XIV
The beasts seem so content in the ever-streaming moment.
How did you mislay that timeless awareness, that childlike quality?
What was it that enticed you from the garden, beguiled you from the source,
But the intractable, remorseless weaving of desire and fear,
And other passions inspired by the vanities.
* * * *
A teacher is always willing to teach students willing to learn.
* * * *
Those who assert god (a.k.a. quantum) is in all things,
That its unfolding nature is even witness in you,
Are not just saying what you want to hear.
* * * *
A gust of wind is as real as any quest for glory.
* * * *
No premise stands without acceptance.
* * * *
Just being takes practice.
* * * *
Dwell where the manifest cannot.
* * * *
Revolutionaries, despite all rhetoric
Of fairness, of justice, of equality, for all,
Usually yearn for more than a fistful of dollars.
* * * *
Are doer and deed separate? How could they be?
* * * *
If your body is tangible, if it is real, why does it change so?
* * * *
What was before the so-called big bang, and what will be after?
How many creations have come and gone? And how many will be hence?
Anything and everything is possible in the realm of absoluteness.
* * * *
All desire, all angst, is fabricated by the attachment to the mind-body identity.
Without the manifest form you would not exist, you would not be,
And there would be nothing to want, nothing to fear.
* * * *
What anyone else thinks of you matters only if fear gives it weight.
* * * *
Peel that flesh off them bones, and what do you get?
* * * *
It is your story; there is no author-ity but you.
* * * *
You are, there is no other.
* * * *
Be generic Self
* * * *
Earth, air, water, fire
Are but ephemeral players,
And anything ephemeral
Is but a cloak to truth.
* * * *
Anonymity within is the highest state.
* * * *
How harsh to be judged solely by exteriors.
* * * *
The moment-to-moment experiencing of consciousness
Is akin to using a light bulb to cast hand shadows on a wall.
* * * *
Are you anything more than a careening set of measurements?
* * * *
Memories are difficult to resist; the desire for more is ever an enticement.
* * * *
Convince yourself of whatever you will, there is ultimately no need for rhyme or reason.
* * * *
What outward manifestation is so enticing that you choose irreconcilable suffering?
* * * *
The world, the universe, is dreamt by the mind through the senses.
You are source, you are witness, as free and clear as you choose.
* * * *
There are no experts in this field, just knowers of the knowing.
* * * *
End all concern of becoming something or someone.
What you really are is before everything and nothing.
* * * *
You have yet to meet someone or something
That is not a mirror of your own awareness.
* * * *
All are beginners, no matter how singular.
* * * *
Do you really think the voice within?
* * * *
Any idea is as real as the mind creating it.
* * * *
What another thinks of you need not be your concern.
* * * *
The only faith you need is in the ultimate reality you know you are.
* * * *
Separation is the result of confusion and ignorance; unicity, of wisdom.
* * * *
Truth, reality, is in the random wander of any given day’s moment-to-moment.
* * * *
The moral dilemmas you play with yourself are such an unnecessary, mindless game.
* * * *
Conditions set by any given mythos need not be more than endured.
* * * *
All who still hunger for the manifest will not yearn for the eternal.
* * * *
Moral self-righteousness is the mark of dogmatic ignorance.
* * * *
At the core, you will discern You in the greatest sense.
* * * *
All this absurd silliness just to maintain the body,
And the mind's plethora of insatiable desires.
* * * *
And when you do find it,
When you do give your Self over to it,
What then, Grasshopper?
* * * *
What are you afraid of losing?
Your identity, your body, your things?
Get real.
* * * *
A multi-dimensional tapestry,
Too inexplicable for any but god-minds
To but vaguely comprehend.
* * * *
The world exists because you are witness.
Without your presence, none of this would be.
* * * *
If you want it, you will find it; if you do not, you will not.
* * * *
What is that physical form to which you are so attached
But flesh, blood, and bones wandering about in a body bag.
* * * *
Most of humankind suffers, yet how much of it for any real reason?
* * * *
Do whatever it is you need to do, want to do, with your brief, mundane existence.
Experience anything, everything that entices you hither-thither.
Sense every sense until it makes sense.
* * * *
Mastering compassionate indifference takes a lifetime of practice.
* * * *
Real discipline double-double-toil-and-troubles at the core.
* * * *
Find the kernel of Self; let the chaff of identity fall away.
* * * *
What does any eye see but what it creates?
The world is a mirage of the mind's making.
* * * *
There are an infinite number of ways
To experience living and dying.
The ultimate you experiences them all.
The trick is fearlessly embracing their teaching.
* * * *
The stillness of awareness you are
Has always been and will ever be the same.
The only meaningful difference there can possibly be
Is awakening to the awareness of the awareness.
* * * *
What does it truly mean to be one with the oneness?
Completely free, completely alone, completely eternal.
* * * *
Give your life over to isness, and it will all unfold effortlessly.
* * * *
Do everything you must until oblivion manifests in consciousness.
* * * *
Observe the face and body of someone you consider physically desirable
And imagine his/her skeleton tuning into dust in some not to distant future.
* * * *
Contentment is something brewing within despite what happens without.
* * * *
The so-called civilized manner humanity has chosen to manifest,
Is a coffin crafted of blind ignorance and unbounded delusion.
* * * *
Behind the sensory facade of everything and nothing is home.
* * * *
What is so disconcerting, so terrible, so incomprehensible,
As to deny others the altered states of consciousness
That are so readily offered by this garden paradise.
Who is anyone to tell another how to live their reality?
* * * *
All things, all experiences pale into insignificance
When contrasted with the sweetness of awareness.
* * * *
When the font of true Self fills the emptied container,
You own everything ever contemplated on the matter.
* * * *
Even the greatest portion is but a slice of the whole.
The tiniest morsel is ever of the same quantum recipe.
* * * *
All conclusions are subjective, arbitrary, meaningless.
* * * *
To discover your true nature is the bona fide raison d'être.
* * * *
Ants, bees, and all the other wandering beasts are true sanyasis.
Their instinctual aimlessness is the high mystery in manifest form.
* * * *
No mathematical equation will ever grasp or explain the mystery of it all.
They, like words, or any other symbol, are by their nature ever incomplete.
* * * *
Pride is just another of the many markers of identity's deluded ignorance.
* * * *
Contrary to all assumptions, time never began; it was now then, too.
* * * *
All identity is but a habit, a patterning of human conditioning.
The broom of discerning awareness sweeps it immaculate.
* * * *
Your time-bound desire for consistency and permanence
Is born of ignorance and confusion framed in duality.
* * * *
Is philanthropy any more than consciousness
Seeking immortality in the minds of others?
* * * *
The mind seeks ordered consistency,
But the manifest reality of true nature
Is ever the order of spontaneous chaos.
Awareness suffers no divisive boundaries.
* * * *
These insights cannot be taught.
Those who are hungry will seek it out
Through whatever venue is made available.
Wisdom is the distillation of experience.
* * * *
If not for the mind-body
And the vast diversity of the play,
There would be no need for all this struggle.
* * * *
How mesmerizing this mystery.
Maya casts a spell of blinding ignorance
Using the guiding reigns of the mind-body identity,
And the multitudes compliantly follow the tantalizing carrots
With little question of the underlying, ultimate reality.
* * * *
Male and female in every species are wired with different mindsets.
Their interests may intersect at varying points, but never completely.
* * * *
Is any mythology any more than the groupthink of ethnocentric notion?
* * * *
Suffer if you insist, but do not for a second believe any of it necessary.
* * * *
Surely, you don’t really believe you are the only one who does that?
* * * *
How could there be any other but through the play of the senses?
* * * *
Eyes open, eyes closed, the world of appearances is the same.
* * * *
The quest for permanency constantly erodes before your eyes.
* * * *
The nuances of science are ever in the eye of the beholder.
* * * *
The throws of attachment are the most opportune time
To witness how thoroughly you believe your part real.
* * * *
Exactly which direction do time and space travel?
* * * *
What is any hell but a veil between awareness
And that which is not, never was, will never be.
* * * *
That mind sure can wander the hither and thither.
* * * *
Madness is the game; reason the grounded stage.
* * * *
Physical suffering is one thing, psychological quite another.
* * * *
Challenge the fear: Discern that which requires the greatest courage.
* * * *
Of any existence it can be said that it seemed real at the time.
* * * *
It may be disturbing to realize that you do not really exist,
But the fact remains that your ultimate destiny is oblivion.
* * * *
The only difference between a big mind and a little mind
Is in the little mind's ceaseless absorption in attributes.
* * * *
If something is true, it can be verified by many eyes.
Subjective assertions are not the harbor of science.
* * * *
Consciousness is riddled with every sort of desire,
And desire is the most worthy opponent
Of those who would be freedom
In this world or any other.
* * * *
Just because you are godness,
Does not mean you can break the speed limit
And always get away with it.
* * * *
No matter
Where you are,
Whenever you are,
It is really all the same,
Has always been the same,
Will ever be the same.
* * * *
Desire is like a hydra.
You must eradicate the beast,
Else its many heads will flower ever anew.
* * * *
Seeing that your universe is entirely your creation,
That you were misinformed about your part in the dance,
Turns everything out of kilter in a timelessly kiltered sort of way.
* * * *
Good and evil are human concoctions.
If you believe they existed before we unleashed upon the world,
You are caught in the mire of delusion.
* * * *
Every day another level, another tweak, of degradation.
How much longer will our little mishap in time carry on?
* * * *
This universe is merely a temporary theater,
But the you that you really are is real,
Immortal, and free for all eternity.
* * * *
Look where pretending to know
What can never be known
Has brought us,
And is taking us further still.
* * * *
There is no solution
But the inevitable consequences
Of all things approached by imbalanced minds.
* * * *
Hang out in the left brain
When it is all about monkey chatter,
And the right side when stillness has the notion.
* * * *
Just about everything you have ever seen, heard or done
May well be happening somewhere in your world in particular,
Or your imaginary quantum universe in general.
Who knows, who cares?
* * * *
How do you spend your life? You put food and liquid in, poop and piss it out.
You make and buy and take and sell and toss and lose and give things.
You put the body through a seemingly infinite variety of paces,
And then slumber or medicate yourself to rejuvenate.
Your form deals with a nearly endless series of states and stages,
And in the end it will be as any dream, as if nothing at all had ever happened.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved