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If you had never been born, where would be, where would you not be?
And how could this dream we call living really be in any way different?
* * * *
Another moment of the most glaringly obvious remains unseen.
* * * *
Is there truly higher or lower consciousness,
Or is it all just consciousness, a dream just the same,
With distinctions only in the minds of the many
Who wish it more than it can ever be.
* * * *
So much pettiness and unnecessary drama
Playing out in each and every one of us.
Not easy to abide the inner monkey.
* * * *
All the voices of this busy-busy world are in your head.
Some just are not that interesting to listen to anymore.
* * * *
Can there ever really be any reconciliation between greed and sloth?
* * * *
Never trust a middleman to have your best interest in mind.
* * * *
Some things need time to brew in the steeping pot of consciousness.
* * * *
All the free spirits trying so hard to be free.
* * * *
In the world and of it, in the world and not of it.
Schizophrenia of the so-called spiritual kind.
* * * *
We may glory in our imagination, but that is still all it is,
A temporary little hullabaloo of energy, pretending itself real.
* * * *
Jesus is a phantom two thousand years-plus dead.
The rest is naught but self-serving propaganda and wishful thinking,
All meaningless unless you comprehend what he was hopefully saying included you.
* * * *
Nothing can touch you, nothing can harm you,
But that you lower the drawbridge of your mind.
* * * *
There is just so much crap in all our heads.
* * * *
How clearly you see Self
Depends how deep you can dive,
How far you can step back.
The heart of awareness
Is a very still place.
* * * *
Aging is about trying to hold it together as best you can while you are falling apart.
* * * *
What is the rush about growing up?
You will be wrinkled, weak, deaf, toothless, bald, arthritic,
And all but invisible before you know it,
If you live so long, that is.
* * * *
Between here and there,
Despite the best of memory’s intentions,
The mind can be so quickly born to some far distant shore.
* * * *
What is there to say when too much still is not enough?
* * * *
How would your version of the universe exist
Without you to every moment generate it,
Without you to every moment witness it?
Does it care or not, does it laugh or weep,
That it will some day dissolve when you do?
* * * *
Even if there is a personal deity, it is merely a different façade of what you already are.
* * * *
Prior to all movement, you are.
* * * *
You will not find god in a box, or in a boxed-in mind.
* * * *
How can there be a savior when there is nothing to save?
* * * *
Woke up again this morning; another day in the dream underway.
* * * *
Innocence.
What was that like, anyway?
Did you experience it long enough to find it again?
* * * *
Buddha, Christ, Lao Tzu, Mohammed, and all the many others,
Just dreamers in the same quantum matrix as you.
Nothing more, nothing less, nothing but.
* * * *
Jesus, and the cross onto which he has too many times been carved,
Should have long ago been placed in the “Dustbin of History” column.
* * * *
If you love somebody, enjoy them; if you like somebody, appreciate them.
If you do not like someone, ignore them; better to be, better to allow.
No need to wound or slay those whose dreams do not validate your vanity.
Never a bad thing to work on transcending that inner monkey whenever possible.
* * * *
Be ye human being, or human (not) being.
* * * *
The futility and despair of loneliness
Are why churches, malls, bars, coffee shops,
And so many other tree branches are every day so full.
The serenity of solitude is hard won.
* * * *
Same rut, different day.
* * * *
Every addiction has a piper to pay.
* * * *
Easy to be smug and complacent
When you have studied nothing else.
Few are granted the propensity for doubt.
Fewer still take it to its resolute end.
* * * *
Life will carry on, life will endure,
One moment at a time, one existence at a time,
For as long as stardust allows.
* * * *
The oblivion of quantum nothingness,
Cloaked in the reflective swirl of consciousness,
Is naught but a three-dimensional dream playing its Self real.
* * * *
Speculation is not knowledge, and knowledge is not immeasurable.
* * * *
Nothing is the most logically irrational conclusion imaginable.
* * * *
Probably better to worry less about loving our neighbors
Than simply resisting the daily temptation
To slit each other’s throats
For leaves falling into each other’s yards.
* * * *
The potholes daily grow broader and deeper and harsher.
Much easier to create and destroy than it is to preserve.
* * * *
Another cotton candy moment.
* * * *
Neither accept nor reject.
* * * *
Ugly just got uglier.
* * * *
The true church has no walls.
* * * *
You can tell a wound is healed when you stop looking for the pain.
* * * *
About the mystery beyond measure,
About the mystery prior to consciousness,
Nobody really knows nothing; and nobody ever will.
And anybody who claims otherwise is talking through their hat.
* * * *
Desire fosters fear, and passion reaps instability.
The path to a balanced existence, to a serene state of mind,
Is keeping things as guileless, as straightforward, as whole as possible.
A satisfying, nourishing excursion, seasoned with an ample helping of detachment.
* * * *
We must all play our little parts, our little dreams,
However our capacities and limitations and interests intertwine.
No point in sweating over anything, over everything,
To whatever degree it can be managed.
* * * *
True science is about truth, not the influence of funding.
* * * *
And suddenly, without warning, without pretense,
Another streaming moment was come and gone.
* * * *
The foolishness of vanity compounding daily.
A scratchy record that can only play so long.
* * * *
Monkeys all, and airs to boot.
* * * *
Another day in the dream.
* * * *
We are all such meager fates in but one crashing wave of all creation.
* * * *
The band and cheerleaders
Scurry about and make much ado,
But it is the warriors who wander the field.
* * * *
Desire, fear, and all the passions they invoke require the winds of thought to set sail.
* * * *
Idolatry of form and concept permeates the vanities.
* * * *
Enough is enough.
Growing up is surely an option.
Giving up these childish things would no doubt
Make more people much happier, and perchance even content.
* * * *
Is not existence enough of a mystery, enough of a gift,
Without wanting an endless array of circuses and magic shows, too?
And where does all that distraction leave you, really?
* * * *
The only things untouched or untrammeled or left unknown,
Are those rare few things our kind has not discerned, has not fathomed,
A need or want, a desire, to use and abuse and consume … yet.
* * * *
From beginning to end, the body is really nothing more
Than a labyrinth of interwoven sensations
With which you may identify,
Or not.
* * * *
Truth is so matter of fact that the only real curiosity
Is why so many have such difficulty discerning it.
* * * *
What course might history have wandered had wisdom instead of greed taken lead?
* * * *
As long as it may seem at the time,
The body, the world, the universe, is but a relatively brief distraction.
* * * *
The true believer is the scourge of a higher caliber of civilization.
* * * *
A seamless dream that only consciousness questions or splinters or finds flaw.
* * * *
We are born, we die.
We are not born, we do not die.
Oblivion is really very much the same as existence,
But without a body in which to be so vainly attached to this and that.
* * * *
And where is the drop’s reflection when it merges back into the sea?
* * * *
Time and space are eternity coated with consequences.
* * * *
A new seed, a new container, a new dream.
Same awareness, same momentary you.
Another existence to briefly play out
In whatever way the fates allow.
You are all things great and small,
And all things great and small are you.
* * * *
Pride-filled animals, but animals, nonetheless,
Despite any and all claims to the contrary.
* * * *
Doubt until the doubting’s done.
* * * *
Remembering to forget; forgetting to remember.
* * * *
We are all dancing alone, chattering away to ourselves, all together on the same stage.
* * * *
Just another of the seemingly countless things
You seem to have to go through to see through.
* * * *
The world we have created offers a never-ending feast
For those given the capacity and courage to inhale deeply.
True, it likely does not leave much for the future past,
But you cannot miss what you cannot know.
* * * *
Whoever came up with the conviction they were unconnected to the fountainhead
Was either a self-indulgent fool, or a born-again snake oil salesman
Who spotted how easy it was to exploit the sheepless
In vanity’s climb to power, fame, fortune,
And other such worldly ends.
* * * *
Every moment in this quantum theater contains an infinity of potentials,
Of which your sensory mind only harvests portion enough
To sustain the rendering of the vast universe
You have in imagination created.
* * * *
Not much you can do about all the regrets, other than to forgive yourself and move on.
* * * *
Everyone seems to have a price here.
It is a game called “Name that Vanity.”
* * * *
All assumptions are assumptions; nothing more, nothing less, nothing but.
* * * *
Question authority.
* * * *
No time to win, no time to lose, no time, whatsoever.
* * * *
Learning never stops; wisdom rarely starts.
* * * *
Death is only a relatively few steps away.
Have you managed to let go of everything, yet?
* * * *
It is true that you never know what you have got until it is gone.
Never take good health and well-being for granted.
Youth is indeed wasted on the young.
* * * *
Almost eight billion relatively hairless two-leggeds,
That is sure a lot of piss and shit and other bodily fluids
Wandering to and fro in the daily back and forth.
* * * *
Knowing truth, and being truth, now there’s the rub.
* * * *
We all tend to define others by our own limitations.
* * * *
Beware anyone who wants to be your leader.
* * * *
Still playing the fallen angel, are we?
* * * *
It is only life, it is only death, no worries.
* * * *
Feeling sorry for yourself all the time is not one of the more satisfying strategies.
* * * *
What to care about, and what not to care about;
Questions of more than a few billion dreams.
* * * *
Any hell is of its own making, of its own design.
A set of narrowing, limiting choices,
Born of an imaginary field.
* * * *
Each of us wandering our own infinite universe,
Creating for others to discern what they choose.
* * * *
You really own nothing:
Neither your body, your mind, your things,
Nor even your existence.
* * * *
The last real freedom you had was the moment
Before the seeds of consciousness took root.
* * * *
The limitations of the mind and body,
Real as they seem at the time,
Are entirely imagined.
* * * *
The manifest world is but a temporal quantum dream,
Which all inhabit and play out as their nature demands.
* * * *
The ones who can play the fool have the advantage on the road to Self-discovery.
* * * *
No matter how much you believe you know,
It is merely bits and pieces of a dream unknown.
* * * *
Seven going on eight going on nine-plus-plus-plus
Way too many human beings on this poor Madre.
* * * *
Merge into the awareness of consciousness, and what duality can there possibly be?
* * * *
The senses and mind will always deny you your birthright if you allow it.
* * * *
What does not kill you today may not always make you stronger.
Sometimes it may just enjoy watching you suffer for as long as possible.
* * * *
It can never be more than this given moment,
So what is there to want, what is there to fear, really?
* * * *
What the one-percenters and their many high-rolling minions
Seem to forget, or more likely are not the least concerned about,
Is that their progeny will have to somehow abide alongside the masses
In this garden world we have all together so adeptly and thoroughly mauled.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved