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