The Return to Wonder - Chapter 292

CCXCII

Babble.

Babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble-babble.

Babble-babble.

Babble.

* * * *

Freedom is more than a word, and is free to all

Who discern the essential nature,

And therein reside.

* * * *

Wandering on empty.

* * * *

Just pointing out the obvious.

* * * *

Freedom is a state, a quality of mind.

You can be in chains, tortured, locked forever away,

And be as free as the freest soul ever born.

* * * *

Nature is the only god there has ever been.

How humankind lost touch with that indelible truth

Is a story well beyond any and all bounds of rational thinking.

* * * *

Love is really only as meaningful as its manifestation in any given moment.

* * * *

What is there to complain about when you do not know any different?

* * * *

Truth is all-inclusive, no ifs, no ands, no buts about it.

* * * *

Who is the you that wonders about all this?

* * * *

Everyone works out a salvation

That suits the capacities and limitations

Of their fleeting mortal wander.

* * * *

Within the corridors of memory, you could travel forever.

* * * *

We are all bottomless abysses

That cannot be filled by anything,

No matter how grandiose the effort.

* * * *

It might have hurt if you had cared.

* * * *

Ignorance is a bliss of its own making.

* * * *

If you think God does not weep

For what we have made of this Eden,

Then you neither feel nor fathom the rain.

* * * *

Another flawed character

Expressing such an array of noble ideals,

That even they turn a blind eye to the unadorned day-to-day.

* * * *

It is all just recycled compost, the piss and shit of cockroaches and dinosaurs.

* * * *

You are hopefully too busy living, too busy exploring the allotted moment

To bother about whether some vain and jealous and otherwise malevolent deity

Is going to judge you, punish you, for playing out your given nature-nurture inclinations

In a relatively brief mortal existence in which you had absolutely no say.

* * * *

At some point in the discernment of Self, all doubt ceases.

* * * *

If you cannot build heaven in the right here, right now,

What makes you believe any divinity worth its salt

Is going to invite you to park yourself in his?

* * * *

And if nothing calls you, what then?

* * * *

A touchy-feely, 3D dream in which everything gets you nothing, and nothing, everything.

* * * *

Is it a method to his madness, or a madness to his method?

* * * *

We may all be tools in each other’s awakening,

But the universe looks likely to end

Before some figure it out.

So do not feel like

You have to stick around,

Unless some sort of absurdly futile,

Cross-bearing martyrdom is seducing your vanity

To a near-death experience on one lonely hilltop or another.

* * * *

Good, empathic, compassionate, kind, considerate, cheerful,

Composed, responsible, trustworthy, tranquil, graceful, content;

Likely attributes of a mind at rest, at peace, serenely fulfilled.

* * * *

It is all happening in a sort of topsy-turvy,

Inside-out, ass-backwards, convoluted,

Surround-sound, dipsy-doo-dah way.

* * * *

Whatever you do the first twenty or thirty years of life, you will pay for with the rest.

* * * *

It is far too large a mystery for the monkey-mind to decipher

With any organized techniques, with any dogmatic assertions.

There is really only merging into the grace of its indivisibility.

* * * *

What is a life unmeasured?

* * * *

Speculations abound, none really any more true than any other.

* * * *

Your existence is permeated with both an innate craving for,

And an innate aversion of, the pleasures of the seven deadly sins

– Pride and envy and gluttony and lust and wrath and greed and sloth –

And the chronic suffering they inevitably foster in mind and body.

* * * *

It is really consciousness that plays family,

Lover, friend, acquaintance, stranger, adversary.

Every kaleidoscoping mask is naught but a translation

Weaving its intention within the vastness of your imagination.

* * * *

Whatever analogies, metaphors, parables,

Or concepts of any sort you or any other might employ,

Mind-born imagery is all they are, have ever been, or will ever be.

None have any actual reality beyond aftershocks

Echoing down neuron pathways.

* * * *

Why would you ever need another to tell you that you are remarkable?

Why would you ever need another to tell you they valued you?

Why would you ever need another to tell you anything,

When what you really are requires no sanction.

* * * *

Education is about training the mind to move in many ways.

Meditation is about returning it to its innate serenity.

The quantum origin permeates all venues.

* * * *

The dream of time by any other name is the same.

* * * *

Awareness, call it what you will, is you.

* * * *

Despite your hedonistic, narcissistic,

Insatiable inclination for pleasure,

It is all rather painful, is it not?

* * * *

Whatever it may be called,

Five Elements or Periodic Table, Ether or Quantum,

It is all the same indivisible essence.

* * * *

A pathless mind leaves no footprint.

* * * *

Better some thoughts rattle about on paper.

* * * *

The cosmos is an adventure

No matter which way you might turn.

The maze of existence goes on and on and on,

For as long as there is the breath in which to wander time.

* * * *

Compassion arises from empathy with all things great to small.

* * * *

The mind is a flower of nature, in its own little mortal, temporal sort of way.

* * * *

What do you mean you cannot have your cake and eat it, too?

You had your cake, and then you ate it.

What’s the conundrum?

* * * *

Is there even such a thing as a waste of time?

How can something that does not exist

Ever be spent badly or well?

* * * *

When were you born, when were you not?

* * * *

Not all candles seek to be lit.

* * * *

Joyful bother.

* * * *

Thought is only necessary to abide in fields of dreams.

* * * *

Exploring nothing is always new ground.

* * * *

Language is language, concepts echoing across the abyss, ground to all.

* * * *

What is this ephemeral emotion we call love, if not the eternal void of pure awareness?

* * * *

There is only one mystery, one truth, and we are all equally of it.

* * * *

The grace and serenity of eternity trumps all the speculations born of time.

* * * *

The mind of humankind is an indelible tool-maker,

And those tools in turn shape future minds

In countless, unforeseeable ways.

* * * *

The ever-present tripwire is taking everything,

And thus your self-imagery,

All so seriously.

A glaringly subtle error, indeed.

* * * *

Die ten thousand deaths every moment.

* * * *

However it all began,

We all share the same origin.

All life is the posterity of the first seed.

* * * *

The oldest game in town.

* * * *

And there it is, once again, staring you right in the face, the blatantly notorious obvious.

* * * *

In every word, a degree of separation.

* * * *

There is a price to be paid for everything.

* * * *

It is incomplete, uncritical, undoubting thinking

That has so many of our kind believing, asserting,

That we must play out this theater any particular way.

* * * *

Even if it is witnessed, it nonetheless remains a dream.

* * * *

It is relatively easy to be happy when you have nothing in mind.

* * * *

The history within any given mind is no more than a vague, arbitrary, temporal notion.

* * * *

The ending of desire is the key to freedom from the known.

* * * *

We are all living on borrowed time from the get-go.

* * * *

Time travels oblivious to the eternal moment,

Which allows it temporal right of way,

Ever untouched all the while.

* * * *

Death is like a balloon fizzling out of air,

A scoop of salt dissolving in water,

A river washing into the sea.

A candle flickering out,

What has changed … really?

* * * *

Eternity is like Teflon, nothing sticks.

* * * *

Monkey dust.

* * * *

If there is a supreme being,

Maybe when you die, it will finally show its face,

And you will discern it your own.

* * * *

Just as monkey as everyone else.

* * * *

Expand, stretch into the great stillness within.

* * * *

All over the map because there is a map to explore.

* * * *

If there is still psychological pain, then you likely have deeper to delve.

* * * *

And how would you feel if another treated you the same way?

* * * *

Always amusing how intelligent, well-educated folk

Truly imagine they can persuade ignorance

To become as savage as they are.

* * * *

The mind is a-whir.

* * * *

It all starts off as nothing,

Then gradually becomes something,

And then, for those who awaken,

Reposes into nothing again.

* * * *

How can you forget what you never knew?

Why remember what you think you do?

* * * *

If a vision does not include everything,

Then it cannot really be anything

More than another lie.

* * * *

We all put ourselves under so much pressure for whatever.

* * * *

Is monkey love really any more than narcissistic self-absorption?

* * * *

It does not get any more graceful,

Any more effortless, any more flexible,

Than the nothingness of the eternal mind.

* * * *

As if all your caring really means anything.

* * * *

If you assume someone else knows more than you about this unknowable mystery,

Then you are likely destined to be tithing to one middleman or another,

Perhaps until your last wheezing, hacking, weary breath,

Less, of course, the nominal ten percent.

* * * *

What is this corporeal form but a satchel of memories

Destined either to be licked by flames into ash,

Or consumed by one creature or another

In the bowels of the dusty labyrinth.

* * * *

Try telling that to anyone who cannot listen.

* * * *

Some seem to feel compelled to proclaim themselves Buddha

Because the original moniker no longer bears the sovereignty.

* * * *

To die, or not to die, that is the question.

* * * *

How expansive, expansive can be.

* * * *

What was it you projected in that, anyway?

* * * *

What fear it takes to not even be able to look.

* * * *

There is no other, never has been, never will be.

* * * *

Never mind.

* * * *

You are absolutely nothing in the most profound sense.

* * * *

How has all this come about, a mystery that has no answer.

* * * *

Be as an infant in the womb – serene, aware, unattached – with malice toward none.

* * * *

What consciousness hath set apart, let consciousness render whole again.

* * * *

Why bother holding on to all the memories of what has only ever been a dream?

* * * *

Every life form is a shard of the Truth, the Life and the Way.

* * * *

Manifestation is the limitation of one form or another.

* * * *

Remember nothing. remember everything.

* * * *

Family are the people you love, friends the ones you like.

To have love and like one in the same can be rare, indeed.

* * * *

It starts as nothing, it journeys as nothing, it ends as nothing.

How can there ever be either beginning or end to the indivisibility?

* * * * * * * * * *

The Return to Wonder

Field Notes from the Unknown

© Michael J. Holshouser 2009

World Rights Reserved

The Return to Wonder - Chapter 291

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.

* * * *

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?

* * * *

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.

* * * *

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.

* * * *

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