Chapter 170 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CLXX

When the genes
Of your parents’ ancestry
Merged in your mother’s womb,
The patterning you are was set in motion.
Food was added, and the rest is memory’s projection.

* * * *
Freedom nurtures freedom.

* * * *
The dream passes more silently
As the craving for chatter dissipates.

* * * *
What do you imagine
Is so kind and loving about this world?
Have you ever closely observed
The reality of the creatures
You consider so cute?

* * * *
Humanity’s violent club has grown with technology
To a point undreamed of in prior history,
Yet what is there to learn
But that its destructive capability
Is equally devastating to whoever wields it.

* * * *
Concepts within concepts within concepts
Ad infinitum.
From whence do they all begin?

* * * *
Questions and answers.
Both come from and return to silence.

* * * *
Every nexus is a vehicle of the diversity of goodness.

* * * *
All purpose is imagined.

* * * *
Does a dull lump of unshaped clay
Adorn itself with meaning and purpose?
Only that which it is fashioned into
Would play out such vanity.

* * * *
We would laugh if an ant thought itself grand
Or a daisy sought to change itself into a rose,
Yet we cannot see our own vanity is no different.

* * * *
Duality is created by minds which do not discern
The essential nature of opposites is the same.

* * * *
Is there any difference which is not imagined?

* * * *
Transcend every thought, every concept,
Until there is nothing but pure awareness.

* * * *
Lotus bound, ye are, ye are.

* * * *
How foolish we are to destroy one another
For seeing the same thing differently.

* * * *
Stay awhile.

* * * *
A dreamer whose only dream was to become true.

* * * *
Always on the make,
He dreams in lust.

* * * *
You are the coin in this sorcerer’s dream.

* * * *
Nothing is forever.

* * * *
“What do you want?” the question.
“Nothing,” the answer.

* * * *
Have you had your fill of the loneliness, yet?

* * * *
Every bubble a universe.

* * * *
What does anyone want but a fantasy?

* * * *
What good is any so-called spiritual book
If it doesn’t relate to what’s happening now?

* * * *
Age is a cloak of invisibility.

* * * *
What will it be like with 10 billion?

* * * *
Any given expectation
Is bound, sooner or later,
To prove disappointing.

* * * *
Fooled again by your own naïveté.

* * * *
How far must you expand into the universe
To comprehend it is your own creation?

* * * *
How valiantly you have sought to fulfill your perceived purpose,
Only to finally realize it was merely a convincing concoction of thought
Given reality by the senses and your incessant craving for more.

* * * *
There is no reconciliation of the dualistic mind.

* * * *
In their ceaseless fabrication of self-made knowledge,
The sciences ever divide into increasingly finite specializations.
It may well be our undoing if we do not find visionaries
Capable of piecing back together the whole.

* * * *
Until your vision
Takes in the universe,
You will drift in hell.

* * * *
There is no suffering,
Just knots of consciousness
To be cut by the blade of discernment.

* * * *
The sense of duality is resistance to the inevitable.

* * * *
Concepts are being used herein to destroy concepts,
Until all is seen from that unlimited nature beyond concepts.

* * * *
It leaves you very much alone
In a most purifying way.

* * * *
Power, wealth and status
Tend to create divisive,
Blinding arrogance.

* * * *
Cut and slice until you discern
Only that which was never born.
The essential abyss of awareness
Wherein no concept can tread.

* * * *
Do not hold others back from Self-discovery
Simply because you are too vain to let go.

* * * *
Your attachment to limitation is what kills you.

* * * *
What would you be without all the history?

* * * *
Leave behind all your desires for a better world.
You cannot save anyone or anything,
Not even your Self.

* * * *
Could you learn as much in a lesser hell?

* * * *
What relationship
Can the finite have with infinity
But through complete and utter surrender?

* * * *
All that knowledge blinds you to reality.

* * * *
A world full of blind men;
All exploring the same elephant.
Debating parts and killing one another
Because they cannot extrapolate the whole.
And all the while, the elephant stands unconcerned.

* * * *
Fools follow fools.
The mystic follow none,
Leading where none can follow.

* * * *
With our busy lives, there is so little time
For real inquiry into the essential nature.

* * * *
No brag, just fact.

* * * *
What reconciliation can there be
Between the personal with the impersonal,
But complete surrender of the former with the latter.

* * * *
Duality can never be reconciled
Without insight into the ultimate unity.

* * * *
The interacting flow each has
With people, places, things and ideas
Is an inconceivable, kaleidoscoping dance.
Step back as far as you can imagine,
And the universe shimmers
Within a deep silence.

* * * *
Within each of us,
This impersonal nature
Witnesses the eternal theater
Forever now.

* * * *
The only way this dream
Could ever have been fair
Is for it to have never been.

* * * *
Ideals are meaningless without real intention.

* * * *
Detachment comes as you discern
You are more stillness than persona.

* * * *
No matter how expansive you may imagine it,
Any god created by consciousness
Is ever only a concept.
Until you see its reality within,
Your vision will be forever bound in time.

* * * *
Have you discerned yet
That every time you wake up,
You have this repeating nightmare
That you are a human being?

* * * *
Peace must manifest within before it ever will without.

* * * *
Gotta have a sense of humor.
Kind of like ruby slippers.
Click a couple times,
And you’re home.

* * * *
Does anyone really remember asking for this?

* * * *
Is the best we can do?

* * * *
Isness, nowness, godness, oneness…
All the same mysterious sugarness of youness.

* * * *
Without the stillness,
There would be no reference point
To discern the movement.

* * * *
It’s a relativity thing.

* * * *
No matter how infinite,
How fantastic the light show,
It is ever the same essential nature,
Which is without any attribute whatsoever.

* * * *
Contemplate an atom.
Extrapolate its essence into you,
And then expand to infinity.

* * * *
Identity is a temporary framework,
Which should not be confused
With the final de-structuring.

* * * *
Just because someone did something horrific to one of your ancestors
Does not mean you must exact revenge upon the descendants.
Do not be burdened by the whims of historical nonsense.

* * * *
What is seeking glory
But an empty bag
Of projected memories?

* * * *
What knife can harm
That which birth and death
Can never penetrate?

* * * *
Pain is not an eternal matter.
It is in the realm of mind
Locked in the continuity of time.
Pain without time is merely sensation.

* * * *
The fear of death has been used against you
In every way imaginable
Since this silly game got going.
You are, of course, a complicit player in the plot.

* * * *
There is no end to man-made knowledge of god,
But what, pray tell, does god really have to say?

* * * *
Anyone who is just looking for Jesus
Has misunderstood the Christ aspect.

* * * *
Humanity’s so-called success
Is at the same time the seed
Of its inevitable destruction.

* * * *
What exactly would you change this world into
That everyone would willingly go along with?

* * * *
Eternity is nowness in a forever kind of way.

* * * *
Hell hath no road untrammeled.

* * * *
You create and allow
The many voices of reflections
To reign your temporary, mortal existence.
To realize all are your own projection
Is one of the greater challenges.

* * * *
Love, cute and nice are all four-letter words.

* * * *
Each of us sees our own way,
Yet what each of us sees
Is in reality exactly the same.

* * * *
All any devil needs do to turn it around
Is to just start stretching its wings.

* * * *
You are neither above or below
Anything or anyone.
All arrogance is unfounded.

* * * *
The many judgments you cast
Are the ones you have yet to face.

* * * *
Seek ye god, and you will find your Self.

* * * *
Your resistance to life is ever matched
By its gritty talent at creating trials
Which transform you into wine.
Very similar to the way water
Turns mountains into silt.

* * * *
So many thoughts.
Nowhere to go.

* * * *
A gift to time.

* * * *
Share your Self.

* * * *
You are reincarnated in every thought.

* * * *
Until the mind totally merges into its unitary nature,
Consciousness will endlessly reincarnate the identity it plays,
The you, you believe you are, but have never been.

* * * *
Any revolution begins with the seed of a vision.

* * * *
Intellect caught in the web of words
Cannot fathom beyond them.

* * * *
Pride is maya’s greatest ally.

* * * *
Dredge the mind of that which is not.

* * * *
Cleverness can be so wearing.

* * * *
There is only one way,
But there are an infinity of witnesses
In which it wanders its creation.

* * * *
All concepts end at the grave,
But what you truly are
Can never die,
For it was never born.


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

Chapter 171 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CLXXI

Live life in whatever way you will,
But through it all, discern that which is untouched
By any fleeting, temporal dream.

* * * *
Few truly seek the end of oblivion’s rainbow.

* * * *
The patterns into which each is woven
Must in time play themselves out.

* * * *
Anonymity within is the most real tack.

* * * *
Activists shout from the rooftops
That the house is ablaze,
But never discern
They are among
The many arsonists.

* * * *
Taste is relative to the individual tongue.

* * * *
Every mind a bubble,
A universe unto its Self.
None really better or worse.
All equally imagined.

* * * *
The most binding snare
Is the mind’s incessant predisposition
To make eternity more complex
Than it can ever be.

* * * *
How does it feel to be locked
In a bag of wilting flesh?

* * * *
Are your emotional states
Merely association and attachment
To the chemical reactions of your mind-body?

* * * *
We do not achieve peace because so few really intend it.
The passion of separation gives a pleasurable energy,
Despite the destructive nature it vents all about us.
If everyone truly wanted a peaceful existence,
It would be happening each and every right now.

* * * *
Hell is a great time, don’t you think?

* * * *
Be sovereign.
Allow sovereignty.

* * * *
You torture yourself
Because you believe
There is something else
You should be doing.
And what would that be?

* * * *
We have made ourselves psychologically dependent
On so much.

* * * *
You are the creation and destruction,
Both loving and weary.

* * * *
There are none who lack the seed of redemption,
No matter how desolate the soil.

* * * *
Does it make much difference knowing this?
Only if you can sustain your detachment.

* * * *
You will suffer as long as you believe the play real.

* * * *
Here you are, godness come to life,
Witnessing the theater of the manifest field,
The mortal epoch filled with every twist
Of emotion, thought and deed.
What is it you want?

* * * *
It is your own soul you must discern,
Not someone else’s.
Too many follow far too long.

* * * *
What was really born of Eden
Was a vivid imagination.

* * * *
You might consider a gnat’s lifespan short,
But what makes you see yours as long?

* * * *
It is your assumption that you are a body
That creates so much suffering.

* * * *
Is all your busy-ness a facade
Designed to avoid the black box within?

* * * *
Would you be satisfied to be merely gnat consciousness?
Then why are you so content merely to be a human being?

* * * *
As to your body’s health,
Give it whatever is needed,
That it is neither a distraction,
Nor a vain burden.

* * * *
Every imaginable pact played equally well.

* * * *
The only thing to die to is identity.

* * * *
Consciousness is the manifest exponent of ignorance.
Only through disciplined inquiry into its primal nature
Can that ignorance transcend into eternal simplicity.

* * * *
The greatest context is without barrier, reason or rhyme.

* * * *
Chaos rules.

* * * *
Each imagines a unique universe.
Language and art allow disclosure,
But how quick we are to judge those
Whose arbitrary visions are not our own.

* * * *
You can only question as deeply as your fear allows.

* * * *
Though you want it to be more than it is,
You are already as it can ever be.

* * * *
Illusion is sugar-coating.

* * * *
If you look to heaven
After the physical death,
You have missed the boat.

* * * *
The body is bound to this earthly plane,
But your vision need not be.
Expand into the inconceivable limits.

* * * *
The pressure to conform is so great.
Few can discern prior to the many voices,
The many reflections of their imagined universe.

* * * *
Your quest for consistency is the inconsistency.

* * * *
The only way you can really love another
Is by first loving your Self.

* * * *
What most call love
Is a pleasant physiological response to a thought process.
It is the product of attachment to the attributes
Of the manifest theater.

* * * *
Are you individually reincarnated, or is that game
Merely your general stream of consciousness
Playing out delusion in the indivisible mind?

* * * *
Do you ever feel you belong somewhere else?
That you are really an alien disguised as a human being
Watching an extremely confused species act out
Every conceivable, often twisted contortion?
It is what drives so many to one asylum or another.

* * * *
Humanity will probably not figure it out,
But there’s no collecting on that bet.

* * * *
If existence was merely a theater of pleasure
Without the teeter-tottering pain of consciousness,
Would you, could you ever discern your ultimate reality?

* * * *
Every bit of manifest consciousness,
Every thought uttered or written
Is simply you chattering
Through diversity
To your Self.

* * * *
Godness is the patterning,
And all patterning is born of limitation.

* * * *
You have created all this knowledge, but to what end?

* * * *
There is really only one thing to know.

* * * *
You continue hoping for some magnificent fate,
As if the glory will prove you are worthy
Of that which your already are.

* * * *
Would you need to pray if you really understood
What you truly are?

* * * *
Ah, for that timeless time
When you are never parted.

* * * *
Who am I but you in yet another form?

* * * *
Sweet oblivion plays within so many forms existing not.

* * * *
What boundaries can hold any madman?

* * * *
Neither path, nor the landscape along it:
Neither river, nor the banks beside it,
You are.

* * * *
Those who know the oneness see it in all things.

* * * *
Essentially inessential.

* * * *
You were maybe for some reason expecting
This manifest world to be perfect and fair?
Hah, the joke is most certainly on you.

* * * *
You cannot hold onto anything,
So you may as well breathe well.

* * * *
As long as you ask lightshow questions,
You will get lightshow answers.
Maya begets maya.

* * * *
The tabula rasa is eternally blank.
The desire for purpose is your own concoction.
Rhyme and reason will ever be whatever will fabricates.

* * * *
Why pen all these thoughts?
Because it is amusing to chip away
At the false pretenses of human arrogance,
And perhaps even plant seeds for a time to come.
Which, of course, is the scribe’s own delusional arrogance.

* * * *
Can’t win for losing.

* * * *
You are told to become something,
But when have you ever been
Anything but what your are?

* * * *
What is integrity but integration with that which is whole.

* * * *
Whose approval do you really need but your own?
No parent, teacher, king or god can fulfill your longing.

* * * *
Seize the now.

* * * *
Palace or gutter; same glory.

* * * *
To have a perception of the past is the nature of the mind.
But to give time too much weight is the way to destruction.
* * * *
What other creatures would bother
With most of the things human beings do?
Our vain edifices are entirely of our own making.

* * * *
So many trying to change themselves or someone else.
Who is seeking the change, and what will anyone change into
That is really any different?
Gold is gold, no matter the cast.

* * * *
Psychology is about the comfort of conformity.

* * * *
Where are you
When the mind loses
All sense of time and space?

* * * *
Is gossip really any different
Than a chicken coup in uproar?

* * * *
So many voices.
Which ones speak the truth?

* * * *
There is only one way,
But no vision of it
Will ever be the same.

* * * *
Once the lotus of awareness bursts into bloom,
There is really no way to ever slumber again.

* * * *
What hell can rock your bliss
Without your volition?

* * * *
Innocence is a one-shot deal.

* * * *
What are we but primates with unwarranted airs?

* * * *
It is written, but to what end?

* * * *
You are the calm within both fair and stormy weather.

* * * *
How discontent you are
With your fleeting little role.
Would being god even satisfy you?

* * * *
Poor Jesus.
Wonder what he really thought.

* * * *
How trapped you are by all you self-made idolatry.

* * * *
Any expectation is bound to suffer disappointment.

* * * *
To rely on experts is to forego your own knowing.

* * * *
Seek the meaning of words
Beyond habitual reactions.

* * * *
Even if you could cross the universe in moment,
Your underlying awareness would still be here and now.

* * * *
What conceptual gods can ever compare
To that which is prior to all concepts?

* * * *
When will you take responsibility
For the outcomes of all your actions?
When will you take custody of your fate?

* * * *
Discipline, discipline, discipline.

* * * *
Is there any concept worth dying for?

* * * *
Be very still within,
And the pain of consciousness recedes.

* * * *
What is this craving to be known,
To be recognized by another?

* * * *
Matter-of-fact crazy.

* * * *
Looking for that nothing you will never find.

* * * *
Real power is not about titles.

* * * *
How easy it is to be distracted
All those experts who claim to know.

* * * *
So many games to learn not to play.

* * * *
You seek answers to the questions
Who, what, where, when, why and how,
But rarely glance at source desiring to know.

* * * *
How many shields, angers, fears, and resentments
Must be peeled aside to even comprehend
A child’s pliable vulnerability?

* * * *
Once you see it,
Whatever vehicle you used
Is no longer necessary in your journey.
It is perhaps even a distraction.


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

Chapter 172 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CLXXII

You are born of the original seed.

* * * *
Grasp that the identified you
Is not the you playing out
This spontaneous lightshow.

* * * *
Seek nothing but union,
And consciousness will take care of the player.

* * * *
Judgment is separation.

* * * *
Goals require desire,
And when desire diminishes,
All goals become clear and simple.

* * * *
Part of humility
Is a grace and equanimity
In moments both harsh and blessed.

* * * *
Love is a one-way street.

* * * *
We madly stampede toward the cliffs,
Violently clawing at one another,
Creating a hellish nightmare
Without any reckoning
Except utter destruction.
Both appalling and amusing.
Lemmings ain’t got nothing on us.

* * * *
We have loaded so much in our heads.
There is little room for serenity,
Good will and wisdom.

* * * *
Do you only care about the many because they are anonymous?
Do you think they care about you for any different reason?

* * * *
Habit is a precursor to inattention.

* * * *
Things might be much easier
If you would only remember to breathe.
The brain requires plenty of oxygen
And air’s other components.

* * * *
What will this world be like
When ten billion human beings
Are scrambling, clawing to survive?

* * * *
Not so Self-evident as one might think.

* * * *
How weary one becomes of all the wanting.

* * * *
To think it’s more than it is,
Is just more of the same old vanity.

* * * *
Now, if you’d been paying attention,
You’d know it weren’t time
For that particular thing to happen.

* * * *
You’ll have your feast, my friends, but not today.

* * * *
Deep down, we’re all Soul mates.

* * * *
Too infinite, really, to be called anything.

* * * *
Time can make or break any relationship.

* * * *
One twisted soul, two twisted souls,
Three twisted souls, four…
Who knows how many more?

* * * *
Gratuitous romance.

* * * *
Humility is the art of not thinking
About your many vanities all the time.

* * * *
Huff and puff all you please,
This house won’t be
Coming down anytime soon.

* * * *
Muggles everywhere.

* * * *
Unceasingly amazing
How stupid people can be
About so-called religion.

* * * *
Good thing you’re not in charge.

* * * *
Life is the creative evolution of the mystery.

* * * *
Ah, my fine pretty, the only reason
Your insolence is forgiven so readily
Is the irony of your superficial beauty.
Exhaust that, and you’ll discover
All those suitors really think.

* * * *
What we call news is just glorified gossip
With pictures and expert commentary.

* * * *
Knock, knock, knocking on the devil’s door.

* * * *
If you are insane, it is the world
That made you that way.

* * * *
What’s hotter than hot and colder than cold?

* * * *
You are the stuff of which godness is made.

* * * *
Boredom slows the clock,
Which can be nice as you age.

* * * *
It’s that old theory/reality irony again.

* * * *
Sometimes you hurt yourself more
By trying to stay in shape
Than you would
If you just took it a little easier.

* * * *
Oh boy, another stoplight.

* * * *
Emotion is overrated.

* * * *
Everything so quickly done.
Nothing you can do except let go,
And keep rolling on till death do you part.

* * * *
The concept of hell was created
By the guy who got beat up by the playground bully,
And wanted to exact some sense of revenge.

* * * *
Be considerate when possible,
And ruthless when you must.

* * * *
Just playing out your piece of eternity.

* * * *
Field notes
From a madman
Back from the sun,
Wax wings intact.

* * * *
They worship their desire and their fear and their suffering.

* * * *
The unspoilable dynamic.

* * * *
Rushing from one moment to the next,
They miss all of it.

* * * *
Sometimes the most open is the least obvious.

* * * *
Is there anyone who doesn’t one day wonder
Of sickness, injury, illness and dying:
How is this happening to me?

* * * *
When it comes to the control-nicks,
The trick is to stay beneath the radar.

* * * *
Jesus,
2000 years…and counting.

* * * *
Amazing how patient delusion makes some people.

* * * *
Unlikely any translation
Can ever completely grasp
Any given author’s exact meaning.

* * * *
Liver’s a lot cheaper.

* * * *
Suffering is a lack of presence
Coupled with denial of process.

* * * *
Time melds, time melts

* * * *
Do you really care, or do you just pretend to?

* * * *
Does the bee attend a dried-up rose?

* * * *
It’s more a matter of what you don’t want to do anymore.

* * * *
Justifying yourself is one of those Sisyphean tasks.
Chances are no one will ever totally accept you as you are.

* * * *
The joy of a true cynic
Is outraging another cynic.

* * * *
Pundits like to show off how little they know.

* * * *
You believe what you need to believe
In order to function in your world.

* * * *
An island in the storm.

* * * *
What is there in any word to believe?

* * * *
What you’re really looking for is a state of mind.

* * * *
So many things you’ll never know.

* * * *
All a state of mind.

* * * *
Another day and no form to go in the madness.

* * * *
If you don’t care, why should anyone else?

* * * *
If there was only pleasure,
There would be no pain
To unmask the unmaskable.

* * * *
From form to formless
And back again,
Water is so unattached.

* * * *
Only in consciousness
Is there pleasure and pain.

* * * *
What evidence do you have that it excludes you?

* * * *
Life is harsh,
But need we make it harsher?

* * * *
Why let emotions dictate your life?

* * * *
Not an easy fate.

* * * *
Be wary of believing any propaganda.

* * * *
Hollywood endings are not reality.

* * * *
Living for another
Will always leave one lonely
Sooner or later.

* * * *
Life is a disease
To which death is the remedy.

* * * *
It’s all about attrition.

* * * *
Everyone a linguist in their own fashion.

* * * *
Are you anyone’s promise?

* * * *
Not so hungry as you used to be, are ya?

* * * *
Any given mind is a unique mix of capacity and limitation.

* * * *
I am that I Am
You are that I Am
She is that I Am
He is that I Am
It is that I Am
We are that I Am
They are that I Am
There is nothing that is not
That I Am.

* * * *
So driven.

* * * *
Some days you’re estranged.
Some days you’re involved
Nature of the beast,
Consciousness.

* * * *
Language is just the communication between universes.

* * * *
Can you really change your mind?

* * * *
Is religion really any more than
A tattered security blanket?

* * * *
The biggest bother about growing older
Is attending all those funerals.
And you thought weddings were bad.

* * * *
Credit banks on a future yet unknown.

* * * *
Another imaginary crusade
To save the world from itself.

* * * *
Build a field,
And they might come.

* * * *
Cars passing, passing, passing.
Passengers watching, watching, watching…
What are we all seeing through the windows of our eyes?

* * * *
Surrender the many to the one.

* * * *
It’s as infinite inside as it is outside.

* * * *
It really doesn’t make sense
That some god would create you,
Then judge you for how you play a game
In which there are no clear rules.

* * * *
Plagiarists all.

* * * *
What’s the point of decaf coffee
And non-alcoholic beer?

* * * *
What evidence of a personal god does anyone have?
Believing something does not make it so.

* * * *
Fear of some speculation is a waste of breath.

* * * *
Am I supposed to be bothered
By what you think of me?

* * * *
Looking for a bigger picture.

* * * *
Does it always have to make sense?

* * * *
Better you than me.

* * * *
To be at peace is a choiceless state of mind.

* * * *
So simple that only the most simple can see it.

* * * *
What is this thing called time?

* * * *
Pretty easy to get along with people
If you play out a reflection they can tolerate.

* * * *
If only god would finally give
All these Christians their imaginary heaven.
Now, that would be good news.


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

Chapter 173 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CLXXIII

These moments of peace are brought to you by your Self.

* * * *
Tell people what they want to hear,
And they’ll usually like you.
Political expediency,
If you will.

* * * *
Without doubt,
There would be no philosophy.

* * * *
Were you born stupid,
Or are you just working yourself that direction.

* * * *
Strange how fear can dominate our lives.

* * * *
No soul can be bought or sold.
You can pretend to be bought or sold,
But it’s only pretend, because you can’t trade
What isn’t yours to own.

* * * *
It’s your piece of the pie
To do with what you will.

* * * *
Ah, something else you will never know.

* * * *
Another beautiful woman…
Ho-hum.

* * * *
There is no touching now with the mind.
One only passes through a dream.

* * * *
Some things are just more bother than they’re worth.

* * * *
An interesting illusion, self image.

* * * *
Interesting how any given history changes over time.

* * * *
It was a non-committal, political face.

* * * *
Go up a few hundred feet,
And a human being won’t come across
Much bigger than an insect.
It’s all relative.

* * * *
Sometimes it’s far more lonely in a crowd.

* * * *
Nowing now to now.

* * * *
Got lots of nothing to say.

* * * *
Temples of vanity everywhere.

* * * *
And they just keep on getting fatter.

* * * *
He’s back,
And you’ve got it all wrong.

* * * *
Your face and body
Are the reflection of your soul.

* * * *
She thinks she’s worth diamonds,
But is she really even worth a dime?

* * * *
Amazing how far a step at a time will get you.

* * * *
Seventy years of life equals
840 months, 3,640 weeks, 25,550 days,
613,200 hours, 36,792,000 minutes,
22,07,520,000 minutes, and
Who knows how many moments.

* * * *
You toy with history as if it matters.

* * * *
Money is really only a little time and toil.

* * * *
It’s all just the play of a dream.

* * * *
Might be a good idea to leave a few stones unturned
So that down the road you have something new to taste.

* * * *
Even the most perfect memory
Cannot recapture one single moment,
Nor can any given perception ever outlast time.

* * * *
Only nothing is eternal.

* * * *
Ever notice how when someone
Wants something so very, very badly,
The desire to give it to them tends to shrivel.

* * * *
Or is it just you?

* * * *
In the actuality of daily living, there is nothing but choice.
But the essence from which all life, all form is born
Does not embrace any choice whatsoever.

* * * *
Ultimate truth is not about the persuasion
Of choice-filled, time-bound propagandas.

* * * *
When you’re young, all you see is youth.
As you age, the range and variety
Seems to expand daily.

* * * *
Morality is a personal issue,
But why ruin someone else’s life
For a few moments of gratification?

* * * *
If chickens had fur, and were a bit cuter,
We probably wouldn’t eat them, either.

* * * *
Divine madness doth reign
In a mind that hath no bounds.

* * * *
Is it a matter of following,
Or of mirroring the reflection within?

* * * *
It takes a lot of pain to be detached.

* * * *
Why be in such a rush?
You’ll be passing through that now soon enough.

* * * *
What is more important: To know god,
Or to know you are that which is godness?

* * * *
Wet ain’t so bad, as long as you stay dry,

* * * *
Once you’ve seen beyond experience,
All experiencing becomes relative.

* * * *
That’s about as fast as that needs to happen.

* * * *
In the eternal sense, one now is as good as another.

* * * *
There’s usually room for one more.

* * * *
Why not you?

* * * *
Should be okay as long as nobody does anything stupid.

* * * *
Once upon a time,
The future seemed so far away.
Now it’s here, and that, too,
Is slipping so quickly
Into another day.

* * * *
Wasn’t so long ago that things were so different.
The pace is quickening so quickly now.
A roller coaster out of control.

* * * *
You used to be so fearless.
What happened?

* * * *
It’s a total thing.
No partials allowed.

* * * *
How do you enlighten
The people who are exclusive
That it’s all-inclusive?

* * * *
Who can hear what cannot be said?

* * * *
Let the cosmos decide the fate of our time.

* * * *
There’s always somewhere else you’d rather be,
But even there, here you are now.

* * * *
The first and most precious gift
You have ever received
Was a breath.
But nothing lasts forever,
And someday death will take it back.
Your physical body’s last act, conscious or not,
Will be a long, full exhale into oblivion.

* * * *
Judgment is just another twisted form of desire.

* * * *
Ever wonder if you’ll live to regret it?

* * * *
Have you ever looked around
And wondered at how truly grotesque
So many human beings are?
The flesh that was once so firm and supple
Eventually bloats, sags, and discolors to such appalling ends.
Only the mind’s capacity for delusion makes it tolerable to abide for any duration.

* * * *
Despite what the newspaper said,
They probably didn’t perish instantly.
In fact, they likely suffered intolerable pain
Much longer than you’d care to know.

* * * *
There’s really no glory in anything
Except your imagination.

* * * *
Amazing how freeing it is
When what any other thinks of you
Is no longer of any concern.

* * * *
Relax, it’s only time.

* * * *
Like being up on top of a mountain, totally alone.

* * * *
You never know when your last moment will be,
So enjoy each and every one possible
In whatever way you will.

* * * *
At least you’re still moving.

* * * *
Even the tortoise eventually gets to the finish line.

* * * *
That guy has got a serious issue
With the size of his penis.

* * * *
Gossip is a world-wide phenomenon.
A certain amount of it will be about you.
Get over it.

* * * *
It’s not like you’re the only one who sees it, you know.

* * * *
Sometimes the obvious
Just isn’t warm and fuzzy enough
For those seeking comfort.

* * * *
Sorry, but your delusion just isn’t all that interesting.

* * * *
Fill it however you please,
Your entire life is a brief window
Into the misty fog of time and space.

* * * *
If you’re into measurement, have I got a world for you.

* * * *
You don’t have to keep processing this, you know.

* * * *
Survived another little journey in time, eh?

* * * *
Amazing what the will to survive will endure.

* * * *
Don’t let time intimidate you.

* * * *
As you get older,
You realize so many things,
Once so important,
Aren’t at all.

* * * *
Eternity is a longer time than long can be.

* * * *
The way things ought to be
Ain’t the way they are.

* * * *
If god is what so many think,
Then he is as finite as you.

* * * *
The reality is you are only a breath from death,
Therefore, if you must identify with something,
A breath is much more vital than any thought.

* * * *
A marketing swirl.

* * * *
You don’t have to keep processing this, you know.

* * * *
Amazing what the will to survive will endure.

* * * *
There are some people you would be sorry to kill.

* * * *
Lost your humor again, I see.

* * * *
You aren’t the first, and won’t be the last.
You are the first, you are the last.

* * * *
Here and now is the here now your mind allows.

* * * *
A neurological dream.

* * * *
We’re all strangers.

* * * *
There is no shortage of vanity in this world.

* * * *
Death’s easy.
It’s life that’s the bitch.

* * * *
Whatever dream you play out
In any scenario of this vast light show
Are all imagined realities untouched by reality.

* * * *
Why? Because it seems to be amusing
To play an endless game of hide and seek,
To lose and discover your Self again and again
In the infinite maze of eternity timing and spacing.

* * * *
The only way to get past all delusion
Is to reside Soully in the stillness of absoluteness.
Not an easy thing for any to want to do.
Maya smiles at the challenge.

* * * *
The wages of our separation
Are collected in so many ways.

* * * *
When you close your eyes, shut off the senses,
Where is the world but in your imagination?

* * * *
Grief over one loss or another
Is an act of selective self-absorption.
All forms succumb to the changing nature.
None are immune, and that for which one grieves
Is but a projection, a denial offering no tonic but delusion.

* * * *
In any well-intentioned deed,
There will be the seed of mayhem.
In any so-called iniquity there will reside
A purity few will ever comprehend.

* * * *
You will know as much at the end
As you did in the beginning.

* * * *
Rushing inattentively through space-time,
You so often miss the unfolding now,
The play of light and shadow
As it mysteriously unfolds
Without any concern or doubt.
Would that you were so care free.

* * * *
If you are in a muddled morass,
There is no use blaming all the others.
You must get your Self out,
Or perish trying.

* * * *
To be vulnerable, open, receptive,
The walls of resistance must dissolve.
To see those is the death of identification,
The ending of sorrow and confusion.


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

Chapter 174 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CLXXIV

How challenging to project your infinite view upon the world.

* * * *
Surrender requires an at-easeness with death.

* * * *
It might be important to somebody’s dream.

* * * *
Wandering through the maze of time,
Alone no matter where you are.

* * * *
Every start, every stop
Opening up your life to a new aspect
Of this mystery adventure.

* * * *
It will unfold as all things do.

* * * *
What would you really do
If you were in the same situation?
Easier said than done.

* * * *
Are you true to your word?

* * * *
Taking life and times personally
Is a great way to experience hell.

* * * *
Assumptions are inevitably flawed.

* * * *
Giving your all to anything you do
Is a great source of contentment

* * * *
Ironic that innocence so often suffers the most.

* * * *
Don’t be too quick to judge.
It might just happen to you.

* * * *
There are really no winners and losers.
There is just process.

* * * *
Seems inevitable that as soon
As you think yourself so hot,
That you fall flat on your face.

* * * *
The only real expectation is that nothing will last.

* * * *
It’s all good; it’s all bad.
It’s all whatever it is.

* * * *
Scary as it may be, you are the standard
By which your universe is measured.

* * * *
Undifferentiated chaos is the order of the day.

* * * *
Some people never get out
Of the little box of their mind.

* * * *
Everything in your universe is arbitrary.

* * * *
Life’s drama seems to boil down
To assumptions being taken
Far too personally.

* * * *
Aging is about seeing your father or mother in the mirror.

* * * *
To be reborn is to see the world wonderously anew.

* * * *
Great havoc can come from living for what others think.

* * * *
You are the creator and destroyer of universes,
However many there may have been, or will be.

* * * *
What prevents your seeing the greatest vision?

* * * *
One of those days
When memories trigger
One after another.

* * * *
You are witness to the changing of your universe.

* * * *
Have you ever wondered
At the many common features
Of so many creatures upon this world?
How obvious we are cousins of the same origin.

* * * *
Into the sun and back again.

* * * *
Look closely, breathe deeply.
You may never experience this again.

* * * *
When it comes down to it,
Every single one begin anew
Every single moment.

* * * *
Even the most attentive
May fall from grace
Occasionally.

* * * *
Slowly but surely, humanity expands
To the given limits of this world.

* * * *
Keep on pushing that rock, you fool.

* * * *
As one philosopher in time is said to have said,
The only true philosophical question is suicide.

* * * *
Such a harsh reality that things so easy in youth
Become more and more challenging
With every passing year.

* * * *
Which came first, winter or spring?

* * * *
So much pondering dissolving.

* * * *
Too many terrains for memory to recall.

* * * *
What does forever really mean?

* * * *
How can you believe love is attached to any form?

* * * *
To fathom the unfathomable,
You must be unfathomable.

* * * *
A back burn for the fire raging out of control.

* * * *
There are those who feel and those who think.
Heaven and hell know the journey taken.

* * * *
All these words saying the same thing so many ways.

* * * *
What can you save in a dream?

* * * *
Without thought there would be no illusion of continuity.

* * * *
To simply be,
Without identification,
Is your true nature.

* * * *
Humanity’s course will not significantly alter
If ignorance does not surrender to a higher vision.

* * * *
The greatest club has always wielded the law to its own ends.

* * * *
Generally, the more you think you have,
The more you think you have to watch.

* * * *
All those others merely projections
Created by a vivid imagination.

* * * *
What unwarranted suffering
All the concepts of god have wrought
Upon life in this illusory sphere.

* * * *
Earth, wind, water and fire are what they are
Because they surrender completely to the moment.
Like an electrical circuit, it is resistance that defines the flow.

* * * *
Humanity’s arrogant egocentricity will be its undoing.

* * * *
Bury the dead and let them rest in peace.
Do not bring them back to your hell.

* * * *
Dust to dust, oblivion to oblivion.
All that remains is a temporary memory
In a few other journeys to the same graveyard.

* * * *
During those moments
When you are caught in time,
When you have mislaid your way,
When your attachment to the world
Has created the imagined havoc
Only a psyche in disorder can,
Look within, study resolutely,
Until all becomes apparent
And time again disappears.
Practice, practice, practice,
Until you are eternally eternity.

* * * *
Even the most enlightened
Stumble and fall countless times.

* * * *
The worship of personality,
Of the body, and all its attachments,
Is the route of fallen angels.

* * * *
It’s just a dream, real and unreal,
Temporary and full of empty meaning.
Relax and enjoy the show as best ye may.

* * * *
The knack for discernment
Is effortlessly hard-won.

* * * *
No point to it.

* * * *
All in your head, all in your head.

* * * *
If you can only listen to lies,
Then that’s what you’ll get.

* * * *
So close, yet so far.

* * * *
It starts and ends in you.

* * * *
You’re stuck now.

* * * *
The pettiness in which you enshrine
Your conceptual dualistic god
Is idolatrous blaspheme.
Unless you become that god nature,
You have merely enshrined the mind.

* * * *
What black box is not lightened once peered into?

* * * *
To heal the rifts in the human drama,
A new resonance beyond words
Must somehow come about.

* * * *
Any given scripture will mean
What you are ready for it to mean.

* * * *
Those who are ready will find it and perish.

* * * *
You are the center
Of a personal universe,
Which really has no center.

* * * *
Once you know your Self,
You know all there really is to know.

* * * *
The breath is the most apparent connection with the allness.

* * * *
Godness, oneness, allness, isness, nowness,
Amness, timelessness, spacelessness.
All choicelessly ness-ing away.

* * * *
The kernel of godness
Resides at the nucleus of your being.
Your fruition is a free-will matter
Born of a choiceless nature.

* * * *
Though it may often seem a hard journey,
It’s end is sweet.

* * * *
To be reborn into the spirit
Is not about belief or faith.
It is not a thought process.
It is an unquestionable realization
Prior anything the senses can ever discern.
It is a holy union with that which is eternal prior to all form and function,
Prior all time and space, prior to all concept and limitation.

* * * *
To know one’s godness as a manifest life form
Is a aspiration few will ever discern.
Though the many are called,
Why so few are inclined
Is the real mystery.

* * * *
Even when light
Is shined full force,
The blind cannot see.

* * * *
The void is not.

* * * *
All paradigms are creations
Of minds born of limitation.

* * * *
There is only one dancer dancing.

* * * *
The body is your vehicle to explore this manifest dream.
It is not meant to last, so treat it as gently as you are able.

* * * *
How foolishly, stupidly vain and unnecessary it is to be dogmatic.
What you truly are is the law and the lawlessness,
The principled and the unprincipled,
The king and the pawn,
The saint and the sinner.
Hypocrisy is the outcome for all
Pretending otherwise.

* * * *
You want so badly to live a spiritual life,
Yet when have you not?

* * * *
It is the mind that creates all blocks to reality.
When it ceases to function in separation,
One dances in a very different way.

* * * *
Even the greatest debilitation
Cannot cause separation
Without your consent.

* * * *
It’s just what you do.
No biggee, really.

* * * *
No sin is too great to bar the journey home,
Yet even the greatest angels sometimes stumble
Into the hell of consciousness wrought by time.
The mind is not something to toy with lightly.

* * * *
These words do tell
Of the spaceless timelessness
In which you truly dwell.

* * * *
Just doing what needs to be done,
And saying what needs to be said.

* * * *
On time and space we do depend,
At least until the journey’s end.

* * * *
Don’t grow up.
Grow young.

* * * *
You are, have been, and will be
Every form ever fashioned
In this manifest dance,
Yet your essential actuality
Can never be bound by any of it.

* * * *
How enjoyable, spaciousness.

* * * *
All claims to being anything
Are distortions of the ultimate fact.

* * * *
So easy to forget you’re supposed to be acting older.

* * * *
Are you free in your own mind?

* * * *
Do not assume all the other life forms,
And the elements of earth, wind, water and fire
Are caught up in the same identification
With time and space as you.
Their immediacy is Eden’s eternity.

* * * *
The Garden of Eden never disappeared.
You have simply lost sight of its eternal presence.
It was very apparent when you were a child,
And will be again if you grow old young.


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

Chapter 175 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CLXXV

We are still in the unfolding genesis,
And will be for as long as time endures.

* * * *
Let us all help one another discover
This eternal insight into our ultimate nature.
It is a journey all have an equal birthright to discern.

* * * *
How privileged you are to witness
The vastness beyond the personal aspect.
Yet be cautious of the arrogance it can bring about,
For it in no way makes you superior
To anything or anyone else.

* * * *
You and the father and mother,
Or whatever you may call it, are one
Whether you become conscious of it or not.

* * * *
The bane of the human tendency to band together
Is that the resulting synergy too often becomes an end in itself
With less and less concern for the individuals that it supposedly serves.

* * * *
These writings will bring about
The end of the world as you know it.

* * * *
Healing the sick, walking on water, raising the dead,
Changing water to wine, resurrecting oneself…
So what?

* * * *
To be born into the world,
Each raised in the knowledge
That they are that which is godness,
Void of all superstition, ritual and dogma…
Now that would be heaven on earth.

* * * *
Perchance it might aid in changing things.

* * * *
To discern all potentials within,
Yet choose only those that benefit all,
Those looking to the greater good,
That is the nature of those
Who see they are
The suns of godness.

* * * *
Attachment to the world is all in your mind,
But when was it ever really “your” mind?

* * * *
Free will is the illusion.
It is the maze to which the key
To freedom is surrender.

* * * *
What a mystery this day-to-day
A dream both real and unreal,
A vapor passing ever now.

* * * *
All the sustenance of the world
Cannot feed the hungry soul,
Nor quench its savage thirst.

* * * *
“A work of straw,” exclaimed one author
Of his philosophical works at his deathbed.
True enough, but wasn’t it good fun at the time?

* * * *
From womb and sandbox
To playground and classroom.
From local to national to international,
From earth to galaxy to universe,
The journey of imagination,
From finite to infinite,
Is without limits.

* * * *
Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu,
And all the many others
Have all been played.
Now you play you.
There is no need
To imitate them.

* * * *
It is not what or how you think,
But the movement of thought itself
That must be discerned to comprehend
That which seeks is that that which is sought.
The flickering passage of consciousness
Is the patterning, is the youness,
The nowness, the isness,
The godness,
The one
And only one.

* * * *
However it is named is only a name.

* * * *
The journey, be it fast or slow,
Is ever of the same motionlessness.

* * * *
In the stillness, time and space are transcended.

* * * *
Truth is imperceptible.

* * * *
You are the eternal fact unfolding in dreamtime.

* * * *
The way you see the universe
In which you wander
Is founded upon
Whatever information
Your mythos has provided you.

* * * *
Is illusion even possible without language?

* * * *
If you were truly free,
Would it, could it
Even occur to you?

* * * *
When everything in the day-to-day is complete,
Give space your time and time your space.

* * * *
You may as well live courageously.
What point is there to fearing your fate
When all ends are the same grave?

* * * *
Pride is the destroyer of Eden.

* * * *
Reaction is founded upon conditioning,
Response upon effortless discernment.

* * * *
Forget all you think you know.
It is all an encumbrance
To discerning the way home.

* * * *
All you are is words.

* * * *
Perfection of the personality is a non-issue.
Fusion within is not a matter of class,
Ethnicity, culture, creed or politics.
Nor any patterning the flittering
Of consciousness might undertake.
It is a journey playing out whatever cards,
Be they fair or not, that any given fate has dealt.

* * * *
Can the manifest plane
Ever know true harmony?
Only time will tell.

* * * *
In a way difficult to express,
Whether pleasurable or painful,
How equal each moment becomes.

* * * *
So many praying for forgiveness,
Never seeing they need only
Forgive themselves.

* * * *
Once you discover your true nature,
What is there to do with the time remaining
But whatever the path of least resistance offers?

* * * *
All this emphasis on fun, pleasure, entertainment.
Would any of it be necessary if you were content?

* * * *
Potential is only as good as one’s interest in pursuing it.

* * * *
Nothing’s never good enough for so many.

* * * *
The pot once again declares the kettle black.

* * * *
Hmmm… to which conspiracy theory should you subscribe?

* * * *
Nothing’s the potential in all.

* * * *
A wild mix of incoherence.

* * * *
Amazing how any fact
Can be twisted around
By the need to believe.

* * * *
Tugging at the plug.

* * * *
You are far more a breath than a thought.

* * * *
We all break each other’s cherries sooner or later.

* * * *
Realize that all meaning and purpose is born in your mind.
It is your creation, your speculation, your collusion.
It is not verifiable in any way, shape or form.
Pretend what you will, all identification
Is a surreal, momentary dream.
You are proof of that.

* * * *
Be content that it is so.

* * * *
In far less than a hundred years,
You will not care one diddly-squat
What anyone said or thought of you,
Or even what you thought of yourself.

* * * *
Death is one big eraser.

* * * *
Future generations will look back at this era,
And curse us for what we have done to them.

* * * *
You must use your personal view
To extrapolate the infinite one.

* * * *
Ancient superstitions founded
Upon the ignorance and resulting fears
Of the human psyche continue to wreak havoc.
To discern the fear, its source,
And the causelessness prior to it,
Is the challenge each must face alone.

* * * *
What a pathetic mockery
This world’s so-called religious leaders
Have made of this mystery.

* * * *
Habits are made to be broken.

* * * *
To see how insignificant you are in this infinity
Is to discern how infinite you truly are.

* * * *
Dead poets don’t require compensation.

* * * *
Even if we were all see to this,
Life would remain very much a challenge.
The issue is how much better we could get along
With fewer inane dogmatic assertions.

* * * *
Yes indeed, that’s very Christian.
Very Christian, indeed.

* * * *
How is it so many remain blind to the hellish blaspheme
They have been corn fed by so-called spiritual leaders
Since long before the seeds of culture took root?

* * * *
The personality who engraved these words is unimportant,
Merely a focus of useless chatter and speculation.
The continued parody of ceaseless thought.
Find your Self, and you will know every scribe,
Every seer and mystic this dream has ever known.

* * * *
The only real solution to the human drama
Is seeing clearly what we truly are.
From that, what will blossom
Has yet to be written.

* * * *
Organized religion is like leftover silage.

* * * *
We are following the trails of peoples
Who never observed the universe
Through telescopes or microscopes,
Who never witnessed the earth from space,
Who never discerned any geography outside their own.
Why do we allow them sway over our time?

* * * *
Is what we are doing
With our ballooning population
Really any different than flies swarming
Over a three-day-old pile of shit?

* * * *
We are all the suns of man and god.

* * * *
Condemnation leaves no room for understanding.

* * * *
How arduous it is to discern the unity
Behind the many masks of diversity.

* * * *
No one else can ever grasp what your eyes see,
Your ears hear, your tongue tastes, your nostrils smell,
Your skin senses, or your mind ponders.
Your pleasures and pains,
Your heaven or hell,
The universe
You have created,
Is yours and yours alone.

* * * *
You are the spawn of eternity.

* * * *
You are a student of consciousness.
Masked by countless masks,
It is ever the same.

* * * *
There’s really nothing that needs to be said or written,
But consciousness is absorbed in its endless chatter.
Somewhat akin to Narcissus falling for his reflection.

* * * *
Here we go again.

* * * *
Terrorists are as impossible to battle as ants, cockroaches or flies.
They just keep on streaming from unseen corners,
And there is always another day.

* * * *
The passion of hate
Is all but inexhaustible.

* * * *
The only difference between any you
And a wafting curl of smoke
Is consciousness.

* * * *
Another unwinnable war.

* * * *
A woman’s view of reality is often in no way realistic.

* * * *
A dancing cloud of atoms
Reforming again and again.

* * * *
In all reflections sits the god of vanity.

* * * *
A new level of surrender.

* * * *
The churning pool has no time for reflection.

* * * *
The voice is the spring of the essential nature.

* * * *
To see the world in all its immeasurable detail
Is the blessing and curse of the mystical mind.

* * * *
Organized religions are towers of babble.

* * * *
The challenge for any soul
Is to somehow retain its innocence
In an oft times ruthless world.

* * * *
A coyote cannot hide its eyes for long.

* * * *
In all their ignorance,
Religions everywhere battle
Over that which is inherently given,
Over that which can never be subjugated,
Over that which no mind can no more than witness,
Over that which, despite all assertions,
Is prior to any given notion.

* * * *
Tell it to the judge.

* * * *
Ignorance creates faith to sustain its vanity.

* * * *
Are you content?
Why or why not (In 50 words or less)?

* * * *
Your mind is the expanding universe.

* * * *
Occasionally peek into places you normally wouldn’t.
You might learn something.

* * * *
The nefarious tribe at it again.
Oh well.


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

Chapter 176 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CLXXVI

As soon as you believe
You’ve finally figured it out,
A gust of wind casts it asunder
For the thousandth time that day.

* * * *
How fresh, how weary an immortal soul
Encased in mortal flesh and time can be.

* * * *
Takes one to know one.

* * * *
Another absent-minded moment
Lost to perception.

* * * *
If they know how they were being watched,
What would they say and do?
Look to history for your answer, Pilgrim.

* * * *
Many doors open the young and innocent,
Many of which they will oft times wish hadn’t.

* * * *
Looking for something in which no form can be found.

* * * *
Anonymity cannot be found.
That which is given need not be sought,
For it is in the living seen.

* * * *
Buddha in a baseball cap.

* * * *
They who do not look can never see.

* * * *
A rotting carcass not yet a day old.

* * * *
Much easier to let stupidity rule.

* * * *
Feel fortunate you do not see me,
For I would test your field of vision.

* * * *
You might be loved forever
If it were not flesh
About which we were talking.

* * * *
You have seen enough shores
To know they count as one.

* * * *
Brakes work best when their use in intended in advance.

* * * *
Youthful flesh makes fools of all.

* * * *
If you had it, would you still want it?

* * * *
As any group is held back
By its slowest lollygag,
So is a species.

* * * *
It is sheer randomness that creates heaven.

* * * *
With dying comes the realization
That it was all a mirage.

* * * *
The toll of age comes to all who survive their youth.

* * * *
It is in the everyday mundane you will find your Soul.

* * * *
It’s been a pretty good container,
Considering what you’ve put it through
To reach this moment in this vast mystery.

* * * *
The universe is a masterpiece
Set to any scale you please.

* * * *
It’s always a good day to die.

* * * *
Armed with paper, pen and mind,
You wander into the arena uncontested.

* * * *
Most lose interest in a game
That has no discernable score.

* * * *
Looking for a witness
To your self-absorbed glory
Is a lifetime of incessant delusion.

* * * *
There will perhaps come a time
When even your own silly game,
You will no longer be able to play.

* * * *
Strength is nothing without flexibility,
Dexterity, capacity, wit and endurance.

* * * *
To be content; completely, absolutely satisfied
At that last whispered whiff of awareness
Will be life’s greatest challenge.

* * * *
It will be into the far distant future
That this wordy shadow shall cross.
Only a few need keep the ember aglow.

* * * *
Step back from the windswept crest,
And celebrate what time remains
With a resurgence of sanity
All but lost in history’s
Present unfolding.

* * * *
Toying with the future of time.

* * * *
The best diet plan is getting lost
In a forest for a week or three.

* * * *
Tis an answer only mind’s play will play out.

* * * *
To play so far ahead in time
Is to be very much present.

* * * *
Every game has its players and watchers.
Which be ye?

* * * *
Belief is often a parasitic venture.

* * * *
They pay no more attention to your game
Than you do theirs.

* * * *
In this mystic’s odyssey,
Commitments have been short,
And the usual mix of bitter and sweet.

* * * *
All states of consciousness are relative.
All are temporal parts of the corporate whole
Very much the same at the most essential level.
Any claims to the contrary are delusional.

* * * *
Science is always playing catch-up.

* * * *
Let each be a prophet unto Self.

* * * *
There is no one way to express the One Way.

* * * *
Eternity is the lair into which even dragons fear treading.

* * * *
As present as the tides of consciousness allow.

* * * *
Endless chatter.
No different, really, than the babbling
Of any given brook.

* * * *
There is an absolute,
But it is very much prior
To anything consciousness
Can ever even imagine spinning.

* * * *
More useless numbers.

* * * *
Friends are reflections who like us,
Enemies those too similar to tolerate.

* * * *
A pretty large theater this planet offers this passion play.

* * * *
You yearn so badly for it to matter,
And that it doesn’t, and never will,
Is the source of incessant pain.

* * * *
Thank you, kindly.

* * * *
Humanity’s fate is dark beyond the horizon.

* * * *
Infinite patience
Is a one-moment-at-a-time
Kind of thing.

* * * *
Misguided expectations inevitably
Bring about conflict and suffering.

* * * *
Few will ever take care of you
As well as you will yourself.

* * * *
You don’t have to tell them what you think.

* * * *
I have done it all through you.

* * * *
Shopper hell would be without malls, sales and holidays.

* * * *
As moths to light,
Humans to consciousness.

* * * *
Expectations and disappointment
Have some sort of inverse ratio.

* * * *
Shit waiting to happen.

* * * *
Lots of nothing special.

* * * *
You are delusional like all the rest.

* * * *
And what do you think that proves?

* * * *
Well intentioned, but misguided.

* * * *
Belief is just the speculation
With which you are most comfortable.

* * * *
The wayward mystic.

* * * *
Try unbecoming.

* * * *
Funny what we get used to,
What each calls normal.

* * * *
But for imagination, you have never existed.

* * * *
A speck of sand,
A drop of water,
A ray of light,
You are.

* * * *
Everything short of infinity is limited foolishness.

* * * *
The universe is just a larger womb.

* * * *
The unwavering solitude
Cannot be offset
By any number of others.

* * * *
Despite the fact
That time is illusion,
It’s a rather curious thing
That you can never go back.

* * * *
Those psycho-babblers seem to have
A label for everything, don’t they?

* * * *
The harder you try, the further away it gets.

* * * *
All things to all people.

* * * *
Vanity is the pride of consciousness.

* * * *
In the end, diddley-squat is its name.

* * * *
Where no tourista can go.

* * * *
Who came up with the idea to call it progress?
Was it the same guy who defined resources?

* * * *
A god based on vanity is no god at all.

* * * *
If all you knew was a forest,
Valley, desert, mountain or seaside.
How could you ever imagine anything else?

* * * *
A consistent process of discovery and rediscovery.

* * * *
Daily, fewer and fewer growing up
With a relationship with nature.

* * * *
Do you really know what you are, anymore?

* * * *
The ambitious have always drug everyone else in their wake.

* * * *
Any given mind is ever juggling
Whatever universe it contains.

* * * *
What is Mount Everest to an ant?
What is the universe to a microbe?

* * * *
Wake up to your world.

* * * *
Feel the sanity of a complete breath.

* * * *
You really can’t more than a priori now.
Why would you want to live forever?

* * * *
Misunderstood again and again.

* * * *
No reason to count the miles
On the highway to nowhere.

* * * *
Good god, laugh at yourself a bit more.
You are a joke of sorts, you know.

* * * *
Your wealth is beyond words.

* * * *
Seize the moment.

* * * *
Sure ripe for that lesson, ain’t ya?

* * * *
The answer is that there is really
No question that needs and answer.

* * * *
Ignorance is always making claims
That inquiry cannot sustain.

* * * *
A timely death.

* * * *
Infinitely tall, infinitely small.

* * * *
A dream some call life.

* * * *
Only a fool teases a hornet’s nest.

* * * *
Sometimes it’s doing that counts.
Sometimes being’s just enough.

* * * *
Depends which version of history
To which you subscribe.

* * * *
Whenever hope enters the picture,
There probably isn’t much.

* * * *
Wisdom is much less interesting than a good erection.
That’s why it’s usually the domain of the old and wizened.

* * * *
All too often life consists of shuffling things back and forth.

* * * *
Plain and simple, time travel is not possible
Because there’s really no such thing as time.

* * * *
We battle over instinctual tribal patterns
Born of imagination’s beginnings.

* * * *
If godness is in your heart,
As so many scriptures assert,
Then what does that make you?


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

Chapter 177 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CLXXVII

You are a brief expression of godness.
Nothing more and nothing less.
And so is everything else.
Despite all claims to the contrary,
It is all quite equal in the way most divine.

* * * *
Inside jokes can be tough on the outsiders.

* * * *
Nature’s vendetta yawns and stretches for a new day.

* * * *
All you know are the countless concoctions of consciousness,
As real as the shimmering moonlight reflecting upon the ocean surface.

* * * *
You will never discern your true nature
If you cannot step outside yourself.

* * * *
Your body is a receiver designed
To play out a contextual software.
How you process it is up to you.

* * * *
Wake up to how asleep you truly are.

* * * *
What are you but Soul in a body bag?

* * * *
No face captures you for long.

* * * *
I Am is with you always.

* * * *
What you truly are is quite senseless.

* * * *

The reason you believe a messiah will return to save you
Is because what was taught the first time was not understood.
And because so many since have manipulated the words
To such a blatantly, pathetically absurd degree.

* * * *
If you are honest with your Self,
You will admit how little you know.

* * * *
Anyone who thinks they are Christ, Buddha or any of the others
Is caught up in an identity crisis of delusional proportion.

* * * *
Try not to torture yourself so for being
Forced to play out pretending
You are a human being.
It is really only
A temporary affliction.
The trick is to make the best
Of whatever fate you’ve been funded.

* * * *
A god by any other name is exactly the same.

* * * *
Ideals are the stomping ground of ignorance and delusion.

* * * *
Cities are like anthills teeming
With every insanity imaginable.

* * * *
Political correctness has no place in the quest for truth.

* * * *
You’re only good for now.

* * * *
Consciousness is mental disturbance.

* * * *
It is what is no matter what anyone anywhere believes.

* * * *
The mystery of how
The inanimate became animate
Flows in your veins.

* * * *
Destiny is a rainbow of possibilities brought to light.

* * * *
You’ve a life work yet to complete.
What is it?

* * * *
New silliness always dribbling out
In the odd moments of the wandering.

* * * *
All the faces are running together like drops in a stream.

* * * *
Aphorisms are mindful increments.

* * * *
Give an animal an ego
And it will call itself
A human being.

* * * *
The artful politician is just someone
With a great capacity for bullshit.

* * * *
Life is often not what you would prefer it to be.
How you meet the gap between reality and your ideals
Is the measure of your capacity for suffering.

* * * *
As you surrender yourself over to it,
As the block regains its uncarved origin,
You will likely become more and more vague
About the identification and purpose
Of which others seem so sure.

* * * *
Ann Landers, Miss Manners, and Abigale Van Buren
Can take a flying leap off a tall cliff.
Be untamable.

* * * *
Those who see do not necessarily live easier lives.

* * * *
Who is it who resists?

* * * *
Those who think they are so necessary
Often are not, and perhaps even only
Burden others with their presence.

* * * *
When it finally takes you over,
There really won’t be much choice.

* * * *
Yours is the only world you can really impact

* * * *
For humanity to believe itself superior
To the eternal patterning is a road to extinction.
We weave ourselves out of the weaving
Into a corner of our own making.

* * * *
Imagine heaven, imagine hell.
Can there be a real difference?

* * * *
Either you see what you truly are,
Or you do not.
What middle ground can there be?

* * * *
Personal characteristics
Are merely temporal outcomes
Of any given chemical permutation.

* * * *
Amazing what some find attractive.

* * * *
But for the many thoughts you give it,
There would be no universe,
No world, no theater
For vanity’s incessant drama.

* * * *
You need not justify your existence
To any of the voices within.
They have no real say
Regarding your eternal nature.

* * * *
What to do with your creation is an unfolding question
Answered with each moment’s choiceless passing

* * * *
When you can see everything and nothing,
You will be it.

* * * *
Let the world go when it no longer concerns you.

* * * *
Play the fool, play the sage.
Two sides of the same coin.

* * * *
To see it absolutely is your end.

* * * *
Those who walk between heaven and earth
Are very awake and sleep very soundly.

* * * *
What a distraction knowledge is.
Beneath its unremitting movement
Is such an ocean of timeless stillness.

* * * *
Do you really think the voice within
Is really any different than anyone else’s?

* * * *
That Self which perceives all, knows all, is all,
That you in the most mysterious sense;
How incomprehensible it truly is.
No mind will ever fathom
Its infinite reaches.

* * * *
Your endless quest for hedonistic excess
May pursue you with a terrible vengeance.

* * * *
When the personal mind
Ceases to exist in the known,
A deep serenity is all that remains.

* * * *
What passionate emotions desire manifests.

* * * *
Our ability to communicate,
To share our visions with each other,
Has turned out to be both a blessing and a curse.
We have achieved an amazing ability to manipulate our world,
Yet increasingly stagger in an exponential quagmire
To which the inevitable conclusion may be
Complete and utter destruction.

* * * *
Some might call it insanity.
Others a broad frame of reference.

* * * *
How many ominous ways
Destruction is gathering forces
On the swiftly approaching horizon.
How many, how few are capable of seeing
The bitter harvest of the seeds we have sown.
Such depressing words are not easily heard by most
But to leave them unspoken only allows delusion
To continue its irrational rampage unchallenged.

* * * *
Will we be intelligent enough to survive ourselves?

* * * *
The conversational ability of a gnat.

* * * *
Infinite permutations of insanity.

* * * *
Death is the happy medium.

* * * *
The nexus Muad’Dib.

* * * *
We cannot spawn ten billion human beings
And expect this planet to remain hospitable.

* * * *
What it was, it no longer is.
What is will ever be.
What it will be
Will be
For as long
As forever can be.

* * * *
They harangue their sheep
With the same inane babble
Over and over and over…

* * * *
A government that does not act
On behalf of the world at large
Is no government worth supporting.

* * * *
How can anyone possibly believe
That the totality would ever be bound
By any set of scriptures, any set of symbols,
Any cultural mindset, any racial or sexual preference,
Any mode of dress, behavior, geography, or dogmatic assertion.
Never believe godness bound by any mortal limitation.

* * * *
Flags are just colorful pieces of cloth
Given more weight than they deserve.

* * * *
Contentment is a now thing.

* * * *
Does love require an object on which to focus?

* * * *
Is any experience really anything more than imagination?

* * * *
What generation has not reacted to the circumstances
Created by parents, relatives and other ancestry?

* * * *
The more you think you have,
The more you think you might lose.

* * * *
You are really just a breath.

* * * *
It is because it is.

* * * *
You need not feel guilt or sorrow
Over having been born a human being.
It is both a privilege and a nuisance,
Perhaps the greatest challenge
This remarkable little stage offers.

* * * *
Our blindness to the fact that godness
Is within everything and everyone
Weaves certain destruction.

* * * *
To not see this, to insist upon separation,
Is to bear false witness to the mystery within
And the divine essence inherent in all without.

* * * *
Look down at your body
And realize you have never once
Really seen the face from which you peer,
And that you never will.

* * * *
What you think is never real for long.

* * * *
Humility is not the false arrogance so many practice.
It is a quiet understanding of one’s equal standing
With every form ever concocted in any realm
Of this divine mirage of heaven and hell.

* * * *
It’s all spontaneous word association.

* * * *
The intention herein is to undo the grasp
History has upon consciousness.
To free the mind so that it may deal directly
With the immediate day-to-day eternally unfolding now.

* * * *
Funny how kings need jesters
More than jesters need kings.

* * * *
The garden earth
Has beheld many forms.
You are just one of countless faces
Playing your universe for but a short awhile.

* * * *
Occasionally take pause
In the day-to-day
To recall how one it is.

* * * *
So many things the young do
That they will never dare again
In the many years to come.

* * * *
How far will we take this insanity?
How far will we be allowed to take it?

* * * *
You will be home
When your only ambition
Is to live a senseless existence.

* * * *
Pain and suffering only sharpen the ironic wit.

* * * *
Numb’s the word.

* * * *
When you can say one thing one moment,
And mean something completely opposite in another,
You are either irrational or free (as if they are all that different).

* * * *
Does it being impossible make anything possible?

* * * *
So many doors in this imaginary theater,
Creation, preservation and destruction in each.
Which to choose, which to choose?
All, none or one?

* * * *
What is done is done.
Bury it; put it behind you.
Do not let time bind your mind.

* * * *
No matter how good your intentions,
There will inevitably be a critic
Declaring how s/he could do it better.

* * * *
Until the politicians decide to lead
Or the masses decide to insist upon leadership,
The course humanity is taking is ridden with icebergs,
And the dark waters are very, very cold.


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

Chapter 178 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)

CLXXVIII

Before we can create viable solutions,
We must discern and face the enormity of the problems,
And our very prominent role in their creation.

* * * *
Consciousness
Is as fleeting as steam
Rising from a hot cup of coffee.

* * * *
Wanting to be valued for a body,
A mind, or an outlook that cannot last
Is like treading through quicksand.

* * * *
Who is a stranger to suffering?
The challenge is not blaming others
For the sorrow to which you have colluded.

* * * *
Humanity has never dealt well with its morality.

* * * *
If that’s what you want to believe…

* * * *
What is civilized life
But a mound of parasitic forces
Playing off each other’s many delusions?

* * * *
If you are too engrossed with the details, you miss the big picture.
Too caught up in the big picture, you stumble over the details.
Strike a balance.

* * * *
Lump it in whatever categories you will,
Consciousness is consciousness
No matter the subscription.

* * * *
Trying to be, trying not to be,
It is the effort in either
Which creates the suffering.

* * * *
When you say, play and do whatever the audience desires,
It’s easy to become attached to the applause,
And disabled by the hecklers.

* * * *
It is attachment that makes you so rigid.

* * * *
The obvious is rarely obvious to all.

* * * *
Awareness disentangles the knots of thought’s creations.

* * * *
Does desire toy with you?
Or you with it?

* * * *
Your predispositions find their mirrors.

* * * *
The one-pointed nature is as free as it gets.

* * * *
Regarding the inevitability of physical death,
You will cross that bridge soon enough.

* * * *
You are the beginning and end of time.

* * * *
The limits of godness are created and defined solely by you.

* * * *
The mystery’s greatness
Is cast of your eternal reflection.
Light streams from the mind’s awareness,
Giving birth to sun, moon and stars
And all the myriad forms.

* * * *
Time is a dream.
It has no reality but through
The a priori nature of consciousness.

* * * *
Though the source of all, the infinite nature
Is just another ephemeral piece of imagination.

* * * *
It doesn’t matter whether you like them or not.

* * * *
What can change but change itself?

* * * *
Why should it make sense?

* * * *
What is any dream but the eternal dust
Playing in a sandbox of it’s own making?

* * * *
Dispense with all regrets.

* * * *
No matter the mask, costume or pretense donned,
All are you.

* * * *
These writings are not in the least bit complicated
Once the key to one is discerned the same for all.

* * * *
The many attributes of the flesh
Cannot sate true desire for long.

* * * *
Flowery bouquet that you may be now,
A crumbling skeleton you will one day be.

* * * *
What will we do when the forests are all paper?

* * * *
Perfectionists can make it tough on themselves,
And everyone who chances into their dour path.

* * * *
We are all going to die.
How miserably is the question.

* * * *
Just another pathologically corrupt dream,
As so many seem to be.

* * * *
Light is as light does.

* * * *
Has it ever become clearly apparent
Why you have never, can never,
Will never see your own face?

* * * *
So many things we disagree with
That we go along with anyway.

* * * *
You will only be as free as you desire allows.

* * * *
You have allowed ignorance and delusion
To lead you down a path of destruction
Even a fool would not dream of treading.

* * * *
Throughout Eden’s garden,
Ignorance inevitably succumbs
To its own conscious death.

* * * *
Yours to witness at most

* * * *
Thou art godness in the way no words can tell.

* * * *
How die you that was never born?

* * * *
Your dream is whatever you know it to be.

* * * *
Discard the life that was never yours
In any way thought inspires.

* * * *
Are you sorry you did it,
Or just sorry you got caught?

* * * *
The peace of eternity
Requires no reconciliation
Of an individual nature.

* * * *
How many ways there are to torture oneself
For what we think we are and are not.

* * * *
Growth, growth, growth.
What is it we actually think
We are growing into?

* * * *
How large must a stack of gold be
Before you see it is just a pile of sand?

* * * *
Corporations are inert husks
Filled with teaming life making decisions
That create and destroy with synergistic indifference.

* * * *
If you identify with time, you will be caught in it
In whatever way your free-running will takes you.

* * * *
The challenge is learning to ignore the garbage
So many toss upon themselves, others and you.

* * * *
Do you truly suffer, or
Is it merely imagination’s,
And its correlated attachment
To the body temporarily inhabits.

* * * *
Lots of upset, angry people,
But not about the same things.

* * * *
Grace awakens within those who allow it.

* * * *
People do what their vanity abides.

* * * *
Parasites and critics have a lot in common.

* * * *
Change yourself before asking it of the world.

* * * *
Feeling ordinary is a very good thing.

* * * *
Change the course of a river however you will,
It still must eventually return to the sea.

* * * *
What lies out past infinity?

* * * *
Look past your penis
At what that beautiful woman
Will be looking like fifty years hence.

* * * *
What is this attachment to the word, love?

* * * *
Not interested in the limelight, sorry.

* * * *
Irony has a way of making almost anything humorous.

* * * *
So, in other words,
Freedom of speech for you,
But not for them.

* * * *
What bitterness this thing called love can harvest.

* * * *
We’re all disturbed about one thing or another.

* * * *
Madness abides any given label.

* * * *
They say the good die young.
Hopefully, god will grant a little time off
For those token moments of moderate behavior.

* * * *
A truth for all.

* * * *
Four-letter word for organized religion: bunk.

* * * *
Who and what is not the truth, the life, and the way?

* * * *
What will you do when all your gods,
When all your idolatry has failed you?

* * * *
Death is just returning to the womb of totality.

* * * *
Turn away from all that is known
Into that which is unknown.

* * * *
What a phenomenal thing to exist.

* * * *
The challenge is learning to ignore the garbage
The others put upon themselves, others and you.

* * * *
Do you really suffer,
Or is it merely imagination
And the correlated attachments
To the body it temporarily inhabits?

* * * *
Doesn’t matter whether it’s well-written or not.
What counts is whether you grasp the intent.

* * * *
Is there anything more boorish than false pride?

* * * *
Is god so vain as to attempt
To experience every possibility?

* * * *
The pie is cut,
The niches are full,
And ‘No Trespassing’ signs
Are posted at every imagined border.
Where to go from here?

* * * *
Love measured is not love at all.

* * * *
Anything can be skewed by misinterpretation.

* * * *
One returns to absoluteness
Because it is the only state of mind
Immune from the pain of consciousness.

* * * *
Is humanity capable of controlling its numbers,
Or will Mother Nature intercede in ways
We would rather not experience?

* * * *
Is any thought ultimately real?

* * * *
You are the stage upon which your universe is built.

* * * *
Why are you still dragging around
So many things that no longer matter?

* * * *
So fascinating the countless ways
Human beings have found to worship
The mystery in which we all reside.
The challenge is realizing none
Is more important than any other.

* * * *
No matter how surrounded you are
By the artificial creations of the mind,
It is really all still completely natural.

* * * *
Good breathing reconciles all disorder.

* * * *
Why so much denial
Of the grand indifference
Of this mysterious oneness?

* * * *
Interest fans the flames of capability.

* * * *
Why keep adding to the bother?

* * * *
Another inconsolable life.

* * * *
How can hair and nails be so endlessly fascinating.

* * * *
Jesus was not a white, apple pie, flag-waver.

* * * *
The most effective way to destroy an idea
Is to usurp the message with doublespeak.

* * * *
Who is not disturbed to some degree
By the consciousness in which they abide?

* * * *
Such a tentative, precarious breath
On which this mortal dream depends.

* * * *
How tenacious any given perspective.

* * * *
Delusion is the stream’s impetus.

* * * *
To clap with one hand is no different
Than clapping with three or more.

* * * *
What was is no longer,
And what is now, will, too,
Someday no longer be.

* * * *
There is no escape from space-time,
But through the sovereignty of death.

* * * *
There’s no finding what isn’t there to find.

* * * *
The essence of maybe.

* * * *
The type of person for whom enough will never be.

* * * *
So much time wasted arguing stupid things.


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