Cloudscape

Do not be afraid to be content, even though you dream of more, but always keep dreaming even when you are content, and keep being content even when you dream of more; so that your thankfulness, and so your happiness, might help to make your dreams come true, and that your dreams might also help to make you happy.
Day and night must alternate within you; but so too, in some part they must be one. When night falls, keep the light of day within you, and when dawn comes, keep the dreams of night within you.

When you seek to become more aware, do so with love for that of which you are to become aware, or your awareness will be of little worth. You can concentrate on your perceptions as a cashier would scan wares or an officer would inspect his soldiers, but it will not bring you happiness. Without love you cannot enjoy.

You can pay attention to something as an archer would pay attention to his targets, or as a lover to the eyes of their beloved.  One must be mindful both with gentleness and with alertness; without either of both there cannot be balance.

The butterfly effect says that very small changes can have very large results. It is famously quoted that the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brasil may cause a tornado in Texas — imagine! This is more than just a thought experiment; it actually happens.
This is so because of chaos. The Universe is so complex that extremely small changes may have extremely large consequences. For one thing, the world consists of atoms, and all of those atoms, in the whole world, are connected to one another at the speed at sound of their respective material; above all, those atoms in turn consist of quanta of energy, and all those quanta, in the whole universe, are connected to each other at the speed of light and perhaps beyond.
This is so because the universe is emergent. Every layer of existence arises from the layer below it; the human level arises from the cellular level, the cellular level from the atomic level. When the butterfly flaps its wings, the energy of its motion spreads across the atoms around it across the entire planet and even the entire universe.
At the atomic level, it takes at most 19 hours before its energy has spread across the planet in the form of sound waves; it gets no further than the earth for a very long time because there are few atoms in space. However, at the quantum level, it takes just one fiftieth of a second before it has spread across the planet, and a hundred thousand years before it has spread across the entire galaxy, in the form of light waves.
After all, the way the butterfly moves affects the way light shines on it, and so too the way it will shine onto other elementary particles, which will then in turn affect other elementary particles until every atom in the world is very, very slightly different. Very, very slightly, but that is enough given that this counts for every atom in the whole world to potentially have dramatic consequences.
Next time you see a butterfly, run for your lives.
It might go even further than that. The mass of the butterfly has a very tiny influence on the Earth's gravitational field, and the flap of its wings will change that influence. This effect is extremely small, of course, but quantum mechanics is so extremely chaotic that even so, it may still have enormous effects. The tiniest gravitational wave will affect the atoms it affects, and even if it is just by a femtometer, that's more than enough, as the atom affects all other atoms on the same planet. If gravity travels faster than light, then its gravitational influence will also have a faster effect on the universe than its electromagnetic influence, despite the fact that the latter is much stronger.
Tom van Flandern calculated that the speed of gravity is 20 billion times that of light, and if this is true, it would take two years and four months for the flap of a butterfly to affect the entire observable universe. Through an incredible snowball effect, the slightest movement of a single atom could, in this way, change the course of history throughout the entire observable universe.
If one thinks about this further, this becomes so frightening that it will profoundly change the way one looks at the world. For this is far, far more than a bit of scientific trivia; it casts a different light on the meaning of everything we do in our lives.
Over an infinite amount of time, every action, every event, will randomly cause infinite suffering as well as joy, and also prevent infinite suffering and joy. It will, in fact, have infinitely diverse consequences. That is to say, given that the universe is infinite; even if it is not infinite, then this effect will still be inestimably large. In a universe that is not only infinitely large but also infinitely complex, this infinite butterfly effect is not only infinite over time but also instantly (see entry "subcosmic and supercosmic levels").
Whatever we do, then, will cause cataclysms far greater than we could even begin to imagine, from human to astronomical extent. What, then, is the meaning of our actions here and now, if not for the enrichment of our own lives?
Nothing we do will make the slightest difference in the long run: for whatever we do, both the destruction as well as the creation we cause without even trying to do so is already infinite, and so neither will be greater, nor can either be made greater or smaller; the two will always be equal, since they are both infinite, and infinity divided by infinity is undefined.
In this aspect, all entities in the universe are equal in worth; all of us are Gods, and so is every tiniest bit of energy. Everything in the universe is so infinitely connected that it has no use to cling to such values as dignity except for ourselves and our own lives.
We should but love, then, for the beauty of love, not for what it does to others or to the world; this I say for all kinds of love, from the love of a friend to love of one's occupation. If one sees how people benefit from one's love, then that is a beautiful thing; but it is no more than that. It is not of any actual importance to the world; only to one's own world.
From the viewpoint of severe psychopaths, there is no reason at all to love someone, nor, aside from law, any reason not to kill someone if they wish to. After all, it does not make a difference to themselves, and neither does it make a difference to the universe. But they will never know the beauty of true love unless they somehow learn to see it.
Many people go so far as to state that everything we do is done out of selfishness. This is one perception, but it is no more than that, a mere way of looking at things: it is no more or less correct than any other. Though one could interpret this as selfishness, it is merely an interpretation. It is indeed true that, one way or another, we do whatever we do for our own feelings; even if we do something for others, we do so merely for our own feelings, be it our feelings for others or our feelings about ourselves. One could then say that we do everything for our "self."
The fact of the matter is, this merely depends on how one defines "self." If the self is our consciousness, and we are conscious of other people, then to the extent that we are conscious of them, they become part of ourselves. The only reason why we are ourselves more than we are others is because we are more conscious of ourselves, since, after all, we live in ourselves, and so are conscious of all our perceptions; whereas, if we have compassion for others, we share only part of their perceptions, so that we are them to a far lesser extent than we are ourselves.
Put in a more scientific way: from a neurological viewpoint, our selves are usually defined as our brain, or rather as the contents of our brain. It appears that we are not the matter our brain comprises but rather the information it stores; but this information concerns both ourselves and others. When we empathize with someone, we construct a "scale model" of his or her feelings within our own brain (at least, of what we think his or her feelings to be). In this way, our brain attempts to integrate part of someone else's feelings — a purely evolutionary mechanism, one could say, but also the most beautiful mechanism of our organism, for it gives us the ability to love. When one empathizes with someone, one could say that one thereby becomes partly unified with them, as one's emotions become partly synchronized with theirs. Love is a connection with other beings. When we love someone, whatever we do we still do for ourselves, but our selves have come to partially include another person or their feelings.
Should we still love, then, if love is useless but to ourselves? That love is useless on the whole does not make it meaningless. Love is the most beautiful thing in the universe, not only to the people we love but also to ourselves.

In what we are, all of us are of infinite value to the universe, yet in what we do none of us will ever make even the most infinitesimal difference to it. We can only make a difference to our own lives, though what our lives are includes the connections they have with others'.

The solution to all your problems is to see that you have no problems.

If you're not worried about your worries you don't really have any worries. Sorrow is an artifice. When you try to feel bad, you no longer will. If you are afraid to be unhappy, TRY to be unhappy, and you no longer will be.

If you hate yourself, you can never be happy because you will not allow it, and only when you love yourself will you think yourself worthy of happiness.

Sometimes suffering is the quickest route to happiness. Sooner or later, you come to a point where you come to see the beauty in your suffering -- and as you do, you'll also see that there is beauty in everything. Maybe pain is instrumental in achieving enlightenment.