CCXXVIII
Dissolve the a priori, and what truly remains
But a stream of seamless sensory input,
The perfect order of timeless chaos.
* * * *
‘Tis but death knocking . . .
Play on.
* * * *
Do not judge the world harshly,
For its redemption is in your seeing.
* * * *
Bouts of suffering
Slivers of joy
* * * *
You are That which cannot be named.
* * * *
Agony and ecstasy, suffering and happiness,
Are relative to the given circumstance.
* * * *
Difficult to be content
When one’s health is fading,
And whatever power you once had
Is little by little dissipating.
Not easy growing old.
* * * *
It is less about some god judging you than you judging yourself
For memories that are no longer relevant.
Let them go.
Be at peace with the nowness that is real.
* * * *
Buy someone else’s book.
This one will cost you
What it expounds.
* * * *
Ho-hum, ho-hum, ho-hum . . .
Another name, another number,
Another this, that or the other . . .
Nothing really new under any day’s sun
Except every this, that or the other
Any given now eternally offers.
* * * *
Today’s falsehoods are the silt
Upon which tomorrow’s will settle.
* * * *
No use feeling bothered
By some event you cannot take back.
Just don’t do it again, forgive yourself, and move on.
* * * *
Some deaths are described as having no purpose,
And others as meaningful, even honorable.
Yet the Angel of Death is unconcerned
About any vain human pride.
When one’s time is done, it is done.
* * * *
Any given outcome
Is less a matter of superstition
Than it is inattention.
* * * *
Perhaps your resentment and fear, the angst tainting your dream,
Comes from having to play a painful role forced upon you,
This reverie you have never really quite believed,
But must play in one way or another
Until death do you part.
* * *
Attaining heaven on earth is merely
Changing one’s frame of reference
To inclusive, empathetic choices.
* * * *
If this is a battleground between good and evil,
Then it’s pretty obvious which side is winning.
* * * *
The delusion is strong in that one, Obi Wan.
* * * *
If there is an entity called god
And it is as vain and petty as we,
There is nothing for which to hope.
* * * *
Suffering in every manner conceivable
Is the consequence each must pay
For whatever air is allotted.
* * * *
‘Tis not the location,
But the quality of mind
In which equanimity abides.
* * * *
Wisdom is simple, straight-forward and matter-of-fact.
It culls the distortions of opinion and propaganda,
And serves all in all geographies in all times.
* * * *
Surrender brings a sense of intuitive right action.
Things just happen spontaneously, as they truly always have.
And with little interior effort, it will all unfold before you.,
And you will again embrace your true beingness,
Doing whatever the moment beckons.
* * * *
All the walls in your mind
Are merely contractions of energy
Crashing to and fro.
* * * *
Is all the gazing at mirrors and photographs
Merely a vain attempt to remember
How the mask looks,
Or a check-in to see if the image
Really matches the sense of time and space?
* * * *
Become a voice in the wilderness.
* * * *
The subtlety of surrendering
Is like the rings of a tree
Gradually dissolving.
* * * *
A near infinity of forms . . .
I Am . . . all and none.
* * * *
Surrender is completely voluntary.
It is the choiceless choice.
Perhaps the only one.
* * * *
Without you as its source,
There would be, could be, no universe.
All that is known has you at the core of its foundation.
You are the eternal spring from which all manifest existence flows.
* * * *
Each of us births a universe.
Death is its annihilation.
* * * *
Consciousness comes, consciousness goes.
So it goes, c’est la vie, oh well.
* * * *
Winning and losing with equanimity
Requires an inner grace few possess.
* * * *
The mind craves its conscious movement.
The stillness of eternity is a voluntary death
Only the most intrepid seek and discern.
* * * *
The only real resolution to the pain of consciousness
Is to discern beyond its temporal nature.
* * * *
Slowly, surely, inexorably . . . it is done.
* * * *
Words only get you the place words attain.
To discover that which is real
Is a realm
Words can never attain.
* * * *
Life is a corridor of time,
A seamless maze of birth and death.
* * * *
Lost in space.
* * * *
When you say me, myself and I,
Who, what, when, where, why and how
Do you really mean it?
* * * *
No point in guilt-ridden regrets.
There is no going back in the maze of time.
One can only choose to never wander that path again.
* * * *
I am whatever I am,
You are whatever you are,
We are whatever we are,
Whatever that may be.
* * * *
True science is always open
To new questions, to new answers.
True science seeks truth, not conclusions.
* * * *
What more do you really need?
* * * *
To be content,
You merely need
To decide to do so.
* * * *
In the midst of the most ferocious storm, a serene wind.
* * * *
Soul interrupted.
* * * *
No matter the perceived how,
It’s the same now across time.
* * * *
Ain’t the pig’s life great.
* * * *
Detachment, detachment, detachment . . .
Is the ticket home.
* * * *
Define your assumptions.
* * * *
Practice non-caring,
And your right actions
Will be clear of suffering.
* * * *
You’ve read it perhaps one hundred times before,
Yet this time you finally understood it as never before.
* * * *
It is what needed to be said.
Nothing more, nothing less.
* * * *
Scientists have delved into the core of the atom,
And found nothing.
Your body is made up of atoms.
Put it together and there is only one conclusion.
* * * *
If each of us somehow approached everyone, everything as equal
Rather than through the veil of perceived differences . . .
Culture, gender, race, language . . . ad infinitum . . .
Indeed, what a different world it would be.
* * * *
Sometimes you lie,
Sometimes you cheat,
Sometimes you steal,
Sometimes you kill.
C’est la vie.
* * * *
Is this the world you see for your children?
* * * *
So be it.
* * * *
Every day . . .
Something sweet . . . something bitter . . .
Find the equanimity in all.
* * * *
Thought is but a neural storm.
Still the thought, still the storm.
* * * *
When you leave this world,
Will you seek another?
* * * *
Curious.
* * * *
You are the beingness.
There is really nothing to worship
As much as there is everything to embrace.
* * * *
To be fixated on any particular aspect
Is to miss the vast mystery
Encompassing all.
* * * *
Humanity’s desire for a better world
Has created a looming monster.
* * * *
To realize you own law is an outcome of divine logic.
* * * *
It is partial surrender
Which makes words
Such as these useful.
Once all resistance ends,
You will no longer need them.
Like a ladder after an arduous climb.
* * * *
Eons beyond counting
In the flow of time and space,
And who knows what prior to that,
Have gone into the crafting
Of this fleeting instant.
* * * *
Once you have climbed the mountain,
And seen it for what it is,
It is no different
Than any other point in creation.
* * * *
Hell has an infinity of tentacles
With which to pander your soul.
* * * *
You will project your imagined will upon the world
Until you comprehend neither the world
Nor your narcissistic will
Truly exist.
* * * *
Consume until you explode
If that is what it takes
For you to wake up
To what is really going on.
* * * *
If you find the need for ordinary order,
You will not find it here.
* * * *
Does god become mortal, or mortals godlike?
Was there ever any real difference
But in the realization
That in the other there is but one?
* * * *
As long as you believe you are your body,
You cannot speak with undeniable conviction.
* * * *
An imaginary world
In which goodness plays
With untiring grace.
* * * *
All the others have convinced you
That you should participate in a manner
Aligned with a geographical mythos.
Seeing past one’s conditioning
Is not for ordinary souls.
* * * *
To the periphery of your tentative veil,
And well beyond to the most distant of shores,
You are ever the same vapor of oneness.
* * * *
The dreaming of consciousness
Is a spontaneous unfolding,
An infinity of choiceless choices
Of a vaporous now playing time real.
* * * *
The scribe,
Despite all he imagined himself to be,
Never really existed either.
* * * *
Become your ideal,
Or succumb to eternal hypocrisy.
* * * *
It is not easy for the hatchling to pierce the shell.
* * * *
Fear and desire are simply
The body’s chemical response
Aiding the mind’s attempt to survive,
And the mind’s futile attachment
To an imaginary personality
In an imaginary theater.
* * * *
Ordinary order is the ordinary fabrication of ordinary imagination.
* * * *
There is nothing inherently wrong
With anything the mind may deign concoct.
It is the painful, imagined suffering which is the bother.
* * * *
Lost in the dull, monotonous roar of the churning crowd,
The oblivion of the bottle’s upturned bottom
Beckons yet again.
* * * *
We’re all the same pile of ashes.
* * * *
Is this the way we really want to play this dream?
Is this endless ocean of suffering so necessary
For the existence of our imagined psyches?
* * * *
The limited mind imprisoned in everyday thought
Is an inexorable, mishmashing, hodgepodging clutter
Riddled with absolute nature at every crook and cranny.
The intent of all that has been said in this meandering work
Is to point to the largest mirror eternity can imagine.
It will well more than likely change nothing,
But what else was there to do?
Somebody had to do
Nothing.
* * * *
As always,
Best wishes.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved