CCXCI
The larger picture of history’s unfolding is not a pretty sight,
And daily more removed from any redemption
Other than a sure road to collapse
And dystopian ruin.
* * * *
Why do this, why do that?
Why not do this, why not do that?
Here you are, may as well give it your all-est all,
However time and inclination allow.
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Every day each and every one of us, even the most astutely contemplative,
Awakens from the tranquility of oblivion to a new day of imaginary whatever.
* * * *
Yet another inspirational discourse that the crowd wildly cheers, and as quickly forget.
* * * *
Wisdom is the penance of fools.
* * * *
Once you are born,
You must live, you must die.
You really have no choice in the matter.
* * * *
Nuances within nuances within nuances.
How far will we take the intellectual reverie
Before this dream sends us our merry way?
* * * *
Idolatry is certainly an easier row to hoe than doubt.
* * * *
Not a good idea to entice people do things you are going to regret.
* * * *
Another day in the endless cesspit of wordplay.
The maze of the mind is just one snare,
One dead end after another.
* * * *
‘Tis a statistical certitude that for every height
There is eventually an equal and opposite depth.
* * * *
Just because it is all one
Does not mean it is not pathetic, even horrifying,
At least several times a day.
* * * *
Would that futility were not so resilient.
* * * *
And who, really, has the enemy ever been, but ourselves?
* * * *
Pleasure and pain are only as instantaneous as the given neural network allows.
* * * *
Life’s a bitch.
Still we cling.
* * * *
The one-percenters and their legions of minions have always reigned over the show.
So it goes, too bad, so sorry, oh well, deal with it, get over it, move on.
Render unto Caesar the illusions that are Caesar's,
And unto awareness everything else.
* * * *
Do not you wonder if some of the two-leggeds in the public eye
Ever step back and mortify how absurd their little character really appears?
Demonstrating it again and again and again every 24/7/365 in one headline or another,
To all the rubberneckers who, with either ovation or umbrage, goggle at every move.
Ye gods, the things we primates do in the quest for power and fame and fortune.
* * * *
Aging is about the body’s traversing changing levels of normal.
One of the many challenging realities about growing older
Is letting go all that you were when you were young.
* * * *
Dogma uses that which it claims is truth to propagandize its confining stance.
And truth that is abridged, truth that is usurped for false purpose, is not the truth.
* * * *
Oh, what the heck, no point stopping now,
Let’s just push the gas pedal down
A little further, shall we?
The wall beckons.
* * * *
And though it all seems so real, if you had never been born,
Shoulda-coulda-woulda any of this have ever happened?
* * * *
Such a game it is.
To play along with it,
Or not to play along with it,
That is the question.
* * * *
Man is less the measure of all things, than he is the measurer of all things.
* * * *
Challenging to be appreciative and grateful and content
With the glass of water you have, however full or empty.
* * * *
The swift ascent of the human species in such overwhelming, consuming numbers,
Has been the blight, the ruin of Eden and all its creatures great to small.
How exhausting to daily witness the unrelenting destruction
Of what was once such a wondrous garden.
* * * *
Civilization | ˌsivələˈzāSH(ə)n | noun
the stage of human social development and organization
that is considered most advanced.
Really?
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Cancer |ˈkansər| noun
The disease caused by an uncontrolled division
Of abnormal cells in a part of the body.
Hmmm.
* * * *
Parasite | ˈperəˌsīt | noun
An organism that lives in or on another organism (its host)
And benefits by deriving nutrients at the host's expense.
Hmmm.
* * * *
Beyond the point of no return, talk is cheap, and daily cheaper.
* * * *
There are worse fates.
* * * *
And what is life, and what is death, and need you ask anyone to tell you the difference?
* * * *
So futile and meaningless it is to attempt describing anything.
Words, despite their most eloquent, even passionate illustrations,
Must ever tumble short of expressing anything but lifeless memories.
Eternal life is in the momentary awareness of the ever-present now.
* * * *
How tiresome to be daily obligated to subscribing to the absurdity.
Of believing any of this endless drama really, truly, ultimately matters.
Rest assured the universe takes absolutely no notice of the human stain.
* * * *
The palpable, hackneyed truth that actions speak louder than words,
Applies to groups of every genus as much as it does any given individual.
* * * *
What balderdash all concepts of God are compared to the real thing.
Almost as absurd as comparing Pepsi with Coke or any other soda.
* * * *
Were you even your most expansive, magnificent version of God,
You would still be ensnared by imagination’s ultimate pointlessness.
* * * *
Science can measure everything it pleases,
But it can only flail and miscarry, huff and puff,
When it comes to the Great Nada, source of all things.
* * * *
It is the same here-now as it is there-then, as it will ever be any other where-when.
* * * *
Around some unknown, unexpected corner,
This reverie’s epoch must reach its inevitable end.
T’will indeed be a happy-sad-so-it-goes-kind-of-moment,
And Tralfamadorians across the cosmos will applaud our parody.
* * * *
It is attachment to the myriad sensations that sustains the dream.
* * * *
The world is governed by those whose dualistic notions
Make them the biggest, baddest haters of all nature’s bounty.
Perhaps the Great Trickster so reviled his garden
That he brought forth the human species
To bring it to ruin and desolation
In every way imaginable.
* * * *
How is it that so many accept and embrace
Inaccurate, narrow, superstitious observations
That have never at any time portrayed the actuality
In which they in every moment wander?
* * * *
Perhaps you could try for once not telling us what you really think.
* * * *
Entire universes dissolve in still minds.
* * * *
Glory calls us all.
It is a monkey thing.
* * * *
Thinged out.
* * * *
Hard to pick just one word
To accurately describe humankind,
When both vanity and greed so equally apply.
* * * *
A big part of dying is letting go of the living,
And a big part of living is letting go of the dead.
* * * *
To fables, parables, metaphors, and analogies speaking truth,
Will bound to reason and wisdom does like the willow bend.
* * * *
Oh, unknowable fate.
* * * *
The monkey-mind does not easily tolerate any differences
Outside the patterning in which it has been conditioned.
* * * *
What conclusion can there possibly be to a journey that has no beginning?
* * * *
The descent into madness is not a pretty thing to witness,
But, alas, we cannot choose our time and place of origin.
* * * *
Time is short, and every moment shorter and shorter,
For all we players in this wee bit of memory’s passing.
* * * *
Happy endings, well, maybe in the Holly-Bollywoods.
* * * *
This has all really been
Nothing more than a very large,
Nothing-set-in-stone experiment, of sorts.
You, Self, the first and last scientist.
* * * *
Existence, such as it is, is in the unborn-undying awareness of now,
Not the sundry perceptions projected by consciousness
Into the inflated dreams of future past.
* * * *
Wake up, discern clearly that you do not really exist,
And then go punch in for another the day at the mill.
* * * *
Everybody is tripping along in one mind or another.
* * * *
One group’s seemingly rational plan is to another an insidious conspiracy.
* * * *
Endure and enjoy as best ye may.
* * * *
God weighted with attributes,
God encased by limitations,
God delineated in any way,
Is not God.
* * * *
There are things that matter, and so many more that do not.
* * * *
Another moment absorbed in the neuron figment of memory, imagination’s playground.
* * * *
Transcend the monkey-mind; become a citizen of the cosmos.
* * * *
A deep craving, a deep fear, permeates human consciousness.
It is the source of all turmoil and misery and conflict unending.
* * * *
“Please don’t forget,” God implored, though it knew they would forever again.
* * * *
Neither peace nor wisdom can be transplanted
From one heart, one mind, one soul, to another.
* * * *
An endless enigma this quantum mystery every moment is.
* * * *
You are bound by anything only through your own volition.
* * * *
If you did not know any different, where would it get you?
* * * *
How ironic that the earnest encouragement of so many
For others to raise themselves into goodness and wisdom and truth
Is so often unheeded or forgotten or usurped.
* * * *
If you are waiting for permission to be free, it is going to be another long day.
* * * *
In the ever-present awareness, the unborn-undying now.
* * * *
The creator is the creation; the creation is the creator.
* * * *
Freedom is free.
* * * *
Neither follower nor leader be.
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The timeless stillness of awareness, eternity’s default position.
* * * *
The mystery is a need-to-know thing,
And a true agnostic, perhaps the most honest of creatures,
Neither needs nor pretends to know anything.
* * * *
From angel to demon,
We are all equally of the same mystery.
Only the delusions of self-serving vanity delineates it more.
* * * *
Although you may acquire plenty of smarts from getting it,
Any given piece of institutionalized paper is really much more about
Allowing you access through doors along the maze of your fate.
* * * *
You are naught but a wisp of willful imagination.
* * * *
Hear the call to greatness, and ignore it.
* * * *
Always pursue the greatest vision, and all attributes will slip into place.
* * * *
Why believe in anything; being the awareness is enough.
* * * *
Some are, most are not.
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Unshackle the monkey-mind, and it will flow its willy-nilly way.
* * * *
The dream will out, and the we who are me will witness it all.
* * * *
The greater the anger, the greater the illusion.
* * * *
Seers walk a singular path.
* * * *
The Way sets the ground rules of the manifest game, not you.
* * * *
A daydream of sorts, and nothing to show for it.
* * * *
What is there to do, really, but love thy Self.
* * * *
Why not?
* * * *
Equal indifference to all.
* * * *
The play of quantum ether.
* * * *
Pretty darned amazing, this seemingly endless mystery to which you are witness.
* * * *
Can you ever be truly happy with what any other offers?
* * * *
Merge into the awareness of consciousness, and what duality can there possibly be?
* * * *
Dread is the anxiety over the seemingly endless variety of pains inflicted by time.
* * * *
The relativity of all things is immeasurable.
* * * *
To see this. is the end of the world as you know it.
* * * *
The brass ring is yours if you dare to be free enough to seize it.
* * * *
Why stick around for bad theater with a wearing and predictable ending?
* * * *
The yoga of mind is the unraveling of the veil.
* * * *
The man behind the mask is dead: Long live the mask.
* * * *
Can you ever be truly happy with what the other offers?
* * * *
In the ultimate reality, how could there ever be any other dimension
Which would not, at the essential level, be the same dream as this one?
* * * *
In the wake of all memories great to small,
The cosmos is every moment imagined anew.
* * * *
It, too, will come and go, as all dates and times do.
* * * *
There are players, and there are masters.
Anyone can strive at anything,
But truly doing a tango in any given arena
Is a quality of engagement to which few are given entrée.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved