Chapter 51 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


LI

Dogma is the outcome of limited thinking,
Of ignorance confined to individual attachment
To one make-belief or another.

* * * *
Call it father, call it mother,
Call it anything you please.
It is still ever the same one.

* * * *
Your friends want you to stay at the bar,
But you are tired of the life, ready to leave.
Yet, their insistence gives you pause to ponder.
What will you do?  Stay or go?  Stay and go?

* * * *
What do yes, no and maybe mean?
Does maybe mean yes and no, maybe?
Say what you mean and mean what you say.

* * * *
Can you follow anything
Once you understand
There is nothing to follow?

* * * *
Discern the knowledge
That is not man-made.

* * * *
Will you allow your time to be soured
By what it was not?

* * * *
How astounding, how frightening, how ridiculous,
That for the ceaseless wanting of sensory gratification,
Humanity would sentence the future to a fate
They would not wish upon themselves.
And then bring children into the world to boot.

* * * *
Everyone must discern his/her own limits.

* * * *
Can you transcend your genetic predisposition,
And the psychological set it is arm-in-arm with?

* * * *
An unpruned fruit tree
Grows ragged and inefficient.

* * * *
Surrender is a process of unweaving.

* * * *
If you are satisfied with any label,
How would you feel about a piece of paper
Saying you own a famous bridge?

* * * *
Piece a puzzle together
In any order spontaneity allows,
It will ever shape into the same one.

* * * *
Find me an enemy
And I will show you you.

* * * *
Who do you really deceive but your Self,
Whatever the form.

* * * *
You are what I think you are,
And I am what you think I am.
We are both dreamers.

* * * *
Let it be known that romance novels
Were the most popular book form
Of the times this was written.

* * * *
Martyrdom is just made of the same old vanity.
As if it matters what anyone else thinks anyway.

* * * *
How can you be a guardian of Eden
If you cannot discern your own vain quest
For passion and incessant personal gratification.

* * * *
So many believe that without an outward law
That they would be swept away by their own evil.
Balderdash.

* * * *
What is common sense but the consideration
Of what is good not just for a few, but for all.
A sense of the greater good for everyone,
That each has a right to consideration
In as many decisions as possible.

* * * *
Time marches ever on and on,
But eternity is changelessly now
Through all the many changes.

* * * *
Let each think what they will,
But do not for a second believe
There is truly any other than you.

* * * *
What reason is there for violence,
But for greed, lust and all the more
That no one needs nor can really use.
Who is left when the hunger ends?

* * * *
You have come to know yourself as separate
From god and the many manifestations of creation.
Such is the lie woven by the mind in time.
Cut the knot with the discerning blade
And walk born again in eternity.

* * * *
All any unmanifest beings can ever do is give advice.
And of what use is that if we do not listen?

* * * *
Without the inward movement,
There would be no outward movement.
The leaves do not blow without your recognition.

* * * *
Men and women compete even to deadly ends
Because of a genetic drive too powerful
For many to gain firm reign to.

* * * *
Why are we so quick to take away a child’s innocence?
What answer does not have some vain self-interest at its root?

* * * *
If you merely imitate or play the crowd for attention,
You have proven nothing but the ease of self-deception.

* * * *
The road ahead is one of the most difficult
Humanity and other lifeforms will have thus far faced.
There is little any can do but stay the course, hold on tight,
And take whatever comes as gracefully as possible.
These will truly be times which try men’s souls.
What will come after is anybody’s guess.

* * * *
What’s the point?
What makes you think there is one?

* * * *
Truth is like a shadow
Which you can never catch.

* * * *
Behind every concept
Stands an imagined reality.

* * * *
Those who ignore the balance of natural law
Do so at there own peril.

* * * *
All seeds are born of godness, eternally immaculate.

* * * *
You vainly worship objects alive or dead,
Oblivious to the fact that all value is imagined,
That the infinite source of all manifest creation
Is apportioned equally within and without all.

* * * *
What identity does a flower or any other life form require?
How strange and petty humanity is in the universal dynamic.

* * * *
You breathe in, you breathe out.
You eat, you poop, you drink, you pee.
The body gives and takes without thinking.
Where are you in all this?
Where are you not?

* * * *
What is the point of all this?
Perhaps just to experience, to wonder at
The many potentials existence entails.

* * * *
Death has never even been possible.
It is the illusion of manifest being in time.
The body-identity merely falls off
And the eternal is all.

* * * *
If you were to examine
The human drama closely,
How much of modern history
Focuses upon measure
In one form or another?
As if any stand in eternity.

* * * *
How we do love to chatter.

* * * *
If you are looking for storylines,
There are plenty elsewhere.

* * * *
Recall, if you did not lose it too early, your youth before
The many problems took root in your thoughts,
When a fresh clarity of innocence reigned.
How naturally free you were to roam
Your world alone without all the confusion
Wrought by adults and their make-believe hells.
Before you were taught to be anything but what you were,
A seed of awareness, a sovereign child of godness.
It is still within you to discern that quality of mind.
Cast aside your despair and seek it with all your heart.

* * * *
Why would someone who has no hunger
Continue stuffing themselves?

* * * *
The trouble with spiritual hierarchies
Is the ones who you would want to do the leading
Often do not want to and shun the offer.

* * * *
Living in fear of what is around the next corner
Deprives you of the freedom before you reach it.

* * * *
Someday all these vain histories
Will be left to the cockroaches.

* * * *
What is the so-called will of god
But your will realized for what it is.

* * * *
“Time is money”
Is what mammon worshipers say.

* * * *
Civilization has risen and must ultimately decline.
Humanity must inevitably return to its roots,
Despite the dreams of science fiction.

* * * *
As does every life form,
You are genetically drawn to your kind.
In humans that includes not only survival and continuity,
But cooperation and conflict on an unprecedented worldwide scale.
It would be difficult to imagine were it not truly happening.

* * * *
If you must identify with something,
Identify with nothing.

* * * *
Time imagined has many beginnings, many endings.
Eternity, the ever-present now, has no time for any of it.

* * * *
As long as you believe any of the mirrors,
You will experience vanity and vexation again and again.
Funny, in a challenging sort of way, is it not?

* * * *
You already have eternal life,
But are you willing to die to see it?

* * * *
Across the board,
Life has ever sustained itself upon death.

* * * *
As far as one can see,
No hierarchical claim
Stands the test of eternity.

* * * *
Go blank.

* * * *
What so many call love is just an emotional prison.

* * * *
One wonders how this mad dream
Without beginning will ever end.
More curious that a cat is this jester,
This scribbling awareness of consciousness
Born of eternity’s time-bound landscape.

* * * *
The argument that you are nothing without history
Only coats your mind with a sugary delusion
Disguising the very real and ignored fact
That you are as much nothing with it.

* * * *
There is little need to fear death.
It is life that makes you anxious.

* * * *
The vain histories of humanity
Are the chatter of geographical collusions,
Each proud and mighty in their own enticing delusion.

* * * *
Violent passion rarely does anything
But serve the creation of more division and rancor,
Yet still we enjoy it in every sort of direct and vicarious manner.

* * * *
Few ever get past the many labels
Once they are glued to their dreamy identity.
Why we succumb again and again
To the conceptual morass
Is the mystery of the forbidden fruit
Each of us is tempted, if not forced, to pick.

* * * *
Letting the world into your mind
Becomes a choice once you see
The ultimate nature of its fabrication.

* * * *
The intent of the scribe herein
Is to be often quoted but rarely remembered,
To be unknown in the personal sense.
There is no one to follow.

* * * *
Though they are rare,
Seek sovereign companions.
They will not dampen your eternal quest.

* * * *
Ideals are the wishful stretch of the imagination.
Making them happen is quite another matter.

* * * *
What were you prior to all your words and schemes?
What will you be when they all fall away?
The same answer you are now.

* * * *
A bit knowledge goes a long way
Toward creating a great deal of confusion.
A lot of knowledge spins a vast weaving of insanity.
Returning the fruit back to the garden is easier said than done.

* * * *
What makes you think your dream is superior
To that of a cockroach but your insistent vanity?

* * * *
It is sickness, injury, aging and dying
That are the inevitable bother.
Oblivion is the sweetness
Prior to all this silliness
Born of consciousness.

* * * *
Recall all the times you have laid, sat or stood
With your eyes closed in so many different places.
Were any of them in any way at all truly different
Than the one with your eyes open right now?

* * * *
The trail of time and space
Is cast within the mind ever now.

* * * *
Godness has an infinity of voices.
Within you head is one of them.

* * * *
The tsunami of mother nature cometh.

* * * *
From image to image, each wanders,
Free only if the base is that yonder.

* * * *
Feed you body, not just your tongue.

* * * *
The simple humility of your true foundation
Does not require vain persuasions
Of vain personal nature.

* * * *
Does the good news of eternal life
Make the suffering of consciousness easier to bear?
Needs your research.

* * * *
Humanity has idolized the many religions,
The rich, the famous, the powerful,
To the limits of delusional imagination.
When will the masses realize all are mortal born?
What is this need to create imaginary castes
When all forms are obviously equal?

* * * *
We talk ourselves into so much.

* * * *
Many people seem to create a god
Who really is not much of a parent figure.
Again and again, note who creates the images.

* * * *
To those serious about inquiry,
Drugs are not baubles to be used lightly.
They can open up insights that may be alarming
To those not ready for their teaching.

* * * *
Run as fast, as hard as you will,
You cannot catch eternity.
Stop to witness it,
And it unfolds within.


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