CCXII
Consciousness separated and identified,
And attached to any given moment,
Is by its self-absorbed nature
Destined to both instigate and endure
Every conceivable form of agony and ecstasy.
* * * *
Every society has annual patterns
Embraced by some, endured by others.
* * * *
However one may describe it, it is the thread
Upon which the knower travels the eternal life.
* * * *
An encapsulation of what has been.
A prediction of what is yet to come.
* * * *
The most faultless liqueur begins as a seed,
And before that, a profound mystery
To which there is no birth.
* * * *
Prophets, oracles, mystics, saints and seers,
However you may call their insight,
Are lights of consciousness
In the dusty vortex of time and space.
Though few are inclined to feast the unknown,
The ultimate which they discerned is dormant within all.
* * * *
You are immaculately imagined.
* * * *
How many ways we find to bring god
Down to our level of petty vanity.
* * * *
The myriad stage witnesses every sort of play.
* * * *
Consume whatever you will,
For in due course you will be the glad feast
For one worm or another.
* * * *
Those who survive the time to come
Will do so in the desolate remains
Of humanity’s cancerous path.
* * * *
Whatever it is, finite or infinite,
No instrument born of man’s mind
Will ever view its inexplicable entirety.
* * * *
The body is merely a temporary vehicle.
Attachment to it, and the journey it undertakes,
Inevitably results in an endless saga
Of agony and ecstasy.
* * * *
See the everything in nothing
And the nothing in everything.
* * * *
You will not find something where there is nothing.
Nor can you discern the nothing in the something.
* * * *
How can you judge anything
When you are everything.
* * * *
Live quietly, spontaneously absolute,
Free of the poverty of existence.
* * * *
Who can comprehend eternity
But those who surrender
To its sweetness.
* * * *
How vain every thought.
* * * *
Death is simply the dissolution of a brief fabrication.
* * * *
There is no species
That does not fall prey
To one predator or another.
Large or small, all are consumed.
* * * *
Lazily, the cinder wafts above the roaring fire,
Spent until eternity recasts it for another flame.
* * * *
Reality is seamless.
Only consciousness is lost
In the maze of duality.
* * * *
The truly rich, the truly powerful, the truly free,
Are those who meander unconcerned, fearless.
Even death cannot do more than consume them.
* * * *
Historian, scientist, teacher,
Anthropologist, sociologist, psychologist,
King, warrior, merchant, peasant, holy man, sprite, beast,
Philosopher, curmudgeon, jester, drunken fool,
Mystic, oracle, harbinger, hierophant.
* * * *
The essential point
Of sexual energy is procreation.
The seeds of lust weave the mystery of time.
For the sake of the children to come,
Do not dabble too incautiously.
* * * *
Idolatry is the way of the blind.
Those who see discern the god nature
Inherent within all manifestation.
* * * *
Do not make a burden of those who see.
They are models for you to witness.
Idolizing any form only puts off
Realization and liberation.
* * * *
The long and short are relative to the measurer.
* * * *
Eternal life,
Timeless life,
Nowness forever,
Consciously traveled.
* * * *
You are of the same clayness
Which has shaped all diversity
Across every imaginable realm.
Any denial of that most basic fact
Is the source of all separation.
It is the fall born of free will.
* * * *
Right is right when it feels right.
* * * *
Surely, but for greed, there is plenty for all.
* * * *
Where are you when thought stills?
* * * *
Take notice how language, born of the senses,
Molds your dream through its subject-object implications.
It is a deception woven into the thought process,
But is, in reality, without foundation.
* * * *
Why you separate yourself
From reality, from godness,
Is beyond comprehension.
* * * *
The fabricated identity is the only real block.
* * * *
Do not for a moment believe
The Way is in any way a path.
* * * *
How effortlessly fear, anger, greed and idolatry
Shove aside reason and common sense.
We will hawk our wares as we hurtle
Off the cliff of our own making.
* * * *
What’s done is done, and cannot be undone.
Though cause and effect are ultimately unreal,
In the manifest reality, the piper will not go unpaid.
* * * *
What we call progress is overindulgence in every way imaginable.
Population, ideas, technology, wealth, power, fame, ad infinitum.
Surely, we are a cosmic joke to any who would deign witness it.
* * * *
Though many are beckoned, few turn resolutely
Toward the eternal flame of personal extinction.
* * * *
Any idea of perfection remains only an idea,
No matter how it aches to taste reality.
* * * *
Knowledge defines its own limitations.
* * * *
All claims to birth involve death.
* * * *
Leap the bounds of time and space
Until you are that which is eternal.
* * * *
What, except arguments
Established on desire, fear and guilt,
Could persuade you otherwise?
* * * *
You live in all things, and all things live in you.
* * * *
For there to be the manifest play of time and space,
There must be movement, and for there to be movement,
There must be the stillness to recognize its passing.
For there to be the recognition of the movement
Requires the memory of past movement.
What reality does the knower have
But a mind full of movement?
* * * *
Even your most cherished concept is but an ephemeral reality.
* * * *
One creature’s boon is another’s blight.
Despite the essential equality of all,
Equity in the universe of forms
Is an impossible ideal.
* * * *
Eternal damnation is the inevitable consequence
For any who ignore or deny the eternal nature.
* * * *
Those who see
Know clay is gold,
And gold is clay.
* * * *
To see everything
And nothing,
That is the goal.
* * * *
If goals are real, that is.
* * * *
The chatter of irony.
* * * *
Personality is the wind of consciousness.
* * * *
Once you leave the cave,
Returning to it will never, can never,
Be the same as its memory.
* * * *
Wisdom is merely knowledge distilled.
The truth of the matter is prior to all knowing,
And thus, the only barrier ever remains the knower.
* * * *
One swill of essence is all you need
To know all organized religion
Is the hoax of mind.
* * * *
The patter of thought
Is like shallow footprints
In windswept sand.
* * * *
The turns of every word sets the tone
For those not deaf to its meaning.
* * * *
What agony to reach the ecstasy of true beingness.
To be consistently one with nothingness
Is not for the idle seeker.
* * * *
Without sagacity, endurance, and indifference,
The roiling mind is an infinite sea of suffering.
* * * *
What kind of gift is this existence?
Surely everyone asks many times.
* * * *
Breath fully this moment for it is quickly done.
And you must re-awaken again and again
To consciously witness your revelation
Of eternity’s never-ending story.
* * * *
The sensual mist is enticing for all,
And thus every fate is played.
* * * *
Another year complete in the theater of time.
And those who are aware are reborn as no other.
* * * *
A mystical wonderland, more real
Than the senses can ever gather.
* * * *
What has come before,
And what will come hence,
Has no importance whatsoever
In this moment of paused reflection.
* * * *
It is not for the multitude to discern,
And thus they are witnessed by the few
In the splendid candor, the full regalia
Of all their ignorance and delusion.
* * * *
What is dark or light to the omniscient eye?
* * * *
Death wakens any who pause to reflect
On that which is prior to all origins.
* * * *
As free and untouchable as a beam of light.
* * * *
What passes as living for so many
Is merely death put off another day.
* * * *
What self-deception to believe
There is anything or anyone to be saved.
All is merely dust waxed and waned again and again.
Every form is temporary, dust given shape, but ever dust it remains.
* * * *
Do not move too quickly, too sharply,
Lest the sheep scatter too far afield.
* * * *
Death hovers near, its wings beating patiently.
Can you feel the surety of its inevitable touch?
* * * *
How strange that across the world, we are all conditioned
To play out one identity, one personality or another.
An entire species deluded by a collusion
Of its own collective invention.
Madness on a scale probably unduplicated,
Despite all our science fiction, anywhere in the universe
* * * *
All those romantic walks along a beautiful beach
Take on a different hue in the shadow
Of a hundred-foot tsunami.
* * * *
Mother Nature can be beautiful and inspiring,
But do no be too beguiled and infatuated
By the reflection in a shark’s tooth.
* * * *
Natural disasters are reminders that all life,
Despite humanity’s nonsensical blather,
Exists merely at the whim of nature.
* * * *
The rules of the board cannot be broken.
The further the human species meanders
From the fundamental, unbending reality,
The harsher will seem the consequences.
* * * *
And pray tell, why, why, why
Should some poor, defenseless god
Be made responsible
For your having planted yourself
In the capricious path of a force of nature?
* * * *
It’s so simple.
Play by the rules of the game,
Or die.
* * * *
For any species to wander
From that fundamental understanding
Is a sure path to destruction.
* * * *
It isn’t that Mother Nature is behaving any different,
It’s just that there are more people in her way.
* * * *
How absurd all belief.
Be here now.
Be-ing, here-ing, now-ing
Is all there really is.
* * * *
You need not collude with any history.
* * * *
All are entitled to feast the dream of godness,
But few will partake for they hunger only
For what the parochial senses allow.
* * * *
Peace is harmony with the present,
However it may be flowing.
* * * *
Speak your truth, buckle in,
And let it take you where it will.
* * * *
Wandering and puttering,
No direction known.
* * * *
Where are those danged fishermen when you need them?
* * * *
Just remember, there’s no such thing as too absurd.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved