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?
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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.
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To gain the perfect edge, the sword must withstand the forge many times.
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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.
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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.
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Knowledge of reality can be a great impediment to the emancipating surrender to reality.
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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.
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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.
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Beneath the facade of manifestation, it is all equally unmanifest.
* * * *
The understanding of insight requires no knowledge, isness less than that.
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Freedom cannot be except in fearlessness, which cannot be except in desirelessness.
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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.
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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.
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The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved