Chapter 47 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


XLVII

The challenge of thought is to see through it.

* * * *
Life, a mystery beyond comprehension,
Comes and goes without a moment’s respite,
But what you truly are is ever the same awareness.

* * * *
Whatever you think, go further still.

* * * *
Time ravages all forms.
Nothing is immune to change
But that origin which is unchangeable.

* * * *
The exterior you are bound to is not you.
Your mythos, language, mask and costume,
All into which persona is wrapped, are unimportant.
Seeking approval is unnecessary, there are none to impress.
It is an absolute resolution within, with which the whole world has no say.

* * * *
There is only one thing which can never change,
The unity of the eternal, the smoke, the sugar, the holy ghost,
The absolute which permeates every imagined corner of this grand play.

* * * *
It is a realized understanding, not a set of moralistic, principled codes.
You are not bound by the ephemeral laws concocted by the human mind.

* * * *
The quest for the eternal unity of heaven within
Does not involve power, fame, fortune or social caste.
You will find enough of those distinctions in hell.

* * * *
This quest is not about morality or civility.
It is about understanding reality,
And from that realization
Springs right living.

* * * *
Your behavior pattern is compulsive and habitual,
Created by the mix of desire and fear you exhibit daily.
Complete detachment from every aspect of life is not easy,
Yet is the only way to attain the freedom of your unborn nature.
It is the choiceless choice which only the rarest seem born to discern.

* * * *
You think your life directed and purposeful,
Yet is it really that much different than a passive jellyfish
Floating in the swift currents of an ocean it cannot begin to fathom?

* * * *
There appear to be so many things to learn,
So much wisdom to glean in this magical world,
Yet few seem to learn the ultimate lesson.
Why?  An impossible question.

* * * *
Within a mere one hundred cycles of the sun,
Nearly every lifeform currently conscious
On this small mysterious garden world
Will succumb to that called death.
Where will you be by then
But where you were
Every timeless moment
Of that theater called living.

* * * *
The selfish craving of individual identity
Aids in creating isolation and disharmony,
Yet what would a truly selfless human life entail?
Would ants, bees and other societal life forms
Survive as efficiently if individual cravings
Outweighed those of the collective good?
Can a species valuing individual freedom
Without a larger vision of the greater whole
Even hope to survive the inevitable disorder?

* * * *
Consciousness trying to become something in time
Only locks itself into a more rigid and constricted form.

* * * *
Integration is a challenge
To manifest in this confused realm.
It requires a great deal of courage and tenacity
To be the human being you discern as your highest ideal.

* * * *
The heart is not what you think it is.

* * * *
In your own individual way
You have orchestrated a reality.
It is your uniquely crafted world,
A symphony of the five senses
As conducted by time’s mind.

* * * *
As tempting as it may ever be,
Try not to be fooled by exteriors.
Gold is often discernible only
Between the harshest edges.

* * * *
Nothing is required but what you freely offer.

* * * *
The imagined temptations of the flesh
Reside in all but the most detached mortals.

* * * *
Of the senses, sight seems the most divisive.
How different the human experience would be
If we were blind to all our imagined differences.

* * * *
Be the stillness.
Allow the senses to do it all.
Let them play their illusionary games.
None of it is really you.

* * * *
When you are free,
It is a silent declaration.

* * * *
How strange that each life form
Has a very separate reality based entirely
On individual perceptions drawn from life’s experiences.
That our attempts to envision another’s universe
Can only be extrapolated within our own,
Founded on the unfolding dream
To which each is witness
Very much alone.

* * * *
All you life, whatever the events about you,
You have been this same mysterious awareness.
It is the same for all creature great and small.

* * * *
An interesting note about any pain
Is how quickly it will disappear,
Like the wake behind a boat.
Only the mind remembers.

* * * *
You cannot help where you were born,
Or the family and society influencing you.
It is where you take it from there that matters.

* * * *
When you truly comprehend that you face
Birth and death each and every indefinable moment,
You will see clearly that actual physical death
Is not at all different to that never born.

* * * *
Your moment to moment reincarnation
Is an outcome of your interwoven passions,
Your mistaken faith in the illusions cast by the senses,
And the mind’s ceaseless will to continue its ethereal weaving in time.

* * * *
Many other species, if not most,
Instinctively know nature’s limits in breeding,
Yet humanity’s oblivious imbalance continues unabated.
The cost to the future of this garden’s diversity is already too apparent.

* * * *
How simple to comprehend the eternal nature if you are receptive.
Those so full of themselves have no room for inquiry and remain blind.

* * * *
Merge into the total functioning.
It is a drunk without equal.

* * * *
In every mythos the senses measure in every way imaginable,
Yet what is measured but the limitations of manifest consciousness?

* * * *
Learn to trust intuition’s quiet knowing.
It is the voice of godness within.

* * * *
Take time and space to whatever limits you are capable,
They are ever caught within the nets of their own making.

* * * *
The dream is set before us,
And each has the opportunity
To peer beyond its limitations.

* * * *
To get past your genetic predispositions,
You must discern where they come from.

* * * *
You have reincarnated countless times
During just this lifetime’s imagined identity.

* * * *
Psychologists play a conceptual game.
They are content with the roar of the waves,
Missing completely the vastness beyond the reef.

* * * *
The only way the human species ever seems likely
To make a transformation into a more balanced paradigm
Is with a very severe slap across its consciousness
By the unforgiving forces of mother nature.

* * * *
Disguise it however you might,
It is ever the all of absolute oneness.

* * * *
All your attempts to become
Are ever seeded with limitation.

* * * *
The manifest may concoct hierarchies of every sort,
But the unmanifest discerns no ladders whatsoever.

* * * *
Those seeking more than they are already given
Miss the true treasure they already have within.

* * * *
What laws of man or god can there possibly be
But the ones consciousness in collusion forms?

* * * *
It is dissatisfaction that contributes solely
To the countless heavens and hells
The duality of consciousness
So endlessly creates.

* * * *
The greatest gifts are freely offered.

* * * *
Quests for power, fame and fortune
Only serve as insulation from reality.

* * * *
What differences can those beyond separation discern?

* * * *
The concoction your form takes
May appear superior or inferior to other forms,
But it is only the vain play of consciousness which makes it so.

* * * *
What a vivid imagination you have
To create the universe you have.

* * * *
Reality is ever disguised by imagined limitations.

* * * *
Take off your face, at least occasionally,
To remind your Self who you really are.

* * * *
Sanity and insanity are merely flip sides
Of the same coin of consciousness.

* * * *
Why concern yourself over where the great teachers come from?
The question over your own source has the same answer.

* * * *
These words attempt to show you the equality without equal.

* * * *
A deep awakeness is the sleep to seek.

* * * *
Humanity’s sense of self-importance is counterbalanced
By the great probability that life will continue on Eden
Long after its genetic presence fades into oblivion.

* * * *
That this dream is happening at all
Implies it has happened countless times before,
And likely will through an infinity of  forms countless times hence.

* * * *
Whatever made you believe it would, should or could
Ever be any different?

* * * *
What do you discern within
But a sense of vast timeless emptiness,
An infinite space as immeasurable as the star-filled universe
Stretching across incomprehensible reaches the manifest dreamer born of time
Cannot but in the wildest imagination even begin to fathom.
The oceanic dream of godness flows eternal.

* * * *
You have been hooked on drugs
Since the moment you were conceived.
What you call real is a virtual reality hallucination
Created by foods used to sustain the patterning you inhabit.

* * * *
The realized, connected nature
Has nothing to do with morality plays
Fabricated by any mythological collusions.
It is the intelligence which moves beyond
Any limited scope of the personal mind.

* * * *
For a few moments of glory,
Such vain sacrifices are concocted.

* * * *
All you measuring,
In the end what do you have
But a head full of practically useless data?

* * * *
Outer space, inner space,
What real difference?

* * * *
What it is, what it is not,
Who is it who cares?

* * * *
Each begins so life so uninhibited,
But is gradually patterned by the passions
Of the mirror into which they are born.

* * * *
Each of us creates our own vision, our own dream.
None are the same, nor can they ever be,
Except in their common origin.

* * * *
The undifferentiating state
Is the detachment beyond personal self
And the countless separations which it imagines real.

* * * *
How fascinating that the mind,
Manifested by the mystery of nature,
Has evolved into such a frame of thinking
As to often consider nature the enemy.

* * * *
What is this need so many have to believe
Or hope for one vain circumstance or another?
What is it but the transitory playing of consciousness
Seeking the delusional continuity born of fabricated time?
What is any of it but a play of endless self-deception
Each of us constructs into what we call reality.
Discern that beyond all belief and hope.

* * * *
Letting go as quickly as it happens
Is too easy for a complicated mind.

* * * *
Close your eyes.
Breathe in … breathe out …
Surrender every sense of identification.
Slip into what some call nirvana.
It is so simple, so serene.
Nothing to believe,
Nothing to do,
But be.

* * * *
The purpose of life,
From this scribes viewpoint,
Is to discover without doubt that you
Are that which is absolute, eternal oneness.
The rest is mere vanity and vexation,
The chaff blown into the wind.

* * * *
Try not to imitate.
It’s really quite numbing.

* * * *
Why hold onto what you cannot?

* * * *
The truly religious mind
Is one that has surrendered
To the beingness of its own volition.
It is not something that can be persuaded.
It cannot be forced or interpreted.
It is an individual journey
Into the indivisibility
Of the eternal.

* * * *
The mind which gropes for more and more
Becomes unceaselessly intertwined and twisted
By the endless suffering of consciousness in separation.

* * * *
Those who claim god to be “out there”.
Have no logic to stand on or cling to
But that founded in superstitious fear.

* * * *
Discern the source of your fear,
And you will perhaps discover the peace
For which your piece of Soul longs.

* * * *
Conspiracy theorists are very skillful
At connecting every dot they imagine.

* * * *
One is enough.

* * * *
How can you identify that which has no identity?

* * * *
Lighting the way within is not forced.
It is an arduous inquiry into simplicity.

* * * *
You are already that essence which is immortal.
It is your imagination convincing you otherwise.
It is through discernment that you will remember.


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