The Return to Wonder - Chapter 299

CCXCIX

Humankind must discern its origin of its own accord.

No matter that you see you are its source,

The manifest theater will play out

Of its own free will.

* * * *

So many things given so much weight, hat in reality have had none from day one.

* * * *

Arguments between dogmas is like watching poodles pee on each other.

* * * *

Who is your best friend, your greatest lover, but the essence you truly are.

* * * *

The ephemeral is, without bounds.

* * * *

Rapture is being truly naught.

* * * *

What irony that so many pay so much

To advertise so many chosen brands,

Whether quality sustains them or not.

* * * *

If it is your calling, yours will end up a life undying.

* * * *

You are slowly awakening from a very deep hypnotic trance.

* * * *

Conscious breathing helps keep the passionate mind on an even keel.

* * * *

Addicted to pleasure, addicted to pain, what difference, really?

* * * *

The sensory dreaming draws you back in day after day.

Hypnotic, mesmerizing, enticing, binding,

Imagination’s weaving is.

* * * *

Acute observation dissolves the observer.

It is imagination that exists, not you.

* * * *

Possession is nine tenths of nothing.

* * * *

This dream hath no parallel.

* * * *

Fate is as fate does.

* * * *

How in god’s name did some genetic lines get so far being so witless?

* * * *

A GPS unit cannot get you home, sorry.

* * * *

Yet another anthropological field day underway.

* * * *

The reality of these meat machines comes to light in any toilet.

* * * *

Consumption’s equable adversaries are happiness and contentment.

* * * *

Shivahood is a role to which many are called, but few are chosen.

* * * *

Any belief about truth

Pales in the light of experiencing truth.

That which is truth is neither attached to, nor bound by,

Any thought concocted by any mind.

* * * *

And what do you take from, and what do you give to

This measureless universe, this dreamtime world

Perceived in the reflections of imagination?

* * * *

History is written upon the untold tales of many a harsh fate.

* * * *

How can the observer not be the observed?

The false identity born of imagination

Is the creator of all duplicity.

* * * *

What is not recognized is not remembered.

* * * *

Such a robust manifest stage

Upon which all things great and small

Equally rise, struggle and fall.

* * * *

In the annals of time,

Many so-called advances

Often become either barbaric

Or patently absurd.

* * * *

Do not think about it so much, just do it.

* * * *

When a need is not present,

Disengage the problem-solving mind,

Before it begins to generate the unsolvable kind.

* * * *

You have never really, truly existed

Except in imagination’s endless concoctions.

Awareness is all you really are, have ever been, will ever be.

* * * *

So many speak so surely of so many things that can never be more than known.

* * * *

In that which is mortally immortal,

You are as imperfectly perfect,

And as fallibly infallible

As the creation around you.

* * * *

Why not go mad? Surely, you are alone enough to give it a whirl.

* * * *

Within eternity’s grace, creation brews.

* * * *

Smoke and mirrors, mirror of smoke.

* * * *

Be ye follower? Or conscious witness?

* * * *

I got mine.

Now, sally forth, Brave Soul,

And discern your own.

* * * *

The rules of any game are all arbitrary concoctions.

* * * *

Scarcity makes for many adversaries.

* * * *

Every individual drop formed of the mystery’s nectar

Experiences a unique universe woven of its given nature and nurture,

And whatever blend of foolishness and wisdom it inspires.

* * * *

As much as there is to know, there is so much more

That will never be vaguely imagined,

Much less known.

* * * *

Another of God’s many afterthoughts.

* * * *

Ye gods, the things we must do to appease one another’s vanity.

* * * *

You and godness

Are very much present

In the same ephemeral nowness,

The same singularity.

* * * *

Mediocrity will out.

* * * *

This is your life.

To what end?

* * * *

Worry, dread, fear, re the mind-killers rhat bind you in time.

* * * *

All faces blend into one.

* * * *

Just another avenue for mischief of one sort or another.

* * * *

The immeasurable nature of infinity is beyond the bounds of imagination.

* * * *

Through me, conscious witness,

All things are created, preserved and destroyed.

Nothing is forever, whatever that is.

* * * *

You are truly as young as the day you were born.

The only challenge to discern it clearly

In this imaginary universe,

This sensory play,

So difficult to disregard.

* * * *

Humankind surely has much greater potential

Than the low bar to which mediocrity aspires.

* * * *

Contentment is like wisdom.

It must be discerned the same way

A sword is thrust into the flame many times

Before it acquires its true edge.

* * * *

To really, really, really not care, what is that, anyway?

* * * *

Change is truth.

Change is not truth.

* * * *

And what to do

When you truly discern

It is all just imagination inspired

By the mind and senses?

* * * *

Enough of this bother.

Have you not suffered enough,

And for what, really, but absolutely nothing?

* * * *

Is it too much to ask for leadership

That is intelligent, just, equitable, rational, intuitive,

Steadfast, egalitarian, and reasonable?

* * * *

The mantra for this day: I do not care, I do not care, I do not care …

* * * *

As infinitely, profoundly immortal as you truly are within,

Locked within this time-bound, worldly vessel,

You are bound by its mortal limits.

Bon voyage, matey.

* * * *

Where’s the “off” switch to this holodeck, anyway?

* * * *

Just playing along with the unfolding show,

Knowing it no more than a dream,

Touchy-feely as it may be.

* * * *

Truth is drawn out of those who have the courage and insight to doubt.

* * * *

To suffer the vanities of ignorance

And its predictable corruptions

Is, indeed, challenging fare.

* * * *

A momentary, experiential state that transcends all notions.

* * * *

Not many can achieve that for which they are ill-suited.

* * * *

Whether to seek purification of a body

Permeated with filth and decay

And a host of organisms,

Is but a temporary, mortal dilemma.

* * * *

Promotion of one idealistic delusion or another

Requires far more determination and vexation

Than the earnest candor of resolute cynicism.

* * * *

Pain is one of the greater teachers in this manifest theater.

* * * *

A very authentic state of awareness

That all have equal opportunity to realize

If the eternal calling arises from within.

* * * *

Still exploring the dream, are we?

* * * *

A vast array of forms, all wandering the quantum mist of imagination’s rainbow.

* * * *

You have resisted enough; it is time to surrender.

* * * *

Fishing for fisherfolk.

* * * *

Across your universe, you travel the time and space born of imagination.

* * * *

Strange how faces so often seem to reflect the personality within.

* * * *

Do you even begin to realize

The full meaning of all you are

Reading, hearing, or articulating?

It is a lotus, unfolding in time.

* * * *

A partiality for seeing it as it is

Is the hallmark of the sincere skeptic,

Often called a cynic by those less perceptive.

* * * *

The god mind is the flowering of your genetic lineage.

* * * *

There is only physical security up to a certain point.

No body can avoid its inevitable demise.

But you, you are immortal.

You are, have always been, will ever be.

* * * *

There is really no training manual on parenting,

Only the models in your family and village,

And a strong sense of trial and error.

* * * *

It is all you.

That’s it.

Stand alone, free.

* * * *

The corporeal container

Is but a temporary means

To witness a flowing theater,

Full to the brim with distraction

To one inescapable end or another,

All played out within an eternal infinity

That discerns neither beginning nor end.

* * * *

There is much to do, or not to do,

And much less time to do, or not do it,

Than there was in that imaginary yesterday,

Or will be in that imagined tomorrow.

* * * *

Napoleon’s cannons upon the enraged Paris mob is nothing new to the surging swarm.

* * * *

Work through your demons

Until you realize everything you think is imagined,

And you need not continue harboring

The unending absurdities

Born of delusion.

* * * *

What a challenge for parochial minds across the world

To hold their own against the relativity of a universal view.

* * * *

Freedom within bounds is not freedom.

* * * *

Having neither need nor desire

To be the center of anyone’s attention,

One simply plays the Cheshire Cat,

Here and there with just a smile.

* * * *

What is it all about?

Who is it who knows?

And who is it who cares?

* * * *

You are whatever you are, whatever you want to call it, or not.

* * * *

Such is the nature of peace and serenity that you cannot imagine it.

* * * *

And the given mind did evoke light and sound, and all things from great to small.

* * * *

Pure awareness, the nectar of bliss.

* * * *

What a mystery Eden; a shame we did not treat it with much more respect.

* * * *

That moment will come soon enough, no point endlessly worrying about it.

* * * *

Breathe in, breath out, eternal life, now.

* * * *

Do not call it anything, just be alone in the awareness prior to consciousness.

* * * *

Allow the clear sky back into your mind.

* * * *

From whence do avalanches begin?

* * * *

Happy Birthday, Son of Santa Claus.

* * * *

You are herein free of all and none.

* * * *

Any discerning drop knows its source.

* * * *

The challenge is to forget it all,

And be the you that you truly are,

Have ever been, will ever be.

* * * *

So many assumptions

To which we all subscribe in so many ways.

To what end the only question.

* * * *

You do not really believe

Your little up-close-and-take-it-personal part

Is ultimately real, do you?

* * * *

Nobody can ever really see you until they see themselves as you do your Self.

* * * *

You are not required to participate in any way but your own: You are your own law.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Return to Wonder

Field Notes from the Unknown

© Michael J. Holshouser 2009

World Rights Reserved

The Return to Wonder - Chapter 298

CCXCVIII

Everything is straining to the breaking point.

Which part of the whole will give way first?

Or has the unraveling long since begun?

To discern the big picture requires time.

* * * *

The great stillness of awareness is prior to all pondering about it.

* * * *

See if you can change yourself before all your judgments demand it of others.

* * * *

What is there to save when everything is spent in the right nowness of every moment.

* * * *

What’s the opium in your den?

* * * *

Where there is me, myself and I, there is the delusion of duality.

* * * *

All that is outside you is inside you,

And all that is inside you is outside you.

Where can one possibly begin or end

When all boundaries are imagined.

* * * *

Allow bliss to reign if you can muster it.

* * * *

The reed bends with whatever wind blows.

* * * *

It’s only cheating if you’re playing the same game.

* * * *

How can you ever convince others

That what is inside is outside, and outside, inside,

And that the truth of reality is not subject

To mere persuasion or belief.

* * * *

Seriously, onto what have you ever been able to hold?

* * * *

Those who discern their birthright can never die.

* * * *

The world will likely go on without you,

But without you to bear witness,

How far can it get, really?

* * * *

Yes, the sign really did say “Free” – and below it, “Donation Required.”

* * * *

Dead man walking.

* * * *

The gold prior to all dreams.

* * * *

Agony and ecstasy.

You will find them both in great supply

Either for as long as it suits you,

Or until death do you part.

* * * *

Imagining it all real does not make it real.

* * * *

Change your fate, your destiny, however you will,

That is only the direction it was headed, anyway.

* * * *

So many distractions to draw you again and again

From what you really are, have ever been, will ever be.

* * * *

How can anyone be dead if no one was ever born?

A quantum dream is a quantum dream,

Nothing more, nothing less.

* * * *

There is no order to anything at any level but chaos.

* * * *

The news swings through the jungle

On the vine of one tragedy, one plague,

One crisis, one war, one outrage or another.

* * * *

There is nothing upon which to hold, to cling, to stick, to attach, to hang.

The clear, immaculate space of awareness, is without bounds.

Space and time is without meaning, without purpose.

There is no other, never was, will never be.

* * * *

Awareness is immortal, awareness is godness, awareness is youness.

* * * *

Another now that never was.

* * * *

The immeasurability of truth’s infinity

Is unassailable by the limitations of mortality.

One must give over to the immortal nature

To even begin fathom the immensity

Prior to all manifest proportion.

* * * *

How you perceive something you hear or see,

May or may not be the way it was intended.

Making assumptions or taking things personally

Is a surefire way to get all lathered up over nothing.

* * * *

To forget everything is too simple for words to more than briefly reveal.

* * * *

To judge others is ultimately to judge your own imaginary creation.

* * * *

What you are, truly, is awareness.

Life is but a temporal, dreamy mirage,

The fleeting enchantment of imagination.

Only imaginary consciousness is born.

Only imaginary consciousness dies.

* * * *

You would think it would be more than a little embarrassing

To be that intolerably mean, greedy, and self-absorbed.

* * * *

You posing pretender, you.

Yeah, I’m talking to you.

You know who you are.

* * * *

Even the strongest become frail and weak in the winds of time.

* * * *

Nothing, that’s it, that’s all there is, there ain’t no more.

* * * *

Sometimes an ending is a beginning,

And in others a beginning is an ending.

The only difference, imagination’s framing.

* * * *

There is no other, you are totally alone.

The world offers every form of distraction,

But it is no more than a kaleidoscoping illusion,

No matter how much you wish to believe it otherwise.

Face the fact, and dive into eternal life.

* * * *

Ain’t sayin’ nuthing, t’all.

* * * *

Reality is likely not anything intelligible to human bullshit.

* * * *

So many trying to measure that which has no measure.

* * * *

Every rut just another variation of the same vanity.

* * * *

All is pointless in the most essential sense.

* * * *

Nothing keeps on happening.

* * * *

You are the Way, the Truth, the Life – No brag, just fact.

* * * *

In the beginning, in the end, and everything between,

All a streaming of moments exactly the same as this one.

* * * *

How surreal it all becomes.

* * * *

Become the void you are,

Have ever been, will ever be.

No matter how great your vanity,

It cannot fill what can never be filled.

* * * *

It is a curious thing how desperate so many are

For that for which mortality provides no access.

* * * *

Funny you should ask that, there being no coincidence.

* * * *

Do you really need this, do you really need that?

Odds are more than a bit likely, if you step back a bit or two,

That you really do not, that you never really did, that you never really will.

* * * *

Endlessly seeking the sanction of others

Is such a desolate way to play out one’s dream.

* * * *

You do no have to travel far to travel within.

* * * *

Get your bearing straight and clear.

* * * *

How desperate so many are to believe, to prove, to assert, 

Something that was freely given long before their creation.

* * * *

Yet another betrayal in the unfolding dreamtime of this spinning orb.

So it goes, too bad, so sorry, oh well, deal with it, get over it, move on.

* * * *

Better to live well, than to live long,

Though enduring both might be tolerable,

Should the dream allow it, that is.

* * * *

What kind of world would it be, could it be, might it be

If everyone was trustworthy and true?

Heaven on Earth.

Yeah, right, and of what use

Are such notoriously idealistic notions?

* * * *

Why should a dreamer care about anything?

Light or dark, right or wrong, white or black, yes or no,

Good or bad, truth or lie, birth or death,

All the same, all the same.

* * * *

From the unfathomable awareness, consciousness is born,

And from that mystery is molded this identity or that.

Only the absoluteness of awareness is real.

The rest is the delusion of illusion.

* * * *

You are not, have never been, nor will you ever be

Bound by any form or any identity.

You are the vital force;

Eternal, immortal, absolute, free.

* * * *

It is the attachment to all these sensations,

And the desire which imagination

Endlessly fathoms,

That creates all this suffering.

* * * *

You are Brahman,

Come to play the play.

Thank you, Great Mother.

* * * *

But, but, but … What if you are wrong?

…

…

…

Nah!

* * * *

What arrogance, what absurdity,

To think, to pretend, to believe,

We are separate from any of it.

Surely, not even god is that vain.

* * * *

Tomorrow, and the eons yet to materialize,

Will be the same dreamy nowness as was today,

As was yesterday, and the eons before that.

* * * *

Home at last.

* * * *

Why should you ever be afraid?

No, really, why should you be afraid?

Only the container suffers; you are immortal.

* * * *

Yours are but one set of the all-seeing eyes.

* * * *

Though it really no more than a dream,

You do, at least some of the time,

Enjoy playing along, don’t you?

* * * *

How long is a day, really?

* * * *

Hold nothing in mind.

* * * *

Heal it.

* * * *

How grueling it must be to spend one’s entire life making so much of so little.

* * * *

Everyone is indeed replaceable.

* * * *

An advocate for all creatures great and small.

* * * *

There is really nothing to explain, justify or prove.

The nature of the mystery is beyond all validation.

* * * *

Discern this eternal truth and you will be the peace that is.

* * * *

Would that we could just stop thoroughly abusing each other

Long enough to get along for even just the briefest of a tiny while.

* * * *

One distraction after another, to what end, really?

* * * *

Cockroaches are the true rulers of the world.

Bow to the flexibility and resiliency

Of their genetic blueprint.

* * * *

To all of Eden’s creatures great and small,

Being treated humanely is, indeed,

A most frightening concept.

* * * *

The awareness of godness is the ground from which all manifestation dreams.

* * * *

You cannot force what will not happen.

Nor can you elude what will.

Fate will out.

* * * *

Quibbling over this delusion or that does not for truth make.

* * * *

You have got to be somewhere; it may as well be here now.

* * * *

Dead soul walking.

* * * *

Madness, absolute madness.

* * * *

You have never really been this body.

Imagination can be such a loose cannon.

* * * *

It is all very coherent in some very few minds.

* * * *

All movement of mind dances with the delusion of illusion.

* * * *

Biology, chemistry, physics; all just different ways of looking at the same nada.

* * * *

Popcorn does not pop simultaneously, and some kernels not at all.

* * * *

Hard to miss what you don’t know.

* * * *

Nothing is the pointless.

* * * *

Is time really worth anything?

* * * *

Those who speak do not know.

Those who know do not speak.

* * * *

Anything only means whatever you assume it means, nothing all the while.

* * * *

The full measure is immeasurable.

* * * *

You are but a brief caster of shadows.

* * * *

Truth or idolatry?

* * * *

Believe nothing.

* * * *

Ya had to be there.

* * * *

Another long ago in the same right now.

* * * *

Another day's sweat and toil washes down to the sea.

* * * *

If you could read my mind, love, what a tale my thoughts could tell.

* * * *

What happens when there are too many monkeys in the only tree in the forest?

* * * *

"How many times have I died for you?" the Jester wondered on his newly minted cross.

* * * *

What a jealous, angry, petty, inane god, so many, with such diligence, imagine.

* * * *

What does one do with a mind

Already so full of agony and ecstasy?

Keep stuffing in more until you eventually pop?

Or put a finger down the throat,

And just puke it all?

* * * *

What happens after the dust settles?

Now, that will be a very interesting time to watch.

Yes, indeedy, what will happen to this theater of consciousness

Once the many paradigms have crashed and burned?

Will we evolve, or merely drone on as before?

* * * * * * * * * *

The Return to Wonder

Field Notes from the Unknown

© Michael J. Holshouser 2009

World Rights Reserved