Of a Philosophical Nature: The Stillness Before Time

The Stillness Before Time

Reflections From a Fellow Sojourner

Michael J. Holshouser

Greetings,

Writing has been an enjoyable process ever since I first began toying with prose; scribbling poetry, keeping journals, corresponding with friends and acquaintances during the college daze. The philosophical/mystical/whatever-you-want-to-call-them thoughts, that have been popping into mind since 1989, have always been very out-of-the-blue spontaneous. Nothing planned or forced about them. They are being shared on the off chance that others may find them of interest, though, quite frankly, it really does not matter if no one else ever even reads them, for I am, first and foremost, my own audience. I got mine, so to speak. I played my little part. I had my share of fun. And it is, as it has ever been, up to each to discern their own, on their own. There are really no followers in this Don Quixote quest; only earnest seekers, who waylay their desires and fears and dreads, enough to discern that which is the end to doubt, the end to dueling with windmills. “Yay” if it is your fate to figure it out. “Oh well” if it is not. And “so it goes” either way, really. Ecclesiastes 1:2 is always a good reminder: “Vanity of vanities,” saith the Preacher, “Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.” Awareness can only, with great effort, regain control, regain sovereignty, from the usurper, imagination, creator of all that is time, creator of all that is space. Creator of all that is illusion, has never has been anything more than illusion, will never be anything more than illusion. Only as real as the given moment.

“The Stillness Before Time” is the original work that came together in 1992, including mostly aphorisms, an essay, a newspaper question-and-answer, ten reflections, and lists of both movies and books. Though an early self-published version, long since edited and expanded, can be purchased at major booksellers, a downloadable copy is available, no charge, at the link below. There are also links to a variety of blogs of other creations by me, along with links to many writings of a similar nature, by thinkers and seers from across all times, across all geographies.

"The Ponderings of Yaj Ekim" is the second published book, and is both blogged and available as a PDF download.

The “Breadcrumbs” titles, published annually since 2015, all include the core chapters: Leftovers, Soundbites, Breadcrumbs. In the Breadcrumbs chapters, I unleash thoughts of a more personal nature than in the other two. All just to show I was ensconced in a living, breathing, relativity mundane, oftentimes foolish, mortal mind-body. An actor playing the hand that was dealt; same as everyone else, vain as everyone else. No need to sculpt me into more than I was. No need for myths, nor legends, nor fables, nor miracles, nor cult followings, nor any other fictions, any other absurdities, over to which the human mind, and all its imaginary history, has so often given itself. The Breadcrumbs chapters prove me again and again to be yet another Shakespearian player, as full of the limited and arbitrary as anyone else born into this dream of space and time. So please be sure not to shape me, or these many random thoughts, into some dogmatic absurdity. Use them as a launchpad, not an orbit.

“The Return to Wonder” blog is a compendium of aphorisms not included in the three other works: The Stillness Before Time, The Ponderings of Yaj Ekim, and Breadcrumbs. It originally totaled 3,000 pages formatted in 300 ten-page chapters written since 1990-ish. A gradual editing that will likely never be completed, is changing that dynamic into something of a mishmash.

Please note that this sort of wordplay is very haphazard, way too much work to put into any order. Probably best read it in bits and pieces in the here and there. One of those open-to-any-page works. Especially well-suited for coffee shops, coffee tables, and porcelain thrones.

Also note that all writings are always subject to updates and editing, so if you are interested in the most current version – before this house of cards comes tumbling down, and the world grows large again – downloading PDF copies every once and a while might be a reasonable discipline. This applies especially to the current year of Breadcrumbs, which could well be an annual project until the last wheezing breath, though frankly, the temptation to stop writing entirely is not off the table. It is a pleasant way to pass some of the countdown remaining, but it is unlikely there is much ground that has not been wandered by this frame of reference far more than enough already. No matter how many times Sisyphus rolls the boulder up the mountain, it is more than a little doubtful the seven blind men and their true-believer followers, will ever discern, ever realize, ever embrace, the elephant in the middle of the room, without fabricating some new form of absurdity. It is the way we roll, it is the way we have always rolled, it is the way we will, far more than probably, always roll. Every species has its limitations, and we have in this mind’s eye, far-exceeded ours.

That said, if you do find these many thoughts at all worth preserving, for whatever times are ahead for this world and all its life forms, please feel free to share them with others who might also appreciate them. Else they may well swiftly slip back into the timeless oblivion from whence they came.

So it goes, either way. I said my piece, I had my fun.

All the best,

M

P.S. For best viewing online, using the largest screen you have available to explore my little theme park, is suggested. Scrolling down and down on a phone screen is just not going to give you the same entrée.

P.P.S. Regarding the name Yaj Ekim ... It is just a reverse spelling of the first and middle names ... Michael Jay Holshouser ... Mike Jay ... Yaj Ekim.

P.P.P.S. Coincidently, make of it whatever you will, or will not, Yaj is an Indian boy’s name meaning worshipper, sacrifice, another name for Shiva, a sage. And Ekim is a Turkish name for October meaning “sowing” (of seeds). All kinds of absurdity can be read into that by the many, so-inclined – none of which was in mind when the idea came to reverse the letters to my name. See P.P.S. for details.

P.P.P.P.S. Yes, I am Shiva. And so are You. No, I am not Shiva. And neither are you. Irony and paradox rule.

Of the Human Journey

Mortal existence is not easy. It never has been, and never will be, for any creature sown of this garden orb, this smidgeon of quantum dust, floating in the vast, immeasurable unknown. What follows are thoughts about the human journey; its theatrical paradigm and the fare existence offers, and the choices all must resolve, very much alone, in the sojourn through the veiled maze of space and time, of consciousness, with all its dualistic notions. It is a journey of ecstasy and agony, courage and fear, love and hate, absurdity and insanity, irony and paradox, life and death. It is the ineffable, insoluble mystery, born of the passionate mind, and the ever-flowing array of perceptions, of patterns, every human being faces, in the movement though birth, sickness, injury, aging, dying, and death.

These reflections are written to help promote a larger vision of where we as a species are heading. One that attempts to look beyond humankind’s many seemingly irreconcilable divisions. One that values insight and wisdom. One that elevates rather than detracts. One that seeks to foster a sense of guardianship, rather than destruction and manipulation, of our little dust ball garden, and the many life forms it has spawned.

We live in a time period similar, yet increasingly unique, among the many eras come and gone before. Excessive population, coupled with unprecedented, unrestrained industries and technologies, and the consumption frenzy they feed, are driving our petri dish experiment of so-called free will, toward a rather bleak outcome. All the absurdities, all the insanities, we have so carelessly, foolishly, needlessly wreaked upon the earth’s magnificent diversity, are huge rebounding tsunamis, awaiting our arrival in time. The rules of the manifest game are simple and uncompromising, and those who bend and break them, must eventually pay the price that Mother Nature, chief arbiter of all things dreamtime, is more than capable of exacting.

As long as we human beings battle over pride-filled, tribal differences, we inevitably embrace a fate of our own synergistic, instinctual, self-absorbed design. The monopolistic win-lose divisiveness wrought since long before history’s invention, since our egocentric, competitive, voluntary secession from the garden, spirals us down a path of annihilation. What we have done in all our arrogance, has created a time already nightmarish for many, and will only exponentially accelerate, for those to whom we are now ancestors. And we are nowhere close to discerning a common vision, a truly cooperative paradigm that might sidestep it.

We leave it to future generations, to create solutions to problems, all have aided in forging. We vainly hope that political, economic, and religious leaders will shepherd us to salvation, but they cannot, because the collective vision is too full of limitation and polarity. Despite all our canny attributes, we as a species have not yet fully fathomed our interconnectedness, our inherent kinship, to the indivisible totality. We have not grasped, that time and space, do not exist as any more than a play of consciousness, a collusion of imagination. Nowness is the only ephemeral, eternal reality, and the decisions, the choices, each of us make in this moment-to-moment flowing, of this ever-changing theater, create the dreamtime future.

