Chapter 61 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


LXI

It is the swirl of desire and fear that inspires the dream.
Endure as best ye may all your suffering.
It is your greatest teacher.

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What need you names?

* * * *
Every assumption humanity makes
Is founded upon the natural order
The laws of manifest existence.

* * * *
May all Hallmark holidays
Fall into the abyss they deserve.

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The mists of time can play havoc in your mind.

* * * *
This is the current present.

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Joy and sorrow, smiles and frowns,
Each as impermanent as the other,
Drifting back and forth, to and fro
In the currents of thought’s reverie.

* * * *
When the tablet empties, the child
Remains prior to all contexts.

* * * *
For the media to deny its responsibility
In this fine mess is an abysmal delusion.

* * * *
This is the final conclusion,
Until the confusion arises again.

* * * *
Said it all and will say it again and again.

* * * *
Meditation is floating away.

* * * *
Creation is evolution and evolution is creation.
They have never been mutually exclusive.

* * * *
It is not your words, but your actions
Which announce your true religion.

* * * *
That which is built upon time only becomes
More ritualized, decadent and trivial.

* * * *
Meaning and purpose are concocted
In the unfolding of moment-to-moment experiencing.

* * * *
Subtlety is lost upon the literal mind.
It will run, condemn or kill to retain its delusion.

* * * *
How often one man’s passion
Casts another as victim.

* * * *
How challenging to live in a world
So filled with discontent and rancor.

* * * *
Every single part and particle
Is connected to the same infinity.

* * * *
Physician, heal thyself,
Means simply it is you, and you alone,
Who must alone discern and uncleave the universe
You have so precisely pulled into pieces.

* * * *
The masses see madmen as sane and the sane as mad.
So much paradox and irony this extemporaneous world.

* * * *
Your time is linked in memory.

* * * *
The changing only wears down
That which is changeable.

* * * *
The most incredible thing about the followers
Is that they really believe they understand
What the originators were truly saying.

* * * *
Life’s gift sometimes loses its sheen.
Who does not occasionally wonder,
Especially in moments of struggle,
Why it was given in the first place.

* * * *
All these thoughts,
From where do they come?
Why, why, I do not know,
And less and less
Do I care.

* * * *
Can you ever really be sure
That any of it ever happened?
Or is life merely vague perceptions,
Selected assumptions, vain declarations,
All as brief as sand dunes weathered
By the ceaseless wind of eternity.

* * * *
What distance is there
Between here and there?
What time between now and then?
What measurement between this or that?
But the mind weighing, weighing, ever weighing?

* * * *
When they have nothing better to do with their lives,
People become tourists, plying one decadence or another.
What a pathetic, anemic species we are becoming.
Is it innocence, or the drab mush of excess?

* * * *
The well of eternity can never run dry.

* * * *
The inconsiderate guest
Is the eternal challenge.

* * * *
To surrender you must yield the center.

* * * *
The only block to eternity is the you
You continuously fabricate.

* * * *
Dilemma tends to force questioning
Upon those of subtle spirit.

* * * *
Few flowers stay full for long.

* * * *
Even Buddha meditates best
On a reasonably full belly.

* * * *
An obligatory life
Is not much to look back upon.

* * * *
Most want their bodies and hearts healed,
But rare are those who find remedy in the mind.

* * * *
Consciousness is the trading ground of desire.

* * * *
Avoid adopting the labels others set before you.
Be especially wary of those you paste upon yourself.

* * * *
Caveat:  Many of these thoughts are opinions, not truths.
Sometimes they just sound good, the way words,
Even the mistaken ones, often do.

* * * *
You can almost always spot a tourist.

* * * *
Would Darwin burst  from uncontrollable laughter
At the direction humanity is heading?

* * * *
What suffering there is
Is solely for this end.

* * * *
Real revolution is unformatted.

* * * *
All roads lead to oblivion.

* * * *
Was there truly any other choice?

* * * *
Sometimes you’ve just got to throw out
That rotten sack of potatoes.

* * * *
No one can legally deprive you
Of your god-given right to survive.

* * * *
How many fly wings must be pulled
To comprehend the pain life too often endures?

* * * *
And then there are those who seek
To occupy every toilet and urinal on campus
At least once.

* * * *
Identity is forced upon each and every one of us.
It is the play of consciousness as set out in the human drama.
Its free will outcome, though not apparent now, is ultimately predestined.

* * * *
The finite world is for finite minds.

* * * *
Let those who believe life is life
Bury those they think dead.

* * * *
You’ve save the world ten thousand times
In as many way, yet it is ever the same.

* * * *
If you are waiting to be crowned king of the universe,
The chances grow fatter with every moment’s passing.

* * * *
Being all, what need have you
For singular lives?

* * * *
Let it happen.
Faith, serene detachment.

* * * *
Exclude all sense of time and space.
Unfold into the unreferenced wonder.

* * * *
There are none who are not godness.
It is for each to realize alone
If it is their calling.
Seeing cannot be force or persuaded.

* * * *
But still you must carry on,
Playing out life in time as if it is real.
What to do with it, how to abide in the paradox
Of mother’s three-dimensional dream.

* * * *
Consciousness is consciousness is consciousness.
But what is it prior to its imaginary reality?
In that mirrored reckoning is the truth of the matter.

* * * *
Consciousness is like a breeze
Blowing though the stillness of awareness.
The movement prior to the wind’s ephemeral content
Is what must be intuitively, attentively discerned.
The awareness, the amness, is perceived
Only by those who seek the source
Of this mysterious lightshow.

* * * *
Options change.

* * * *
And still consciousness,
Like the Sirens of Ulysses,
Draws you into its rocky web.

* * * *
To end identification with the body-mind
And all it implies, that is the road less traveled.

* * * *
One must learn to ignore the ego’s incessant desire
To retain the selected impressions of space-time.

* * * *
Where air, water and land meet,
Are they not the same ocean?

* * * *
Some say it all happens for a reason.
Whose reason?

* * * *
When you consider what the body is,
What is there to truly identify with?

* * * *
Complete surrender.
Such bliss is beyond the realm of the known.

* * * *
Anyone can see a larger picture
At any point in time.
Do not hold anyone to their past.

* * * *
You are already that which is immortal.
What greater realization could you possibly want?

* * * *
Burning bridges can be very foolish,
Unless you are very sure your course
Will not require a return in that direction.

* * * *
Eternity is in every step, every breath, every heartbeat
And every immeasurable point through which time unfolds.

* * * *
Consciousness, that which is known, is not the eternal.
It never has been, nor will it ever be.
Attempts to manifest the intangible into time
Can only add to the continuing saga of vain delusion.

* * * *
Justice is a concept to weather the injustice.

* * * *
Isn’t one enough?

* * * *
Some wear suits, others rags.
What difference really?

* * * *
The chance cards in the deck of life
Hold a wide range of surprises.

* * * *
The only difference between now and then
Is a larger set of impressions.

* * * *
The real you can never be tainted by the stains of time.

* * * *
The fine print said sickness, injury, aging, dying and death.
Perhaps you will read it a little more closely next time.

* * * *
The permutations of all creation are, for all practical purposes, infinite.
The library of all ordered knowledge would fill galaxies.
Busy, busy, busy.

* * * *
When any creature great or small is without recourse,
The choices are boiled down to genetic predisposition.

* * * *
Sometimes you just have to let the blind stumble about
Until they see.

* * * *
You know what you have chosen to know,
See what you have chosen to see,
Believe what you have chosen to believe,
Are what you have chosen to be.
You are the chosen one.

* * * *
If the shoe fits,
Take it to the soul.

* * * *
What family is truly your own?

* * * *
All knowledge is yours to sustain
For as long as you choose.

* * * *
Consciousness fragments into an infinity of opposites,
Ever the same, no matter the irony or claim.

* * * *
What inanity will you endure before this dream’s final end?
How many days do you wake up wishing you had not?

* * * *
Every game has an opening, every story an ending.
And the middle is all the tales told by the historians
Who survive or later examine the pieces remaining.

* * * *
Gods within gods within gods.

* * * *
The direction of any life pursuit
Says far more about the pursuer.

* * * *
For want of the only real glory,
We fabricate so many false ones.

* * * *
Is this what you would have imagined life to be?

* * * *
Women may be on the average
More intelligent than men,
But the advantage is generally offset
By how crazy the latter tend to make them.

* * * *
In any given moment of wonder,
What does it really matter
What you are doing?

* * * *
It is the visual sense
Which gives greatest weight
To the reverie of time and space.

* * * *
Why beat your head against the walls of time?

* * * *
Male violence is well documented,
But what havoc is born of an uncontrolled womb
In a world already far too crowded with madness and strife?
What difference really between scalps and flowers?


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