XI
Some get born into pondering thoughts such as these, and some are hijacked into them,
But most of those who investigate the enigmatic unknown of their own accord
Must discover the way with their own blend of doubt and gumption,
And the many serendipities of the given Yellow Brick Road.
* * * *
So many seem to want to be loved so badly,
But one wonders how many are truly interested or even capable
Of reciprocating at more than the most superficial levels.
Love is more than a word, more than a sound.
* * * *
There will be no difference but the one you harbor.
* * * *
You are not obligated to want anything.
* * * *
You have often witnessed the insanity
Of those who blindly follow in ignorance.
Seek out and follow none but the wise,
And then only to listen, learn and own.
* * * *
Your real wealth is beyond counting.
* * * *
The church is within; no edifice is required.
* * * *
It is neither action nor deed, but unspoken intention,
Which must surely win the accolades of any heaven.
* * * *
First knowledge, then understanding, finally, direct perception.
* * * *
Use all trials as levers and fulcrums to the wispy realms of wisdom.
* * * *
You will be ruby-slipper home when desire and fear have no ground to toil.
* * * *
Always check out the fine print, or be ready to run and hide when payment comes due.
* * * *
Earth is a sandbox, an opportunity to play until you are ready to return home.
* * * *
Transcend both male and female; you are ultimately beyond both.
* * * *
Don’t lose your humor; nothing worse than a dour jester.
* * * *
Rational, linear persuasion is of no real use,
Because nothing can ever be proved.
An intuitive logic is required.
* * * *
It is real as long as you believe it real.
* * * *
Coincidences, are they really?
* * * *
A drop that has lost its sense of ocean
Suffers the agony of isolating separation.
* * * *
Any given mythos may try to explain the journey,
But none can convey any to where all paths end.
* * * *
I Am is the Way.
It is within and without where within and without no longer exist.
It is you in the most timeless, absolute sense.
* * * *
Put all prophets and sages in their place, as teachers, not messiahs.
* * * *
How much energy humanity spends wrangling over such petty contrivances.
* * * *
Those who quest that which is true will discern it written about in many teachings.
But to actually be the awareness is to look prior to mere belief and faith.
Union with that which is absolute, that which is eternally real,
Is far more than hollow superstition and idolatry.
* * * *
You cannot really know another until you discern the infinity you are.
* * * *
Everyone you meet and observe, everything you read and study,
Every manifest form you interact with in any given manner,
Is a reflection for you to inquire into your true nature.
* * * *
If often takes more courage to live than it does to die.
* * * *
Try to see others as you would your Self.
Have compassion for the many trials all must face.
None are really different than your own.
* * * *
Honor and respect your family, if possible,
But allow them no reign over your calling.
* * * *
Why would it ever appeal to anyone
To be pigeonholed in their inner quest?
Why be classified for the yearning to ascertain
That birthright prior to any sound given conception?
You are, and that is really all there is to say.
* * * *
You must cultivate and harvest your Self your Self.
* * * *
If your spiritual quest yearns only for distracting
Magic tricks, carnival ferris wheels, and circus light shows,
You are not quite ready to embrace the unknown.
* * * *
To have superlative knowledge of this mystery,
To have read many books, to have attended many lectures,
Does not mean the truth implied has even come close to being realized.
* * * *
Everything seen, everything heard, everything tasted, everything felt, everything smelt,
Everything prior, everything beyond what any mind can measure,
Everything thought, everything not thought,
All that is, all is not,
It is all you.
* * * *
As long as you believe your little self-absorbed identity real and true,
Maya will be only too happy to inflict, to collect, the levy of suffering.
* * * *
For the rare few, the mind is a seed that sprouts and grows,
Flowering into timeless realization, eternal liberation,
Conscious awareness of the original nature.
* * * *
Do you truly believe your puny little personality,
Your meaningless sense of identity,
All your silly beliefs,
Are what will be someday reborn?
* * * *
You are That I Am.
The ultimate job description,
However you are drawn to play it out.
* * * *
In a perfect world,
The pen is as sharp a point
As any other would ever need endure.
But, alas, it is, indeed, indeed, not a perfect world,
So bwahahahahahahaha … !
* * * *
The passionate mind is the birth and rebirth,
The cause and effect, of the ceaseless suffering of duality.
There is tranquil agreeableness in the dispassion of timeless awareness.
* * * *
The countless abuses of affluence have ever been set before you.
Those whose greed controls their destiny have neither heart nor mind for eternity.
Their absorption with gold and other shiny things blinds them to reality.
* * * *
Many may believe they know god through one dogmatic assertion or another,
But what can any ever truly know of that which is prior to all,
If they have not discerned it within.
* * * *
Any absorption with power and control, whether worldly or occult,
Must eventually be set aside as yet another game of illusion.
* * * *
Those who would discern the expanses of awareness
Will meander through valleys of hellish torture,
For that is the mind's potential, as well.
* * * *
Time and space are in the realm of dualistic notion.
What you travel through is an indivisible dream.
* * * *
In the quest toward timeless freedom,
Attachment to the mind-body has less and less hold.
It is but a vehicle; a means, not an end.
* * * *
To identify with any movement of thought is delusion.
Only in awareness is there any relationship with reality.
* * * *
The perceptions and reflections of reality are not reality.
* * * *
Peel away the masks of god to find your own faceless nature.
* * * *
Though it may often not appear so, though it may not often seem so,
And others may use your confusion to their own ends if you permit it,
You are the captain, you are the navigator, of your little portion of soul.
* * * *
Any given mind-body experiencing offers its own means to the eternal.
It will be realized by earnest seekers in every time, in every space, imaginable.
There is really only one Way, but there are any number of pathless paths to discern it.
* * * *
Even if you do not discern it fully, rest assured you are as equally quantum as any.
* * * *
You journey from fad to fad, believing you live meaningfully.
What folly to think pleasure after pleasure will redeem your longing mind.
The endless hunger for more is utterly empty and insignificant.
* * * *
All that can ever be perceived is but a kaleidoscoping light show.
The quantum reality prior to all manifested is for intuition’s telling.
* * * *
The attributes of your body, of your personality, are not you.
* * * *
The competitive urge to survive, to thrive,
That enabled humanity's ascent across this garden orb
Now endangers it to the point of annihilation.
A history that will never be written.
* * * *
What is any word but a stagnant thing
Without the dynamic of the eternal moment
Beneath the wave upon which it surfs.
* * * *
Why participate in any organized religion?
Your awareness is a portal as absolute as any,
And you may well articulate things far more sanely.
* * * *
The senses read only an illusionary sliver
Of the total functioning of that which is quantum.
They cannot even begin to touch its unmanifest reality.
* * * *
Take the long view sometimes, and the short view in others.
Blended together, it makes for theater and the gorp it offers.
* * * *
Why bring innocent children into this strife-filled, often absurd world
If you do not intend, or cannot give them, an empowering foundation?
* * * *
Surely this world is more than just a sandbox for children to give in to unbridled craving.
* * * *
There is insight to be discerned, yet in so few does the fullness of awareness bloom.
* * * *
If time was real, it could be traveled by more than imagination.
You could observe your birth, your death, and any moment between.
And perhaps even broadcast it live on some online feed, as well.
* * * *
In darkness, a light turns on, space takes shape, time begins.
Turn the light off, and all manifestation disappears.
When was it there? When was it not?
* * * *
Wailing for the dead and dying only displays ignorance
Of the immortal reality of this intangible light show.
* * * *
This seemingly endless work of chatter
Is for them that crave being here,
No matter how foul it gets.
* * * *
In every part, a reflection of the whole.
* * * *
It may seem arrogant, even blasphemous
To identify with godness more than humanness,
But that is the nature of this sojourn's rootless narrative.
* * * *
Whether the emphasis is on one teacher or teaching,
Or a wander through a wide array of teachers and teachings,
All are in reality nothing more than masks of the same quantum matrix.
* * * *
At some point in some given hereness-nowness,
Some minds undergo a crisis, a watershed, of consciousness,
And begin a long and winding and solitary divergence toward eternal reunion.
* * * *
How unsteady the helm when the captain is confounded by a sea of ignorance.
* * * *
Dispatch time as a concept from the awareness of the moment-to-moment.
* * * *
Toss the tyranny of tradition on its ear in the quest for the ultimate.
* * * *
The seeds of creation and destruction are within each other.
* * * *
Why so few settle for less than the most distilled essence
Is a question without answer, an answer without question.
* * * *
Until you own it all, none of it is ever really yours.
* * * *
You practice dying every time you fall asleep.
* * * *
Own your divinity and the surrender it entails.
* * * *
Few seek the gold at the end of Maya's rainbow.
* * * *
Like a poker hand when the bluff has been overplayed,
It is time to call the deception of ignorance and absurdity.
* * * *
Your tombs preserve nothing but your fear of a false reality.
The mind-body is a vessel, a meal for worms, nothing more.
* * * *
Those who are ready will discern it in whatever way they are able.
* * * *
All these inventions we tool-makers have conceived and manifested into the day-to-day,
And many if not most feverishly straining to keep up with the beast it has wrought,
Often competing with the myriad creations as if we ourselves were machines,
But really only ending up more and more inane, more and more insane.
What are we and this dream world but victims of our own insatiable vanity.
* * * *
To be ruled by circumstance is like drifting through a maze without a light.
* * * *
You cannot force someone to like you, to give of themselves willingly.
That is of a resonation inspired by an inexplicable dynamic,
A mix of commonalities of mind, body, spirit,
That may even include vibrations at a molecular level.
* * * *
Even quantum manifest can get a ticket, so pay the meter.
* * * *
How convenient it is for the superstitious mind
To praise some god or rue some devil
For all things daily causeless.
* * * *
Until the next problem, then.
* * * *
What does any patterning great or small do
But waft through its tiny slice of matrix
For as long as its shelf life pertains.
* * * *
All this inanity all due to sensory voraciousness.
* * * *
Even quantum manifest can get a ticket, so pay the meter.
* * * *
We all play the game of mortality for as long as the dream allows.
* * * *
Windows of agreeable health and vibrant energy are but fleeting reprieves
From the calamitous endgame that is as sure and true as sure and true can be.
* * * *
What is any story but the chaff surrounding a message, a moral,
The fruit that draws a creature to consume the kernel and convey it to new ground,
The means to draw a reader, a listener, to a conclusion, to an insight,
That may flourish, and perchance ripple further still.
* * * *
Idealism without insight into reality is the outcome of duality's limitations.
* * * *
For reconciliation of mythological assertions across time and space,
Consciousness must inquire inwardly into the pretenses of duality.
* * * *
Why say good-bye when there was really never a need for hello?
* * * *
Do not most of us occasionally wonder
What we might have done differently with our given existence?
But, in this quantum theater, would another route
Really have been all that different?
* * * *
Pain is best met with a certain amount of detachment
If it is to be endured without morphing into the suffering
The human mind so effortlessly, so readily, entertains.
* * * *
Delving into the nature of this ethereal dreamtime
Is like wandering about the backstage of a theater set,
Examining all the ropes and pulleys and such for your Self.
* * * *
Awareness is the only god,
The only dogma, the only shrine, the only idol, the only symbol,
The only truth anyone really needs.
* * * *
Never forget That which can never be remembered in any given now.
* * * *
So-called spiritual experiences are not required to discern and own truth.
Clarity of mind in the awareness of each every moment is more than enough.
* * * *
You are here now because your genetic line,
Since existence kicked off in the swampy puddle of origin,
Somehow survived, somehow thrived, at least long enough to procreate.
The consecration of patterned happenstance; nothing more, nothing less, nothing but.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved