CCLXVI
Unless you delight in chaos and suffering
On a level humankind has as yet never experienced,
Count yourself lucky if you pass on peacefully before the great fall.
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All things are but finite apparitions in the infinity of totality's eternity.
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You are the only one who has ever witnessed the dream in quite the way you do.
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Wander, wander, putter, putter.
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Fame and power and wealth are grandest from envy afar.
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Every ripple finds a shore.
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Reality, in the same moment,
The least common denominator,
The greatest common denominator.
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The owner may not appreciate
The bird, gopher or sundry other tidbit,
But it is what the cat has to offer.
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All contexts boil down to one now or another.
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It does not matter who comes up with the best idea.
All that matters is the idea, and what it will bring about.
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Whether others see it or not is really of no concern.
That you have discerned it is enough for any witness.
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A slice of that apple pie, no matter how it's diced,
Ain't never really separate from the rest of the pie.
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The passivity of vulnerability gets you nowhere.
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What proof is there that right and wrong, good and evil, are anything more
Than vain, superstitious, absurd concoctions born of human imagination?
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Still on the lookout for Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny,
Sasquatch, the Abominable Snowman, Harvey,
And, of course, Jesus.
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To some it may be gloomy, it may well even be doomy,
But for those who see clearly, it is quite simply, reality.
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The irony is how many usurp so many concepts
Without even beginning to comprehend their true meaning.
The literal-minded are mesmerized by their absurdity.
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Humankind is a natural force, a part of the indivisible movement of all creation.
To believe there is for even one moment any point of separation is utter delusion.
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It is a matrix of infinite proportion.
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Any given life is a fated die role that carries all down many paths,
Through innumerable adventures, all to the same mortal conclusion.
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What matters where rests the grave when the indivisible eternity is your home.
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Every moment a bit closer to the end of all beginnings.
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Who is the face behind the reflection?
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Wisdom is a hard-earned, well-worn edge.
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Wisdom is earned by fools
Who have guilelessly wandered
Through the many trials of many trails.
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Play the dream in whatever way you are called.
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God is merely one of the countless inventions of fear.
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Alas, you are too enamored of your own vanity to give attention to mine.
And I, in return, am too much the same in mine to give attention to yours.
So, the game is afoot.
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Some day your bones will be a maze for worms.
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Youth wander naively innocent where their elders long ago tread.
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Let us not pretend that we are in any way, shape or form,
Separate from what it all truly is, from what we all truly are.
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The mind is the surfer of eternity atop imagination's wave of time.
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You are the only one, but not the only one who has discerned it.
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Swimming alone in the deep end, again.
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Masks of youthful innocence are over a lifetime
Etched by the wind of the existence endured.
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Unwonted destruction creates an unwanted world.
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You are characters in my dream, and I in yours.
An exceedingly mysterious thing this witnessing.
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You need not travel far to be here now.
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Even just one instant is enough to discern the infinity of totality.
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Immortality is yours for the seeing.
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To gain power, fame or wealth, you must either earn it, or steal it.
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Just another anonymous face.
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All purpose and meaning is a fabrication of human vanity.
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Anything that is fear-based in its assertion
Is not worth the bread upon which it is buttered.
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Odds are Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, or any of the innumerable other awakened souls,
Could sit next to you in a classroom or coffee shop or bus station,
Unnoticed because you cannot hear them.
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Any given body can only take so much life.
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There are far lesser ways to be mad than that madness which is divine.
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Doubt carries you to the final frontier.
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It is not the first time, and it probably will not be the last.
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Reality is evidently not exactly what the masses have in mind.
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Give the play of time its due, and the rest to eternity.
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Dispassion is the key to immortality.
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Just setting your Self free of the yoke of imagination.
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We are all living on borrowed time; do you kill it, or it you?
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Stepping into the future one breath at a time.
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It is not me or you, it is me and you, and all of them, too.
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The great aloneness grows daily deeper.
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A few flashes of memory to while away the time.
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We all drift into our fates.
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Go away, kid, ya bother me.
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Certainly have painted ourselves into a magnificent corner, eh what?
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‘Tis but vanity which keeps eternity at bay.
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The dream of nothing.
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It is windy at the bottom of the sea.
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You are every moment reborn.
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Before all befores, after all afters, during all durings, you are.
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Nobody knows me but they who know them Selves.
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What makes you believe getting others to agree with your view really matters?
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The blank stares of young gaming minds
Dreaming in the virtual reality of virtual reality.
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You can only measure so far.
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Time is the smoke of imagination.
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You discern who you really are … now.
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If you had not been born, you would never know to rejoice or regret it.
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The mirror says it all.
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Superstitious poppycock.
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We all give back to this dreamy illusion of the world whatever it is we have to give.
Sometimes hate, sometimes love, sometimes this to that from the spectrum between.
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Despite all attempts to attain excellence,
For the mass of humankind, mediocrity will out.
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Such as it is.
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So simple as to be mind-boggling.
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So infinite as to be you.
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Another this, another that, ho-hum.
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Your work is to discern this with all your beingness.
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With or without history and its many forces,
You are ever the same everything and nothing.
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The mind, in all its egocentric glory is the only problem, the only solution.
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Civilization, a loaded concept if there ever was one.
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What can you really get out of any experience but a quickly-passing sensation,
And a perceived memory, that will gradually diminish, and eventually disappear.
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To attain the eternal within any given mind is a testing foray into the unknown, indeed.
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Not quite as bright as we thought we were, eh what?
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Yet another attempt to help you discern your Self.
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The body is but a shell housing the same totality in which all things are contained.
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So easy to forget to remember That which can never be known.
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What doesn’t kill you today
Will come back stronger tomorrow
And give it yet another go.
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There is only one Soul, and it is ours.
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Just a different carnival.
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Anything involving time is ultimately unreal,
Naught but a dream of imaginary proportion.
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A blade is not dangerous if treated with respect.
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Why should you deserve what you do not care for?
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More high-sounding words that mean nothing to nobody nowhere.
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The endless subtleties of nothingness are ever-present.
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How are life and death not the same?
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Another day of wallowing in a litany of predictability.
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Pretty hard protecting sheep from a hungry wolf.
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The answer is not more.
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The immortality of youth is a many-splendored illusion-delustion.
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What part of awareness alone are your not tracking?
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Men create women, women create men, the dynamic is inseparable.
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Pathogens aplenty in this untamable world.
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There’s the rub.
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What is luck but the probability of happenstance working your way.
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Measure, and you shall be measured.
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It has never mattered at all the way you thought.
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Enjoy in joy as best ye may.
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The human paradigm is about itself, not its source.
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Another day underway.
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Why on any earth would it ever matter what any other thinks of you?
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Vanity kills.
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To know nothing is to know all.
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Puny human beings.
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How can anyone expect to be saved from their own ignorance?
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Living for likes.
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It takes a lot of work to grow old.
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Never trust a four-letter word.
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So much history before all the history we think we know.
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All fates are but mirages born of imagination.
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You owe history nothing but what you freely consent.
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Once upon a time, there was nary a beep anywhere.
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We are all the same mystery from every get-go.
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So many things that do not matter; never did, never will.
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Supply will do what ever it must to gratify demand’s hunger.
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Eternity is closer than you think.
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What is awakening but an unassuming realization
Of the absolute indivisibility of the eternal,
From the smallest shard of sand
To beyond the farthest reaches of the cosmos.
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This is likely not a fairy tale with a joyful, dancing ending.
By all indications, it will not be pretty, and will end badly.
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Despite the many arrogant assertions, no one has a lock on that which is absolute.
All must wipe away the drudge of mind to discern clearly what has always been true.
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The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved