Chapter 24 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


XXIV

Every desire, fear, or other form of thought is movement.
What you really are, call it whatever you will,
Is the stillness of awareness.

* * * *
That which is eternal
Can never be touched by the temporal.
The latter being merely a passing shadow of the former.

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Attachment to manifestation keeps you dancing.

* * * *
Like a complex maze, there are many false trails,
But in reality there can ever be only one way.

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Personality is a house of straw or sticks,
Of cards blown by the slightest breeze.

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Once you begin to see your true nature,
To truly believe and carry out your identity
Only magnifies the pain of consciousness.

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Someday the body will all just fall off.

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Regarding time travel,
How can one ever meander
Something which does not exist
But through imagination?

* * * *
Are you obligated to believe any of this is really happening?

* * * *
Is any mark in time much more than a stain?

* * * *
Vanity is the source of all our mischief.

* * * *
Space and time out there
Is really movement within.

* * * *
What you are has always been
And will ever be.

* * * *
None but you can unlock divine potential.

* * * *
Keep them guessing.

* * * *
You are clay given life.

* * * *
Live for a moment all the suffering
Your existence and all life has ever experienced.
Why does humanity vainly torture itself so
By magnifying that pain already given?

* * * *
Seek reconciliation with your utmost nature.
Surrender to the rebirth of eternal insight within.
Never cease expanding your realization of godness.

* * * *
The probability that you exist is none to infinity.

* * * *
In the midst of tranquility or turmoil,
You are the silence observing the senses.

* * * *
Using your patterned longing for continuity,
Maya entices you in every way imaginable
With that which is ever temporal in nature.
It is like being offered sand to quench a thirst.

* * * *
The best scam organized religions ever created
Was to foment superstitious trepidation of the unknown,
And then get the guilt-ridden to pay a holy man for forgiveness.

* * * *
There is no obligation but what Maya
Has fooled you into creating and believing.

* * * *
Those who are so ready to discern the antichrists
May themselves be what the scriptures predicted.

* * * *
Allow desire's end to unfold gracefully.
Suppression only fans the fire.

* * * *
What you think you want
Is often only what you think you want.

* * * *
Existence is rather a windy-liquid-flaming play,
A flowing that linear minds cannot easily discern.

* * * *
To worship a personalized god
Is to put faith in something
As temporal as yourself.
Before god, you are.

* * * *
How amazing the impact
Of simple acts and compassion.

* * * *
Do not wait for your physical death
To join heaven and earth.

* * * *
So many are so quick to inform you
This or that is the most important purpose.
How is it they know and you do not?

* * * *
Do not shrink from your aloneness.
Use every distraction you will, it will not depart.
Through every fiber of your being it is your ultimate state.
When conscious ego-identity merges into awareness, there is no other.

* * * *
Your desire the flower while its freshness titillates your senses,
But where does the flower come from and where does it go?

* * * *
Interest in totality will be the death of you.

* * * *
It is all as unreal as cotton is from candy.

* * * *
Like a drowning man in a lonely sea,
None can save you but yourself.

* * * *
There appear to be many trails,
But there is only one peak.

* * * *
You will not find Self
Anywhere but here and now,
Where it has ever been.

* * * *
Discern the eternal spring within.
Baptize your self in Self.

* * * *
When you hunger and thirst for reality
Consumes every fiber of your being,
You will feast and drink of the eternal.

* * * *
Imagine not believing any of it.
That none of it is real and never has been.
All those tree rings of fear disappear
And a smile opens in your heart.

* * * *
Self plays at sickness, injury, aging and death.
It seeks relationship through infinite diversity,
Yet, succumbing to none, it is eternally untouched.

* * * *
Join that which is timelessly eternal
And you will merge with heaven.

* * * *
You are Self acting out manifest mortality
In your own fashion in this diverse cosmic play.

* * * *
Merge free will into union with absoluteness.

* * * *
Identity shields you from your inner light.
It is the barrier to your perfect union.

* * * *
Any implication that you exist
Draws you into the web of continuity.

* * * *
To be without the vanity of identity
Is to be the witness before imagination.

* * * *
Your sense of identity is used against you
Over and over again in every way imaginable.

* * * *
You do not even need to label yourself spiritual
You just are.

* * * *
For god to know its origin is akin to a light bulb
Knowing where electricity comes from.

* * * *
The elements are the clay weavers of this play.
They are the costume makers of the supreme.

* * * *
No one holds the key to isness, godness but you.

