Chapter 18 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


XVIII

The personality you so value
Has no real meaning to the ultimate.
It is a distraction of an imagined fabrication.

* * *
Surrender is the key to heaven.
The divine will not intervene
Without your invitation.

* * * *
How uncomfortable dying can be.

* * * *
Inattention is often the catalyst of misfortune.

* * * *
When aren’t you paying for something?

* * * *
Curious how you wake up every day
And spend a major portion of it
Recollecting and playing out
The edifice of perceptions
Fabricated by mind and senses.

* * * *
The diversity of the universe about you
Are ever endless facets of your own creation,
Countless variations of the same mysterious theme.

* * * *
Even the very astute can be fooled in unwary moments.
Any manifestation, any portion of this dream has the potential,
To entice almost anyone back into undiscerning ignorance.
Few are ready to sign themselves over to oblivion.

* * * *
To focus on any one portion of a tapestry,
Or one aspect, one facet of a diamond
Is to miss the holographic unity
Of each and every part.

* * * *
The eternal quest for truth and unity go beyond
The mortal patterning of instinct and experience.
It is the freeing release from the personal calamity.

* * * *
All concept is limitation.
Uncarved blocks are not blocks.

* * * *
Pretend you are godness
Until you know it for a fact.

* * * *
You as persona are a knot
Which awareness unravels.

* * * *
Anything you think you are,
You are not.

* * * *
Your power does not come from ego.

* * * *
What is sorrow but the dread of your mortal nature,
The misunderstanding of conscious potential?

* * * *
Liberation is like undoing knots in a rope,
Straightening up a room after a party,
Cleaning bugs off a windshield,
Unjamming logs in a stream,
Ironing wrinkles in a shirt.

* * * *
Nowness is its own reward.

* * * *
Are you waking to the dream,
Or is the dream waking through you?

* * * *
Without you, godness could not witness
Your version of the play.

* * * *
Truth, unity, cannot be unraveled or dissolved,
Only masked by every imaginable form of ignorance.

* * * *
Do you spend anywhere near as much time sharpening your soul
As you do pandering your vanity and accumulating your things?

* * * *
Do away with the vanity of separateness
To get back to Eden.

* * * *
To dwell within is the first and last frontier.

* * * *
Surrender requires total humility.
Your identity need not be a lifetime plan.

* * * *
Filled with their door-to-door persuasion,
They give themselves over to vainly proselytizing
The infinity which they at best only dimly comprehend
In the dense fog of their blinding, self-absorbed ignorance.

* * * *
The devil may be the likable guy you know.

* * * *
Too much of anything often makes one
Forget how simple it was without it.

* * * *
Death crumples life.
Time fashions new dreams
From the wreckage of destruction.

* * * *
To seek recognition in any way, shape or form
Is the vanity founding your manifest existence.

* * * *
To be cast in any manifest form
At any level of this vast dreamy mystery,
No matter how infinitely powerful,
Your limitations are carved.

* * * *
You are because godness is
And godness is because you are.
A symbiotic relationship of the highest order.

* * * *
Ashrams are like horticulture labs,
Precise and calculating in the blossoming process.
Outside the weeds find their own way.

* * * *
What would tempt you back to this plane of existence?
What do you desire to experience that you would die for?

* * * *
It is not material things that are the problem,
But the weight of attachment you give them.

* * * *
There are countless versions of the golden calf
Which you must someday melt into clay.

* * * *
What choice does sculpted clay have
But to play out the sculptor's design?

* * * *
The only thing moving is your mind.

* * * *
The shepherd is every nook and cranny,
And each and every soul will be accounted for,
No matter how terrifying the darkness may appear to be.

* * * *
You are not the scribbling on the board, you are the board.
You are not a shadow playing in the light, you are the light.

* * * *
There is a divine logic to it all
Which the mind bound in time-space
Cannot even begin to accurately discern.

* * * *
But for every drop, every grain,
Neither ocean or shore would be.

* * * *
Lay no claims you cannot substantiate.

* * * *
Avoid blaming god for those harsh lessons
Which bring you closer to home.

* * * *
Your real family, your real tribe,
Are those whose hearts rest in isness.

* * * *
As expansive as you imagine it,
It is so much more so.

* * * *
All attempts to label yourself
Or anyone or anything else
Are vain and meaningless.

* * * *
Who are you, really?
If you do not know, who else does?

* * * *
Even the most perfect bodies
Are mountains worms will someday harvest.

* * * *
Peel away all exteriors to find the real banana.

* * * *
To peek behind the facade, to discern divine logic,
Requires an irrational, illogical mind.

* * * *
What is education for most
But indoctrination into one mythos or another?

* * * *
Totality can be sought and alluded to,
But is never captured by graven images.

* * * *
Ideals are meaningless
If you do not act upon them.

* * * *
Pray intuitively
Asking nothing for yourself.

* * * *
You must be very courageous
To know that which is prior to mythos.

* * * *
What earthly title or position
Could compare with this knowing?

* * * *
It is easy to be friendly with your pain
Once it is gone.

* * * *
Do not fear mistakes; there are none.
Errors of judgment are great teachings
As you slowly collect the tokens of wisdom.

* * * *
Look beyond worldly mortal existence.
The weaving of suffering, of desire, anger and fear
Are not worth one iota of painful angst once your true nature is seen.

* * * *
Neither this world nor any other realms
Are of any ultimate concern.

* * * *
Discern true faith, go home.

* * * *
It is attachment to the movement of thought
Which bars you from the stillness of the eternal.

* * * *
All projection is illusion.
Nothing seen, done or touched is real.

* * * *
To say the light of god is all
Is to miss the fact that any projector
Also has an "off" position.

* * * *
Those ego-ridden, earth-bound souls
To whom power, status, and fortune matter,
Shine dimly in their vain confusion.

* * * *
Your burdens are the choices born of free will.

* * * *
Ignorance speaks loudly and often,
Rarely discerning what real listening is.

* * * *
If you walk around with a full head,
All you get is your own recording.

* * * *
Nothing, everything, that's you.

* * * *
Assume the possibility.
Spend the rest of your life
Exploring the subtlety.

* * * *
Humanity is going to get
A pretty shocking slap across the face
If it does not wake up soon.

* * * *
Be loyal to all and none.

* * * *
When you realize there are none who are not,
You become your brother's keeper.

* * * *
To say "I am the way" does not imply a path.
It is more accurately "The way it is."

* * * *
The seed of the spirit
Requires water, soil and sun
If it is to be nourished into full blossom.
Lacking any of these the soul will rarely find its way.

* * * *
There are at least three solutions to any maze.
Wander aimlessly, sit down or climb out.

* * * *
The fear of death has concocted so much inanity
In every arena of manifest consciousness.

* * * *
The rational mind is linear.
The irrational nature of liberation
Is without direction or motive.

* * * *
All division is vain choice.
No reality sustains it.

* * * *
Call it what you will,
You are it and it is you.

* * * *
Words, thoughts, concepts
Only have power over you
When you believe them real.

* * * *
Contemplate godness wherever you are, whatever you are doing.

* * * *
God is not over there in some pristine golden palace.
Isness is within you no matter the time, activity or setting.

* * * *
Drugs are tools to unlock the rational mind.
Their effect is less and less as the irrational mind
Gains footlessness in the clarity beyond form.

* * * *
To those locked in the rigidity of forms
Divine logic appears foolishly irrational.

* * * *
We are all puppets at the whim of the divine puppeteer.
Few, if any, can know how the script will play itself out.
Each must simply find contentment in their designated role.

* * * *
Practice at being godness.
Sooner or later you will get it down.

* * * *
In oneness, diversity.
In diversity, oneness.

* * * *
We are the briefest twitch
Of an incalculably tiny synapse
Of that most divine totality.

* * * *
To fully embrace the infinity of your ultimate nature,
To completely surrender to the unmanifest
With every particle of your being,
That is the ultimate bliss.
No scripture ever written can capture it.

* * * *
This dream requires that you exist in the way you do
That it might continue to unfold as it will.

* * * *
You do not have to prove anything to any other.
You do not have to do anything, say anything, write anything,
To know, whatever it is, that you are it, have always been it, and will ever be it.
Just being it in the nowness, to your heart’s content, is enough.

* * * *
From the oneness spring the many,
And the many, blinded in their separation,
Wreak havoc and destruction upon themselves.

* * * *
No matter the costume or mask or name,
The we who is you who is me … is ever the same.

* * * *
Don’t quite understand why
Anyone has to be born a few trillion or so times
To discern that bullshit is bullshit.

* * * *
Agape is a process of surrendering to the reality of all.

* * * *
The back and forth argument
About this or that god
Is about as ludicrous as debating
Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny.
The truth of it is that nobody really knows diddly-squat about anything.
That is the wonder of it.

* * * *
Another totally believable lie.

* * * *
There can be no shadow without light,
Nor light without the shadow through which it weaves.

* * * *
The song of god is in every moment played.
Conscious breathing will help keep you there.

* * * *
Birth into this dualistic world is the first of many cuts to the heart.
From womb to manifestation must, indeed be a shock to every Soul.


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