Chapter 209 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CCIX

The ultimate downfall of any group
Is often its disintegration from within.

* * * *
If you don’t like the rules of a game,
Just move on to a different one.

* * * *
They certainly seem to enjoy their hell, don’t they?

* * * *
To win heaven, surrender hell.

* * * *
What to plan
But what unfolds
With minimal effort.

* * * *
Doing nothing.
Just fine since for all practical purposes,
There’s really just nothing in all the things we so busily do, anyway.

* * * *
There’s a time to climb the mountain,
And another to scour the toilet.
Each the same moment,
Just different times of mind.

* * * *
What will you choose in your life?
Contentment and harmony,
Or dissatisfaction and dissolution?

* * * *
Infinity become.

* * * *
All differences are merely linguistical rhetoric.

* * * *
From an immeasurable field of data,
You have created a universe.
Is it heaven or hell,
Or something between?

* * * *
To surrender to reality
Is nothing short of arduous.
It’s never easy to die to delusion.

* * * *
Many deem you mad,
But you know it is really they
Who are lost in the maze of insanity.

* * * *
Does your yearning to be free
Ever give you the right to infringe
Upon another’s to remain imprisoned?

* * * *
In the shadow of words,
Actions tell the tale.

* * * *
Countless faces come and go in any life,
Mirrors sustaining each other’s ephemeral dreaming.
All so real, yet so unreal, so different, yet ever so much the same,
Wherever any may wander, wherever any may remain,
It is ever the same inexplicable way.

* * * *
A fool clings to gold as a fly to paper.

* * * *
Wherever you go, whatever you do,
The witnessing is ever the same.

* * * *
The glory to which so many aspire
Is merely the vanity born of consciousness.
Nothingness trying so vainly to become something.

* * * *
Be you.
Never imitate another.

* * * *
You can believe you are alive,
But can you really prove it?

* * * *
The error in any line of thinking
Is crafted by the first assumption.

* * * *
As your head falls to the pillow,
Release your attachment
To the given day.

* * * *
You need not answer to anyone but your Self.

* * * *
Are not god and the devil,
Good and evil, right and wrong,
Ever one in the same?
Where is the line
Between any duality
But the make-believe one
Fabricated by the arbitrary mind.

* * * *
Put no god before the Youness that is That I Am.

* * * *
In one way or another,
We are all party
To each other’s suffering.

* * * *
Will consciousness ever reside peacefully in Eden?

* * * *
All anyone owns is a temporary head
Full of arbitrary emotion and thought.

* * * *
Confusing to most,
It needs no answer.

* * * *
Who are you, who are you not?
What are you, what are you not?
Where are you, where are you not?
When are you, when are you not?
Why are you, why are you not?
How are you, how are you not?

* * * *
How can anything impermanent ever be considered sacred?
The worship of any form, any concept, is merely idolatry.
Only the surrender to the unknown is sacrosanct.

* * * *
Of the truly great, it can be said they were unknown,
Anonymous, mysteriously empty, useful to no other.

* * * *
Any given problem cannot be truly solved
Without full attention to the immediate need.

* * * *
Indoctrination is the weight of time
Determined to deny reality,
And crush innocence,

* * * *
In dying to time, you discern the eternal life
Of that which knows neither beginning nor end,
That which is truly divine prior to all plays of mind.

* * * *
Carve up the mystic sage
In however many pieces you will,
You will find nothing partial.

* * * *
Those who articulate truth are the real revolutionaries.
Those who maintain the lies of mind deceive only themselves,
And are lost to the righteousness of eternity’s dusty reality.

* * * *
What need for prayer for those beyond doubt,
Those beyond the insatiable chasm of faith and hope?

* * * *
They must doubt,
Those who spend so much time
Begging forgiveness.

* * * *
You need not appease history.
For it is the dominion of the dead,
And you, it seems, are still breathing.

* * * *
Food consumes food consumes food.
From unborn to born to unborn, what is living
But that which is everlasting, without beginning or end,
Briefly dreaming an epic of mayic proportion.

* * * *
It is done,
And done again,
In the sweet and bitter
Of the immeasurable illusion
We call space and time.

* * * *
Grace is the acceptance of what is.

* * * *
All forms must play out their given destiny.

* * * *
You have many memories,
But they are not in the here now,
So who are you, really?

* * * *
It is long, it is short.
It is all, it is nothing.
An ephemeral dream,
Nothing more, nothing less.

* * * *
Fate is the sum of all journeys intertwined.

* * * *
Some go with god.
Some become goodness.

* * * *
What a strange thing to have a name.

* * * *
Today or some tomorrow,
Death will come a-knocking.
Will there be anyone to answer?

* * * *
If you alone see it, that is enough.
If others see as well, so be it.
If they do not, so be it.

* * * *
How indifferent the totality is to any individual form.

* * * *
It matters much less
What one did in the younger days
Than what was eventually learned from them.

* * * *
You are very much
Both student and teacher
In the sorting of the given mind.

* * * *
If you see all this, be grateful
You are not any other one.

* * * *
Weed out the personal from the impersonal.
And your play in time will be all but done.

* * * *
Habits are not easily broken.

* * * *
Why spend so much time anticipating death
When it is always, indeed, very much present.

* * * *
Words only buzz like flies around what is real.

* * * *
Contrary to popular consumer premise,
Having many toys does not make for winners.

* * * *
How infinite does infinity need to be
For humanity to fathom how ludicrous and petty
The seemingly endless self-absorption
In which it is so engaged.

* * * *
You only suffer when you forget.

* * * *
It’s all so simple,
But alas, we are simply
Too complex to see.

* * * *
The “I Amness” operates the body as a driver a car.
It gets in, moves to and fro, and gets out
When the journey’s done.

* * * *
Consciousness is merely babble,
The time-filling patter of a seed sprung,
From that which has no origin, into an illusion.
A negligible ripple in an immeasurably huge, still pool.

* * * *
Hey, it fills the time.

* * * *
We are but seeds flowering in time,
Passing the flame of consciousness.
It will burn away until the fuel is spent.

* * * *
The paradoxical subtlety of attention
Without conclusion or judgment.
Is unutterably profound.

* * * *
Within the stillness of infinite space,
How would time or direction be known?
Without manifestation there can be
No logical frame of reference
To gain foothold in illusion.

* * * *
Knowledge is the order molded from the chaotic essence,
The spontaneous accumulation of sensory stimulation
Cast into one mythological perspective or another.

* * * *
Eternal salvation
Is an entirely personal quest.
No middleman nor divine being is necessary
To discern the mystery-given birthright.

* * * *
The warrior analogy is often used
Because of the timeless immediacy
Invoked in any style of combat,
In which an inner tranquility
Burns away the dross
Of personal identification.

* * * *
What is there to fear about any dream?
Let it swallow you, not you it.

* * * *
Your limitation is created entirely
Of your own volition to its sensory unfolding.
You are the knowing of your version
Of the infinite’s dreaming.

* * * *
Time creates birth and death,
But who creates time?

* * * *
In the absoluteness
Of inner solitude,
Immortality.

* * * *
As a rock experiences the river’s passing
You are merely witnessing existence
From another sort of creek bed.

* * * *
The mystical seers of the absolute mind
Discern the common serenity of oneness,
A witnessing of the unfolding present
Within the individual indivisibility.

* * * *
In the largest sense,
All eyes are mine.

* * * *
What would it be like
To have no fear of time,
No dread of dying or death?

* * * *
Fear clings to limitations.
Surrender is beyond
Its capacity.

* * * *
Discern paradox,
And you will wander
An immortal field.

* * * *
Doubt creates resistance, and resistance, doubt.
A circle vying for advantage, fangs chasing tail.

* * * *
Life is more than capitalistic intrigue.

* * * *
Spread the wings of your discerning intuition
Until you see beyond its conscious invention.

* * * *
You are born alone, you will die alone,
And together, we will delude ourselves between.

* * * *
Dwell where only godness can.

* * * *
Breathe with attentive intent.

* * * *
How often science proves the obvious.

* * * *
There is a rational logic
To the irrational nature
Of social evolution.

* * * *
When you discern your ear is the only one,
All voices merge into the chatter of oneness.

* * * *
Few get past their conceptual masturbation.

* * * *
Saints and sinners are of the world.
Mystics pierce the veil of its origin.

* * * *
These words will anger and befuddle
Those who cannot see behind their nose.

* * * *
Ignorance is bliss only when it is true ignorance.

* * * *
The mind’s potential for delusion and discord is unyielding.
Our species seems innately bound and determined
To turn every stone in this manifest realm.


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