The Return to Wonder - Chapter One


One


Here you are, a drop of the grand mystery,
Weighing in as best you can with what tools you have,
Still unable to fathom any who-what-where-when-why-how to it.
What can you do but be here, be now, temporal witness to the dream of time.

* * * *
If it is your calling, your fortune, your kismet, your fate, your destiny,
You will discern the me within you, the you within me, the same me,
The same awareness within and between all things great to small.

* * * *
The universe has been spontaneously, ingeniously crafted
That you might penetrate this point in time,
Conscious witness to the play.
The price of the ticket: ecstasy, agony, death.

* * * *
You can only observe the play of manifestation
And intuit its ultimate, absolute nature.
There is nothing to be changed,
Nothing to be done.
Nothing which can be done,
Except to freely embrace your totality.

* * * *
Duality is temporal illusion.
There truly is no other.
Nor was there ever a second.
The real you has always been, ever is,
And will ever be, number one.

* * * *
How can you think
You have accomplished anything
If you have not yet discovered the unconditioned?

* * * *
Other than the endlessly wearing reality
That two-legged existence is politics from the get-go,
Why would it matter even one iota what any other thinks of you?
Forever alone, you must daily pretend you are not.

* * * *
The world, the universe, the hologram, the matrix, the quantum, call it what you will,
Is in a relentless state of consumption, a constant state of fluctuation,
Unscathed, unchanged, uncaring, all the while.

* * * *
To gain the perfect edge, the sword must withstand the forge many times.

* * * *
The manifest universe is only real because you believe it real.

* * * *
When desire becomes a mouthful of sawdust,
Realization is potentially just off stage,
And liberation not far behind.

* * * *
Mystery creates and encompasses Maya.
Maya creates and encompasses you.
Discern your Self the trickster's source.

* * * *
Why do you suffer the dance?
Perhaps for the sheer inanity of the play
And the ultimate sojourn home.

* * * *
When you own this,
Identity cascades away inwardly.
The remnants are only a cloak others create.

* * * *
The mind's potential is as a receiver,
Not an isolated, limited personal identity.
The point is to tune in directly to your channel.
No intermediaries are necessary.

* * * *
You cannot expect, or even hope,
That many will even begin to comprehend
This inward journey you are compelled to wander.
It is a lifetime sojourn into the utter aloneness of true nature.
It is a many-are-called-few-are-chosen-fewer-still-volunteer kind of thing.

* * * *
Neither resistance nor acceptance will connect you to the ultimate state of awareness.
You must be, allow, embrace, every aspect of consciousness as a whole,
If you are to rediscover the unbound state of the newborn.

* * * *
How else could isness pretend to know itself but through Maya's playful veil?

* * * *
There is really no you or yours, only awareness of a brief dream.

* * * *
The desire to continue in time has created all this suffering.

* * * *
To discern what you are ends what you are not.

* * * *
Suffering is the teacher and the teaching.

* * * *
Surrender what was never yours.
Your fate can be joyfully eternal.

* * * *
When its simplicity is understood,
Understanding is no longer required,
And simplicity remains, alone and free.

* * * *
Consistency is the binding realm of ignorance.

* * * *
Wander with an empty cup,
Always an apprentice, always a beginner.
Eventually, perhaps you will even do away with the cup.

* * * *
Non-attachment, surrender, liberation – all require much practice.

* * * *
You are nothing but a dream of the absolute to fathom its eternal fathomlessness.

* * * *
One's fear of not existing must end for this releasing to blossom and flower.

* * * *
Be wary of Maya's infinite ability to entice your desire for continuity.

* * * *
Until one sees it as an illusory, kaleidoscoping theater of light,
Pleasure and pain, the vexation that consciousness is,
Will continue, oblivious to the timeless at hand.

* * * *
At some point playing a prescribed identity
And participating in the collusion
Becomes so insufferable
That seeking release is not a choice.

* * * *
There can be no freedom in duality.

* * * *
When experiences lose flavor
When a disinterest for them sets in,
There comes an unquenchable thirst
To drink fully of the eternal spirit.

* * * *
No point waiting for everyone else to wake up.
The only way earth will join heaven is if you do.

* * * *
Identity is but an imprisoning, painful habit,
A play of light of temporal reality,
A fabrication to which mind desperately clings.
It requires the greatest courage of spirit to journey beyond it.

* * * *
What is inward simplicity?
Not something cultivated nor forced,
But something so tentative, so momentary, so free,
All but the most discriminating pass right by, completely oblivious.

* * * *
Love fabricated by desire is not that which is unconditional, freeing, real, true.

* * * *
Believe only your own experiencing: then work on throwing that away, too.

* * * *
The merest trace of arrogance blinds you to your essential nature.

* * * *
There is nothing you can protect or save or hold on to.
All manifestation is timelessly vulnerable to change.

* * * *
The kingdom of liberation, often called heaven,
Awaits your arrival in each and every breath.

* * * *
Your life is a reflection of your awareness.

* * * *
Manifestation is simply mask after mask
Disguising an artful, mischievous trickster,
Playing a timeless game of hide-and-seek.

* * * *
So, what is the point?
The point is, here you are, right now, it is all you.
Breathe it in, breathe it out.

* * * *
Surrender yourself to that which you really truly are.
There is nothing else worth groping for or clinging to.

* * * *
Only when desire ends
For Maya's infinite bag of temptations,
Can one begin to fathom the joyful return to absoluteness.

* * * *
Consume whatever you will,
But always, keep a firm reign of moderation
As you ride the mad bull through all its potential consequences.

* * * *
One day, if you are persistent, your identity evaporates into awareness.

* * * *
The emancipation of liberation is simple beingness – humble, guileless, easy, plain.
It is adroitly playing the spectrum of consciousness from sage to fool,
Without identification or trepidation or attachment.
It is union with your essential nature.

* * * *
You know only what has been agreed upon within the given cultural blend.
Beyond the echoing collusion of any mythological set,
You can really know nothing.

* * * *
You may use a variety of drugs
To understand the relativity of consciousness,
But remember they are but tools to be consumed in moderation,
That it is the essential nature, not the medicine,
Which is being explored.

* * * *
Mind is illusion: Ignorance,
Knowledge, vanity, gratification,
Delusion, vexation, suffering,
And on and on and on.

* * * *
To fathom the quantum nature
Requires an inward discernment.
It is so subtle, so obscure, so arduous,
Only the rare and most determined grasp it.

* * * *
Traditions and dogmas and rituals and symbols
Are nothing more than distracting, empty encumbrances
For those yearning to regain their essential, absolute birthright.

* * * *
You have always been the one and only sovereign number one.
Only the sensory mind-body has tricked you into believing duality real.

* * * *
In the ceaseless quest for experiences you often miss the serenity of just being.

* * * *
Remember always that you are the creator of this playful illusion.
When you surrender and journey timelessly prior and beyond birth and death,
There is a growing awareness of the absolute's infinite power within.
A time to be even more wary of Maya's enticing games.

* * * *
You speak of this experience or that, but are you any experience?
Or simply the timeless witness experiencing the eternal now.

* * * *
You must be absolutely fearless, absolutely desireless,
To reside like a lotus in timeless, unbounded oneness.

* * * *
Any sense of separation is delusion.
Absolutely nothing is other than you.

* * * *
Drop your identity, discover reality.

* * * *
Until your desire for liberation
Cannot be contained even by death,
You will not own the true sweetness of being.

* * * *
When you no longer crave sensory experience,
You are staged to discover your essential reality.

* * * *
The identity, the persona, the individual,
Fabricate by the illusory perceptions of the senses,
Is a binding expression of separation, of artificial boundaries.
Your uninhibited, essential, absolute quantum nature
Is, ever was, will ever be, a flowing in unicity.

* * * *
Doubt everything you have been told; discern for your Self what is true.

* * * *
Personality worship of those who own this only impedes your own liberation.

* * * *
It is identification that limits your infinity and blinds you to the suffering of duality.

* * * *
Knowledge of reality can be a great impediment to the emancipating surrender to reality.

* * * *
Saint or sinner, not an iota of difference to the dispassionate, faceless witness.

* * * *
You can never know what this inscrutable mystery is; only what it is not.

* * * *
You are the gold, not the jewelry into which it is made.

* * * *
Limitation is contrary to your natural state.

* * * *
Consciousness will just play you out
Once you are no longer attached
To its temporal, dualistic nature.

* * * *
None of it is what it appears to be.

* * * *
It is consciousness that suffers, not you.

* * * *
Believe whatever you choose, it is all the same.

* * * *
The you that is in reality me, ever imagining your Self
To be another me that you mistakenly believe is really you.

* * * *
Beneath the facade of manifestation, it is all equally unmanifest.

* * * *
The understanding of insight requires no knowledge, isness less than that.

* * * *
Freedom cannot be except in fearlessness, which cannot be except in desirelessness.

* * * *
In the unmanifest essence of all manifestation, we are forever bound, eternally one.

* * * *
Your mind-body is merely a finite vehicle, not a conclusion in itself.
Catering to the many ists and isms of ignorance, delusion, and all its illusions,
Are contrary and binding to your natural, essential, infinite state.

* * * *
Judgment Day assumes, of course, that there will someday be an end,
Or even a demarcation of one distraction, one agitation, or another.

* * * *
Discern your absoluteness, realize it has never not been there.

* * * *
Nothing wrought of this quantum genesis is ultimately real.
Everything is imagined, everything is dreamily timeless.
All indivisibly appearing, all indivisibly disappearing,
Within and without the eternal matrix of awareness.

* * * *
That I Am be you; That I Amness be youness.

* * * *
Supreme being, or supreme beingness?

* * * *
Challenging to own up
To one’s personal responsibility
For that which is, in each and every moment,
Created and preserved and destroyed.

* * * *
The absolute is without ideals or principles or laws.
What you choose to believe is the choice of delusion.

* * * *
Light gets in your eye; sound, in your ear; taste, in your mouth;
Touch, in your flesh; smell in your nose; a universe in your mind.

* * * *
Just be, anonymous, without identity, and awareness will manifest right action.

* * * *
Even the most basic urge to exist causes the suffering of time-bound separation.

* * * *
To all who caste themselves upon high, who herald themselves greater,
Know well there are many who reside on the level playing field
Who do not and will never subscribe to hollow pretense.
Might may make right, but it does not make true.

* * * *
Man and woman merge in the throws of sexual ecstasy.
In the quiet tempest of goo, two fertile eggs unite.
In the mystery of the woman’s dark womb,
In the eternal stillness before time,
The seed grows, forms into life.
Out comes an organism
Wired for a fate yet unknown
Into a universe of its own conception.

* * * *
True friends will not let you assume false airs.

* * * *
All play a part in the indivisibility of every awakening.

* * * *
Informal communities are a little more relaxed,
A little more cordial, a little more civil, little less disheartening,
Than the more organized, teeming, frenzied kind.

* * * *
Unless you have managed to achieve the higher percentiles,
Best to be practical and frugal, best to live within your means.
Exorbitant debt can get unmanageably ugly way too very quickly.

* * * *
How can anyone play out an entire existence,
And never inquire earnestly, with great veracity, at least occasionally,
Into this vast mystery from which all things spring.

* * * *
The other creates opportunity for reflection,
Something to which many throughout time and space
Have given their lives over, most often willingly, sometime not.
It is a creative enterprise, the pleasure of which sustains beyond measure.


* * * * * * * * * *

The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved

The Return to Wonder - Chapter Two


II


You have been filled to the brim with countless vain distractions
That are ultimately nothing more than deceptions formed of sensory illusion.
Attributes spun of random, arbitrary, evolutionary happenstance,
Nothing more than nothingness playing its Self real.

* * * *
All manifestation in consciousness is devised by you and you alone.
Explore anything and everything; discover the absoluteness in all.

* * * *
There are many ways to rediscover your original state.
The basic ingredients are doubt and discrimination.

* * * *
In the process of discovering the source,
You learn to yield to the path of least resistance.
It is really nothing more than child's play.

* * * *
Values, ethics, morality, good and evil,
Are all fabrications born of limited thinking,
Bondage without anchor in the unseen reality.

* * * *
The eternal quest for understanding,
For emancipation from that which is known,
Is a convoluted, subtle, puzzling, chess-like maze,
A timeless game of strategic and tactical finesse,
Which only the most earnest discern and mate.

* * * *
You need not each and every moment
Hold on to all the psychological and physical pains
Manifested in your brief mortal fling in this garden of good and evil.
Discern the key to immortality – Physician, heal thy Self.

* * * *
In all destinies there is an executioner, an assassin, a slayer,
Ever formed of the earth-air-water-fire of all things here-now ether.
There is no escape for the awareness you are, only an abiding endurance.
Spurn the Fates, they cannot touch you once the shadow of karma loses its hold.

* * * *
Every moment springing simultaneously anew within the indivisible quantum matrix.
All its concoctions, all its innumerable forms, ever the same source,
Ever the same awareness, ever the same you-ness,
Ever the same boggling mystery.
How astounding this indelible Song of Godness,
This eternal eye gazing out the masks and veils of manifestation.

* * * *
You cannot find true contentment in the transience of materialism,
Only the intertwining, sticky web of pleasure and pain,
The bondage of suffering in consciousness.

* * * *
When thought stills, when time ends, when awareness is,
When the waves of desire, fear, and anger subside,
The space is filled with a quiet, simple serenity.

* * * *
Who owns it?  Only those who surrender to it.

* * * *
Master your passionate mind.
Know that you need not be slave
To its mundane, whimsical disposition.

* * * *
You may practice in the world
Or pretend to remove yourself from it,
But until each and every inseparable moment
Is seen purely through the eyes of timeless awareness,
You will perform the penance of continuity.

* * * *
You reclaim your freedom, your birthright, your entitlement,
Only when the discontent with the insufferable bondage of suffering
Takes you to, through, and beyond death's indivisible door.

* * * *
If all sentient beings were to awaken at once,
Consciousness would not, could not, be the adventure it is.
So the relentless, gnashing, grinding, kaleidoscope of bondage and suffering
Spins on in its mysterious, unfolding dreamtime destiny.

* * * *
Once fully unleashed, there is nothing that can long appease or impede
This quest for emancipation, this hunger to discover what one truly is,
But complete abandonment to the timeless source of all beingness.

* * * *
Experience in time is painful and binding
Because of separation from one's ultimate, unborn nature.
Only timeless experiencing without attachment
Is pathless, serene, joyful.

* * * *
You have only temporarily lost sight
Of the intangible nature that you really are.
Do not wait for your dying breath
To realize your birthright.

* * * *
When one sees the source of all things,
The true nature of all manifestation,
There is malleable compassion
For those many suffering
The bondage of ignorance.

* * * *
The senses tease and taunt you.
They are lies of the delusional mind.
You must ascertain the witness within,
Discriminate the freedom that they cannot,
And discern with every particle of your beingness,
That only in the immutability of awareness
Are you as real as real allows.

* * * *
It is a nice ideal, but to love all manifestation in agape fashion,
To crave nothing in the daily passing, is a great challenge for anyone.
Likely even the heralded Buddha still tingled occasionally at a passing sari.

* * * *
That little gratification, that little pleasure,
That little satisfaction, that little amusement, that little enjoyment,
That little hedonistic longing, that little decadent inclination, that little narcissistic notion,
How much do you really need it?  How important is it, really?

* * * *
When you realize your faceless state, the manifest world becomes but a sensory dream.

* * * *
The challenge is to pay very close attention to everything both without and within.

* * * *
The dreamtime of organized religion is losing its sway over many.
Each must discern alone what is real, what is true.
The quest harbors no intermediary.

* * * *
The identity, the persona, the ego, the self, however it is called,
Is but a temporal, mortal, fabrication of mind and senses,
And their weaving with the culture, the mythology,
Of the space and time in which it sets sail.

* * * *
Operating in persona is confining, temporary, and painful.
Once discerned, how can anyone long for anything
But the return to unadulterated awareness?

* * * *
But for the cycles of sun, moon, and seasons,
Would the perception, the conception, the whimsy, of time
Have ever been imagined, ever been invented?

* * * *
To know life is to know death; one is not without the other.

* * * *
Attachment to mind and body is the fountainhead of suffering.

* * * *
To see the many others, yet see no other, that is the razor's edge,
Upon which you timelessly traverse this reverie both real and unreal.

* * * *
To discover your essential birthright you must disregard the senses
And all resulting experiences, knowledge, identifications and conclusions.
You are far less, far more than consciousness bound in time can ever perceive.

* * * *
To see, to know, to own, that you are the absolute, manifest, is beyond all imagining.

* * * *
Peace is a quality of consciousness, not some unattainable, divisible ideal.

* * * *
Returning to oneness, desirelessness, the breath is naturally fearless.

* * * *
There is nothing that is not community at one level or another.

* * * *
How attached are you to the movement of thought?
The door to freedom opens as the waves are discerned
As the cosmic ocean from whence they rise and fall.

* * * *
Even those who, given a choice, would rather not,
Must play out their part in this eternal tapestry.
All are witnesses, some realized, many not.
Those who see the play weaving within,
It is they who return to absoluteness.

* * * *
All you know is what dreamtime shows you.
All knowledge is of the kaleidoscope.
The source can never be known.

* * * *
The universe within is the universe without.

* * * *
Wisdom is not something one attains or owns.
It just sort of happens as you unfold into clarity.

* * * *
The releasing discernment of the absoluteness within,
Is the fulfillment of every so-called scripture ever written.

* * * *
Real loving is without preference, without attachment.
Anything less than everything, anything less than agape, is not love.
It is without any imaginary notion, it is without any fictional conception, whatsoever.

* * * *
The sojourn ends, or perhaps really begins, when you freely blossom into serenity.

* * * *
Why should it matter what another thinks of you when there is no other?

* * * *
Without the word, what could there be?  Even with it, what is there?

* * * *
The quest for eternal freedom requires great courage.
The oblivion of identity, simple as it is,
Is not easily realized.

* * * *
Pleasure alone can never bring lasting peace.

* * * *
Insight is effortless direct perception.

* * * *
Identity is the attachment.

* * * *
Otherness is the illusion.

* * * *
Your true residence is the eternal.

* * * *
The wisest, happiest fools are students of death.

* * * *
Hell and heaven are born of the same timeless moment.

* * * *
See the infinity within your Self, and know that it resides in all things.

* * * *
Nothing is lost, nothing is forgotten.
Each alone must search for it, each alone must discern it.
Each alone must let go of all that is known, release all that is held near and dear,
To realize the eternal truth fated to forever remain unknown.

* * * *
Peace, contentment, serenity, joy, bliss, can only be when desire for continuity is not.

* * * *
Travel beyond knowledge into the realm of wisdom, and beyond that, stillness.

* * * *
Liberation can unfold only when everything mind concocts is disengaged.

* * * *
Yield, surrender, resign, let the spring of sweetness bubble within.

* * * *
You are already perfection; all you need do is discern it.

* * * *
Whatever you think you are, you are not all the while.

* * * *
When one surrenders to insight, eternity emerges:
Infinite, timeless, pathless, unencumbered, serene.

* * * *
Illumination is living each moment in total freedom.

* * * *
No matter how many drops rain down from the clouds,
There is, has ever been, and will ever be but one ocean.

* * * *
Absoluteness does not require the carnival sideshows
Of saviors, priests, gurus, magicians, and other charlatans.

* * * *
In the beginning there was the word, but before that, who can say?

* * * *
All are of the original nature, but each must quest alone that essential state.
It is a journey relatively few feel strongly enough begin, much less complete.

* * * *
In your quest for liberation, you must even journey past the desire to know some deity.

* * * *
You can only know the binding play of illusion, which means you really very little.

* * * *
You must cultivate the discerning, disciplined scrutiny of the scientific mind
To discover the original nature that abides within all dreams great to small.

* * * *
The sojourn through the maze of delusion may be prolonged or swift.
You will reach the crossroad of surrender at your own reckoning.

* * * *
There are many teachers and many teachings.
Search for those who encourage discovery of the unconditioned,
Those who teach you to fish for your own soul.

* * * *
Release every thought,
Every concept manufactured by the limitations of mind.
They are not the real you.

* * * *
To discern all manifestation with the one eye,
To covet no thing, to covet no other,
Is the road to emancipation.

* * * *
When all cravings fall away,
When only serenity flowers within,
Then you become that beingness which is,
Completely full, eternal, supreme, total, absolute.

* * * *
Let your identity go.
Put aside the bondage of thought.
You know nothing other than what you have imagined.

* * * *
You are it, it is you, there is no other.
There is no second, there is no third, no fourth,
Nor even tens of thousands, nor countless gazillions more.

* * * *
The mind must surrender to insecurity to discover the harmony of totality.

* * * *
Only when you are done with all light shows will you return to your natural state.

* * * *
Who can say whether it is all or nothing, for they are one in the same.

* * * *
To one unfettered in consciousness, all experiencing is equal.
Both seeking and avoiding are but sure routes to suffering.

* * * *
Through your eyes, through your mind, all creation passes.

* * * *
One day you will perhaps wonder that you ever doubted.

* * * *
Such a brief dream any mortal existence.
And the skull that has contained these so many thoughts
Is already turning into another layer of sediment,
Another handful of mulch, of compost,
For dreams yet to come.

* * * *
To discover your Self, you must explore your self.

* * * *
What do you want so badly that is worth the fear?

* * * *
One day you will perhaps wonder that you ever doubted.

* * * *
You are the knowing; it is not loitering out there somewhere.

* * * *
Double-speakers calling the circle, square, and the square, circle.
And weary octagons forever on their own, ever out on limbs too far.

* * * *
Sweep away all identification; there is nothing oneness needs cling to.

* * * *
Indeed, there is so much to both like and dislike here; hard to stay, hard to leave.

* * * *
No matter how much you think you know, it is ever a mystery behind the veil.

* * * *
Do not surrender to anything but what you truly are, and then give it all.

* * * *
At some point the fevered monopoly game runs out of new ground,
And the worn and torn infrastructure turns to gravity for resolution.

* * * *
Identity is the mistaken belief that the awareness you really are
Is at all attached to the sundry attributes of the  food-body,
Or the world of appearances through which it renders.

* * * *
Consciousness is by its nature twisted, convoluted.
Some swirls upon the dusty stage are called good, others evil.
Since you are the ultimate source of your creation,
In reality, you are the only one judging.

* * * *
Call it what you will – soul, self, cosmos, god, whatever –
You are the awareness, not a dream of consciousness.

* * * *
The pitter-patter of meandering thoughts
Dancing across the mindscape offer so much distraction
That one is hard-pressed not attend them.

* * * *
The make of a man is his word, nothing more, nothing less.

* * * *
What is thought, what is said, what is written,
Are but different means through which consciousness
Plays out a relatively brief opportunity to discover its potential.

* * * *
Awareness is the “awakeness” of all living creations,
Of the indivisible quantum matrix, the stardust, come to “life.”
It is the eternal eye of the unknown prior to all manifestation ever-changing,
And whatever dreams they in spontaneous combustion may inspire.


* * * * * * * * * *

The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved