Chapter 118 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


CXVIII

More of the same.

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How we love to beat dead horses.

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He had something to say
But too few were interested.

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What a relief to release the obligation to care.

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What is good, what is not good?
Eyes of the beholders all see
What they choose to see,
And in that reality they often
Find so many ways to disagree.

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So many charging fees for that
Which is free to all for all time.

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Isn’t life scary enough for you
Without the countless contrivances
Concocted by unreigned imagination?

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Even if you could have
Everything, anything
You needed, wanted,
Would you be happy?
Would you be content?

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What is done even well will ever be undone.
The changing is the ever-reflecting nature,
The ever-changing truth of this reality.

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The peace you idealize
Comes when you reject that
Which worldly existence conjures.
It is the heaven-sent repast
To which all are invited
But few truly seek.

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For the lack of better wording,
We call it common sense,
But in this world’s confusion,
It does not seem all that common.

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There are no stairways to heaven,
But there is a deep elevator to hell.

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What a challenge not to tell another
What to say, think or do.

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Slaving for the man,
You wonder why.

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To own godness you must release the concept of god.
The god you project will ever be a product of limitation.

* * * *
It is much easier to condemn than it is to understand.

* * * *
Use your pain to question deeply.

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A drop can never be an ocean,
Yet the ocean cannot exist
Without every single drop.
It is the mystery of all mystery.

* * * *
Mystics are aimless wanderers
Without origin or conclusion.

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How many ways will we argue it
Before we see it is all the same?

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In this mystic seeing,
All are rich and impoverished
Within the same breath.

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Any other can only perceive
Your mask and its projected behavior.
You are probably only rarely what others think.

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What’s the difference
Between possessing
And being possessed?

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The Stillness Before Time
Brought to you by you.

* * * *
How can you win an argument
With someone caught in ignorance?

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Does god really strike bargains,
Play favorites, or answer prayers?
You get what you perceive.
It’s all or nothing.

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To observe attentively without wanting,
Without collecting or pursuing,
That is the groove.

* * * *
It is the mother of all mothers,
The father of all fathers,
Giver and taker of all creation.

* * * *
How many different faces each of us display
In the many circumstances of our daily living.

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Sometimes you don’t even know what you mean.

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Consciousness can only exist in time.

* * * *
Too hot, too cold … whine, whine, whine.
A world of pea-under-the-mattress whiners.

* * * *
You play in the sandbox
Until you decide it’s time to go home.

* * * *
Balance is.
What’s your worry.

* * * *
Every creature dreams a different dream.
Why should you be attached to any?
Including, of course, your own.

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Anyone who is anti the Christ
Created by western religions
Is the antichrist they dread.
And there are many of us.

* * * *
True words have always seemed the opposite
To the literal-minded bound in ignorance.

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You are not I, you are you.
Break the boundaries.
Discern the chaos of all.
.
* * * *
Solve a problem before it becomes one.

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The bottom feeders
Feed upon whatever drifts down.
The take what the winners of the game choose.

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The cycles of anger can only be broken
Through detached determination.
Its ceaseless feeding frenzy
Will otherwise never be resolved.
Co-existence is a paradigm beyond self.

* * * *
All speculations, all reasonings, all vain notions
Are fanciful dusty fabrications without real meaning.
You are, and when that is viewed clearly, it is enough.

* * * *
By the chances of genetic lottery,
You partake the existence of this particular form.
How to play it is full of choices played out
On the field of choiceless design.

* * * *
The end of the story will have no readership.
It is the irony of the author’s joke upon its Self.

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What would you do if, suddenly,
You could not remember?

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You tell me you value life,
And I wonder how many types of poison
Are under your kitchen sink.

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The mind in its linear nature ever seeks a truth which is tangible.
The irony is that that which is immeasurable, infinitely timeless,
Cannot be encapsulated within the meager boundaries of time.
The intangible will never, can never be more than it already is.

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If your truth is tangible,
It is the delusion of idolatry.

* * * *
It may seem hardcore and  resolute
But that’s the way this umpire is calling it.
If I’m wrong, oh well and no big deal.

* * * *
Mindsets and universes come and go,
Founded upon one delusion or another,
Dreams all within the context of oneness.

* * * *
Miscellaneous thoughts for miscellaneous minds
Delving into oneness in so many ways the same.

* * * *
Patterns run deep.

* * * *
Even the humble screw is necessary
To keep the most vital machine afloat.

* * * *
Dust is dust no matter its form,
No matter the pointless reasonings
Of finite nature rationalizing its context.
There is naught but one for those perceiving
The indivisible reality beyond all the appearances
Of the time-bound kaleidoscoping play of light and shadow.

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World weariness is born of the gradual realization
That you cannot really change anything or anybody,
That you have no real choice in the matter, whatsoever.
It’s a stage you can muddle past if it is your destiny to see.

* * * *
Why are you doing this?
The sunny river rock beckons.

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You are omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient.

* * * *
The craving for recognition is is shallow fodder.

* * * *
How many decisions does a lifetime entail?

* * * *
Life imitates concept.

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Ethical codes are easy to assert,
But challenging to maintain.

* * * *
All that individualized self-hood
Is the unending fiction of imagination.
It is an island on which each suffers alone.

* * * *
The rules of the game are not negotiable.

* * * *
Cuteness wears thin
If it’s not got substance
To keep it funded.

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All things arise from obscurity
With the utterance of the first word.

* * * *
Self-imagery is as ever-changing as the wind.

* * * *
Even moderation can be an extreme.

* * * *
There is still time.

* * * *
Sweetness can quickly sour,
And sourness is perhaps sweet
To that you have yet to consider.

* * * *
It will always be now sometime.

* * * *
The river meanders from the spring trickle
To the ocean’s great pulsing depths.
The drop, caught in the sweeping
Currents far beyond its control,
Is beckoned by clouds yet to come.
All ever now at every point of the journey.

* * * *
From each moment flowers a new reckoning,
Ever fresh until soiled by mind’s conceptions.

* * * *
Without your traditions you are nothing.
With them you are nothing deluded.

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It is your resistance and craving which creates time.

* * * *
The mirage molds dust into time,
Into the you imagination breeds.

* * * *
Your craving casts your suffering.

* * * *
You’ve perceived the world through your own eyes.
But how would it be to view yourself through
All the eyes that have seen you?

* * * *
It finally boils down to there being
Little need to think about it at all.

* * * *
Eternal salvation is simply having the fate
To discern that time does not exist as the mind insists,
That this delusion is no more than an illusion,
Touchy-feely-real as it may appear.

* * * *
To end all your problems, you must perceive clearly
That your craving creates them again and again.
Discerning and returning  to inner stillness
Is the discipline of the adamant seeker.

* * * *
All your life others have reflected: do this,
Don’t do that, believe one thing or another.
How challenging to discern reality for oneself
Amid the roaring waves of cause and effect.

* * * *
How far will we as a species take it?
Have we really even seen anything yet?

* * * *
So many saying it’s this or that.
All you need reply is, “Is that so?”

* * * *
All your dualities are unreal delusion
Concocted in imagination’s
Dream of time.

* * * *
God’s theater is an infinite repertoire,
All one none the less.

* * * *
Declare yourself to be one thing,
How often you find it to be another.
To be nothing inwardly, undeclared
In that private space most eternal,
Is the freedom at journey’s end.

* * * *
So many demons to ignore.

* * * *
Death negates all pride.

* * * *
Why should you ever fear that which you are?

* * * *
A declaration of independence.

* * * *
It is the inward journey which envisions
The infinity beyond the farthest shores.

* * * *
Fairness garners many visions.

* * * *
Perhaps the end has already passed,
And the beginning never began.

* * * *
The shortest views are of identity,
The longest are of the indivisible infinity
Which comes to rest clearly within.
One cannot truly know Self.
One can only be it.

* * * *
The river is you.

* * * *
Your resistance is the level
Of attachment to your delusion.

* * * *
It is the death worth seeking.

* * * *
Buddhas and christs are passe
To the narcissistic pleasure seekers.

* * * *
What’s never born yet is forever?
That which is inconceivable?

* * * *
These many thoughts would not be written
If it were not the truth as these eyes discern it.


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