Chapter 35 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


XXXV

One is to one
As two is to two
As three is to three
As ten thousand is to ten thousand.
Diversity ad infinitum
Is ever the same.

* * * *
Life is full of kaleidoscoping options.
Discerning which to journey
Is a sovereign issue.

* * * *
Life is only as valuable
As any decides to make it.

* * * *
War is the outcome of greed, pride
And innumerable vain conclusions.

* * * *
The choice of mortality is death.

* * * *
You are the source of every possibility.

* * * *
How desperate humanity has become.
Its separation is wreaking havoc in every realm.

* * * *
The desire for life, for consciousness,
Comes from you.

* * * *
Contentment walks arm-in-arm with patience.

* * * *
The fear of not being, of ending,
Is tightly woven with desire-filled actions.

* * * *
It is not easy to be here for any.

* * * *
Humanity’s greatness resides only
In the mind born of limitation.

* * * *
Humility is often just another variation of pride.
If you were truly humble, it would not occur to you.

* * * *
God’s grace is the realization
That you are that which is godness.

* * * *
These words from a fly on the wall
Who flew and flew until he saw it all.

* * * *
Without the knowledge that you ultimately know nothing,
Your quest for knowledge is meaningless.

* * * *
You are the beginning and the end
Of all that is now.

* * * *
Freedom is not a state of mind.
It is the quality of beingness free of self.

* * * *
What are we really in this tiny universe
But self-aggrandizing microbes?

* * * *
Where do all those opinions come from, anyway?

* * * *
Wealth, power, prestige are important
To the blind who believe they are.
The rest just shake their heads
And suffer the consequences.

* * * *
Bask in the rebirth of eternal life,
The awareness of awareness
Prior to all  personal contexts.

* * * *
Just when you think you have it, it slips away,
Often into whatever you thought it was not.

* * * *
So many love words and the concepts they invoke.
The seer loves that which they are not,
Can never be, yet ever are.

* * * *
What is any image but a projection
Based on all the factors making up that point in time?

* * * *
In time you are everything,
Yet eternally you are not even
The least of anything.

* * * *
The effort of the personal self,
Of the form bound in limitation,
Is the suffering of consciousness.

* * * *
These words shine upon the path home.

* * * *
How else could you be here
But as the eyes of godness?

* * * *
Prophet, seer, mystic, buddha, christ, fool.
All the same indivisible oneness.

* * * *
Could desire, anger, fear or any other passion
Exist but for the movement of consciousness,
Cast in the silent still relativity of awareness?

* * * *
No mask, no costume, no form
Is not the same awareness as you.

* * * *
Be royal among your brethren.

* * * *
Become that from which love springs.

* * * *
The cynical pessimist, once a passionate idealist,
Is easily worn away by this three-dimensional theater.

* * * *
Cast you Self adrift within.

* * * *
Try not to waste too much time
Imagining what others think of you
Since it is nothing but what you
Have chosen to believe anyway.

* * * *
Ultimately you become what you imagine.

* * * *
Eternal life is not the home
Of time’s infinite array of passions.

* * * *
Desire is the greatest enslaver.

* * * *
At first you may fear the silence of a free mind.

* * * *
Even the greatest warrior knows the pang of fear
Shadowing the essential nature’s futile desire
To play its immortality out in this time-bound theater.

* * * *
How can any clay figurine discern the clayness
But through its own clayness?

* * * *
To live for the other
Is the false imprisonment
Of the personal self.

* * * *
Do not be labeled by any action or deed.

* * * *
You may see to the ends of the universe,
But you must still live and someday die
In the mix into which you were born.

* * * *
Does the bulk of humanity seriously believe
The can extinguish any life form
Without ramification?

* * * *
Other than differences created by geographic circumstance,
What real difference is there between anyone or anything?

* * * *
You may say many things regarding your personality,
But that says nothing of the you you really are.

* * * *
The freedom to see beyond yourself
Is not easily discerned.

* * * *
These are thoughts from one
Who has come far to share them with you.

* * * *
If you truly have the faith of knowing
You will not need to pray.

* * * *
If you believe the jumble of thoughts
Flying ceaselessly back and forth in your mind,
You will never be reborn into your birthright.

* * * *
Even if you were as expansive as what you call god,
You would still be the same awareness you are now.

* * * *
Most only believe what their context inspires.
Few explore until all limits cease.

* * * *
Eternal life is yours for the seeing.

* * * *
You are all that is known.

* * * *
Consciousness values many things in many ways,
But that which is prior is without any value.

* * * *
It has become an unparalleled issue of survival.
Humanity can no longer afford unhaltered competition.
Always so ironic how success inevitably leads to destruction.

* * * *
There are as many points of view
As there are points involved.

* * * *
How quickly the moralists judge others
According to their vain laws.

* * * *
The answer is
There never really was a question to ask.

* * * *
The thought of freedom
Is not the freedom unknown.

* * * *
Drift as you will amid the solitary wave of you mind.

* * * *
Is any sojourn without imagined glory?

* * * *
How can you lack compassion
For those who suffer the cruelty
Of their own imagination?

* * * *
You will be manifest for as long as you are,
Not a moment more, not a moment less.

* * * *
Consciousness is consciousness,
No matter the form cast.

* * * *
Look at the spectrum of joy and travail
You have already passed through in you dream.
How many dreams have been experienced
In the same incomprehensible way.

* * * *
Some would say each of us is cast
Upon this world through one design or another.
What proof can any over but speculation
Founded only upon imagination?
Even “I am” is a speculation.

* * * *
There can only be so much creation
Before the changing wand of destruction
Wave is indiscriminate shadow.

* * * *
Your life is not yours for long,
If it ever was at all.

* * * *
Whether you dream is happy or sad
Is a choice left souly up to you.

* * * *
How can anyone caught in time
Ever comprehend the one who is not.

* * * *
They killed him once
And probably would again.

* * * *
Be true to your Self.

* * * *
To judge another by the traces of personality
Is the whim of choice.

* * * *
So many believe that by labeling themselves
They have articulated an ultimate truth.
How ironic that they cannot see
They only snare themselves.

* * * *
Once you know a mirage is a mirage,
You cease giving it the same weight.

* * * *
In the eternal aloneness resides the seed and flower
Of your sovereignty, your joy and contentment.
It is the end of the otherness which creates
The suffering consciousness manifests.

* * * *
Creation and destruction
Are merely dualistic notions
Of the mind born in time.

* * * *
Desire is the longing born of loneliness
For reunion with the sovereignty of aloneness.

* * * *
The endless use of symbols, chants, edifices, stories, principles,
Dress, prayers and anything else fabricated by thought
To grab hold of this awareness are unnecessary
Once you discern the only true sanctity
Is the still harbor you are within.

* * * *
Humanity’s greatest impoverishment
Is not discerning as a corporate body
Where its eternal wealth truly resides.

* * * *
Life is torturous enough without the further malice
Born of greed, anger and violent pleasure.

* * * *
Before language, psychological sovereignty
Was an integral part of daily living.
It was the grace of Eden
Prior to the fruition of knowledge.

* * * *
How interesting so many think another
Controls the sovereign key to eternal life.
What middleman can have say in your mind
But through your own conditioned imagination?

* * * *
Call it God, love, Tao, Buddha, Ja,
Brahman, isness, and on and on and on,
It is and has ever been the same essential state
All diversity is eternally linked to through and through.

* * * *
How many live now in the past or future?
Rarely do the many fathom the bliss of eternity
As its silence unfolds right beneath the nose of time.

* * * *
That consciousness seeks to destroy itself
Is not really a problem.

* * * *
So many mistakenly believe
The mind can solve the problems
It is entirely responsible in creating.

* * * *
What is there to love but your Self,
Whatever the form it takes.

* * * *
Where it begins is where it ends.

* * * *
Most bodies really become quite frightening, quite quickly.
Without clothing, jewelry, makeup and other aides
Our kind would undoubtedly be far less enticed
By the endless sexual fantasies born of imagination.

* * * *
You are the weaving of conscious desire for consciousness,
An habituated thread of awareness traveling alone in time.

* * * *
All claims to prominence, to notoriety, are imagined,
The same clay pretending to be more or less important,
When in reality all is indivisibly equal, no matter the illusion.

* * * *
So many differences
For one mind to align.

* * * *
If the inanity of delusion
Draws you more than the intelligence of moderation,
So be it.

* * * *
And what labels
Will the ivory tower scholars
Give this testament?

* * * *
A mystical crossing
Well-crossed many times
In many geographies.

* * * *
Ravens like shiny things, too.

* * * *
Who are you?
Any answer but “That I Am”
Is naught but delusion born of self absorption.


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