Cloudscape

The goal is always love. You can either search that which you love, or love that which you find. If there is nothing left which you love, for instance if everything causes you suffering, you have no more choice than to try to love that which you find, even if everything you can find brings you suffering. If you are suffering, it is not enough to accept your suffering: you must love it, especially if there is no longer anything else than suffering.

When you are in sadness, try to let go of attachment as much as possible: let go of greed, of anger, of fear. Let go of all things you tell yourself that must or must not be. Letting go of attachment is easier when sad, and in this way, sadness can come to its use. It can thus cleanse your being from impurities and, like winter, creates an emptiness from which new life can grow in spring. The faster you are able to let go, the less painful your sadness will feel, and the quicker it can also pass. Thus, do not resist sadness, but try to make use of it until it is gone. The use of sadness is to make one let go how things go, not as a punishment when things do not go your way. In your sadness, let go off all control and let everything be. Thus, it will come to its use.

Sometimes the best thing you can do when you are in sadness is to make use of your sadness' purification abilities, and the best way to do this is to turn inwards. Meditation, or, if you are religious, prayer, can be a good way to do this. In your sadness, you are more able to let go of control, thereby creating an emptiness within yourself. Learn to appreciate the silence this brings, and in that silence try to find grace.

Above all, when you are sad, think about what you want to do with your life. Sadness is an emptiness which creates a panorama within your mind. Hear the silence. See the darkness. Feel the cold. In this emptiness, find purity. Once you have done this, your sadness has served its purpose, and the light may come back once again.

Love, in its earliest form, still as a germ, usually inevitably comes with attachment, and so fear, and ultimately hatred for anything that threatens that which we are attached to, and these remain until our love has become perfected. Usually, it is only if our love grows steadily, so that it grows already being close to perfection, it does not cause attachment. Attachment arises when our love grows faster than we can deal with.

Perhaps we can so see the evil within us, in the form of fear and hate, as a good sign. It means that we are growing, and that we are growing fast. That we hate means that we love, and that we love so much that we are prepared to make the sacrifice of suffering for it. When we make this sacrifice, we must bear it, however, and not impose it upon others; it is our own burden. Others did not choose to share in it.

It is, in fact, easy to get rid of all suffering, but only if one gives up one's love. Love, once found, however, is so strong that one rarely finds the force to dispose of it again, unless one has descended into extreme tendencies of self-destruction, such as drug addiction.

Life is as hard as you are willing to make it. Life will never be easy unless you make it so. Remember this when you are suffering. It is the cross you bear to love. You can always be freed of it if you give up that love, and stop caring about anything in unfeeling emptiness. To suffer, until you are perfected, is your own choice.

It is only when one stops trying to resist one's sadness that one can be free.

Love your hate, lest in hating it you would let it grow. In so doing, however, remember that your hate is, nonetheless, something that is not meant to be, but do not attempt to undo it. Be objective, trying neither to kill it nor to make it grow, but merely observing and enjoying it in the current moment, as nothing more than a merely relative and transient experience.

Moreover, experience it in its context, neither focussing too much upon it nor too little; for hate is an enemy which will attack you in your back lest you are on your guard, but as the Hydra, it will also only grow stronger as you fight it. Instead, then, try to unify and reconcile it with your life, and your life with it. Let it be part of your life as long as it is there.

We resist suffering merely because suffering is per definition that which we resist, nothing more and nothing less. Suffering, then, is but resistance and otherwise nothing but an illusion. Pain itself is not an illusion, but if one will not resist it, one will not suffer from it. Do not resign yourself, but do not resist either

Suffering is the only thing that does not cause growth, yet that which causes the suffering often causes most growth. To grow, one must overcome suffering.

In an infinite universe there will always be infinite suffering, and nothing we ever do can ever change that. For an infinite universe as a whole can never be changed, for that would otherwise have been done by others before us. While its parts may be changed, on the whole it always remains as it has always been.
The only thing that matters to us, then, is the beauty of our own experiences.

Everything is relative. Nothing by itself is good or bad, small or large. For example, the Earth is large compared to our body, but small compared to the sun. Many have heard such rhetoric before, but it goes much farther than that; as another example, a sociopath may be cruel compared to the average person, but kind compared to Hitler, and in a world where almost everyone would be a cruel as Hitler, sociopaths would be Saints.
When we judge something, it is not by itself true, and therefore meaningless; for this reason, judgment has no use. Judging something, be it as good or bad, is the cause of attachment, which in turn is the cause of all suffering.
There is nothing that does not depend on subjective experience; the only absolute truth, then, is subjective experience itself, although it only is for some people, and sometimes for only one. True is only that which is experienced, that which has been experienced and that which will be experienced.
What one will experience in future depends on the causality of that experience. For instance, if one will put one's hand in a fire, one will get burned. If one jumps up, one will come back down. We know things like these because we have experienced it before.
Furthermore, if other people say something, it is sometimes, but not always, true: for instance, your mother might have told you that you will get burned if you put your hand in the fire. In this case, you have not experienced it before, but you have experienced that when you are a child, it is often best to listen to your mother. As another example, scientists might have told you that certain medicines aid against certain diseases. You have not experienced this, but they have experienced it through experiments. In this way, much of human experience can be shared by all humanity.
Any thought that is not practical, however, is pointless. But thought may have another practical use except for predicting causations; thought may help us to imagine things. Through thought we can create an entirely different world within our minds, the world of concepts. Knowledge is not only something we memorize, and ideas aren't just things that we think; both are also things that we experience. If we could not experience these things, they would be quite uninteresting. But thoughts are more than just tools; they are patterns which have their own beauty. In a way, notions are experienced in a way similar to sensations, but less vividly.
We could classify thought in three categories:

1) Judgmental thoughts
2) Causal thoughts
3) Conceptual thoughts

Of these, the first is the most common, followed by the second and third in that order. Conceptual thought is beautiful in itself, in the same way that anything else we experience can be, such as a flower or a sunset; causal thought is not beautiful in itself but is useful, meaning that it may lead us to greater beauty (but also to lesser beauty, when it is used to destroy rather than create). Judgmental thought, however, mostly impairs the quality of our lives.
When you realize that everything is relative and so nothing by itself is good or bad, however, judgmental thought, which is in effect attachment, starts to disappear. Finding it to be unneeded, you slowly let it go over time. It is an immense liberation when you find that there is no need to see anything good or bad, and that you can therefore just experience it.
Try to pay attention when you have judgment. Also, try not to judge your judgment itself. Your judgment itself is, after all, part of the current moment, just as every other pattern that is part of it; instead, try to experience even your judgment, the emotions it brings about.
Whenever you find that you judge something, try to see the relativity of whatever it is that you judge, and your judgment will no longer distract you from your experience. Judgment in itself is beautiful if that's how we see it; judgment is merely not conducive to greater beauty.
For instance, suppose a driver comes at a zebra crossing where an old man is very slowly (of course, relatively) shuffling to the other side. The driver may feel impatient and hoot, judging the old man slow. The old man may then feel annoyed, judging the driver hasty. Neither point of view is absolute. Thirty seconds may be a lot of time to cross a zebra crossing, but nothing compared to an entire day, let alone an entire lifetime.
In this way, the meaning of every word is relative. This does not mean that we can never speak the truth, however, as much of what we mean in what we speak is not said. Every statement depends on context and otherwise makes no sense at all. (For instance, the old man is slow compared to the average human we know, but we do not mention this as we assume that the other knows what context.) This is, however, more an issue of linguistics than of ontology.
However, by realizing that everything is relative one may be more able to experience is as such. This will make it easier to detach from judgment and just experience everything in itself. In our thoughts we must make comparisons; but not in our feelings.
In one's experience, the best frame of reference is that of nothing. If one compares everything in one's life, anything at all, with nothing, one will always find it to be better than nothing. Ask yourself the question: would I rather have what I have now, or rather nothing at all, though everything has its beauty? In this way, one will be more able to appreciate the value of what you already have. By thus assuming a more neutral attitude, one will enjoy more and suffer less.

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'.