So many of the leaders we have chosen to follow, with all their insecure, parasitic ambitions for power, glory, and wealth, only wax the slide with empty promises, and compromising, shortsighted decisions. Though many are highly intelligent in many clever ways, too few have the wisdom and integrity, to truly serve those they pretend to lead. The result is, that along with there being no political or economic solution to the dilemma now unfolding, our dysfunctional paradigm has created a spiritual crisis, well beyond all the vain pretensions so many call religion.

No one has ever, will ever, can ever, see the world exactly the same as anyone else. We are like snowflakes and fingerprints, patterns woven of a mystery, to which all creation is witness in one form or another. Time and space are magical illusions, and each and every one of us is an equal participant, in a vast theater of consciousness, spontaneously playing itself out, in seemingly every possible way. All our knowledge, all our histories, all our schools of thought, the countless frames of reference we imagine individually and collectively, dreamily overlap and merge like ripples, crisscrossing to and fro upon the same sea of relativity.

Words, whatever the language, are conceptual icebergs, each and every one of us envision and translate differently. Thoughts of culture, tradition, ethnicity, gender, morality, currency, politics, religion, ad infinitum, inspire an array of responses, often conflicting because of rigid, dogmatic attachments to time. Yet, at the origin of all consciousness, that quantum field from which this grand three-dimensional mirage has come to pass, is very much the same indivisible oneness, the same universal, eternal truth, despite all our sophomoric, meaningless arguments, over the endless permutations of knowledge, we ourselves have contrived.

All differences are fabrication, make-believe, fantasy, whimsey, delusion, born of imagination. All polarizations, whether cultural, racial, sexual, geographic, economic, political, religious, mythological, and on and on, are illusive deceptions, born of the play of matter, of light and sound, and the theater they together weave. Each of us imagines a personal universe, in which all travel very much alone, despite all the sensory evidence to the contrary. Until one can see past the attachments to an individual life, the many differences seem real, but ultimately, they are not, never have been, and never will be. It is a dance too vast, for any mind to more than intuitively discern, and perchance fathom, that it is lead dancer in its spirit-mind-body chronicle.

We are passing through a holographic epoch of time, in which the seemingly countless dramas of human existence, are available for all who have capacity and means to explore. What evolved of geographical isolation, can now be witnessed in whatever fashion predisposition allows. There is a tendency, due to the aberration of pride and the quest for false glory, to argue one mythology’s supremacy over another, yet is any collusion, more than a conceptual adaptation to time and circumstance? Is any one version, any one dream of consciousness, any one play of imagination, from the ultimate-reality perspective, really, truly, in any way, superior, to any other? Might may make right, but it does not make truth.

No one gets out of this manifest existence alive, and every human being ever born comes to grips with that truth, in whatever way capacity and limitation allow. Some create hells for themselves, while others discern within, a quality, a virtue, a harmony, that has been given countless names across the world. Most of us, of course, wander the purgatory between. In the journey of life, each of us swims an ebb and flow, in which the individual spirit-mind-body plays out incalculable variations of the passions born of desire and fear.

The life any of us creates, with all its perceptions and interpretations, is a blend of voluntary and involuntary choosing. Traditions are creations every cultural grouping, every societal mindset, fabricates, in order to maintain continuity in those the genetic lottery casts into its geographic realm. No one is bound to continue believing anything, but through the conditioned choices of imagination, that some call free will. Those who discern their own law, see this manifest play far differently than those, who, for whatever reason, cannot see past their attachments to the narrow propagandas of history, whatever the scale.

The gist of these reflections, is to encourage those who see their immeasurable nature, to become that to which they aspire. Intuitively, spontaneously free, to meet the moment as it unfolds, whether or not it fits the vision of any other individual or group. In the statistical bell curve of any rise and fall, of any creation and destruction, there are always the initiators, and those who tag along well after. Those who entertain the greatest vision, are already among the many who do not. Whether the reader sees it as a fact or not, we are all that which is the same indivisible upwelling, the same inexplicable mystery. Eternity is very much present within every part and particle, every quantum of the dreamtime to which all are witness. It is a vision so spaceless, so timeless, so infinite, so infinitesimal, as to be intrinsic to all creation, from You, to the farthest reaches and beyond.

Is the human species, with all its competitive predispositions, capable of comprehending and responding to a larger vision of itself? With all that is facing us, do we have the luxury of time? Probably not. More than very unlikely, in fact. Though the transformation of consciousness is an instantaneous matter, we as a species are caught in the juggernauting wave of collective ignorance, avarice, hedonism, narcissism, and countless attachments to choices made in times long before our brief little window, our tiny little scratch of the timeline. We may agree the problems ahead are nearly insurmountable, but a paradigm shift into a cooperative, balanced, intuitive, holistic, realistic mindset, is too much of a change for most to even begin to fathom, much less enact, at this point in time.

Despite the countless lessons offered by history, we are too attached to building mountains of false gold, practicing divisive religion, maintaining rigid traditions, following disingenuous leaders, promoting the idolatry of personality, supporting destructive institutions, fabricating egocentric class structures, producing adverse technologies, consuming insatiably in every conceivable way, destroying irreplaceable diversity, and killing one another because our ancestors could not get along any better than we, for all the same myopic, space-bound, time-bound, evolutionary, imaginary reasons.

Recognize it or not, the human species is fast-approaching a tailspin of its own design. It is inevitable that this garden planet, and all life that dwells on it, will someday return to its origin. That is the nature of the vast changing, the creation-destruction of each passing moment, in which we all choicelessly, spontaneously participate. The indivisible, impersonal totality; that which relatively few fully discern, much less quest total surrender.

The question is, will we go out with nobility, humility, integrity, and discipline; as fully-evolved human beings, harmoniously realigned with the source of our origin, guardians of what is left of the garden that birthed us all? Or will we exit like fruit flies, churning feverishly for the last dollop of honey in the bell jar; like rats, vying savagely for the last crumbs at the bottom of the cage?

Each of us makes that decision in every step, in every breath, in every deed, every word, every thought. We individually create our own unique, imaginary versions of the universe, and how we work it out together in the impromptu theater of consciousness, only time will tell. The essential quantum reality is not about contrived differences. It is not about futile, conceited pursuits, meaningless paths to glory. Life is an opportunity to perceive, within and without, a vision of an integrated relationship with that which is infinitely, infinitesimally greater than its many parts.

It is the true discernment that each and every one of us, including every angel and every demon, including all creatures small to great, including every infinitesimal, absolute speck of quantum dust swirling within, to the furthest indivisible reaches of the unknown, is equally That I Am, to which mystics across the world, throughout time, point. There is no other.

Each and every one of us is the same indivisible eternal oneness, the same absolute, immeasurable, timeless genesis, playing out the relativity of dreamtime. We are all connected, inseparable, no matter the exterior, no matter the capacity, no matter the frame of reference. No religious middlemen, no stairways to heaven, are necessary. This indelible insight is absolutely free to all discerning enough, to see clearly, that the ethereal thing called truth, is the momentary, intangible, undeniable birthright of the timeless awareness, imbued equally within all quantum creations. This intuitive vision of the clarity beyond form, and the exploration of right living it brings about, is the only true revolution.

This inexplicable mystery we call life, this beyond-boggling organization of matter, is an opportunity to witness the vast unfathomable diversity of this manifest theater, this grand play of creation and destruction, of known and unknown, in whatever way each individually imagines. It is the potential within all, to see that every form born of space-time, is merely one of a ceaseless kaleidoscoping of shapes, of facades, of masks, of patterns, all veiling the same source, the same awareness, the same witness; nothing more, nothing less, nothing but.

The singularity of totality is beyond the scope of the mind, beyond the irrational concoctions of superstition, beyond the rational explorations of science. It is beyond the wordplay of any belief system, beyond the egocentric weavings of individual persona, and the countless delusions spawned of ignorance. We are all alone, together, and how we as a species finally choose to dance the dance, sing the song, walk the walk, and talk the talk, is ultimately, in this mind’s eye, the true legacy of the human journey.

Best wishes,

Got God?

Do you believe in God? If so, describe what you mean by that?

Godness is the “I am That I Am” within each of us. It is the everything and the nothing. It is the smallest particle to the greatest whole. It is the isness, the nowness, the awareness, the timeless indivisible, unborn, undying source of this infinite, unknowable mystery. It is the creation, preservation, and destruction of every part and particle playing out the grand theater, the eternal kaleidoscoping holograph of space-time. That spark of divinity, of the Self within all selves, is the witness acting out every dreamtime imaginable.

Each and every life form is the immortal totality splintered into mortal fare. The source of life, of creation, is more than any measurement can ever explain or define. All attempts to grasp it, all the traditions, symbols, rituals and concepts, all the speculations ever devised in this garden world, or any other, are equally limited as anything but intuitive reflections. They are all merely a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

Time is a fabrication of consciousness. It is the virtual reality of the mind; the cotton candy of imagination. The ephemeral, momentary nowness is the only reality. Every life form, no matter who, what, where, when, why, or how, is very much of the same evolving creation, the same source, the same light, the same dreamer, the same witness, the same amness, the same uniqueness, the same absolute oneness. No matter how you slice and label it, we are all holographs of the same essence.

If you were raised in a religious environment, has that had a positive or negative impact on your life?

Organized religions across the world clutch vainly to beliefs founded upon geographic assumptions whose foundations have all become brittle and stale in this shrinking world. Groups throughout time have again and again claimed to be the standard-bearers of truth, but have all too often created far more conflict than community in their ethnocentricity. The net result is that the many propagandas of history are weighing us down with clashing notions. Notions that no longer hold water when examined closely.

The fact is that we are all the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and those blind to this most simple, obvious understanding, those attached to literal translations and dogmatic collusions, cannot help but perpetuate unnecessary confusion and disintegration.

Religious traditions, with all their customs, folklore, symbols, rituals, and concepts are products of time and its inevitable limitations. Their value is that they remind us of our relationship with the mystery of our existence. But to vainly cling to any as more than temporal tools, to battle over them in any way, to use them as anything but maps home, presents a narrow vision of the eternal quest. The word is only sound, and no sound can more than echo through the expanses of eternity.

Organizing the spiritual quest tends to box godness into a concept. And in the journey beyond concepts, into that which is immeasurable, there are no boundaries, no assumptions, that withstand that which creates, preserves, and destroys all illusions. The source of time is bound to no form, and inevitably harvests all.

Do you believe in heaven, hell, and judgment day?

Heaven and hell are states of mind, plays of consciousness, that only seem real where the now of time meets the road. Heaven is a sense of intuitive unity, an understanding, a clear harmony, a serene contentment. Hell is its divisive counterpart filled with unending prejudice, complexity, and contention. It is the passionate mind playing out the dualistic weavings of desire and fear, and the suffering they endlessly bring to fruition. Every day is judgment day for those confined by the illusory, dualistic play of the senses. In separation we are demons, in unity we are angels. Who has not tasted every potential to some degree?

Can prayer heal the sick?

If you really have faith, do you need to pray? Sickness, injury, aging. and dying are inevitable in this mortal theater. Oblivion of personal identity is the undeniable fate of all forms. Yet that quantum essence each of us truly is, is immortal, and this very simple realization creates a far different view of life, than most seem destined to entertain at any given time. What each of us really is, is far greater than birth and death, and the limitations of any manifest theater. And praying to imagination for mortal immortality, is rooted deeply in the quicksand of ignorance.

Are your religious/spiritual beliefs separate from your political ones?

Every action ripples. Every cause creates effect, and every effect becomes cause to the next effect. Those aware of this tend to walk more attentively in their day-to-day actions. Separative choices lead to disintegration; holistic ones to integration. Through interactions with others we show what we value. Are religion and politics separate? All division is the play of the time-bound mind. As long as we as a species value power, fame, and fortune more than we value right relationship, as long as we are in the grips of worldly attachment, as long as we worship mammon and idolize form, we journey toward an inevitable, synergistic fate of our own creation. The paradigm from which we spawned is no longer functional, and the bell is daily tolling louder.

Describe a spiritual experience you have had recently.

Is there any moment that is not spiritual, magical, mysterious? Whether sitting on the porcelain throne, or caught up in an inexplicable vision, every moment’s unfolding is ultimately very much the same. We may or may not be tuned in, we may prefer some moments to others, but in reality, the ungraspable is sky to all the cloudy creations of consciousness, wherever or however they unfold. Pay attention to the vastness within, or meander through every sensory, dualistic diversion the world offers, it is all the same ephemeral virtual reality. Life is an opportunity to reflect upon the indivisible oneness within and without, and to take it as any more than a three-dimensional, quickly passing mirage, misses its greatest potential.

What is the soul?

What is not the That I Am? What is not the ground of all creation, preservation, and destruction? What is not the indivisible, immortal, absolute reality, that permeates all seen and unseen? What is not the same quantum mystery residing in everything, from the smallest particle of an atom, to the farthest galaxies of all creation? Godness, as discerned through consciousness, is as expansive or limited as any given personal vision, yet cannot be confined by any. Ultimately, there is no other. The ocean of godness, of isness, of hereness, of nowness, is all, including the drop of awareness reading this. The proof of it is that no one, no creature ever birthed upon this spinning garden has ever, will ever, or can ever discern more than a reflection of its own face. All forms are splinters of the same witness, the same oneness, the same faceless unknown. All attributes, all measurements, are born of the illusion of the quantum matrix of space-time, and to be bound by any reverie is the delusion of ignorance.

"Got God?" was a response to a seven-question survey of Chico News & Review readers published in April 1996.

Ten Reflections

Become a conscious, sovereign human being, awakened to the intuitive wisdom of Self, witness to the reality and unreality of this timeless-spaceless mystery of time and space.

Respect this diverse garden world, and the inherent rights of all creatures great to small. They are all masks of the same creation. There is no other.

III

Treat others at least as well as you would prefer they treat you. Do not expect them to return the favor, or to learn from your example. No one will ever be you.

Live and let live; live and let die; grasp and release; give and take; win and lose; forgive and forget; inhale and exhale; fly and land; swim and drift; rise and fall; open and close; lock and unlock; come and go; start and stop; begin and end; flow and resist; tense and relax; be and allow; create, preserve, destroy.

Moderation in all things. Gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath, lust, and pride are the roots of limitation, the source of suffering. The axis of evil is nepotism and cronyism and favoritism. Take delight virtue, in integrity and simplicity.

Share what you have to share. But not in such a manner that it is degrading or disempowering to those you serve. Giving to get is not sharing.

VII

Play win-win whenever practical. Unmitigated competition is ultimately a dysfunctional paradigm. Avoid unnecessary conflict. No one really wins a fight. There are plenty of cooperative, egalitarian opportunities for those seeking the inherent ground.

VIII

Bring children into this world only if you intend to truly care for them. There are far too many human beings already. Life is arduous enough without a harsh, imbalanced beginning.

Do not put false wealth above real relationship. Learn to listen to the many voices of nature. Learn to see with its many eyes. Mountains of gold do not compare with a child's joy in a mound of sand, a bird's, in the morning sun, or a dolphin's, in the passing wave.

Creation and preservation and destruction are equal partners in this kaleidoscoping light and sound show, playing out in the infinitesimally infinite aloneness of this dreamtime quantum theater. Deeply understanding this, may lessen the suffering of your relatively brief, more than a little absurd existence. Try not to take it all so seriously that you cannot laugh, at least occasionally, at this temporary mind-body, at this transient identity, this ephemeral, ever-changing, three-dimensional illusion, to which you are so attached.

The Stillness Before Time

Reflections From a Fellow Sojourner

Website

The Stillness Before Time
Reflections From a Fellow Sojourner
https://thestillnessbeforetime.com/

There is really only one Way.

It is without division or boundary.

It is without name or theology.

Awareness is its scripture.

Here now, its venue.

You, its witness.

Your life, the journey.

A PDF is available at:
https://thestillnessbeforetime.com/thestillnessbeforetime.pdf

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