Chapter 222 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CCXXII

No matter the language, culture, or time,
All mystics speak with the same voice.

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Within all movement,
The hub of stillness.

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Harboring ancient grudges
Will never bring peace.

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What a chasm between obligation
And that given unconditionally.

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What will you do for your line to survive?

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If you approach life with expectations,
You will often be disappointed.

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You will probably die a wretched death.

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At what level of exaggeration do you operate?

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Feel the untamed passion of life within.
Give it no direction and find where it leads.

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A physician’s prescription is only as good
As the patient’s determination to be healed.

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Ridiculously silly as it all seems,
This seems to be your most earnest work.
What drove you to this mad state?
Did you ask for any of it?

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Mankind, the great arbiter of patterns,
Conquered the world, but could not
Conquer its own virulent success.

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Where does this hunger come from?
What will completely satiate the beast?

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Life imitates its technology.

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Humility is a dusty demeanor.

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Silence is a state of mind.

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What need to control another
When you have control of yourself?

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Lethality is the punctuation of human experience.

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Everyone and everything
Deserves an acting award
In this herald’s version.

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What a foolish thing to spend your time doing.

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Something happened
And things were never quite the same.

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How alike we are in our differences.

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What’s your favorite way to die?

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You can never have enough
Until you see how little it is.

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Alas, this poor feeble body.
You have abused it well.

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Both honesty and dishonesty
Define their limits.

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Home, James.

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Word spreads quickly in a henhouse.

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A wave is far more challenging to ride than a ripple.

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Why does there need to be an answer?

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Do we need the kink of heroes history subjects us to?

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Innocent does not mean stupid,
Merely open, attentive, truly ignorant.

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Impossible to be content
With so many words you’re trying
So hard to achieve.

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Words are merely sounds given meaning.

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In your infinite wisdom,
Have you ever seen such a fool?

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For those who can delve into anything,
It’s all quite simple.

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How ridiculous to kill without need.

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It’s all different depths of superficial.

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You suffer from delusions of humility.

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Selective hearing does not for truth make.

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Must you endure every form of idiocy before it’s over?

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To be the sail, cutting the edge in the winds of time.

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It’s about personal responsibility.

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Just another version of god.

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It will all be as if it never happened.

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History is a short-lived proposition.

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How deep the need for group approval.

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Why is it people squabble so over god?
Why do they believe their version the only one?
How vain and foolish the human species not to realize
That we and every other life form are created of the same origin.
What an absurd muddle we have all made of such an obvious, simple truth.

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The checklist of an organized mind.

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Too much of everything.

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What peaceful ecstasy to let go.

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Once you understand how things work,
The knowledge applies to any form of work.

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A gift, or perhaps curse, of time.
From time to time.

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The civilized world is so out of touch
With the real rules of the game.

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What is beautiful and what is not
When one becomes the other
And the other becomes one?

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How the reflection in the mirror becomes
More and more your father or mother.

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What peace resides at effort’s ending.

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Some efforts never end, some cannot begin.

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How many possibilities are never born?

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Vanity even to think you’re not.

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We all need to make a buck somehow,
But some ways are more tiring than others.

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Essential nature is the stillness
From which elements move.
The mind is the source
Of their dance.

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The universe is a huge mind
From which all illusion is born.
Creation and destruction
Are one in the same.

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These are interesting times.

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Time has a way of evaporating.

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The compass within points home.

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Be wary of those too eager to teach you.
Find those who make the wait worthwhile.

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Spasms of this mind ponder anything and everything.

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There is a time for sound, and a time for silence.
Knowing when is for discerners to know.

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If you are afraid of errors, how will you learn?

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Mirages wading through mirages.

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Moderate you impulses.

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Why consign you soul to any other?

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The insecure crave power, fame and fortune.
Why do we so often allow smaller souls
To control so much of our destiny?

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Even Orwell could not see
How far technology would go.

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The only constant is the awareness,
And even then only for as long
As the container survives.

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If those who read this ever come
To understand your meaning,
You will be the antichrist
In its truest meaning.

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When you know where home is,
Nothing can distance you
But a poor memory.

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Ground yourself.

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All your ancestors combined
Have probably not had near as much,
Either experientially or materially.

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It is fear that blinds you
To an eternal life.

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If you are reading this sort of thing,
You may yet be an awakened “one”.

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Approach it with the deepest sincerity.

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You would probably need a lobotomy
To accept the world as your true home.

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The admonition to forsake the world
Means to still the imagination.
Become the dreamtime.

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How many ways the body can torture the soul.

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We create all this knowledge
And then delude ourselves
Into believing we really
Know something.

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Go beyond parochial schools of thought.
Their vision is limited to what they see.

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What need for god or devil?
Are you not proof enough of both?

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How useless to argue this inner vision.
Either one sees it or not.
There seems to be no middle ground.

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You are exactly the same
As everything you call else.

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Ego is as tentative
As the wall of a balloon.

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The true seeker of the unknown, the one
Who will eventually find that which is sought
Discerns a security few ever comprehend.

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How wearing life can be.
Sometimes one just longs
For the peace death will bring
From the endless striving,
The incessant craving,
And predictable constancy
Of vain ignorance and delusion.

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Most only know what their mythos
Has colluded to let them know.

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Freedom is frightening
Because of its vulnerability
To the aloofness of the unknown.

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None will ever have the same frame reference.
Every dream is unique in its snowflake indivisibility,
And the pretensions of imitation or collusion
Only multiply the pangs of suffering.

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Heed the call of your inner vision.
Follow unfailingly your inner voice.

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Most argue their limitations
To the very end of their time.

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Are you clever enough
To escape your own creation?

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Contrary to what so many would have you believe,
We are not arguing about a different god,
Only different conclusions.

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You are an adaptation to time and circumstance.

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I am the I Am that includes you,
And you are the I Am that includes me,
And we are the I Am that includes every other,
All to the point where there is no other.

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Life comes without a set of instructions.
You make up your own as you go.

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Americans like to believe they are morally superior,
That they are born with white hats and are here
To tame and teach this world full of savages.
It is a hypocrisy we would do well to drop.

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Life is always a bit sweeter
When things are going your way.

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Philosophers are a pretty useless
And expensive by-product of education.

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Humanity will probably never cease to be disappointing.
Reconciling to insanity is one of the greater challenges

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The only truth is change,
And even that is a lie.

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Don’t make promises you have no intention keeping.
Don’t make claims about which you have no proof.

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We are overwhelmed by our words,
Yet we, as in so many things we touch,
Manufacture and consume more and more.
We can neither stop nor help ourselves.


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