Chapter 84 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


LXXXIV

How we all work it out is the tail’s head.

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Set aside the craving for another version of god.

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Nary would a shot be fired in a real revolution.

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He went for a walk and found he was lost.

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If you are drawn into battle,
Never hesitate to change the rules,
Perhaps many times.

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The commander who aimlessly wanders the field
Bemuses and frightens his opponents.
The most inflexible lose.

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God’s gonna kill you,
Same as everything else.

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We are a world civilization of clashing mindsets.
The heading we are set upon leaves little recourse.

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Will geographies someday lose sight of each other?

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Last man standing stands alone.
Historical curiosity how he gets there.

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What a challenge not to burn bridges,
Or burn them so well no one can follow.

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Burst through the bubble of history.

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Take something away all at once,
Or bit by bit in such a fashion
That it is never an irritant
The same in giving.

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You looking for a piece of history?

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When you zone in on the significance of these words,
Our minds will have achieved the common denominator.

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Who needs to forgive you once you forgive yourself?

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How pathetic we have become in our techno-civil rise.

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You snoozed, you losed.

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How preferable the humility of a commoner.

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How arid and unrewarding the sciences become
When they cannot face the chaotic order of reality.

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Science is its own form of superstition,
Just another collusion of illusion.

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When you want nothing from the illusion,
You will perhaps take the opportunity
To discern your godness within.

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Would you stay if you were not
So attached to your vanity?

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Sometimes you cannot remember anything.
An alert infant-like blankness fills the mind.

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Sometimes faint glimpses of what is written here.

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How else could we ever learn
But through our self-created destruction?
Our species hasn’t the wisdom to do it any other way.

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In less than one hundred years
Almost every life form now living
Will be the dust of the next stage.

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Extrapolate your piece of the play
Into whatever vast diversity you conceive
This world, this universe, all creation may offer.

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This dream, so repugnant at times,
So completely astounding at others.

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Which self-image do you play in any given moment?
One limited and fragmented by identification,
Or full-blown, unbridled absoluteness,
Fearless and free of craving?

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Comprehend very clearly
How every bit of the whole is you.
See it or not, the all is very much the reality.

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Persecution is denial
Martyrdom is pointless.

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What point is there to the continuation
Of the human paradigm now playing?

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You are the revolution
Of a paradigm founded
In the reality of oblivion.

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Sometimes don’t you wonder
How much more you can stand knowing?
How much more do you need to see?
What is it you don’t understand?

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Can any particular name
Ever even begin to capture
The flavor of the real you?

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Peace is in the stillness of awareness,
Not the movement of consciousness.

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Why should these thoughts be consistent
When nothing is but the chaos of change.

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Who are the antichrists
The organized flock fears,
But those who assert
A greater vision.

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The devil is perhaps your greatest teacher.
What else can shepherd the journey out of hell,
But that portion of each who have created it.

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Is a fully cooperative paradigm even possible?
Unlikely we’ll ever know as the point of opportunity
Quickly fades into memories of happier times.
As passion and pride bludgeon their way
Into a fate already far too predictable.

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Just calling it for what it is.
Take it or leave it.
No skin off this immortal schnoz.

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Thought is the creator of all,
Awareness the reality of one.

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Clock hands go round and round,
Shapes and sounds move to and fro,
A mask smirks gallant in the mirror,
But still here you are playing it
Very, very much the same.

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It is all light spun into creation.
Free will is just another fantasy.

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Organized religion opts for words rather than reality.

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As much as god may be all-wise,
God is also equally all-stupid.

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We are all graded by the masks we inherit.

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Specialists may overcome generalists,
But only in the arena of specialty.

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Conditioned from day one
To assume some form of identity,
It is nearly impossible not to.
A do or die proposition.

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Take stock how many
Do one activity or another,
And then note how many are not.

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Dispassion
In any given circumstance
Will stead you further.

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There is really no geometry to space-time.
It is neither point nor line nor circle nor triangle,
Nor any other shape conceived of mind.

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Examine every attachment
And discern the common ground
Is the futile attempt at mortal security.

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We will forget everything.

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What a fucking pain in the butt all these thoughts have become!
More to transcribe and edit, but to what end this eye is blind.

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Cultures are an innovation of environment.
Associations of individuals adapting in groups
To geographical contexts in so many unique ways.
A good show for those in student of life mode.

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Not much use conversing
With those who cannot listen to you.
How can the narrow ever discern the broad,
Or the broad ever return to the narrow?

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Amazing how each of us
Will recollect a common event,
If it can even be remembered at all.
What different universes each visualize.

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What a hen house the media is,
All hovering for the next torrid story.
And we play into the madness.

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Answers, all you want is answers,
But first you must discern the questions.

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A worker bee passes away,
His life work boxed and stored,
Untapped for lack of interest,
Awaiting final sentencing
At the nearest landfill.

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Where exactly does the inner end
And the outer begin?

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Jesus was the anti-christ,
Siddhartha the anti-buddha,
And Lao Tzu the anti-tao.

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Grok it, baby, grok it.
Then die anyway.

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Everybody’s selling something.

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What’s the gap between your ideal and your reality?

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The masses, by definition, will never be ready.

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Is it mind?  Is it breath?  Is it heart?
None and all at the same time.

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Believe you me,
The body gives not one iota
About any of this.

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Everything nothing.
All diversity one.

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The universe has amazing ways
Of reminding you who’s in charge.

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Personality is the doubt, the fear and the craving.

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So many promising a higher high,
And you so gullible for every scam.

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You didn’t get here by being Mr. Nice Guy all the time.

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So challenging to have a firm grip
Upon the context of your time.

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Science is just another paradigm.

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More of the same.
Sigh.

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If the Pope was a real mystic,
The Church would have to kill him.

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Organized religions are for the literal-minded
And that your role is just as meaningless to them.

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When ego moves around there is ceaseless drama.
Where there is anonymity, only the silent take notice.

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Pain sort of forces you to take a look.

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There’s something to be said
About ignorance being bliss.

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Nature is the only true teacher.
Nature is the only true student.

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You must not really crave it,
Elsewise, you might well have it.

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History must be understood through its context,
Not the historian’s.

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You read so many words, yet cannot see through them.

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Sometimes you forget you are pretending
And must pretend you remember.

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Sometimes there is no choice, no time
For anything but an instinctual response.

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Only two trillion lifetimes to go.
Wallahoo!

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Why do they do it?
For the same reason you might
If you get the chance.

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Regarding the senses, it is indeed arduous
To bypass the many pleasures they weave.

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If you knew what horrors lie ahead,
Would you take your life to avoid them?

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What price pleasure?

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Steel your mind against the pain.

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But wasn’t one enough?

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Assuming there is a lesson to learn,
Have you learned yours?

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All you can grok is born of time’s play of light and sound.

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You wander looking for another to recognize,
A mirror who will reflect the acceptance
You seem unable to muster within.

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The rigors of time play havoc to the end.

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Is it worth it?

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At some points you just prefer your own company.

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Funny what you’ll spend money on.

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How can there ever be true peace through violence?

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Learn to think but not too much,
Or about the wrong things.
That’s education.

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How much unwarranted attention
We give actors, politicians, gladiators,
And other caricatures of vanity.


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