III
The individual, the mysterious you, has never really existed.
You are a seeker seeking, a weaver weaving, an image imagining,
A dreamer dreaming, a witness witnessing, a kaleidoscope kaleidoscoping.
* * * *
How arduous the humility to simply see, cease believing, and suffer bondage no more.
* * * *
Prior to all mythos, prior to all weavings of the mind, you are that.
* * * *
You who are alone, mislaid, confused, world-weary,
Will perhaps acquire the strength, the insight,
To distinguish the true nature of isness,
And the sovereignty, the peace,
Will welcome you home.
* * * *
Being what you naturally are is a challenge.
Allowing others the same sovereignty
Can indeed be even greater.
* * * *
You are like cup of three-day old coffee.
All you need do is empty out the stale stuff,
And willingly accept a fresh-brewed refill.
* * * *
Some answers are too large for any questions.
* * * *
This awareness is beyond any distinctions:
Sex, color, race, culture, nation, creed, ad infinitum.
All mythos is meaningless distraction to any seeking liberation.
* * * *
If you are looking to be comfortable, truth is probably not your thing.
* * * *
You are the dreamer in the dream, the player in the play, the mystery in all answers.
* * * *
What do you want out of life? The seeds of your suffering are sown within the answer.
* * * *
The main difference between sage and fool is that one sees his foolishness.
* * * *
Discovering what is real takes great dissatisfaction, great doubt.
* * * *
The kaleidoscoping play of dreamtime illusion
Offers an infinity of pleasures and pains.
Fearing the loss of all you cling to,
All that you believe you know,
You choose the continuity of identity,
And thus suffer the burden of consciousness.
* * * *
Your Self, just a game you play.
* * * *
Enjoy in joy.
* * * *
Desire has no bounds.
* * * *
In all that is and is not, you are.
* * * *
Discovering isness is a subtle game.
Only when the pieces play out to their end,
When that which has been sought is at last found,
Does one fully comprehend the journey taken.
* * * *
If there is any attachment,
Any desire to be bound,
One cannot discover the ultimate.
Even the craving to be liberated must cease.
You simply become what you are, what you have all along been.
* * * *
You may believe you own many things, but they are not yours, nor are you theirs.
* * * *
When you have really got it, when you are truly free of all constraints, you will know.
* * * *
You are already absoluteness; shed your identity and expand into its mystery.
* * * *
Allow the monkey free reign, and it can play your mind like a jungle.
* * * *
You are but a drop in the vast mysterious ocean of totality.
The ultimate nature is timeless, without attributes,
Without direction, purpose or meaning.
Enjoy and endure the dance while you can.
* * * *
Be a student of all, and a teacher to students.
* * * *
Freedom is dormant within.
All you need do is rekindle the coals
With an unquenchable longing.
* * * *
To discern what is really going on, that is the task.
* * * *
Why pretend it real once you see it is not?
* * * *
Maya is a rogue trickster, a sublime whore.
Few can serenely decline the infinity of temptations
Which will be offered before the journey's end.
* * * *
The end of psychological suffering can only come about
When you are completely detached, impersonal, indifferent,
To all attributes of this illusory dream of mortal existence.
* * * *
How can anyone be anything but agnostic? Only pretenders pretend to know.
* * * *
If you truly accept nothing, not even yourself, reclaiming your birthright is within reach.
* * * *
Behind the facade of all appearances, what is really there, but you?
* * * *
Unity, contentment, harmony, serenity, joy.
Words only dancers of the unmanifest understand.
* * * *
Absoluteness neither requires nor gives credentials.
* * * *
All manifestation is subjective projection.
* * * *
Wisdom often appears foolish,
So some learn to play the fool's role,
Mocking all they see, and themselves as well.
* * * *
Intuition, that subtle inner knowing,
Is the mysterious voiceless voice
Of the timeless mystery within.
* * * *
You do not exist in the way you think.
* * * *
Everything you know
You have been told or experienced.
But what do you really know?
Not enough to fill a thimble
Of the infinity it is.
* * * *
There is no path, there is no definitive way,
In the quest for the freedom of one's truest nature.
Whether seen or not, your essential state has ever been.
* * * *
The desire for sensation does not bring about contentment,
Only brief tastes of pleasure, and predictable swings of sorrow.
* * * *
Liberation requires unconditional surrender of identity; there is no compromise.
* * * *
To attain liberation, to discover the original state, is life's only real purpose.
* * * *
Compassion and emotion are vastly different.
Emotion is little self's play of attachment and suffering.
Compassion is unattached serenity.
* * * *
The duality of Maya only creates suffering.
* * * *
What else can you be but isness in disguise?
* * * *
Identity is such a forlorn task.
* * * *
To see it all, and want it not.
* * * *
You are not your body,
Your video of life experiences,
Your confusing, bulky bag of values,
Your encyclopedia of knowledge,
Or anything else ever thought.
And neither is anyone else.
* * * *
Though cloaked by passionate identity,
The witness you are in reality
Is the dispassionate absoluteness.
* * * *
What can you possibly hope to get from an illusion?
* * * *
Consciousness identified with form has lost touch with reality.
* * * *
Remember as often as need be that what you really are is isness.
* * * *
Are you able to perceive, without any attachment whatsoever, that which is perceived?
* * * *
Those who own this cannot say much to those unready to die to personal mythos.
* * * *
If you for a moment believe those who awaken
Must behave in some prescribed manner, guess again.
They make it up as they go, same as you and everyone else.
* * * *
Is there an individual who knows, or simply the knowing?
* * * *
You are that which is, and that which is, is you.
* * * *
It will be your voluntary destiny
To reside in the kaleidoscope of bondage
Until duality no longer suits you.
* * * *
Pleasure offers no serenity.
Desire is unquenchable.
* * * *
There are no limits to the havoc and pain
Consciousness is fully able to wreak.
Only in non-attached beingness
Can you discover real peace and joy.
* * * *
No one can really do more than speculate
How this incredible mystery came into being.
It is impossible to know more than words pretend.
* * * *
Merely pandering the senses is a sure road to suffering.
* * * *
There is nothing to become, only that which is to be undone,
The peeling away of layer after layer as one would an onion.
* * * *
You manifest the experiences to which you give your attention.
* * * *
Seeing, being, the nothingness, desire and fear dissipate.
* * * *
Avoid following or idolizing personalities
And any groupthink organized around them.
Real religion is a sojourn each must divine alone.
* * * *
Christs, buddhas and other immortals
Are only projected images of your desire.
Their realization of truth is within your grasp.
* * * *
Only the grateful dead know serenity.
* * * *
Evil touches only those who believe it real.
* * * *
The mind, with all its time-bound cravings,
Will perform any trick it can muster
To stave off contentment.
* * * *
Wisdom can be expressed in countless ways.
There is no standard to which it must conform.
* * * *
Try holding even one breath, even one thought,
And see clearly the temporal nature of existence.
* * * *
Simple ignorance is the most true state.
You can only know appearances and attributes,
Projections you in mind, in imagination, in time, create.
The unknown is ever clouded in mystery.
* * * *
Why all this is happening no one can more than speculate.
* * * *
Another dab of the usual pain and suffering to be endured how many more times?
* * * *
Is there anything that cannot be twisted, usurped, by some other agenda?
* * * * *
There are those whose giving hearts earnestly seek goodness,
And there are those twisted ones who do not.
Their loss, indeed.
* * * *
To fully comprehend these thoughts,
You must be able to transcend your personal view.
You must be able to examine anything
From an unaligned stance.
* * * *
You need not, cannot, explain or justify anything
To those who do not comprehend.
You are your own law.
* * * *
Here again now.
It is what it is.
* * * *
Identity is like a heavy coat
Which will someday come off
And never be worn again.
* * * *
What is the quality of consciousness
Unburdened by desire, fear and anger?
Unfragmented, full, complete, whole, one.
* * * *
Rediscover that heartfelt laughter … if you are able.
* * * *
Still looking for that Hollywood/Bollywood ending? Hah! Good luck with that!
* * * *
For consciousness to examine itself, for awareness to become aware of itself,
For the mystery to gaze into the indivisible depths of its mystery,
Is not this the ultimate raison d'être for all creation?
* * * *
All your life, you have been trying to figure out what you wanted to do.
Guess this is it.
* * * *
In the ultimate eternal infinity of reality, each of us is our own law.
In the club and fang of this mortal garden, however,
That is entirely a relative matter.
* * * *
Best deal with the fact that relatively very, very few
Really give a rat’s ass about your existence
At any relatively meaningful level.
* * * *
All seeds merely inherited genetic blueprints
Dutifully playing out their design.
No brag, just fact.
* * * *
Drip … drip … drip … drip …
* * * *
Nothing to win, nothing to lose.
* * * *
Can you take all the pain upon which you dwell,
And cast it away in one mighty knock-down toss?
* * * *
Through all creation, all preservation, all destruction,
The indivisible nothingness of awareness reigns absolute.
* * * *
It is perhaps your destiny to awaken,
And unravel the manifest existence that seemed so real
Into yet another journey into the only reality there is, ever was, will ever be.
The only reality that is not, never was, will never be.
* * * *
Without all these many passions, you would more clearly see the you that really is.
* * * *
Erase all boundaries, burn all flags, discern the common ground of awareness,
And wander your universe unburdened by the differences born of imagination.
* * * *
The universe exists because the oneness cannot do it all but through the many.
Truth is, who would ever want to revel in every ecstasy,
Much less endure every agony?
* * * *
How ridiculous it is to believe anyone individual can save anything or anyone,
When in the reality of this kaleidoscoping dream, there is nothing to save.
And even if there were, it would be the matrix-level synergy doing it,
Not some illusory persona wrapped in inflated self-absorption.
* * * *
When the ebbing and flowing of the essence, the quantum fever, subsides,
When foreword is no longer forward, when backward is no longer backward,
When the singular awareness transcends the ever-moving tides of thought,
Where is the me-myself-and-I that believed its imaginary realm so real?
* * * *
If you are still looking for something, try turning your mind inside out.
Look to nothing, see what it is, see what it is not,
And that it is the just reward.
* * * *
Water flows, plants grow, birds fly, universes bang, universes crunch.
Only the mind you imagine you are daily struggles to be more or less.
* * * *
You are entirely a dream in everyone else’s awareness, and they in yours.
We are all alone together, from this shore to the farthest reaches and beyond.
* * * *
Everything is possible in the infinite array of the grand play.
It is not about good or evil, black or white, or any imaginary this or that,
It is simply the make-believe of free will playing out in the dream of consciousness.
* * * *
What is the Bible but a poorly organized history book, laced with smatterings of wisdom,
Certainly no greater than any other so-called scripture scribed across this temporal orb.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved