CCLXXI
Everyone has as one set of capacities and limitations or another.
None can ever aspire to play out more than they are
But through reflections of imagination.
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From greatest to least, all truly sovereign within.
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What the human paradigm is, how it could have been, how it might someday be.
The illustrious “if only” echoing through the matrix in the dreamy wonder of time.
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Sometimes it seems as though this is the first time you have ever really awakened,
Though surely it is not, or is it, given that now is ever the same nil-naught-nothing.
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Once you have scaled the summit of truth,
There is really no going back down,
So why cling to any ladder?
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Is not this human-dominated world harsh enough
Without those who have neither need nor knack for it,
Joining in at being boorish and otherwise unkind.
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In this ever-flowing moment,
You are truly that which is called god,
The adulation of which, is the fall from grace.
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The current fad will inevitably make an appearance
In a variety of yard sales and flea markets, as it makes its long, squalid journey
To being just another thin layer in one landfill or another.
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You are the ineffable from which all things spring eternal.
You are earth and sun and moon and stars,
And all the space between.
And none of them all the while.
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We are all born of the same womb, live in the same house, and share the same grave.
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It really does not mean squat to anyone but you, and you alone,
And even that indifferent reality is of relatively short duration.
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Cynical wonder.
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Some here-now in one tomorrow or another, will be in the here-now soon enough.
Give awareness, give attention, give mindfulness, to the here-now allotted here-now,
And you will be, you will discern, the grace, the inviolability, of that which is eternal.
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In the topsy-turvy of all things absurd,
One topsys, the other turvys, one turvys, the other topsys.
One man’s confusion is another’s order.
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Every life form has its own sensory universe,
None ultimately more or less real than any other.
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Even the most incorrigible demon
Plays out its meager part, serves its divine function,
In the manifest theater of consciousness.
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Ignorance is a hell of its own.
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El grandito infinito.
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You need not travel far to attain infinity.
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Curious how it is always left to the next generation to work it out.
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Ambition, what was that, anyway?
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More toys than longing to play with them.
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Where are you when the mind’s chatter grows still?
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Children of a lesser quantum.
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Does any cancer fathom itself a cancer?
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To label any life form or thing a resource, more often than not sets its course
On a harsh journey of exploitation or depletion or extinction, or all of the above.
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Fighting the good fight is rarely, if ever, easy,
Especially when a wave knocks you flat,
Another one coming up only seconds behind,
And who knows how many more following after that.
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The dust of eternity courses in your veins.
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You do not have to recall all the details to know the essence.
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The irony of paradox and the paradox of irony are the helix of time born of eternity.
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Sounds good, anyway.
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All things ordered by mind deprive the natural order its penchant for spontaneity.
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An inexplicable madness, the most ordinary quality of mind consciousness can attain.
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Very challenging to be free of all patterning.
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Ironic how compassion for others often creates even more suffering.
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How could it be even the least bit possible
For an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent god
To be separate in any way or shape or form?
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You are but a minute ripple in the stream of time,
Which itself is but an infinitesimal capillary
In the inestimable ocean of eternity.
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What is fate, what is destiny, but playing out the role
To which one is most inclined in the given space and time.
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Dubiously curious that any given culture considers itself normal.
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The precipice of the abyss is well-cloaked by gravity.
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Faith and hope and belief offer little relief in the reconciliation you truly seek.
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The Great Whatever.
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Each and every name ever given it is just another wisp of sound
Born of, fathomed by, that timeless awareness you truly are.
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Do not be bound by mortality; it is of no lasting duration.
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Whether or not anyone else ever discerns it,
We are each and every one, very much alone.
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The surest way to ignore what dare not be realized
Is to ridicule or destroy with little or no reflection.
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All things rise, all things decline in the relativity of one duration or another.
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Do not be looking to anyone else to tell you what to do or how to live.
Fathom your own mind, find your own way, do not fear standing alone.
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All these thoughts are meant for those whose fate it is to awaken.
All others are for now bit players, rudderless in the waves of mind.
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In every mind’s eye, the same witness.
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Any history is only as real as the memory allotted.
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Yes, it is that simple.
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Who knows what death will choose you.
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The heavens are as infinite as a mind untarnished by time.
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Over and over you pinch yourself to forget.
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We are all distracted by so much delusional absurdity.
The only real question is, how much of it re you able to disregard or dislodge
In the quest to freely witness the reality awaiting perception.
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You will know your brief mortal existence is in the throws of decline
When cars stop slowing down, and nary a honk blares its lustful approbation.
And if that never happened when you were younger and sweeter,
Well, them fates can be merciless in many more ways
Than we would ever deign to imagine.
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Another self-absorbed gnat.
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Same clay, a different day.
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The immeasurable can only be measured to the nth degree.
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An unreflective mind is no friend to wisdom.
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The gift of wonder few crave to discern.
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An unparalleled, paradigm-shaking lesson
About the infinite nature of singularity
Is a-dawning upon the horizon.
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All is relative until boiled down to the absolute.
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What wonders, what blessings, what horrors,
Are being fashioned in laboratories and garages,
That will inevitably add to the vast host of footprints
Already crisscrossing the besieged landscape.
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An inescapable conclusion is an inescapable conclusion.
No amount of vain, wishful thinking can prescribe otherwise.
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Inner simplicity is the surest means to freedom.
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All stand up in time, for as long as time allows.
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Back to the future, where nature rules.
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Stylized anything is rife with limitations.
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Belief and faith are comfortably meaningless.
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Science, with all its vigilantly astute observations and measurements,
Must eventually reach an impenetrable wall of profound inexplicability.
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What barbaric notion would inspire a species to adorn its living spaces
With the castrated sexual organs of another species,
And then, without irony, call it love.
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Milo Minderbinder continues to bedazzle us all
Into a quandary from which there is no escape.
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To awaken to totality, to the absolute, is all any one can really do.
And it cannot be cajoled or coerced; you either see it, or you don’t.
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The most manageable prison is the one in which the prisoners are all volunteers.
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Nothing in spades.
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Beware my fine young pretty,
Else a two-legged will catch you,
Filet you, and gobble you all up
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Memory allows all to wander every aspect that imagination may render an interest.
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It is all one, but some facets, some aspects of the oneness,
Are more conducive to your continued interest and well-being.
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That hoard of wealth, that pile of gold, is a relative, ephemeral state of mind.
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The world, the universe that you daily juggle in your mind,
All the memories, anxieties, obligations, possessions,
And on and on, ever on, can be more than a little exhausting.
Sometimes you just need to set it all down, and wander about alone,
Unconcerned about anyone or anything, including your own fictional persona.
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How many twists and turns a mind must take
To want to wantonly torture another life form.
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Any given universe can be so easily undone with such mundane panache.
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Hell is, indeed, in the details.
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Not a state of mind you would ever have, could ever have, predicted.
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That which you have come to expect is likely that which will manage to continue.
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Well, that’s not much of a question, now is it?
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You are solitary witness, alone no matter how big the crowd.
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Today’s headlines are tomorrow’s sorrows.
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The truth, the truth, what is the truth but what you think it is, but likely isn’t.
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The different you, the different me, I am you, and you are me.
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Where’s the humility?
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Time is a concept to which you need not submit.
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Everything is born of arbitrary assumption.
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Critical thinking is the chasm between sage and fool.
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Yet another face in which vanity will find harbor.
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Immortal soul, mortal body, forever young playing the gray.
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The mystery born in you, was born in me, too.
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Gaia is founded upon differences that are not; it is the requirement of any lila.
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Alone in their own worlds, the players all play along.
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Who is the me in you? Who is the you in me?
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So far away, so long ago, the show, the show, it changes so.
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A decline of hunger makes for great philosophy.
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The saving grace of time is in the insight that it is not real.
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The difference between you and me is just a thought or two or three.
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Who wins, who loses, just a state of mind.
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Need and want are mutually exclusive motivations.
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A little humility, please.
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To live for applause is a most shallow and debilitating motivation.
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Consciousness is the inherent flaw that all must endure.
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Pluck out that thorn of desire, and what is left but an abiding grace.
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The nothing of now, across the board, for all eternity.
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The idolatry of form, the idolatry of concept, same thing, really.
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The clock is not your friend.
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History comes, history goes, but the passions are ever the same.
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The cynicism of old men is not easily endured by the young.
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How true the true, how false the false.
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Awareness has no reality but through timeless attention.
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How much does imagination require to see it is but an illusion?
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How focused ambition must be in order to fulfill great desire.
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How can you imagine any speculation but less true?
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A true gourmet can dine happily on the relativity of nearly any delicacy.
Even hemlock likely has a memorably flavorful zestiness,
Were anyone still around to recollect it.
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Through what happenchance of destiny did a copy or link of these onerous writings,
This chronicle, this soliloquy of across-the-board ponderings.
Show up in your reverie of time?
Oh, happy fate, perhaps, perhaps not.
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The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved