god
Having to watch his creation put to waste
By such a weak, self-absorbed, malignant species?
* * * *
Whether you begin with the big picture,
And wander aimlessly the mixture of parts,
Or in the parts until you discern the big picture,
It is all truly very much and ever eternally the same.
All differences are the fabrication of sleeping dreamers.
* * * *
Since most prayer seems to be abject, self-absorbed whining,
God must be very tired, indeed, of paying attention to the human theater.
If one lifetime seems enough to discern the nature of all things,
Witnessing billions of them must be exhausting,
Even to an immortal essence.
* * * *
A can of Raid beneath so many sinks.
In the relativity of all creation and destruction,
How many of us are really morally superior
To any Ghengis, Hitler, Stalin or Sadam?
* * * *
The world offers every distraction imaginable
Until you tire of the sensory-mind feast,
And one day begin slowing down
To behold its source within.
* * * *
The world will never be what you want it to be.
* * * *
Attachment to anything is not required to discern reality.
No geography, culture, language, tradition, ritual, symbol,
Costume, creed, color, sex, superstition, belief, ad infinitum,
Has any jurisdiction whatsoever in the realm of absolute truth.
* * * *
Free will is a matter of pride,
And pride cannot constrain itself.
* * * *
The wonder of a child’s mind
Is that it knows so little of the world
And yet wanders through it with such ease.
* * * *
Just another self-absorbed assumption
Anchored in the vapor of consciousness.
* * * *
Language is the limiting factor
* * * *
Machines and computers are born of the logic of mind.
Do not confuse man-made reality with the natural order.
* * * *
Is there a power greater than death?
Perhaps an imaginary one.
* * * *
Laugh while the whole world dies around you.
* * * *
Doesn’t just about every group under the sun,
Think they are god’s chosen few?
* * * *
You are being watched as you watch
By the many others who have
Shaped you into you.
* * * *
Why does this silly scribe
Continue penning this gibberish?
Because it keeps flowing to the paper,
And he doesn’t exclaim, as he no doubt could,
“No more!”
* * * *
To say you are responsible for your universe
Does not suggest you have any control
Over the spontaneous unfolding;
Just your grace within it.
* * * *
Thoughts such as these
Are written in the annals of time
To describe that which is timeless.
They are not bound to any geography,
Or to any other conscious circumstance.
They hold true across the entire board.
Call it what you will, truth is truth,
Ever indefinable but through
Time’s passing reflection.
* * * *
There is nothing that is not of the primal origin.
* * * *
Who sees?
Who hears?
Who touches?
Who smells?
Who tastes?
Who identifies
With the senses
But a dust-bowl
Of thoughts?
* * * *
A pride-filled mind is a force of time.
It is a signal of unrealized consciousness
Declaring ceaselessly what it can rarely defend.
* * * *
The first mistake was accepting that you were ever born.
From that first assumption, your destiny has been written.
* * * *
The drop flying above the soundless wave
Peers through reflective boundaries
And declares its universe real.
It entreats mercy for imagined sins,
Staggers in dread over imagined punishments,
All of which are an utter squandering of one’s brief existence.
In the end all simply return to oblivion’s womb
As the wave returns to the sea.
* * * *
Wander the circuses
And the countless sideshows
The manifest theater of illusion offers,
Until they leave you drained,
And perhaps complete.
* * * *
Even in the depths of imagined hell,
That which is remains ever untarnished.
* * * *
These words,
An inane intellectual reverie,
Slipping slowly, slowly into the inevitable oblivion
Sewn entirely of mystery.
How real can any form, no matter the size,
Ever be when all crack, crumble and reshape
Over and over again into new forms
Both similar and contrary.
Nothing a wondrous mystery in all.
* * * *
Okay, okay, one more chance.
* * * *
Ho-hum-yawn.
* * * *
We drink it in, eat it up,
Pee it out, and poop it again.
Awake, asleep, in it comes, out it goes.
Ever, never the same, who can say if it will ever end.
* * * *
Even if we all decided to be fair to each other,
How would we, could we even begin
To define that fairness
Without starting another debate?
There can be no unity
In the duality
Born of consciousness.
* * * *
Where do you seek truth?
Your response explains
The life you imagine.
* * * *
It isn’t my way, or your way.
It is the Way, The Way It Is.
* * * *
Sages and mystics are like flowing water
Slowly softening the coarse world
Through which they meander.
And when their time ends,
Others take up the torches,
And share what there is to see.
* * * *
Flesh gets old.
* * * *
An unanointed task,
For what reason,
There need be no reason.
* * * *
To what mesmerizing tale
Will the media aspire this day?
* * * *
Never lose the capacity to have a good day
Happily mixing it up with a little dirt and water.
* * * *
How rare the modest saint.
* * * *
Everything ripples to some degree.
* * * *
What glory is there in winning the applause of ignorance.
* * * *
Activists aren’t of much use to sages, either.
* * * *
Anyone who seriously believes human beings
Will ever colonize another world has lost sight of the fact
That Buck Rogers, Lost in Space, Star Trek, Star Wars, Aliens, Dune,
And the many others, are only popular science fiction fantasies.
The distances across space are too vast, and the likelihood
Of finding a hospitable planet, getting to that planet,
Surviving once there, and ever being seen again,
Make a lottery win look like a piece of cake.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved