Chapter 224 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CCXXIV

Are you weary of this world?
Are you so awash in experience
You sometimes feel like exploding?
Have you yet discerned a point,
A purpose worthy your time?
Does this field of dreams
Offer you the home you seek?
Or are you serene beyond all knowing?
Have you discerned the source all veils hide?
Only you know the answers to these and other questions,
Only you hold the key to eternal salvation.

* * * *
What humility it takes to surrender time.

* * * *
If you hadn’t been living there so long,
You might think it was a pretty nice zone.

* * * *
To resist your life is to resist the role you were born to play.

* * * *
The masses, believing they know so much,
Miss out completely on their true reality.

* * * *
So many telling others what to do,
All the while living in the shadow
Of their pious, vain hypocrisy.

* * * *
Maybe, maybe not.

* * * *
The mind is a tool,
Not an end in itself.

* * * *
What so many call civilized is not even close.

* * * *
What great visions have not been resisted at first?
The masses habitually cling to their ignorance.

* * * *
Life is too short to put up with unbearable situations
If you have the wherewithal to avoid them.

* * * *
When even playing god would be unimportant to you,
These words will resonate with your Soul.

* * * *
Humanity has the potential to transcend its animal nature,
But that requires an intelligence, a discipline, an austerity
That relatively few have the inclination or insight to marshal.

* * * *
Watch how your body discards itself bit by bit.

* * * *
The development of languages throughout the world
That enabled us to witness countless universes,
Has proven to be a havoc-ridden blessing.

* * * *
An interesting dream best not taken too seriously.

* * * *
Sorry to be the one to tell you,
But love has not always won.
In fact, it so rarely even makes
Much more than a faint showing
That it is quite arguably nothing more
Than a four-letter, single-syllable concept.

* * * *
Gone through a lot of people to reach this point.

* * * *
The questions are endless for so few real answers.

* * * *
Why do you do this to your Self?

* * * *
Be wary of the demands of political correctness
Groupthink is the curse of the human drama,
The bane of all those seeking to know the Way.

* * * *
How much pain is life worth?

* * * *
The plebian taste bud is much more content.

* * * *
To gain Buddhahood,
One must endure every agony.

* * * *
The sand in eternity’s hourglass
Shifts in its own chaotic way.

* * * *
It can never be foretold
When the vibration of a butterfly wing
Or an explosive solar flare from across the universe
Will trigger another soul’s awakening.

* * * *
Pushing grocery cart
Down a lonely road,
Now that’s humility.

* * * *
How can anyone ever long
To keep on playing the same song
Or recite a bad joke over and over and over?
Like a dog chasing a ball, or an organ grinder monkey
Jumping for a token or a bit of stale applause,
It must get awfully, awfully old.

* * * *
If you do not hunger or thirst,
What will become of you?

* * * *
Neither know nor care.

* * * *
Peace is a simple breath away.

* * * *
Imagine the laughter
If poodles declared themselves
The highest life form.

* * * *
What seems so solid, so permanent
Is really as fluid as any stream, wind or fire.
All illusion is ephemeral.

* * * *
Your judgments
Really say more about you
Than those you judge.

* * * *
All differences the same.

* * * *
Brother, you are ripe
For a bout of self-examination.

* * * *
The road to madness has many avenues.

* * * *
Inspired leadership generally gets more from the troops.

* * * *
The court jester abides without a throne.

* * * *
Put yourself in the line of fires,
And you may well pay a price.

* * * *
When you tire of moving, sit.
When you tire of sitting, move.

* * * *
Goliath is much mightier and David much weaker
Than any flick of a stone will ever hope to prevail.

* * * *
The totality is indifferent
To all arrivals and departures
And all journeys between.

* * * *
How tiring all obligation.

* * * *
An empty vessel can be filled with anything.

* * * *
What’s yours is mine to treat with respect.

* * * *
Personal importance is an interesting delusion.

* * * *
Failure lays bare the vanity.

* * * *
Embrace oblivion.

* * * *
Maybe that’s what you need to wake up.

* * * *
There are no magic equations, no combinations of words
Which will more than briefly distract you
From the eternity within.

* * * *
The abandonment of will is the end to personal adventure.
The union of surrender is the point of all seeking.
When that which is sought is found,
The divide within is joined.
Peace reigns,
Goodwill towards all.

* * * *
It all boils down to nothing.

* * * *
Life is an opportunity to wake up,
Nothing more, nothing less.
Everything else is chaff.

* * * *
The recovery of one’s innocence requires a surrender,
A passivity, a vulnerability very challenging to master.

* * * *
Ignorance may be no excuse,
But, alas, it is all you truly have.

* * * *
All the giving in the world will not help a soul
Who will not find the strength to endure.

* * * *
You are a time machine of perception.

* * * *
What if this is heaven?

* * * *
What is physical death
But the ending of consciousness,
And the resumption of the timeless stillness?

* * * *
We’re all ghosts,
Apparitions of imagination;
Some just a bit more solid than others.

* * * *
The accidental discovery
Is the serendipity
Of eternity’s mystery.

* * * *
It is all just the movement of consciousness,
Nothing more, nothing less.

* * * *
We have created a jungle
Far more dangerous than Eden ever was.
And the only way to a safer future
Is to change our minds.

* * * *
A vivid imagination
Is the crux of the problem,
And its solution.

* * * *
The permutations of the dreaming are infinite.
If you had not meandered in this journey,
You would have wandered another.
All are equally witnessed,
Equally absolute.

* * * *
The subtlety of words depends upon the potion they brew
Within the mind of any given reader’s frame of reference.

* * * *
Hard-heartedness is the shield so many raise
To defend themselves from a world
That contorts us all.

* * * *
You are the space caught in form.

* * * *
The scribe never saw his own face.
It is not necessary that you do either.

* * * *
Why do we burden each other
With so much foolishness?

* * * *
How separated we are within our unity.

* * * *
Happiness and pleasure are not the same,
Nor are they always mutually exclusive.

* * * *
Love is a timeless, unspoken commitment.

* * * *
Why are consideration and responsibility
Such difficult options for so many?

* * * *
If, before the conclusion of your manifest dream,
You can discern even a glimmer of your original nature,
You will have earned the accolades of heaven.

* * * *
From the general is delved the specific,
And from the specific is divined the general
And round and round the cycle goes and goes.
No fire can exist without the flame of totality.

* * * *
Every life form is a play of creation and destruction.
And even though there is no other in the ultimate reality,
There would be no mortal theater without it in duality’s reality.

* * * *
Confusing and frightening
To all but those who see.

* * * *
When you lose your way,
You must slow down, even stop,
To rediscover its momentary presence.

* * * *
Divine madness is a simple path,
But not necessarily easy nor painless.

* * * *
The cosmic genesis is a tapestry beyond mortal comprehension.
Humanity’s disheveled drama is of perfection no matter our theatrics,
Yet how serene our meager existence would be if joy rather than sorrow,
Community rather than self-interest, was instead our daily fabric.

* * * *
The absurdity of idealistic notion is unending.

* * * *
But soft, you are already drifting in the abyss,
Gravity not withstanding.

* * * *
So many souls trapped in the web
Of one debilitating addiction or another.
Unable to discern the discipline of moderation,
They become locked in a hell of diminishing choices.

* * * *
Even god must wash his own bowl.

* * * *
Seems like the less you have to do in a day,
The more time you fritter away doing it.

* * * *
Heaven or hell,
The choice is yours
Each and every moment.

* * * *
Let it go.

* * * *
You may find an incredible capacity for exploring life
If you choose to transcend your fear-bound limitations.

* * * *
Suffering is the inevitable result of self-absorption.

* * * *
Who cares what anyone thinks of you,
For all reflections are ultimately your own.
Be kind to yourself, and much will be forgiven.

* * * *
You are traveling
Through a maze of your own creation.
You are a-mazing.

* * * *
You are not required to linger in hell,
Nor obligated to realize nirvana.
It is your thirst for clarity
That is the voucher.
Either way, the ride is free.

* * * *
Love is so much more than an emotion.
Emotion is fashioned by desire, by fear of loss.
Love is the source of nowness, the integrity of eternity,
Pure and simple, sovereign, absolute, infinite in its excellence.

* * * *
Another day of madness.

* * * *
That’s the mystery of it.

* * * *
Listen closely, listen well
For if you are fortunate,
Call it god’s will, call it courage,
Call it luck, call it fate,
You will find your calling.
And you will feel blessed with its meaning.

* * * *
What need for purpose
When the mystery
Offers everything required.

* * * *
What is each of us
But a spark of consciousness
Steeped in delusion?

* * * *
Sometimes the obvious
Is not to the masses,
And takes time to fathom.

* * * *
Patience takes time with a grain of salt.


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