Chapter 39 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)



XXXIX

You are whatever form manifests,

And by that form you are bound
In the illusion of limitation until death
To time and space once again frees you.

* * * *
You are the beginning and end of all dreams,
That which all have as their origin and destruction.
Without you as witness, no thing would exist.

* * * *
All the wealth this planet might conjure
Could not faintly match the gold you truly are.

* * * *
“Remember me”
Is not a personal lamentation.
It means do not forget the you, you truly are,
That of which all castings are poured.

* * * *
Any who ask for money to minister truth
Have not yet discerned the way is free.

* * * *
What is the statistical probability
That you will peer through the misty veil?
Where will you be on the bell curve of those who do?
Will enough see to make any difference to the human predicament?
Questions only time will tell.

* * * *
Christ was a homeless vagrant
Who had the decency not to set up a church.
That was the initiative of the many others who followed later.

* * * *
If you want to believe your vain little personality is important to god,
You are caught in the most laughable delusion one can imagine.

* * * *
Be totally, immeasurably alone
Without any sanctuary but your beingness.
That oblivion is the everything and nothing of your existence.

* * * *
The separations of our ancestors are upon us.

* * * *
Trying to please some people
Is like trying to please a sandy wind
Whose only reality is grinding you into it.

* * * *
Once upon a time, perhaps,
Leaders were chosen by others.
How often now they choose themselves.

* * * *
Differences are all individually imagined
By threads of habit weaving through one another,
Done and undone again and again.

* * * *
All time is played out in the nowness of eternity,
And you are a tiny sliver of the complete carving.
Go to where no woodcutter has ever been.

* * * *
Dwell fearlessly within.

* * * *
How can you be attached to any thing
But through you imagination?

* * * *
Less ambition for personal fulfillment
Would lighten up things.

* * * *
Once you thoroughly see
That you are faking your entire identity,
There is no point in making such an effort at it anymore.

* * * *
Home is whoever, whatever,
Whenever, whyever, wherever, however
The wheel of now hits the road.

* * * *
Liberation is like floating through time.

* * * *
Will is the outcome of desire in time.
The surrender of the known to eternity
Erases the boundaries of individuality.

* * * *
Ignore yourself.

* * * *
Arrogance is whittled away
By suffering and discernment.

* * * *
Your biggest blind spot is behind you.

* * * *
To call yourself any ist
Or a member of any ism
Is merely a form of identification
Which once again panders to the inanity
Of the individualized mind.

* * * *
You are
Therefore
You are.

* * * *
You need not know every detail
To see the direction of the flow
Or what decision needs to be made.

* * * *
What do you stand on
But space playing as if gravity exists?

* * * *
We each look for masks
To reflect back whatever
We choose to see.

* * * *
These are the observations of a madman
For those whom madness beckons.

* * * *
The obvious will be obvious
When you are ready.

* * * *
Why should you feel any pride
For finally discovering what you have always been?
Delusion is a subtle teacher.

* * * *
We take of the ground
Without replenishing the soil,
Growing at the expense of those to come.

* * * *
Did any of this ever really happen,
Who can say?

* * * *
Grow, grow, grow.
Die anyway.

* * * *
All this study of the mind,
Only to discover it imagined itself
And every sort of concoction.

* * * *
Dogma is denial of the whole.

* * * *
So many calling for change,
But change into what
Is subject to so many contrary visions.

* * * *
When Eden is treated as a resource
And not tilled as a garden,
The result is inevitable.

* * * *
No play can continue forever.
The curtain always drops.

* * * *
Those who imitate are content with false gold.
They bask in the illusory light of others,
Missing entirely that their own
Is of unparalleled glory.

* * * *
The mysterious voice within
Is the source of consciousness,
No different for any but for attachments
To the many thoughts manifested.

* * * *
The stillness, like an ocean,
Is always present, effortless,
Despite the apparent crashing
Of the waves of thought.

* * * *
Imitating another’s joy
Is only another form of suffering.

* * * *
Some will value these words, many will not.
What a strange play consciousness creates.

* * * *
Scientists deny their intuition
By declaring subject and object
Exist independent of the observer.

* * * *
The patterning is ever the dynamic reaction
To the unfolding veil of time and space.

* * * *
What is enlightenment
But seeing that there is only one light
And its creator is within all.

* * * *
One man’s freedom is another’s delusion.

* * * *
The fall from grace occurs
In every thought of separate identity,
Of the birth of a you apart from the oneness,
The “I Amness” of all manifestation.
Grace is a quality of mind
Free of all division.

* * * *
Who is it who desires, fears, angers, suffers?
An imagined creature, surely.

* * * *
Even the enlightened who stray into longing
Suffer for their separation.

* * * *
Desiring the end of desire
Is a trap of its own.

* * * *
To see without knowledge
Is the grace of Eden
Potential within.

* * * *
Knowledge is the bind time has woven within your consciousness.
Only the most subtle, effortless awareness of the awareness frees you.

* * * *
Confusion is born of narrow choices.

* * * *
Knowledge erases innocence,
But only for so long as one is attached
To its intellectual time-bound path.

* * * *
Place none before the you, you truly are.

* * * *
Oh, bittersweet mortal play.
Death comes, but will it be your last?
Or will you ride again and again
Until the lesson is learned
For that final time?

* * * *
The first time something is experienced,
There is an innocence, a fresh wonder,
But after that it is difficult not to know.

* * * *
The only real difference
Between a gourmet feast and pig slop
Is what sort of dish it is served on.

* * * *
Death is for those who believe they were truly born.
Eternal life, for those who discover it was all a lie.

* * * *
Death is the dustpan meeting the broom.

* * * *
Others will be only too happy to bind you up
In the countless shoulds and should-nots,
The many principles, laws and dogmas
Created by duality and the many passions
That it manufactures and so earnestly sustains.

* * * *
Moralists must live with their many judgments.
They play a meaningless hoax upon themselves,
A hellish bind only consciousness can create.

* * * *
In all your wealth you own nothing.
In all your power you are powerless,
In all your fame you are unknown.

* * * *
What so many call freedom is at the expense of others.

* * * *
What is it anyone recognizes
But a projection of their own recollection.

* * * *
Who turns an engine on or off?
Only the awareness of no-mind discerns
What the rational linear mind never can, never will.

* * * *
Given free reign,
The undiscerning mind
Can never know the serene bliss
Of the one reborn into that which is sacred.

* * * *
You may give the voice within a personal note,
But its temporal nature can never touch its origin.

* * * *
The masks will hypnotize you
For as long as you allow the mind
Undiscerning, undisciplined, divisive rule.

* * * *
Time is a concept cloaking eternity.

* * * *
This is a set of consciousness-shattering thoughts
For you from you.

* * * *
As long as you only see the universe unfolding without,
You will not discern that it is truly a mirage within.

* * * *
Eden is the nest of all life’s creation,
And we, through synergy of empty foresight,
Blindly destroy the diversity of its mysterious origin.
How laughably ironic this spontaneous, aloof cosmic play.

* * * *
Be positive so many expound.
About the unmanifest awareness, yes,
But about humanity’s self-absorbed theatrics,
Only on the day enough awaken into common sense,
Or the one on which humanity is finally wiped into oblivion.
And the diversity is allowed some peace from our tragic disunion.

* * * *
The mind does not exist as you know it.

* * * *
Who calls who sane or insane?
What, pray tell, is normal?

* * * *
Well into the far future now,
In a time as cannot yet be seen,
Consciousness shall perhaps discern
Its narrowing, destructive, painful plight in time,
And wisdom shall gain sovereign foothold upon Eden.
That for the idealists whose minds and hearts
Yearn and hope for peaceful morrows
Denied by this day’s passions.

* * * *
The mind has a hard shell of imaginary design.

* * * *
Deny nothing impossible,
For you are already most indelibly
A most unlikely outcome.

* * * *
Does this sort of eternal babble
Do anyone any real and lasting good?
Or is it merely another useless play of distraction
In the mind’s ceaseless fictional, nonsensical accounting?

* * * *
The motto of humanity’s self-absorbed, so-called civilized time
May well be:  Why not put off today what others will tomorrow pay?
What a merry price life must pay for consciousness unconsciously woven.

* * * *
How often the sane among the throng
Are called mad and the mad sane.
It is a world full of ironic jest,
A dream of unresolvable passion,
Joy and sorrow cast in light and shadow
Upon a spinning stage enhanced by physical laws
None but the most determined can escape.

* * * *
History, herstory, itsstory
All just stories, nonetheless.

* * * *
Time dictates its own mad version.

* * * *
Where is the boundary between light and shadow
But within the seer’s undiscerning vision?
Only if that eye be the inward one
Can duality achieve a unified clarity
Beyond the meager forms cast in time.

* * * *
Gravity creates a useful hatching ground for this manifest theater.

* * * *
Who is real?  Me? You?
Forgive me, I can no longer tell.

* * * *
So intent I am to point out the way
That I forget again and again to remember
“I am that I am” that is ever, yet has never been.

* * * *
Immortality is guaranteed.
It just may not be in the form
You have in mind.

* * * *
From beginning to end,
We must all learn to trust our own vision,
In the study of reality, truth, or whatever you wish to call it.


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