* * * *
The journey toward total surrender
Is rife with setbacks as the individual mind
Resists that awareness which is total, indivisible.

* * * *
Few, if any, know their manifest fate, and denial of any resists all.
To be ready for any possibility embraces the infinite's die roll.

* * * *
As long as you believe this or any other dance real,
You will again and again succumb to the play of light.

* * * *
This inane hellish world is even more challenging
For those intelligent enough to inquire deeply.

* * * *
Prune euphemisms and political correctness.
See and tell it like it is.

* * * *
It is your attachment
To the very movement of thought
Which must be discerned.

* * * *
Nothing you can say about it is ever what it is.

* * * *
Inner struggle and resistance
Are confusion wrought by duality,
The false separation of subject and object.

* * * *
The end to resistance only happens
When individuality becomes indivisible.

* * * *
There is nothing to reconcile once you see
All was imagined from the word go.

* * * *
It is often difficult in the midst of life's fray
To discern just what it is you are learning.
Be patient, distillation will come later.

* * * *
If you see only the many parts,
You have not looked deeply or broadly enough.

* * * *
Ultimately, none of us have individual lives
We can really call our own.

* * * *
Action without integration
Only creates more confusion.

* * * *
None are born, none die,
But they who believe it so.

* * * *
"I am" is the leading authority.

* * * *
You are it already.
There is nothing more to become.

* * * *
You must act in this world,
But what is its ultimate meaning?
Need there be one?

* * * *
It takes a great deal of resistance
To maintain the narrowness of individuality.

* * * *
If they have not discerned a detachment,
Those more aware they are faking it
Often suffer much more acutely
Than those who play themselves without doubt.

* * * *
The spark that fires into the word,
That "Ah hah!" is the point of intuition.
It is the divine source, the fountain of all being.
The word itself is dead without that subtle realization.

* * * *
In the midst of creation, maintenance and destruction,
Reality is changeless.

* * * *
Outwardly obey the rulings of Caesar,
But within your own realm you are sovereign.

* * * *
Your identity is the sacrifice and the libation.

* * * *
To say anything about all this is foolish.
To say nothing only a bit more so.

* * * *
Who is it who cares?

* * * *
There is no one to follow.
You must stoke your own knowing.

* * * *
You are the purity, the goodness,
The righteousness beyond morality.

* * * *
As you surrender, as identity dissipates,
It all just sort of takes care of itself.

* * * *
What is this mix of craving and fear
That you have done all this to yourself and others?

* * * *
Treat everyone and everything as you would be treated.
At least be aware when you do not.

* * * *
Your consciousness is reflected by the company you keep.

* * * *
That which you discern in others
Who have realized reunion within
Is that which you seek in your Self.

* * * *
False humility, the self-righteous denial of vanity, is no less vain.

* * * *
To imagine your mind is an identity is akin
To using a computer simply to add and subtract.

* * * *
Without this sense of union,
All proactive efforts result only
In continued disarray and confusion.

* * * *
Humanity is in the tight grip of an absurdity
Whose seeds were sewn in nows that no longer exist.
To be free, history and tradition must be given much less weight.

* * * *
Fear of the unknown is an unconscious choice,
Born of attachment to that which you think you know.

* * * *
There is only one awareness.
All personalities in consciousness are fated
To dissolve into its unmanifest oblivion.

* * * *
Real faith is an act of loving volition,
Not a fear-ridden cautious gamble.

* * * *
So desolate the vanity offered in this material plane.

* * * *
Awareness, if not for the senses,
How would it focus into consciousness?

* * * *
To what can you be truly committed,
When there is nothing onto which to hold?

* * * *
Humanity's assumption of title role in the play of god
Is arrogant, ethnocentric, unfounded fancy.

* * * *
Logic does not rule in the here and now.
I Am … is as irrational as it gets.

* * * *
Just try and hold your Self together.

* * * *
Understand logic well enough to know you are not.

* * * *
What part of ‘It’s not about you’ do you not understand?

* * * *
Any promise of forever is just another deception.

* * * *
Your given universe presents every sort of distraction imaginable.
Peace is either at the ending of all concern for anything,
Or the all-embracing concern for everything.

* * * *
Every moment is yoga for those discerning union.

* * * *
Your true wealth is beyond all counting.

* * * *
Every life form is bound
Within the given patterning
Of its capacities and limitations.

* * * *
Who came up with this idea, this absurd notion
That everyone’s going to wake up, anyway?
Just another lie; just give it ye old no mind.


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