Cloudscape

At times our thoughts crowd in on our experience, the transition from one experience to the next becomes more difficult, and we must instead make use of the transition from thought to experience, meaning that we must seek out experience through thought, as a detour. Often when we want to become conscious of our experience, we try to do so; but experience itself cannot be a goal, and when we try to experience, we do so from our thought; when we are trying to become more conscious of our experience, we must therefore realize that we must be patient till the trying wears off, and we can truly experience, not departing from thought but from feeling.

Thought should start with questions, not with wanderings. Think only when the need is felt, and otherwise, feel.

We slip into unconsciousness not because we are forgetful, but because consciousness tends to hurt at times. If we wish to be conscious, then we must endure it. Discursive thought is a means of dissociation. We must face this shame to recognize that we are afraid of every single moment, lest we never conquer that fear — everything we feel would become overwhelming were it not that we seek to escape from it.

To achieve the balance of neither repressing negative emotions nor surrendering to them, acknowledge them first of all and afterwards do something about them if needed, be it either by changing one's way of thinking, or the situation that causes it; when it comes to this, do this both through thought and through action in balance. Remember how you feel, but also remember how you could feel instead of how you feel.

In whatever we do, we should start from our feelings and end with it, using thought only when we need it as a tool.

Cherish positive emotions as love and hope, and they will grow. Pay no further attention to negative emotions as hate and despair, and they will dwindle. With positive emotions, I mean to refer to emotions that further growth, and with negative emotions, to emotions that destroy; in this sense, positive emotions need not always be pleasant, and negative emotions not always painful.
Remember to recognize negative emotions rather than repress them, but pay no further attention to them, for whatever thought one will pay attention to will grow.
Some negative emotions may sometimes partly feel positive. Despair often comes with a resignation which takes away our fears, while anger takes away our fears through defensiveness; despair, then, is an extreme of yin, while anger is an extreme of yang. While both these extremes should be avoided, the the yin and yang of these extremes can be used; thus, rather than decreasing the yin or yang of either extremes, perhaps we should complement them with their opposite.
We sometimes yield to them because, ironically, they give us a feeling of safety; if that happens to us, we should not repress the negative emotion but focus on its positive aspect of safety. Pain can bring us into a state of detachment; if we can preserve this state of detachment even when our pains have not been in vain.
Some people believe that only through suffering one can grow; I would say that suffering is, rather, a side effect of growth: suffering is resistance to growth. Hardship makes one stronger only if one learns to love what life brings you even in your hardship, even if that means to love your hardship in itself. One can grow only through love; but love can bring suffering along with it as it causes you to grow; remember therefore that love does not need to be pleasurable, and can just as well be painful. It is not an feeling in itself and can manifest in many kinds of feelings; but unless it is incomplete, love always brings us to greater beauty.

Sensations are the foundation upon which all else is built; therefore, focus on your sensations unless you have found something more interesting to focus on, which may be an insight, an imagining, an impression or an emotion. But order not to get lost in discursive thought, return to your sensations by default, straying from it only when needed.

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.

Some teachings urge us to live by the principle of concentrating upon the here and now, and for many years I myself have lived by this principle. But I have come to believe that this principle is incomplete. What does it really mean, to live in the here and now?
Many doctrines, notably Buddhism, seem to urge us not to think. But I believe this is, if not inaccurate, then at least misleading: thought can be a beautiful thing. Not merely useful, but actually immanently beautiful.
For although we should be aware of the beauty there is in the world, so too there is a world within each of us whose beauty we should be equally aware of, a world, that is made of thought; a vortex of thought that can brings us from one place to another every second. It is a place where everything can happen and nothing is bound to time and space. It is a beauty we can experience just like a landscape, a landscape within the noosphere, the sphere of notions. We should enjoy its wonders just like the wonders of nature, for thought is one of our greatest assets as humans.
For what are daydreams, what is our inner world but an emulation of the real world? And if we are to live in our senses, should we not just as well live in the senses in our dreams? The sensations of our imagination are just like any other, less felt, but with far more possibilities, and if we enjoy them, they as well will grow with time. Thus, our inner world is part of the here and now just like the real world, and must be experienced just the same.
We would miss much beauty in the world if all of us had overlooked the beauty of thought. There would be no technology or science or even philosophy if we used thought merely as a practical tool, for all these things approached thought as something that is beautiful.
Thus, thought should be appreciated for its beauty for it is part of our experience. Thought is more than a tool to create beauty, for it is in itself beauty. There is beauty in our daydreams, but so too there is beauty in biology, in physics, in chemistry, in mathematics, in geology, in psychology, in languages, in everything.
This is, quite simply, because even knowledge is part of our experience. Knowledge is a very abstract construct in our inner senses. Concepts are made of imaginary sensations, which are usually visual; it is no wonder that 20% of our brain is visual cortex, because we think in a visual way. For instance, numbers each have a place in a long row in our mind, like a ruler; it may be made of the inner sensation of a ruler. When we say six, in our subconscious we may see of six dots, or a figure with six angles, or just the number six with other numbers next to it. When we say square, deep inside we see a square before us. When we say "atom," deep inside we see a nucleus with orbital electrons. If we say plate tectonics, we see the plates of the crust before us. All these things have their place in another world, a world of ideas, which is called, as mentioned before, the noosphere. Thought is mechanical. It knows space and time just like the real world, even if it is a world which is bound to no physical laws - only to the laws we impose upon it ourselves.
All these thoughts can fit together into such constructions of perfect elegance that it would be folly to state that one can find no beauty in thought, only in real experience. We should enjoy that elegance, revel in its wonderful panoramas. The beauty of thought is the beauty of connections, connections which take place in the mechanics of our inner world; if we should enjoy the touch of the wind, the smell of rain or the beauty of a forest, then we should enjoy the brilliance of a novel's plot, the ingenuity of our own bodies, the awesomeness of the giant balls of fire that show in a clear night's sky. We should enjoy the beauty of all the connections there are between all things, connections that aren't there in our sensations but which we create in our intellect. And we should be grateful for the gift to see these connections in the world.
We should live in the here and now. But even things that existed in the past or things that may exist in the future, as well as things that could never exist in the real world, can be part of the here and now within our mind. For they exist as thoughts, and these thoughts can be just as beautiful as real sensations or even more so.
But if that is so, then everything is actually part of the here and now. Does it still make sense, then, to say that one should live in the here and now? Whatever one perceives is "here and now" in that person's experience; is it possible to be not here and now, but rather there and then, if in one's mind there and then is here and now?
What is really important, then, is not to live just in one's sensations. It is senseless to exclude part of reality to concentrate on the rest of it, because then one omits part of life and its beauty. All one achieves in this way is too narrow the scope of one's existence. There is no such principle by which one can live.
There is, then, only one attitude towards life which can always lead to greater beauty, without excluding part of it, and it is to love everything in life, to love the beauty in everything, and to enjoy it. The love of beauty is the most beautiful, most powerful and most creative principle by which one can live.
Whatever one loves will grow; thus, if one loves beauty and cherishes it, it as well will grow. This just goes to show, that the sole fundamental principle in the universe is that of love: love is an act of creation. For love is that which causes whatever it loves to increase. Love is therefore the driving force of existence. Love creates, love is creation, and it is in this way that everything came into existence.
For even if that love was only present in a fundamental way before there was life, even so it was there: then, it was the love of an electron for its proton, or the love for mass for yet more mass, or the love of energy for yet more energy, or the love of complexity for yet more complexity. The universe loved itself in whatever form it was until it became what it is today, and we, as part of a universe, should love it with all our hearts so that it keeps becoming more and more beautiful until we become one with all things.

See also:
The Innerverse
Love is Immortal
Love Life

If we think that something is good, it is hard to avoid that we'll also think that the opposite is bad, which creates fear of losing whatever it is that we think good. Instead, let us then feel that the thing in question is not "good," but instead enjoyable.