Chapter 67 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


LXVII

The irony and paradox is that we are all the everything and the nothing,
So desperately determined to somehow become something more.

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Who, what, when, where, why, how,
Will you hear the soundless sound?

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At the root of any given topic
Is the study of consciousness.

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Kill all you please.
None die.

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You are in the grip of time,
Though without you
Through which to act,
It would not, could not be.

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Justice is a function of the might
From which it blossoms.
Might makes right
Through the muscle of its intention.

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What point is there in knowing in reality
The answer to why ignorance
Flowers so persistently?

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Who made the first choice?  Is there any such thing?
Or is it merely another dulling, empty concept
In a dream of fabricated assumptions?

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Will you ever work out your karma with me?

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Seek that which knows no other.

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The real universe
Is not a fabrication of consciousness.

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How fascinating the rationales wealth allows.

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What attachment can awareness have
To any of will’s countless acts?

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Hopefully these words
Do not cause the blaspheme
So many others have.

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Who is the who, who embraces so many passions?

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The play wears to the same conclusion
No matter which way you look.

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With collective dismay
We watch our fate unfold.

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Paranoia is the mind running wild
Of its own incoherent reasoning.

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What need have you
To belong in this world?

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As distinct as any bubble
In a frothing, humming jacuzzi,
You are only a tiny bit more long-lived,
In a divinely fictitious sort of way, of course.

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Get past veiled definitions of yourself.
It’s a god eat god, god touch god, god taste god,
God hear god, god smell god, god love god, god hate god,
God damned illusionary, delusionary, confused world,
In an otherwise perfectly orchestrated universe.

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The veil takes countless forms.

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You spend you life
Defining its narrow resolution.

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Joy and suffering are both temporal.
The ultimate requires neither.

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Could hell be that much worse
That this world is for some?

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What task can you fully enjoy
If you approach is with dreadful anticipation?

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Maybe I’m talking to you,
Maybe I’m talking to myself.
Is it really any different?

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To read these words
And not make them dogmatic
Will be your challenge.

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Do you enjoy forgetting?

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No solutions from this corner.
Just another way of looking at things,
A set of reflections of another you
Bound in the play of time.

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Have you been taught, have you learned,
To resent yourself and the world?

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If I am in some future lifetime
Required to become a Christian, Hindu or Otherism,
I am indeed doomed to live out eternity in hell.

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Why be bothered by anything?

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Heal thy Self,
Love thy Self.

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Now is the no-man’s land of time.

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Except in the most abstract sense,
You cannot separate yourself
From your context.

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How many notebooks, pads and scraps of paper
Has it taken to scribe these many reflections?

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This where I Am,
So this is what I write about.

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Be the ignorance.
It is the eternal salvation,
You so prideful seek.

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We give such power to sound.

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How many vie to leave some mark,
Some sign that they existed?

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How can you help but eventually offend
A person easily offended?

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End your commitment to time.

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It has nothing to do
With what you think you are.

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It says one thing one time,
An opposite thing another time.
Why can’t the scribe be consistent?
Ah, the irony of earth, water, wind and fire.

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No further questions, your honor.

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Let all the others take the credit.

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Whether conspired or just a synergy of ignorance,
We have placed ourselves and this world in harm’s way.

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That trail of nouns you ponder so thoroughly
Will only be important as long as you exist.

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Put yourself in that cage, aquarium or back yard.
Put yourself in the hands of a scientific experiment,
The ripping end of a chainsaw, a shrinking net,
A hunter’s gun sight, or a spray of poison.
Empathy brews a world of bedfellows.

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How can you examine your own blood under a microscope
And not fathom that you too are of the same mystery?
Our blindness, our denial of reality is the greatest irony.

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Every day you wake up to the same old tired conclusions.

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The storm of eternity thunders into consciousness.

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It is those who believe in birth and death who create karma.

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Once you begin something,
A conclusion is inevitable.

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You are angel and devil in the same breath.

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We are so fixated on believing
Knowledge is the key to everything,
That science will solve all the problems
Created by denial of intuitive common sense.

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Adapt or die.

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Consciousness concocts the maze of the universal drama.
It is the key to existence, the answer to its dissolution.
Without its movement, the walls cannot stand.

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Who knows what history will make of you.

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Women tend to hibernate in the middle ground of maya
While men play fool or genius at either end of the spectrum.

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We are consuming our way to a new existence.

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Denial is viable if you wish to live insanely.

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We tend to make god as vain as we are.

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Home being wherever you are,
Rest easy in it.

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Fortunately for the world,
I choose to be harmless.

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You are infinity locked in a bottle.

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How can you see the eye of god
But through your own?

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Seek simple solutions to complex problems.

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The further you look into either past or future,
The less you will touch the present.

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What lies you weave for yourself.

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What if you came as your children
With you as their parent?

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Can a drop be any less godness than the entire ocean?
Only to those who measure.

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Time opens the gate now.

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Sex has become as dangerous as Russian Roulette.

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Do you really have much use for this absurd spectacle anymore?

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What would any of us be without all the names?

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Through your vision all differences melt into the one.

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Does the chalkboard care
What the chalk says of goods and evils
And the inane dualities they spread?

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Have you ever really seen any devil
Other than one formed in the shape of man?

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Eternity has nowhere to go
And an infinite amount of time to be there.

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Why this need to attach value to everything?

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All personal context is contrived.

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Desire brings out fear of not getting or loss,
Fear brings out the desire for fear’s end.
A Catch-22 of consciousness framed.

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What is enlightenment but what you think it is?
But is it really anything which thought can ascertain?

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Nice guys finish last because they enjoy the saunter,
And because they are generous enough
To let everyone else go first.

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Dig a hole, then fill it.
See what peace a little sweat and grime brings.

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Death is just a more final loss of consciousness than sleep.

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So many caught in a painful loop
Forged entirely of their own creation.
How challenging the psyche so attached
To the serrated edge of its own imagination.

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If you cannot be detached,
If you cannot die to the pride,
Then you will never be free.

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Truth is the dying to the persona
And the rebirth into eternal life of Self.

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So attached to our divisiveness
That attempts to reconcile,
To iron out the disarray
Is met with scorn
By ignorance.

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What pathetic, absurd idiocy this unwavering ignorance.

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Revolutions come about through many small steps
Down a variety of paths using many means.
Most are merely the same old pursuit
Of power, glory and affluence.
But the most real revolution,
The greatest change humanity
Has yet to discern much less muster
Is a paradigm shift into the deepest order.

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It takes great courage to be free of doubt.

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To pierce the veil with your mind,
You must discern the mind is the veil.

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Unrequited love may be the best kind.

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Are you a slave to time and the illusion which creates it?

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How many ways can you say one?
How many creations are in one dollop of eternity?

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Leaders can only lead
Where followers are inclined to proceed.
They are the inner voice, the common echo of communal will

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Ride the dream, cowboy.

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Disband the band.

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Dispense with band-aids, the patient is dying.
Scrapes and scratches are not the issue.

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Polarizations only lead to extreme resolutions.

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Why hope for that which neither offers nor sustains it?

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The gleam of wonder laces the wander.

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How is it so many consider ownership
And jealousy to be acts of love?

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These many reflections meet the criterion of validity
As seen by the vision of this mystery through the eyes of the scribe.
Many are of a sense of universal truth while others sally through the play of Maya.
You may envision something entirely different, and that is your inner sight.
And in that, you are the truth, life and way, the source of all creation.
Our differences will ever be the delusions of a common dream.


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