Chapter 50 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


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Imagination creates this world, this universe, this dream of godness,
And ever wraps it in an endless array of personal and collective mythologies.
Call them whatever the language of geographical collusion chooses,
Prior to the imagination of time and space, of all illusion,
There was nothing, the same eternal nothing
The passing now ever presents.

* * * *
Discern that which is prior to all sounds, all words,
All concepts, all knowledge, all imagination,
All conscious movement of any sort.
You are that.

* * * *
The past is a selection of neural patterns,
The future merely a projection of those patterns,
And the present is the ephemeral dream in between.
Only in the aware stillness of pure beingness
Can the eternal be touched within.

* * * *
There is no vehicle,
Only you, and the desire
To know your ultimate nature.

* * * *
Why is god’s name is a middleman necessary?
The very idea is contrary to the great teachings.

* * * *
The poverty of unity is your greatest wealth.

* * * *
In childhood you see only your own world.
As you age that expands to others you know.
At some point you perhaps envision a world view,
Maybe a universal view, or even that born of godness.
If you are truly rare, your journey may lead to absoluteness,
That which is beyond all frames imagined by conceptual limitation.
Life is a rare opportunity to witness the unitary unborn nature.
If it is your inclination to explore it, then it is your calling.

* * * *
As an identity there is gain and loss.
Without it, all is sum-zero.

* * * *
Your desire to be
And the resulting passions
Are what hold you a voluntary captive
In the vain prison of your own mind’s creation.
Without the attachments of consciousness,
You would disappear into the oblivion
Of your untraceable nature.

* * * *
How long humanity will continue
Is entirely dependent upon its ability
To adapt to the many changes
Set in motion by the past.

* * * *
Who is to say that before god
You will not your own judge?

* * * *
Suffering is your greatest teacher.
Where would you be without it?

* * * *
To see the nature of the oblivion, of the void within,
Is to discern the path is, was, and will ever be, pathless.

* * * *
Instinctual responses drop away as the limitations
Of the animal nature are seen more clearly,
And the pure awareness of eternity
Becomes its own impoverishing reward.

* * * *
How many masks and costumes there are in this strange dream called life.
How many you have witnessed, yet how many more you will never see.
Incomprehensible that such infinity is even remotely comprehensible.

* * * *
Collusions, with all their antagonisms toward other collusions,
Create so much havoc and remain blind to their common delusion.

* * * *
Resume your space, now.

* * * *
Sorry to have to say it,
But existence cannot always be just fun,
Despite the incessant craving to avoid the unhappier reality.

* * * *
A mountain and an anthill may well be the same size
Depending on the relative view of any given perceiver.

* * * *
Seek out those of like mindedness.
To do elsewise can be futile and vexing.
You cannot truly save any other but your Self.
Any seed requires the soil of sincere intent.

* * * *
We have idealized that consciousness
Is capable of unity, yet that idealism
Has proven ever again and again
To be only the play of air in time.

* * * *
Truth cannot be discerned in time.

* * * *
Thou art godness,
And this is the world
You have created.

* * * *
How fascinating what we as a species
Have no choice but to go through
To learn a very simple lesson.

* * * *
Our grouping tendency
Brings us security in one sense
And destroys us in another.

* * * *
The energy band in which we have evolved
Is not as broad as our ignorance leads us to believe.
Nature has a tendency to counterfeit extremes.

* * * *
The subtlety of these words,
Only a rare few will have the key to.

* * * *
How many self-righteously believe god
Wants them to make a buck at Eden’s expense?
Not.

* * * *
Magnify your mind,
And see that it is the universal one.

* * * *
Mother Nature will not be pulling her punches,
And they will come in every way imaginable.
We have no one to blame but ourselves,
And the paradigm of our competitive evolution.
There will be no escape, no direction but forward.
Every karmic seed of humanity’s history will blossom
As they have been sewn since we lost sight of the garden.

* * * *
If past and future were to suddenly disappear,
Where would you be?

* * * *
The humble arrogance of doubt
Opens the gate to the unknown.

* * * *
Is it a concern that others discern
That they too are of the oneness?
Only if they seek the good news.
None can be forced to drink if not thirsty.
The way is seen through effortless surrender,
Not through persuasion, rancor, or force.

* * * *
When you were a child,
You were innocent, vulnerable,
Pure awareness without a trace of persona.
In time came a growing detection of physical limitations,
Sensory perceptions, sounds and concepts, and that sense of “I am”.
Gradually, the protective layers of personal identity were molded within your mind.
To return to the original eternal nature, you must shed all you have learned,
And become that simplicity prior to all that is imagined to be known.

* * * *
Eternity can be terrifying
Because you cannot take anything with you,
Even your Self.

* * * *
Every moment is an opportunity
To drink the sweet nectar of eternal bliss.
It is you confidant, best friend and most intimate lover.

* * * *
Whatever the future may be,
Humankind is just the tyrannosaurus
Of this likely to be very brief era.

* * * *
Whenever possible,
Be ally to your friends
And befriend your foes.

* * * *
Better to forgive and forget, to push on,
Than to be poisoned by bitter grievance.

* * * *
The clock goes round and round,
But did time ever really move?

* * * *
What is this mysterious light that makes all things possible?
Can its unknowable source be any other than you,
The witness to its magical mystery tour?

* * * *
Do not be led astray by all who would deny
What is so obviously, undeniably, irrefutably true.
Any separating themselves from that which is godness
Are the fallen angels whose divisive enterprises
Only fan the cold fires of conscious hell.

* * * *
I sing, you sing, we all sing the dreamsong of godness.

* * * *
It is easy to deny another’s truth
When you have not even heard it.

* * * *
I am the playful piper, the flaming bush,
The enduring ferryman, the ascetic recluse,
A wandering madman journeying the universe.
I am all things, all places, all spaces.
There is nothing that I am not,
And nothing that I am.
I am the irony, the paradox,
Unnamed, unclaimed, untamed.

* * * *
The issue of salvation is for each to meet alone.
It is the conscious merger of mind, body and soul
Into the timeless one prior to the illusory changing.
It is the reunion into that which you truly are,
Not what you imagine yourself to be.

* * * *
The mark of any society is the degree to which
Fear and coercion are used upon its children.

* * * *
With your last breath it will not matter
Whether your life was long or short,
Powerful or weak, wealthy or poor,
Wise or foolish, intelligent or stupid,
Famous or anonymous, loved or hated,
Female or male, healthy or sick, good or evil,
One race, one culture or another, religious or not,
Death blends all attributes into the same one.

* * * *
Does the vast universe in day or night’s sky
Have a sense of duality, of time and space?
And what of that beyond its farthest reaches?
What will it be but what you choose to predict?

* * * *
Any difference between you and me
Is completely imagined.

* * * *
Nothing can be anything other
Than what you project it to be.

* * * *
The witness can discern its Self
Only through the reflection of illusion.

* * * *
It is one thing to play the game,
Quite another to see through it.

* * * *
Shoot for the middle
And average will be the conclusion.

* * * *
The claim that god is just and loving
Would mean you and everyone else is.

* * * *
The fool is not locked into any direction.

* * * *
Consciousness is the veil.

* * * *
Each of us suffers in individual ways,
Ways which seem our own, yet are similar.
The pain molds our thinking, shapes our identity,
Shields us in imagined cloaks of invulnerable personality.
The return to the unimagined state is the surrender to the changing,
The perseverance in every moment possible to the path of least resistance.

* * * *
The peace of consciousness,
Called hell by some,
Offers only temporal solace
Between bouts of intense suffering.

* * * *
A fool’s gold has no value
In this world or any other.

* * * *
The promise of eternal salvation,
Only the most adept students will earn.

* * * *
Your fear of god is the fear of the void within.

* * * *
Karma is a very simple fact
Made complex by dogmatic traditions.
It is quite obvious that the life anyone leads
Is an outcome of events in time’s manifest continuity.
The sword and plow each create likely fates.

* * * *
How vain to judge another.

* * * *
Get a grip on your mind
Or it will get a grip on you.

* * * *
Ancient texts and religions were created
Upon the order of oral traditions and storylines
To which modern technologies need no longer subscribe.
Information now crosses the world in moments rather than centuries.
Vain attachments to ancient traditions is not required by the educated masses
As it was by the monastic and feudal orientations of past millenniums.
Consciousness moves at an exponential pace and the minds
Which create order on vast amounts of information
Have the potential to come to terms
With the original nature
As never before.

* * * *
Humankind’s greatest cities
Are really no different than anthills or beehives,
Except in that they are far less efficient and much less orderly.
And we are so quick to call ourselves intelligent.

* * * *
Keep your own accounts,
And let others keep theirs.

* * * *
What is it to be born when what you truly are is eternally unborn?
You wander about in countless masks, costumes and roles,
Yet you are not any imagined state and never will be.
As ever, you delude yourself again and again
Whenever caught in maya’s illusory and snaring web.
How strange it is to remember any of this never really happened.

* * * *
You may well wish less suffering upon this temporal world,
But you have no power to remedy the determination
Which so many inevitably seem to create it.

* * * *
Once you discern the void of reality,
There is no more than pretending this world,
Or any of the vain reactions of humanity
Are of any importance, whatsoever.

* * * *
Wisdom goes the same zero-sum
Dreamtime way everything else does.
Forget it along with everything else.

* * * *
Any need you have to convince others
Is a sign of your residual doubt.

* * * *
Even if everyone in the world
Knew your name and many deeds,
It would do you no real and lasting good.
No matter how great, all glory is quickly forgotten.
Forget the imagined vain self and become that most true.

* * * *
Continued identification with the finite nature of existence,
Putting off surrender to the unlimited prior to all forms,
Only perpetuates the needless imagined suffering.
Surrender is not easy, but the incessant push-pull
Of that which is born into time and that which is timeless
Is unreconcilable duality in just another variation of dreamtime.

* * * *
The pretense of objectivity is entirely subjective.

* * * *
Some would argue that the point and purpose
Is that all consciousness within this vast mystery
Will someday attain a magnificent harmony with its Self.
This the scribe does not pretend to know, nor think important.
Ultimate reality has always been the eternal serenity
Manifest consciousness can only idealize.

* * * *
The same people who so valiantly save human lives
Will often not hesitate to destroy another life form.

* * * *
There are no experts,
Just a lot of deluded dreamers
Filled with make-believe.

* * * *
All distinctions are imagined.
They are all governed by desire, fear,
And the many ensuing passions.
They do not really exist
But for the belief that they do.

* * * *
The world you project is the one
By which you judge yourself.

* * * *
Realize that you really know absolutely nothing,
That you are but a temporary reflection
Of the mysterious sea of infinity.


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