Chapter 26 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


XXVI

History is full of great, well-meaning thinkers
Who bound the unfolding present into countless knots
Each era must with great discernment unloose the binds of time.

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Humanity is only as important as it is capable of being.

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The world you are presented
Asks you to be content with trivial pursuit.

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As free as you may feel on the mountaintop,
If you cannot do it in the valley as well,
Then, perhaps, you are not.

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The garden is still here,
But the gardeners have trashed it.

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When enough is enough,
What more do you need?

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You are the clarity before light.

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Vanity often speaks far louder than anything said.

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You create descriptions, analogies and metaphors
To describe data collected by the five senses,
But reality is beyond such limitations.

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Truth offers no comfort zone.

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All purpose and meaning are simply
The projection of one desire or another.

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Science has done extremely well at discerning parts,
But who glues together the whole?

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The heavens and hells you create after death,
The personalized gods and devils you enthrone there,
Are projections of your desire for continuity.

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The more you want from life,
The more hoops you will jump.

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How far you get, how well you do,
Depends on how free you want to be.

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Life is a blend of passivity and action,
The challenge of a tightrope taking a lifetime to master.

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Open yourself to the many faces of consciousness
And you will find it all the same voice.

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Every time you fall asleep
Your identifications disappear
Into the oblivion you really are.
Death is no different.

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To merge into the impersonal now
Is to know what your destiny has ever been.

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So many think just by naming something
That they really know and own it
When all they truly do
Is bind themselves in conceptual knots
Entirely of their own creation.

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You are free to change your mind at any now, if you can.

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Real discipline manifests from order within.

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In unity there is the potential for diversity.
In diversity there is the reality of unity.

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This mystery defies all logic.
Approaching it with a rational mind
Only sustains the separation.

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The unknown offers no sanctity for continuity.

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Dogmatic principles harbor opinion
But shine little light on the nature of consciousness.

* * * *
What a vain show so many make of their spiritual quest
When it should just be a momentary acknowledgement.

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You may think you escape the world in seclusion,
But as long as it remains in consciousness,
You are ever in it and it in you.

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Bigotry is complete isolation,
The ultimate denial that any reality
Other than your own is worthy of existence.

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What to cling to, nothing.
What to let go of, everything.

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Do not accept these words as law,
As coming from any dogmatic authority.
You must discern your own way.

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When it comes to the other,
What you usually fear
Is what you think
Another thinks about you.

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The solution to all problems
Is within this understanding
Of identity's temporal nature.

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You are totally responsible
For your portion of humanity's destiny.

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Acknowledge what you are
Instead of pretending to be what you are not.

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The unlimited takes on the guise of limitation
Based on the given patterning of its manifested form.

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When it is identity looking through your eyes, there is a despair.
When it is isness, there is simply silence.

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It is the synergy of greed, of me and mine,
Which has created this fine mess.

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It is vanity and ambition
Which creates hierarchies to godness.

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Neither alive nor dead, happy nor sad,
The stillness is.

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The attached mind is akin to a
Clinging, embattled clenched fist.

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The individual ego transforms into indivisible godness.

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On the road to total responsibility
Things may appear pretty irresponsible.

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When the maintenance of identity
Is no longer worth the painful costs,
You will do what needs to be done.

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Eternity is now,
And you are here witnessing it.

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Who or what are you living for?
That is your attachment to this world.

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You cannot discern freedom
Until you are done with imprisonment.

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What the way is, who can say.
Know, however, that your are it and it is you.

* * * *
Do you seriously believe Jesus or any other christ
Would join in with your vain organizations?

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Once carved, the block plays out the carving.

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If you do not teach someone to fish for themselves
You have taught nothing.

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If you think god is going to straighten up
The mess we have made of our own free will,
It is going to be with your hands.

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How could you even for a moment
Believe yourself really separate
From that which is eternal?

* * * *
You entered the world
Until rebirth do you part.

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The street folk know that the streets
Have always been lined with gold.

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Estrangement is the root of sorrow.
It is the ultimate dysfunction of the mind.

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Desire for personal gain is the worldly game.
Its end is heaven's.

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Your personality is a diddly-squat proposition
From the word go.

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You are the way,
But must realize it in the fabric of your being.

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Guilt is the means, the programming,
By which dogma controls those too fearful
To gnaw through the straw leash.

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What can clay ever really know
Of the sculptor or itself?

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Infatuation is the blind projection
Of insatiable desire temporarily fulfilled.

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The potential for harmony
Requires surrender to the symphony played.

* * * *
All these leaders, political, religious or any other realm,
Who are they really fooling but themselves?

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How challenging for those who see the potential of heaven
To patiently endure those determined on creating hell.

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All your problems, your disharmony, your conflicts,
Are the stillborn of vivid imagination.

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Harmony that is thought is not harmony.

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You must reconcile with it, not it with you.

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How inane to hurt, destroy or be destroyed
For any idea, whether grand or small.

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As far as your vision dares travel,
You will see the reality of absoluteness,
The quiet serenity you truly ever are.

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Playing tug-of-war with god is futile.

* * * *
Heaven has been within you all along.

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Negate until there is nothing left to negate.

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It is not political revolution which will free you.

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For its form clay is subject to the sculptor's whim,
But for its clayness clay is subject only to clayness.

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It is thoughts of identification which divide you within.
Can you operate in the realm of consciousness
Without sowing the seeds of conflict?

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Your body is really more function than form,
But without all the vanity what on earth would you do?

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The mind creates division which does not exist.
All duality is fabrication created solely
By the weaving of time and space
As read by the senses.

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Any assertion that you are this or that,
Or that what is one way or another
Are of no importance at all.
You are whatever you are
And it is the way it is.

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You will find what you seek.
Seek the highest beyond imagination.

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Desire and fear have no roots in harmony.

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The cruelty self-interest wills into manifestation,
Does it have any bounds?

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Without a sense of gaining there is nothing to lose.

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All this knowledge, but at what cost?

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Is the word love used but rarely
By those who understand
Its eternal nature?

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You are the truth and the way.

* * * *
We are travelers through space and time,
Through that which does not exist as either we, space or time.

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That life seems so lackluster, so commonplace
Denotes how you have taken this mystery to be so ordinary.
Wake up to the fact that every moment can return you to a state of wonder.

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God is the creator of all patterns,
But before all patterning is your ultimate reality.

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Why do you believe it?
Because you cannot see through or past your body.

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What medal, ribbon, honor, title or gold coin
Is worth your life?

* * * *
Anything is possible.
You are the proof.

* * * *
Nothing touches you
But what you imagine does.

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Why fear death
When its eternal nature
Is as real as your temporal life?

* * * *
Each dwells in one hell or another
Until heavens's knowing shines.

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Suicide kills the body and the personality,
But never touches that which was never born.

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The only real problem is the dysfunctional use of the mind.
Our paradigm is dashing us toward an unnecessary destiny.

* * * *
Insist on division and separation in whatever way you will,
It is never more than short-lived concoction born of imagination.

* * * *
This sandbox is the opportunity
To manifest your vision of heaven's perfection.
Odds are this world will remain confused long after you are gone,
But you will know its divine potential, and that is enough.

* * * *
In all you have ever done,
What is it but what you think you have done?

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No one can save you from yourself but you.

* * * *
Even the most unconscious and unaware
Are still you and you them.

* * * *
You are the one and only original you.

* * * *
There is no such thing as static.
Everything is dynamic, constantly changing.
Even a rock is gradually moving.

* * * *
Gaze back into all the memories,
And the synthesis of the discerning eye
Will glean the wisdom every moment proffers.

* * * *
Looks like this world isn’t quite done with you just yet.

* * * *
The irony of foolish, stupid people is that they think everyone else is.


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