Chapter 17 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


XVII

Even amidst the most appalling sights,
The most blaring sounds, the most bitter tastes,
The most putrid smells, the most excruciating sensations,
Even in the face of death itself, the knower of Self can own a laugh.

* * * *
You are the witness from your slice of the pie.

* * * *
What possible good does it do
To revere someone else's knowing
If it does not lead to your own?

* * * *
You really only have one parent.

* * * *
Other than your awareness of it,
You will never be any more or less
Than you are right now.

* * * *
At the other end of that gourmet feast
Is an indifferent pile of dung.

* * * *
Money is merely a concept, a tool for survival.
Its usefulness ends at the morgue.

* * * *
Mythos sustains itself feeding off your innocence.
Without your compliance it could not exist.

* * * *
Return to the womb of creation.

* * * *
Life is very short no matter how long,
And very long no matter how short.

* * * *
It is your light that creates all these reflections.

* * * *
Spiritual anarchy.
Now.

* * * *
Intolerance resides in the harbor of ignorance.

* * * *
All your definitions have no reality
But what you give them.

* * * *
Time is the vapor of the ever-present now.

* * * *
There may be love in passion,
But is there passion in love?

* * * *
No one owns the truth.

* * * *
What identity need a grain of sand have
When immersed in the shores of infinity?

* * * *
Who is anyone or anything else
But you in a different guise?

* * * *
Peel off her clothes, her hair, her make-up, her jewelry.
Peel away her exquisite flesh down to the bones, scatter them afar,
And watch them dissolve in the sandy hourglass of time.
A romantic outing if there ever was one.

* * * *
Do not stop until you find you, and you alone.

* * * *
Want nothing from others
That they do not think to offer.

* * * *
What is evil but a projection of superstitious ignorance?

* * * *
A sane madness.

* * * *
We know so much, yet understand so little.

* * * *
Words.
So many
So useless.

* * * *
The more you own your true nature,
The more serenely content your being.

* * * *
Have faith that you will know
What you need to know
When you need to know it.

* * * *
Probe mind with mind,
Heart with mind,
Mind with heart,
And heart with heart.

* * * *
The mind is a tool,
The pole in the vault.

* * * *
A drop of its own accord
Seemingly has little power,
But when combined with others
Becomes rain, rivers, lakes and oceans.

* * * *
There is no place to run, no place to hide.
You will always be you no matter what the dream.

* * * *
Go ahead, pretend that you are godness.
It can be a thorny crown and rough on the extremities,
But there is a serenity when the headache's over and the scars heal.

* * * *
That which is manifest must speak for that which is not.
Listen for the soundless voice of godness issuing from your heart.

* * * *
It is a clear mind and an open heart
Which make you a dwelling of godness.

* * * *
Despite your illusion of individuality,
You are that which is indivisible isness.

* * * *
Idolatry is the self-absorbed play
Of those who put off or are incapable
Of discovering their true nature.

* * * *
The burden of past and future,
Of identity and all time involves,
Is strapped on by desire, fear and anger
And the mistaken belief that they are truly real.

* * * *
In one sense we all commit suicide.
Merely by having been born, consciously or not,
Each seeks out, through free will choices,
One form of death or another.

* * * *
Until you awaken to Self
Your life is the slumber of illusion.

* * * *
Tomorrow ever arrives today.

* * * *
To know you are oneness,
To abide in that grace,
Is enough for any heart.

* * * *
To know who you really are
Is to know everything and everyone
Is ever the same mysterious you.

* * * *
Look into any mirror
And see your own projected reflection.

* * * *
Desire is a Pandora's box.
Once opened the tide is ceaseless.
Close the lid and the passionate swells calm.

* * * *
To realize without doubt you are godness
And not this body or the world it entails
Is the greatest blessing a life can receive.

* * * *
All manifestation, alive or inert, has a story to spin.
Witness all and distill the wisdom gleaned.

* * * *
It takes great courage and discernment
To own and shine the light you really are.

* * * *
Thought is insatiable in its desire for more.
It is the creator of all habit, all addiction.

* * * *
The chatter of your dreams is no different
Than that of your awake state.

* * * *
Your personality has no relationship
With what you really are.

* * * *
The love of little self
Is rife with limits and conditions.

* * * *
All the pain, all the pleasure
You have ever known
Have been great teachings
When seen in pure consciousness.

* * * *
Tragedy and boon are merely flip sides
Of the same consciousness.

* * * *
If you really love someone or something,
You need not be with them or own it.

* * * *
Only you can purify your heart and mind.

* * * *
What is real is never knowable in anything
But the most timeless sense of knowing.

* * * *
What is there to love in anything or anyone, really,
But the clay of godness dwelling within and without?

* * * *
To take your identity and your projected world seriously
Is to miss the opportunity to laugh at a great joke.

* * * *
The body is a costume, theater garb,
No more real than one donned on Halloween.

* * * *
That fact that you are
Makes godness a divinely logical probability.

* * * *
All is perfection.
Only the mind sees it as anything less.

* * * *
Because you are, you are that.

* * * *
Do not pretend to love
If you do not love it all.

* * * *
Quested through the mind,
It rests in the heart.

* * * *
It is totally your free will
To give or not give yourself over
To the choicelessness of Self.

* * * *
Evil is fabricated by the mind of humanity.
It has no more reality than a shadow.

* * * *
To be in this world you have no choice but to act.
In what manner, however, delineates heaven and hell.

* * * *
God, isness, self, oneness, Allah, Brahman, ground, totality, absoluteness,
And the infinity of names by which it might also be known,
All fluid words used interchangeably herein
To pay homage to that which can never be named.

* * * *
If you worship and practice only one day a week,
You are missing out on the other six.

* * * *
You need not own all the secrets of this mystery
To own the heart of unity.

* * * *
What do you think godness used
But its own clay to create you and your world?

* * * *
If you believe only the lies the senses weave,
You are done for.

* * * *
You can never love your Self too much.

* * * *
Do not doubt even for a moment
That you are the beloved.
All hesitation is born
Of flawed consciousness.

* * * *
The mastery you seek is of your Self.

* * * *
In the quest for freedom,
Better to attempt and fail and try again
Than to miss the opportunity entirely.

* * * *
You are unity manifest in apparent diversity.
Do not be deceived by the light show.

* * * *
You cannot do much for those who will not help themselves.
It is a feast to which all are invited but for which few are truly hungry.
The illusory play of manifesting light is seductively hypnotizing.
You alone must wake up if you are ever to return home.

* * * *
Staying completely awake to this is a challenge
As long as the light show is the least bit enticing.

* * * *
Once you own this, there are no more hoops
Through which you must involuntarily jump.

* * * *
Whatever you label it is unimportant.
The play of words too often creates
Unwarranted dogmatic divisions.
Knowing your divine union is enough.

* * * *
Discovering the unmanifest within,
That is the highest calling.

* * * *
See the part in the whole
And the whole in the part.

* * * *
When Jesus said to follow him,
He did not mean to imitate, beg or fear.

* * * *
To believe your part more real or important
Is vain error.

* * * *
The drop which separates itself from the ocean
Suffers the isolating agony of personal hell.

* * * *
Healing does no good if it merely touches the body.

* * * *
Countless temptations in every portion of the garden,
Endlessly vie to seduce you from the journey home.

* * * *
Like the archer and the target, human consciousness
Has historically taken countless shots at discovering truth.
Their success ranges from bull’s eye to missing the mark entirely.
You alone must discern the aimlessness required.

* * * *
Abolish all borders and tribal lines.
No nation or form abides in the eye of isness.

* * * *
The Lucifer of Maya you fear
Is the one you create.

* * * *
Divers return to tell you what is below.

* * * *
What can you want if you lack nothing?

* * * *
The heap of bodies it has taken
To create you at this point of the creation
Is probably much higher than most would care imagine.

* * * *
Psychologists, with their countless labels and gimmicks,
Have yet to discern what the mind really is and is not.

* * * *
Do infants shriek and wail
Because they divine the many trials
Awaiting them on the long and winding trail ahead?

* * * *
Why is it, how is it,
That you will never ever
See your own face?

* * * *
What do you still want badly enough
To die for again and again and again.

* * * *
A beautiful face is a promise that cannot be long kept.

* * * *
Damn the glory, get off the stage.

* * * *
Better enjoy every single moment possible,
Glean everything awareness allows,
The ever-streaming passing
Is all you really have.

* * * *
You are not the first to discover the divine origin,
And you most assuredly won’t be the last,
Yet it is the same oneness within all,
No matter the time and space
You intuited the call.

* * * *
The ultimate detachment in consciousness
Is the immortal stillness of awareness.


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