Chapter 92 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


XCII

You cannot change a pattern
Until you want, or are forced to,
And even then it is a tough show.

* * * *
Life’s choices are more akin
To wandering through a funnel
Than an infinite set of possibilities.
Hardly this vain notion we call free will.

* * * *
Over-consumption creates an inevitable future.

* * * *
Why live in fear of that which
You aid fully in creating?

* * * *
If you want to change something,
Change the paradigm.

* * * *
A brief dream in which you cannot do more than long.

* * * *
Where to go once every assumption
Is exposed to question?
One becomes very still, very silent
In the facelessness of the inevitable answer.

* * * *
It is the highest science.

* * * *
You deal with relationship
One moment at a time.

* * * *
No thing is forever.

* * * *
The only reason these writings have been penned
Is because of your self-taught discipline as a writer.

* * * *
See what an education can do.
Kind of scary, isn’t it?

* * * *
How silly that so many believe heaven
Is somehow patterned after all humanity’s
Vain petty and insignificant hierarchies.

* * * *
What is life but an opportunity
To enjoy and suffer your creation.

* * * *
Did what happen?

* * * *
Great oceans are built with tiny drops.
Great mountains with tiny grains of sand.
Great universes with tiny iotas of matter.
Put it together and what have you got
But you?

* * * *
Some follow because they cannot stand alone.
Other cannot follow because they cannot stand but alone.

* * * *
Children are very much in the present
Because they have no baggage to contend with.

* * * *
Whoness,
Whatness,
Whereness,
Whenness,
Whyness,
Howness.

* * * *
The form is only as useful as the user.

* * * *
Pray tell, what is there we have not done,
Seen done, or thought about doing?

* * * *
From one, all.
Far too many to count,
Despite countless vain attempts.

* * * *
Organized religion is as contradictory as military intelligence.
Co-opting wisdom does not for truth make.

* * * *
They hedge their bets by praying Sunday service
Will turn aside their six days of hypocrisy.

* * * *
As long as you don’t step on my toes.

* * * *
The problem with hero worship
Is that close scrutiny so often
Calls the assumption into question,
And then the duped followers get upset.

* * * *
Death.
The final frontier.

* * * *
You think godness
Will want to play you forever?
Dream on.

* * * *
Back off occasionally
To illuminate the landscape.
Charge in to glean its subtle parts.
Challenge and retreat, thrust and parry.
Fluid like wind, like water, like fire.

* * * *
The elements are teachers
For students of life’s wisdom.

* * * *
Measure everything as much
Or as often as you might.
It don’t mean squat .

* * * *
How could it be if all possibilities
Were not equally present?

* * * *
Sometimes you wish you still wore
A younger man’s clothes.

* * * *
Glory is in the small,
Unacclaimed, unspoken
Unrewarded things.

* * * *
Humanity really doesn’t see that it,
In separation, is the devil it so fears.

* * * *
You tell me I am not realistic,
And I say there is much greater reality
Looming ahead in a now yet to be perceived.

* * * *
How amazing how all these words materialize
Upon this tiny two-dimensional screen.

* * * *
Pleasure you enjoy, pain you endure.

Flip the coin again and again
Till breath’s death do you part.

* * * *
Squash a fly and know
You won part, your own fate.

* * * *
How vain to think you deserve more.

* * * *
Any assumption can have far-reaching consequences.

* * * *
How much do you put in your head
To call yourself educated?

* * * *
It is as it is
As it has ever been
As it will ever be.

* * * *
We burden the unborn
With our synergistic irresponsibility.

* * * *
Why do so many require applause?

* * * *
What would you do if a knock sounds in the middle of the night?
What would you do if they came to put you in a boxcar
Whose destination was shrouded by ashes?
How passive are you to your fate?

* * * *
Harsh winds calm, calm turns harsh.
Which time is more interesting?

* * * *
How many doors there are to open.

* * * *
Humanity is just not as great as its vanity pretends.

* * * *
Take at least a few moments each day
To fathom some contentment, some serenity.
The little tastes of the grace which is your potential.

* * * *
The big lesson here is about who’s in charge.
A ship cannot right itself unless it balances its reckoning
Within the natural forces through which it tacks.

* * * *
Amazing what lies we will believe.

* * * *
Holding the universe together is a full time job.

* * * *
Words can only convey what we all know.

* * * *
To be an individual yet a participant,
Separate yet indivisible, a part yet one with the whole
Is a state of grace from which right action flows
As does a healthy mountain spring.

* * * *
Alone together.

* * * *
Your wings are quickly melting
And you are hurtling into the ground.

* * * *
How much of your life
Has been spent justifying
An existence you did not ask for?

* * * *
Even the harshest wind cannot touch a still mind.

* * * *
That you might kill or die
To possess a mountain of gold
Is an intriguing set of values.

* * * *
Good dogs mind.

* * * *
Free the chi.

* * * *
What a vast difference
Between the conjured ought to be
And the realistic way it is.

* * * *
Why be concerned about impressing
Those who see no further than the surface?

* * * *
Welcome guests help keep the house clean.

* * * *
Those who see bear the burden
Of those who do not.

* * * *
A world run by demons,
Some even well-intentioned.

* * * *
Megalomania to say you are godness,
Megalomania to think you are not.
One big Catch-22 paradox.

* * * *
Do you come to terms with the world,
Or the world to you?

* * * *
Try to be easily amused.
Expectations can turn one bitter.

* * * *
Why deny yourself?
Moderation allows all things.

* * * *
This is your dream.
Spend it whatever way you will.

* * * *
Humanity cannot help be but what it is.

* * * *
Find Eden within.

* * * *
More energetic souls than you
Have sought to change this mystery.
Yet has anyone really changed anything?

* * * *
Make plenty of friends
On your way to the ovens.

* * * *
You need justify nothing.

* * * *
Ride the fence and see all sides.

* * * *
Does one thing bring out another,
Or another one thing.

* * * *
Once you’ve gone beyond all form,
What need for any flag?

* * * *
You abide in the realm of possibilities.

* * * *
You are the only one.

* * * *
For these things you have a great memory.

* * * *
You were born into the Chinese curse of interesting times.
Will anything ever be uninteresting for humanity again?

* * * *
Whose universe shall rule?

* * * *
Why allow your confidence
To be controlled by any other?

* * * *
The world will never, can never
Give you everything you want from it.
Deal with it, get over it, get past it.

* * * *
Where is the identity in an empty mind?
Without attributes, what is existence?

* * * *
Clarity comes with inner stillness.

* * * *
Less rigorous is the road less traveled.

* * * *
What was matters no more.
What will be cannot be altered.
Fate happens; you will complete it.

* * * *
Was it never not so?

* * * *
A speedy death
Is a great opportunity
To discover if you’re going
To wake into some tomorrow.

* * * *
Once you’ve seen the source,
What can hold you?

* * * *
Does being the outlet for some part
Some peculiar portion of the play
Somehow make you superior?
Every part played is what
Entitles you to yours.

* * * *
How simple to ignore it.

* * * *
How deluded we are that we would laugh
At other creatures if they behave as we do.

* * * *
It takes but a moment to create the universe anew.

* * * *
The mind born of knowledge, a product of chaos,
Is the creator of order’s temporal reality.

* * * *
Delusion is a form of self-hypnosis.

* * * *
God must be desperately lonely.

* * * *
Play to the dream.
Complete your solitary fate
In whatever way you will.

* * * *
Face after face sifts through
The hourglass of eternity.

* * * *
Stardust, clayness, essence.
All the same implication.

* * * *
The stain of time,
The grit of personality,
The smudge of awareness.

* * * *
Words are so fallible.

* * * *
“Consumed by their existence”
Might read humanity’s tombstone epithet,
Were the universe to even register our rumored existence.


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