Chapter 76 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


LXXVI

Argue duality in whatever way your individualistic limitation wills,
It is all the same indivisible oneness dancing away
In the waves of conscious design.

* * * *
Curious how it sometimes becomes difficult
To recall who you are pretending to be.

* * * *
There is really only ignorance
And awareness of the ignorance.

* * * *
We argue the propaganda of time,
Of the limitations of the self-absorbed mind.
Grasping the largest view is beyond the scope
Of any parochial, unquestioning perspective.

* * * *
Life is the only real teacher,
But what is it you seem so certain
You are here to discover?

* * * *
How can you ever be truly content
With the placebo of another’s truth?

* * * *
What can the vague pleasures
Of any dream truly offer?

* * * *
The pendulum swings.

* * * *
You are in the beginning
As you will be to the ending.

* * * *
Sometimes so light, sometimes so dark.
All the same dancer, all the same dance.

* * * *
Are you waging the game of life supreme?

* * * *
A set of writings for coffee tables,
Bed stands and bathrooms.

* * * *
How different any life would be
With even just a different name.

* * * *
The mind embraces every sort of speculation
As if any of them can capture a shred of truth
With even the most profound plays of sound.

* * * *
All are conditioned to believe so many things matter.
That has been the flow of the human drama.
Seeing beyond the mind’s choices
Into the detachment of choicelessness
Is challenging even for the greatest minds.
Attachment to any given pattern permeates all.

* * * *
At some point a whiff is all you need
To know well enough any experience.
All delusion is born of imagination.

* * * *
Shit, piss, semen, gas, sweat, snot, blood, tears, wax, saliva.
What is the body but an amazing energy conversion unit?

* * * *
You will ether reject these world
Or harness them to you own devices.

* * * *
Following an idea promising
Something that you already have
Is the remedy of ignorance.

* * * *
When you can spin hay into gold,
You are the mystery.

* * * *
Imitating an ideal is as close a most ever get.

* * * *
What temptation to abuse privilege.

* * * *
If you believe karma is real,
You probably are due for more.

* * * *
Do you wallow in anything as much
As reflection upon your personal existence?
The trick is remembering its relativity to any and all.

* * * *
How can you ever be free
If you have any expectations
Of what freedom will be?

* * * *
This is an answer to the quagmire
Of a dysfunctional dead-end paradigm
Well on the way towards self-destruction.

* * * *
Belief is the mind’s unceasing attempt
To gain security in an existence
Which can offer none.

* * * *
Why not be confident?
Why tolerate fear?
Why hesitate?

* * * *
If you believe karma even exists,
Then you are probably due
For a few more slaps.

* * * *
How can you even hope to be free
If you have even one expectation?

* * * *
Theater is theater
No matter the stage.

* * * *
One plus one equals one,
It is the most simple math.

* * * *
Change is not.

* * * *
God is the invention of a self-absorbed mind.

* * * *
Idealistic delusion is sweet
Until the Golden Horde
Comes over the hill.

* * * *
Love godness simply because you love totality,
Not out of fear, obligation or hope for reward.

* * * *
We’re all god here.

* * * *
Take it or leave it, it really don’t matter to me.

* * * *
Love is a tricky word,
Absurdly indefinable.

* * * *
As you are more powerful than many forms,
Why should there not be many others
Much more potent than you?

* * * *
It only takes one person
To screw it up for everyone else.

* * * *
How much of life is the bluff
Of a moderate poker hand?

* * * *
Knowing something is true,
And then coping with it in the everyday
May be two very challenging things to pull together.

* * * *
So much you don’t know, so much you cannot know.
Yet without you there is no knowing, no knower.
What a mysterious paradox all creation.

* * * *
How quickly we jump to judgments
Of another’s perceived shortcomings.

* * * *
The scope of truth is both broad and narrow.

* * * *
Is the mind as we know it capable of true joy?
Can it be manipulated, deceived, cajoled,
Ignored or conditioned to be happy?

* * * *
You are the research vehicle.
Send a memo when you
Figure an answer
That suits you.

* * * *
Complexity is a many-edged sword.

* * * *
The egoistic impulse for glory
Seems strong in each of us.

* * * *
Rare are those who can put aside their craving
To fully, impersonally, objectively examine
Their personal, subjective context.

* * * *
The devil is the one who takes everything personally,
Who cannot see the other’s suffering is the same,
Who cannot play life any way but win or lose.
The devil is in the hell of dualistic notion,
The one in denial of the Self within.
Who does not play out that role
To one degree or another?

* * * *
Are you detached in idea or reality?

* * * *
Where mind leads, body will follow,
A shadow to the end of all beginnings.

* * * *
What bliss surrender!
Is it more than you deserve?

* * * *
All that effort to control something over which you have none,
All that will exercising remedies to a fate which lacks any.

* * * *
Managing free will is a fool’s game.

* * * *
We each live the life we feel called to live.

* * * *
Life is a subscription, death its payment.

* * * *
Wisdom is just distilling things down
To the most simple equations.
It seems profound only to the mind
Snared in the complexities of its vanity.

* * * *
Unless we as a species alter our paradigm,
We are doomed by our own success.

* * * *
Change breeds change.

* * * *
Why are we so blind
To the greatest commonality
Is a mystery unto itself.

* * * *
What point to the esoteric is oneness
Cannot be incorporated into daily living?

* * * *
Every drop unique, every drop original.
All very much the same essence.
Fractions abide ever one.
No more, no less.

* * * *
Can any bubble bridle the truth?

* * * *
Create just enough courage to overcome you fear.

* * * *
What would life be like
If you truly lived it effortlessly?

* * * *
The world birthed of the human mind
Cannot stand against the immeasurable.

* * * *
Pop out into the infinity of the absolute.
Pop back into the dualistic vehicle
Which allows you to envision it.

* * * *
Those who do not manage their bodies well
Run the course of any ill-mannered mechanism.

* * * *
Manifest freedom is relative to circumstance.
The unmanifest freedom is without context.

* * * *
Muster the courage that dissipates the fear.
Summon the breath that vanquishes the dread.
Attend the mind that generates the doubt and worry.
Give pause the activity that hypnotizes the vision.

* * * *
Everything is imagined habit, patterned
By a random mix of genetics and context.

* * * *
The inevitability of time, of cause and effect,
Creates a play of history all but concluded.

* * * *
Inward non-being is the integration meditation attains.
Only in the cessation of the concept of freedom is there freedom.
When mind stills into simple awareness, you are the wind that is not wind.

* * * *
Youthful self-absorption denies
The same sense of experience others share.
Wisdom is the appreciation of life’s wider commonalities.

* * * *
Does having much more than needed prove better?

* * * *
The whole universe is contained in your mind’s eye.

* * * *
Different strokes for different folks.

* * * *
Those who seek truth do it alone.

* * * *
Passion generally only exacerbates a problem.

* * * *
The Sodoms and Gomorrahs
Are consumed by their own ignorance.
The wrath of god is not required.

* * * *
Plead simple ignorance
In the courtrooms of judgment.

* * * *
No use making yourself sick
Over circumstances which you have
Absolutely no say whatsoever.

* * * *
How can you ever hope to find completion, fullness,
If you can’t discern it in the passing moment?
It ain’t gonna happen no place else.

* * * *
Even those you have killed are your teachers.

* * * *
Confusion sets in again and again
In the mind caught in the web
Of its ceaseless limitation.

* * * *
The overwhelming play of numbers
Has numbed our sensibilities.

* * * *
Is time friend or foe?
Or simply awareness
Dreaming in real-time?

* * * *
A fool is not bound by his words.

* * * *
Ponder all the fire of hell or the gold of heaven
Until you discern it is all merely the fickle waves
Of your vivid, subjective, delusional imagination.

* * * *
Interesting how so many believe god judges us
For a silly game we had no hand in inventing.

* * * *
One foot in eternity, the other in time,
Wander aimlessly purposeful.

* * * *
What limitations we each and every one compensate for.

* * * *
Life is a game with a set of rules
In which we all participate willingly or not
In so many unique permutations.

* * * *
Your life is a statistical cross section of potentials.

* * * *
What doe a cancer do
After it has consumed all
But turn upon itself?

* * * *
Successful, abundant specialization
Inevitably collides with its limitations.

* * * *
Of meaning and purpose, there is none but what is imagined.

* * * *
History is a collage of fiction.

* * * *
You are as rich as you feel.

* * * *
You need not be bound by any personal mythos.
At any point in time, you can change your mind.

* * * *
Contentment means passion hasn’t got
The same shackle on you that it once did.

* * * *
Examine any event through all eyes present,
And there will be as many views of its history.


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