Leftovers
This is a Leftovers sampler. For the full monty from 2015 on, see the Breadcrumbs blog links below.
PDF’s for each year are available in the Preface sections of each blog.
Breadcrumbs 2015
Bits and Pieces from a Dream of Time
https://breadcrumbs2015.blogspot.com/
Breadcrumbs 2018
Bits and Pieces from a Dream of Time
https://breadcrumbs2018.blogspot.com/
Breadcrumbs 2019
Bits and Pieces from a Dream of Time
https://breadcrumbs2019.blogspot.com/
Breadcrumbs 2020
Bits and Pieces from a Dream of Time
https://breadcrumbs2020yajekim.blogspot.com/
Breadcrumbs 2021
Bits and Pieces from a Dream of Time
https://breadcrumbs2021.blogspot.com/
Breadcrumbs 2022
Bits and Pieces from a Dream of Time
https://breadcrumbs2022.blogspot.com/
Breadcrumbs 2023 & Beyond
Bits and Pieces From a Dream of Time
https://breadcrumbs2023.blogspot.com/
To become a skeptic, a cynic, a doubter, an agnostic, one becomes an adversary of delusion,
An antagonist to the fallacies of mythology, superstition, and other cultural assumptions.
The mind of the critical thinker is its own reflection of what is real, and what is not.
* * * *
What hope can there be for harmony in a world swirled and hurled asunder
By the exponentially accelerating technologies of death and mayhem.
War is peace in this Darwinian leap into the survival of the fittest.
And those who endure, those who abide the dystopian future,
Are not necessarily the stronger, or the more intelligent,
But those most adaptable to the pendulum of time.
* * * *
No matter how assiduously one may give heart and mind
Over to some idea, some creed, some meme, some groupthink,
No individual existence can ever be close to being exactly the same.
Despite all thought and done, all are exclusive blends of the same stardust.
* * * *
The personal pronouns – I, you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us, them –
Should be considered in all these thoughts rather loosely used,
Given that “we” are really nothing more than the nothingnesss of awareness,
Playing a game of charades conditioned by time, drawing toward a whimpering conclusion.
* * * *
Measuring our decline one graph at a time;
Kind of like an already bad poker hand that only draws worse.
The good news is that we will be leaving behind a prodigious collection of videos
For the extraterrestrials to check out when they finally show up.
* * * *
Best to be somewhat cautious with that body.
It is the only one you will have on this relatively brief journey.
It is more than a little fun to toss it around and gratify it with every form of indulgence,
But know that there are many consequences to each of the deadly sins.
Pride, envy, gluttony, lust, wrath, greed, and sloth,
Should never to be taken lightly.
* * * *
The grace of youth, the wonder of innocence, sooner or later, quickly or slowly,
Gives way to the inevitable decline and fall of sickness, injury, aging and dying.
The end of all entitlement, no matter how grand, is most assuredly guaranteed.
* * * *
The idolatry of form has drawn many a mind throughout the rise of humankind.
How many whimsical notions have been fabricated across the world,
Faces we can see rather than the one and only we cannot.
* * * *
Is money to be considered an end, a raison d'être, in itself,
Or a means to survive, a means to experience one’s fleeting existence,
In as many satisfying, entertaining, hedonistic, even enlightening ways, as possible?
* * * *
What is light? What is dark? What is good? What is evil?
What is right? What is wrong? What is agony? What is ecstasy?
And what is the impenetrable awareness permeating all things imagined?
* * * *
Likely not many are watching you, or thinking about you,
Near as much as your monkey-mind might choose to believe.
You are only the center of your imaginary version of the universe.
* * * *
How can there be even a trace of loneliness
Once the eternal aloneness of the ultimate nature is discerned?
It is not a thing to be dreaded or forestalled once the monkey-mind is transcended.
Embracing its indivisible sanctity is the truest religion.
* * * *
Sophistication in any field of endeavor
Is a matter of how the given capacities and limitations
Double-double-toil-and-trouble their way into conscious awareness.
Who are the most skillful but the few-and-far-between giving their fullest attention.
* * * *
So what?
To everything.
* * * *
For as long as there is air, and a body-mind bent on existing,
You are free to breathe it in and breathe and it out,
A witness to the mystery beyond measure.
Enjoy in joy as best ye are able.
* * * *
The scientific mind is ever observing,
Ever exploring everything in everyway imaginable.
True science is transcends all boundaries.
* * * *
Your only constraint is being locked up in the temporal body.
The indivisible youness you really are knows no bounds.
Only imagination binds itself to the given universe.
* * * *
There are no exceptions, no exemptions, no get-out-of-jail cards.
All are destined for one expiration date or another.
More certain than taxes, to be sure.
* * * *
We are all the center of our unique little dream; every conscious thing is.
None can be the same, no matter how diligent the effort,
And why even try? Why even bother?
* * * *
Narcissism is defined as the pursuit of gratification
From vanity or egotisic admiration of one's own attributes.
If you are past all that, if you have transcended the given mind-body,
Why should you not esteem your essential Self with every ounce of your being?
* * * *
The thoughts of time mixed and remixed times beyond counting.
Who knows what was scribbled when or where,
And why would it matter?
Wisdom is the coin of eternity.
* * * *
Consciousness is capable of anything imagination can conceive and physics allow.
It boils down to playing out the blueprint, the programming,
Of the given seed line as it sprouts into time.
* * * *
What is an orgasm but the mind’s most innate high,
A very present, very pleasurable detonation in the timeless now.
A disintegration, a dissolution, of any sense of self, of any sense of separation.
Is it any wonder our species gallops the edge of obsession about everything to do with it?
Sexuality is the wellspring, the underlying force, the fulcrum of human history.
Power, renown, prosperity, the creativity of art, science, technology,
All have come about as aphrodisiacs to its gratification.
And all of it the evolutionary outcome
Of the genomic ambition to abide evermore.
* * * *
So many faces come and gone in the rolodex of life.
So many moments spent together, so many things shared.
What happened to them all, what stories unfolded into destiny?
The things we can never know of our dreamtime are many and large.
* * * *
Every eye, a subjective filter.
Objectivity is the ruse of idealistic notion.
No matter how detached, how indifferent the endeavor,
It is ever seen through the personal coloring of the conditioned mind.
* * * *
What are all human beings but liars, cheats, thieves, murderers, and anarchists.
At the cradle of the genetic lottery, we are the jungle from which we were spun.
* * * *
What is so dysfunctional, so surreal, about the human species,
Is its obsession with what others think, and what others think about them.
Groupthink has been a mainstay of our survival in this dreamtime,
But its interminable absurdities are beyond measure.
* * * *
Existence creates many questions, answers to which often raise many more,
And on and on knowledge bounds into its fabricated future.
What is the parable of Adam and Eve
But the plucking of knowledge from the garden,
And then carrying on with whatever its imaginary whirl concocted,
Eventually swirling into the marvel and madness of these our so-called modern times.
* * * *
Unless you have managed to achieve the higher percentiles,
Best to be practical and frugal, best to live within your means.
Exorbitant debt can get unmanageably ugly way too very quickly.
* * * *
This universe, this world, was not created by meekness,
By fear, by hope, by political correctness, by any absurdity whatsoever.
The vagaries of the human condition are but a hiccup in the unfolding eternal theater.
* * * *
Is the me you think you know, the me I think I am?
Of course not, nor would the visa-versa ever be bona fide, either.
We are all one-of-a-kind imaginary universes, each and every one at center stage,
All of it happening in a quantum sort-of-maybe indivisible way.
* * * *
Consciousness is an insatiable force.
Were it to heartily devour the entire universe,
Were it to experience absolutely everything imaginable,
It would not be enough, it would still yearn for more, more, more.
* * * *
Same old story in yet another tale.
The cast, the crew, the stage, has changed,
But the patterned narrative is very much the same.
* * * *
A great curiosity, a great absurdity, about this two-legged drama,
Is why so many are so concerned what others think or do.
What is all this judgment but a survival mechanism
Bred into being in the jungles of long ago.
Yay or nay, it is ever entangling.
* * * *
All concepts, whether of some god,
A horse, a chair, a rock, a star, or some abstract quantum formula,
Are born of limitation because they can never be more than formulations of temporal consciousness.
No sound will ever be more than a vibration, no perception will ever be tangible,
Including the you that you in mind-body believe so real.
It is all a dream born if imagination.
* * * *
If history has proven anything,
It is that far too many always manage
To talk themselves into just about anything.
* * * *
Very dubious whether our seemingly innate attachment to the past,
To whatever tradition, to whatever time and geography, we might subscribe,
Is leaving many if any real options in the future just round the bend.
* * * *
If there is a purpose in all this, then surely this here, this now, is it.
An immense theater in which you, a drop in all, are the all in a drop.
The real and only you, sovereign, absolute, indivisibly immaculate.
* * * *
Imagine all the life forms on this garden planet,
And realize that you are of the same clayness as each and every one.
Look out into the sea of stars, and discern the same.
All are cousins of the same source.
* * * *
Every geography in its own time is its own brand of modern,
All likely equally resistant to other renderings of the same.
* * * *
Nature’s dogma is the unwritten law determined and enforced by quantum mechanics:
Irrevocable, irreversible, unalterable, unchangeable, immutable, undeniable,
Incontrovertible, indisputable, permanent, binding, absolute, final.
* * * *
Time to get another trim, cut another nail.
Time to eat another steak, drink another bottle of wine.
Time to take another jaunt, another walk, another shit, another piss.
Time to fill another form, smog another car, pay another bill, lace up another shoe.
Time to abide another debate, cast another stone, suffer another injury, endure another death.
How many times does one need to do something to catch the drift?
* * * *
Who contemplates?
Who perceives?
Who knows?
Who cares?
Who feels?
Who loves?
Who hates?
Who believes?
Who does anything?
* * * *
Somewhere in time, somewhere in space,
Some mind first said it, first wrote it, first built it,
Different mind, same mind, all derived of the same essence.
* * * *
Assuming any survive the dystopian now daily unfolding,
They will be walking in the ruins of greed and self-absorption
Unlike which the world and all its critters have ever seen.
* * * *
Ultimately, the final chore is to let go
All you have done, all you have not done,
All that the world is, all that the world is not,
And just quietly wander in unutterable solitude.
* * * *
You are but a fleeting window in the seed principle’s theater of dreamtime.
Think what you will of its inexplicable mystery, you are but a player,
And all your conclusions, all your assumptions, mean nothing.
* * * *
Quantifying, measuring everything imaginable, what is the point, really?
Being ever-present with this inexplicable sojourn,
Now that is a challenge, indeed.
* * * *
Science and technology stand on the shoulders of all those who have come before.
Turtles all the way down, and all the way up, too, for as long as the dream plays out.
* * * *
Time and space is but a mortal fabrication of neuron trails and memory cells.
The nothing more, nothing less of quantum vapor playing the indivisible real.
* * * *
So many haranguing from some pulpit in their mind: ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that.’
All based on utterly absurd, often contradictory notions written thousand of years ago,
Warnings of a go-directly-to-hell naughty list kept by some Santa Claus up in the clouds.
Well, any defensive lineman worth his salt knows to shove back or sally around the block.
There is not any doctrine, any on-high authority, that means squat to those bent on discovery.
* * * *
If you take your body, your vehicle, your temple, your meat machine, for granted,
It will only be too unhappy to again and again, in many ways,
Remind you of the error of your ways.
* * * *
Different geographies, different cultures, different languages, different livelihoods, different clothes,
Different foods, different sports, different creeds, different absurdities,
Different this, that, and the other thing,
Same monkey.
* * * *
And what would this inane world be like if we all respected each other,
If we all treated one another as we would ourselves choose to be treated?
Is the so-called Golden Rule anything more than an ideal, a soporific notion,
To which vanity only rarely allows more than lip service be paid.
* * * *
Revenge has a long memory,
And it is only through self-restraint
That it is not severely exacted at some point.
How many are fortunate that they have not endured
What others have contemplated with one apparatus or another.
* * * *
What curious thing how flesh can in one instance be so enticing,
And in another be only just a few clicks short of horrifying.
Everything abides in one slice of relativity or another.
Perception is all, and all must endure one way or another.
* * * *
Not even one moment in your entire existence has ever been more than a dream.
None of it has ever been truly real but for the ephemeral nothingness
That is as close to “reality” as this mystery can ever be.
* * * *
What solution can there be to the interminability of it all,
When the universe you were in no longer exists.
When you are, each and every moment,
Ever streaming past the point of no return.
* * * *
Human beings are absolutely no different
Than any other biological entities in this manifest realm,
And we will, each and every one of us, disincorporate the same as every other
In Mother Nature’s magically indifferent dream of time.
* * * *
So many interesting things to do in life
That are entirely satisfied by a spoonful of imagination,
The real thing often being far too out of reach,
Or too bothersome to bother doing.
* * * *
So many wandering about,
Regurgitating one blather or another,
When right smack dab in the middle of their mind
Is the most inexplicable mystery they could ever hope to discern.
* * * *
Time travel? Get real.
How can you cross something that does not exist
As anything more than an imaginary notion?
* * * *
To exist free of vanity is a rare feat, indeed, and more often than not only in deep sleep.
Whether it is even possible on more than sporadic occasions when awake
Might well be cause for the greatest vanity possible,
And even get you dangled on a cross or molded into a statue.
* * * *
Those hairy things that swing from branch to branch, yes, you are closely related.
What is a few million years of evolution when you are really talking
The billions it took to build the stage in the first place.
* * * *
There is little or no point in trying to explain or justify anything to anyone, really.
May as well remain mute to those who will never understand the inner quest.
The apologist for the ephemeral is ultimately only babbling away to Self.
* * * *
As perfect as the word, the number, the note, the line, the hue, might be,
It is instantly but a perception forever caught in the amber of imagination.
* * * *
Everyone believes whatever falsehoods they want to believe,
Until doubt perhaps slowly sprouts in one cranny, one nook or another.
And from that moment on, who knows where the long and winding road will lead.
* * * *
The task is to discern the nature of heaven in the hell humankind has made of paradise.
There is no god, no devil, there is no good, no evil, there is only consciousness imagining all.
And you are really very much on your own in figuring it out in whatever way suits you.
* * * *
Words, numbers, notes, lines,
And other such conceptual intrigues
Are the endless playground of imagination.
They cavort with nothing to their heart’s content.
* * * *
If you are acting out some dogma you are beating a wrong tack.
There is no right way, there is no wrong way,
There is only the Way.
* * * *
What a tale to tell of all these overlapping monopoly games
Striving for pride’s supremacy in the Game of Mammon,
Which we must all play – like it or no – to some degree.
* * * *
What we call goodness is consciousness without ulterior motive.
What we call evil is consciousness distorted by perception
Into every imaginable contortion of self absorption.
* * * *
The Seventh Day was much more a paradise
Than the human mind has fashioned in the Eighth.
And the Ninth is coming up to bat, the Tenth is on deck,
And what roster will play beyond that, only the mystery knows.
* * * *
Rest as easy as the abrasive traces of the mind-body allow
In all the tensions your existence has inspired in its neurological frame.
It is the anxiety all life forms balance in order to survive,
In order to propagate a future for its kind.
* * * *
Best not to declare most anything impossible,
For there always seems to be someone in one cubicle or another
Looking to find a way to prove you wrong yet again.
* * * *
Why should you not be somewhat irritated, frustrated, irascible,
That your innocence was defiled, corrupted, maligned,
By the wearing quagmire of human inanity?
* * * *
“It is this way,” said one. “No, it is this way,” asserted another.
“No, it is neither of those ways, it is this way,” argued yet another.
And on and on and on, in the all right and all wrong of all who bother.
* * * *
Religious fervor ebbs and flows, rises and falls, in the bell curves of time.
Eternal life is the essence, the genesis, of the ever-present now,
The born again-ness of each and every moment.
* * * *
To consciously be the light unto thy Self,
Is up to you, and you alone, to explore and discover.
An ever-present journey through a long and winding mind, to be sure.
* * * *
What need for worship, for piety, for virtue,
For belief, for faith, for dogma, for idolatry, for ritual,
Once you have discerned what you truly are is prior to all creation.
* * * *
Even the intelligent, the honorable, the healthy, the beautiful, the loving,
Earn the undivided attention of maggots and other experts of obliteration.
* * * *
Meditation is suspending the worldly attributes fabricated by the sensory mind,
And instead wandering about in the timeless indivisibility of the quantum ether.
* * * *
So many distractions this manifest creation offers:
Tangible and intangible, in every ways and means imaginable.
But what is a Self to do when all become so passé,
When even watching it is bother.
* * * *
The body may exist, the mind may think, but is it really you doing any of it?
Are you really any more than witness to the given nature-nurture?
Attached only to the mesmerizing churning of the senses,
And the innumerable vain notions they parlay?
* * * * * * * * * *
Leftovers
© Michael J. Holshouser 2015
World Rights Reserved