The Return to Wonder - Chapter Eight


VIII


What might it have been like to have never seen your face?
To have never gazed at your reflection in a pool of water or a mirror,
To have never had a portrait painted, or a photograph taken,
To have abided only in the many reflections of others
As you wandered about your perceived world.

* * * *
Assumptions can take one down many hard paths.

* * * *
Pierce the abscess, release the poison.

* * * *
Before enlightenment, suffering.
After enlightenment, suffering.
But perhaps, and just perhaps,
Without quite the same attachment.

* * * *
Sorrow is a function of time.

* * * *
Normal is the encasing ideal of culture.
It is the conditioning of tradition.
It is the denial of the flower.

* * * *
Do you really believe it matters what you believe?

* * * *

What irony that those history anoints worthy of note

Were so often callous liars, cheats, thieves, and murderers,

Who used the coin of their realms to acquire a redeeming image.


* * * *
Interesting how so many of our kind
So earnestly strive to be known, to be remembered.
Some sort of survival mechanism deep within the genomic structure,
That histories across time and space well know as the cause of many an absurdity.

* * * *
All this striving to become something, when in truth you already are enough.

* * * *
Those aware of the awareness neither need nor create nor foster
Any belief, any tradition, any ritual, any symbol, any dogmatic hierarchy.
That is the entangling outcome of those who are forever baffled,
Those who follow, those who imitate, those who recite.

* * * *
What unutterable vanity to believe that this timeless quantum mystery
Needs to be, much less can be, systematized into any so-called religion.

* * * *
What does it mean to think you are this body, that you are alive?
What makes you believe you will someday cease to exist?
What makes you so sure you were ever even born?

* * * *
You are more than you know, less than you think.

* * * *
What is the use of worrying over anything?
The only problem is the maker of the problem,
The duality the mind in separation creates.

* * * *
The dreamtime river is an ever-flowing quantum matrix.
Though mind may attempt to dam it, to channel it,
Or to encase it until it wallows in stagnation,
It ever remains unconstrained, eternal.

* * * *
By succumbing to knowledge and the experience of separate identity,
Consciousness weaves a sticky web of dualistic perception,
The reckoning to which, all who yearn freedom
Must alone realize the key.

* * * *
All lives are played out in one pattern or another.
The mind habitually requires the order of purpose and meaning,
Yet all purpose and meaning is nothing more than the make-believe of delusion.
The realization that you are but a dream is the only salvation.

* * * *
At their outset, most religions were likely seeded with masterful insight,
But to all but the most discerning, to all but the least confused,
They have all too predictably become nothing more
Than hierarchical snares of dogmatic self-perpetuation.

* * * *
You are ultimately alone in this eternal journey.
At best another can only offer some hints and urge you on.
You must blaze it anew in whatever way you will.

* * * *
To flow in the symphony of isness
Is to know the serenity of eternity.
It is as simple as the next breath.

* * * *
Time forgets all.

* * * *
Living as most manifest it,
Is little more than a life-long,
Unlearned lesson about vanity.

* * * *
Hesitation, guilt, shame, remorse,
Are the plight of the conditioned mind.
Live each moment fully, and regret nothing.

* * * *
Attach to no definitions, accept no labels.

* * * *
The mind-body as identity can never know serenity.
It is a recorded etching of pain and pleasure,
A vain product of manifest separation bound in time.
The mind-body's ambition to become is vested self-deception.

* * * *
When you came into this garden through your mother's womb,
You and all the other creatures knew only the concord of eternity.
You consumed the harvest of knowledge and lost sight of its source.
The so-called beasts still reside in there, awaiting your timeless return.

* * * *
Thoughts such as these are dead in themselves.
Their intention is to aid in the transcendence of consciousness,
Into discerning the timeless, changeless, immutable potential of the natural state.
And whether or not they resonate, succeed, flourish, triumph, prosper,
Is entirely up to the ears that hear, the eyes that see.

* * * *
Whatever is done to another is ultimately done to your Self.

* * * *
Contour whatever dreamy illusion you will,
You are ever the clay of the ground,
And clay sees only clay.

* * * *
The point of all this is to help you learn
To tap your own eternal nature.
That all your vain divisions are illusory,
That your sense of duality is utterly fabricated.
Examine closely everything you have ever been told.
To own this you must be in total revolution.

* * * *
Spiritual hierarchies are manufactured
By those often quite willing to seize everything,
And leave your spirit desolate and flapping on a rocky shore.

* * * *
There are no chosen people.
All are equal in the quandary of oneness.
Those laying such claims only mislead themselves
And anyone credulous enough to believe someone on a pulpit.

* * * *
All that is, is of the patterning, but what resides prior to all patterns?
Who cares whether you exist once, or expire times beyond counting?
Every moment's kaleidoscoping streamtime is the story’s true telling.

* * * *
Every culture creates an ethos to perpetuate its continuity.
Identification with any mindset, any tradition, is ultimately a quagmire.
To become boundless, to realize absolute nature, to become the cosmic dance,
Discern that all mythos is nothing more than vain, arbitrary fabrication.

* * * *
When graven images no longer entice you, just exit the building, and go home.

* * * *
These sundry thoughts are for those no longer enchanted or distracted
By the ever-kaleidescoping light show of this manifest dreamtime,
Those called to discover that which is prior to consciousness.

* * * *
There is such a huge gap between knowledge and understanding,
And neither have much in common with the source or their origin.

* * * *
The quantum matrix kaleidoscopes into human beings,
And humans imagine the mystery in their own image.

* * * *
Question every assumption; leave none unturned.

* * * *
Identity is a temporal figment of imagination.

* * * *
Undo the quest for continuity.
Reality bubbles in the moment.

* * * *
The most insidious desire is for continuity.

* * * *
You need not “try” to become absolute supreme.
You already are that ultimate, effortless state.
Simply rid yourself of the forged sense of identity.
Still the mind, ignore the senses, abide in the awareness.

* * * *
Until the momentary surrendering is attained,
Spiritual practices and methodologies only continue
To strengthen and contort the mind’s fabricated personality.

* * * *
The indelible mystery and those who discern it with a dollop of clarity,
Have always been misconstrued and desecrated by the vanities of ignorance.
Awakening to your own witlessness, challenging it in every way, is the prime directive.

* * * *
What is natural, what is synthetic, and do such rifts exist in the quantum matrix?

* * * *
You can speculate and argue about this mystery all you please,
But what you think makes absolutely no difference, whatsoever.

* * * *
Celibacy is a natural lack of craving, not denial or repression.

* * * *
All one can really do is live life in agnostic wonder.

* * * *
Maya is nothing but the dance of imagination.
To abide in serenity, to give freely, to love joyfully,
Simply merge into that which was never born.

* * * *
Only in the ascetic stillness of aloneness,
The inner source of all manifest godness,
Can any truly know their ultimate nature.

* * * *
You are the cotton candy spun of godness.

* * * *
If you were to fall asleep, never to awaken,
Those remaining might notice, but would you?

* * * *
All are free to drink fully from the eternal reservoir.
How thirsty any are is really the first and last question.

* * * *
To discover what you really are is to tap into a content serenity.

* * * *
Those already free cannot really help anyone; each must journey alone.

* * * *
Better to live moment-to-moment in freedom, than a lifetime of continuity in chains.

* * * *
Wisdom acknowledges and embraces ignorance so closely as to make it innocuous.

* * * *
As long as you abide the mind set in some concrete, arbitrary reality
You cannot discern the fluid timelessness of its indivisible nature.

* * * *
In no way, shape or form is godness separate from you.

* * * *
Identity is nothing more than a collusion of memory.
Without it you are no different than anything else.

* * * *
All those labels you abide by mean diddly-squat.

* * * *
When the inner voice, the ego, the little self,
Dissolves into the awareness, into the witness,
The mistaken conception of duality ceases.

* * * *
There is a time to sow, a time to reap.
There is a time to learn, a time to unlearn.
To abide all with a sense of grace is the task.

* * * *
In awareness, there is no time-space continuum.

* * * *
Maya is a time-bound, ever-present trickster.
Only simple, momentary faith casts aside the veil.

* * * *
Ego must dissipate for this knowing to take up residence.

* * * *
Duality is created by mind and senses; it has no reality beyond delusion.

* * * *
Pretty amazing all the gibberish that comes about because of a few memory cells.

* * * *
You were born because you were told so; you will die for the same reason.

* * * *
Whether awake, asleep or waking, the witness is always ever-present.

* * * *
The awakened mind in awareness wanders a pathless path,
In which, within every breath consciousness allots,
It repeatedly discerns there is no other.

* * * *
To see this is to unfurl the sails in a rudderless voyage.

* * * *
Imagination is its own student, its own teacher.

* * * *
Check your mind at the door.

* * * *
The stillness before time, that is home.

* * * *
To discover that which is prior to mythos,
Is akin to a newborn blanketed in mystery
Suckling contentedly at the mother's breast.

* * * *
To quaff at the trough of eternity without sharing
Does not seem to be the nature of the indivisible.

* * * *
There is really no difference between monster and saint.
Both are just masks disguising the same faceless nature.

* * * *
From beginning to end in this dreamy manifest dimension,
All you think you are, is just food for worms and other critters.

* * * *
Those who cannot comprehend will constrict your efforts into labels
In order to avoid the introspection that understanding would require.
Never allow your Self to be encased by Maya's countless limitations.

* * * *
Sensations you like are pleasurable, sensations you do not like are not pleasurable.
Both are equally the recreation of the mind abiding the senses.
Discern That which is prior to all.

* * * *
Those who will not collude, they are the unborn, prior to mind and senses
Free of desire, fearless, absolute, timeless, serene, they wander alone.

* * * *
Thought as identity, as persona, is a yellow brick road
Bent on every conceivable, every imaginable genre of suffering.
Only in the tranquil stillness of the indivisible awareness
Is there any prospect for genuine contentment.

* * * *
Are you Jew, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Taoist,
Existentialist, nihilist, ad infinitum?
Or none of the above?

* * * *
The quixotic seeker travels far and wide and long,
Until finally realizing home was always here now.

* * * *
The source of all is neither nothing nor everything.

* * * *
One day you will perhaps find craving,
Other than for the most essential necessities,
Slowly, quietly, without fanfare, just burns itself out.

* * * *
So many claims, so many lies, so many scams.
The so-called spiritual quest is not about power, fame or fortune.
It is about ascertaining the clarity of your own vision.

* * * *
Many a scientist has through microscope and telescope discovered
What seers across time and space intuited long before history's origin.

* * * *
So many prophets and religions, so many philosophers and philosophies.
Curious how much more guileless truth is than the countless thoughts about it.

* * * *
Those claiming they are keepers of any given belief system, any given word,
Can never be more than false prophets and sordid hypocrites.
Even That I Am cannot know its origin.

* * * *
When will you be free and clear?
When will you discern that which you already are?
Depends how long you persist in lugging around that busy-busy mind
To which you so arbitrarily and tenaciously cling.

* * * *
Dispense with knowledge and the ever-present garden reappears.

* * * *
You cannot erase pain unless you deal with its cause,
And that may or may not be well beyond possible.

* * * *
Whatever you do, whenever you do it,
Wherever you do, in whatever form you do it,
It will ever be nothing more than a quantum dream.

* * * *
There are the wolves, there are the sheep,
And there are the sovereign aligned with neither.

* * * *
It may take a few billion years
For all traces of humankind to be obliterated,
But eventually everything recycles in this quantum playground,
So, no worries, Mate, earth abides.

* * * *
Through awareness of the other comes awareness of the no other.

* * * *
What we call knowledge is no less imaginary than any fairy tale.
Both are equal products, equal conscripts, of the time born of mind.

* * * *
At some point, it there really anything that you have to do ever again?
Seriously, how many times do you have to brush your teeth to get the gist?


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The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved