I couldn’t sleep. My mind was in a state of unrest and I had much physical pain. I left my chambers and came upstairs and wrote this in one quick sitting. I apologize for the visual appeal, as I know, for me, at times it is easier to read in distinct paragraphs, but this is the way the piece is meant to be presented and delivered. Having written this I feel emptied of anxiety and rescued from much of my pain. I do not understand where all of this comes from and why in a sense I am haunted by thoughts until I release them. But I have released, and in doing so I feel realigned, comforted, and home. I choose not what I write and for whom I write. I know only that this is what I was given. As I am tired now and ready to rest, I ask that you also forgive any errors I overlooked. Blessings and Love ~ Sam

Your pain is not a gift, nor is it a curse. You have not manifested your suffering or created or birthed it into being. Your pain is not more because you are chosen. Your pain is not less because you were not chosen. Your mission is not grander with pain. Your mission is not weaker in the absence of pain. To wear your pain on your sleeve is to say: Because I have suffered I am special. But we say onto you everyone suffers, everything suffers. When one suffers all suffer. When ones pain exceeds another the pain is not held by one alone; the pain is held by each body here, one upon the other taking in the pain. Pain breeds pain and suffering breeds suffering. This is not to say that the sufferer is to blame or in charge of his suffering. No one is in charge of his own suffering. Yet everyone is in charge of the suffering of one. We all suffer. No matter the witness or contest, no suffering is greater. There is no way to compare suffering, as there is no way to compare love. And in so saying, you cannot love without suffering. You cannot suffer without love.

Suffering occurs in the absence of love. Every type of suffering denotes a missing element of being. There is a string of events that will show you this suffering. Genetics mean nothing; nor does circumstance. All is merely oil on the canvas, paint applied to represent what is happening. No paint suffers more. Even if the paint depicts a horrible picture of torment and suffering, the paint does not suffer. The image denotes suffering. A representation of suffering occurs. An observer can find the suffering and behold the suffering and relate the suffering to this self in form, but the image painted feels nothing. We are these images. The suffering we feel is not our own paint, the suffering we feel is when one looks upon us and sees the image represented by the paint. If our image be grand through and through, the colors brilliant and bold, the semblance of happiness present and moving, even still the observer may suffer. For he may then sense lacking, the happiness pouring from the once blank slate and indicator of his own demise and inability to reach potential. It doesn’t matter the suffering or the imagined joy depicted in illusion; whatever the observer choses to see, he sees, and whatever the observer refuses to see, he misses. No two can set eyes upon eyes and see the same; this is impossibility, but still you insist reality is real. Well, whose reality is real? Whose view of the painting is adequately represented as truth? Which viewer’s viewpoint do you choose? Yours? Another’s? A beloved’s? An enemy’s? What if we were to say your enemy’s view is as equal to yours and yours to his? For whatever he holds true becomes his painting and whatever you hold true becomes yours. Therefore when two meet and behold the colors brought forth, your illusion is formed not once but twice, in the illusion you perform and the illusion you present as truth of your neighbor. Therefore when two meet four illusions are formed. The painting of one, the painting of the other, the viewpoint of one, the viewpoint of another. All is illusion quadrupled and multiplied in meeting, and still one walks away thinking he holds the truth. But what of the four is the truth? Which one? When one holds true the representation of himself is what he holds as truth, then what is this truth based on but not illusion after illusion built into storybook of truths. And further, when one holds a truth of another based on the view, does he not only counter the illusion of the first but intensify the illusion of the other. In seeing this there is a temptation to unravel the truth, to single out which of the choices is real. But this is the same, very much the twin, of choosing between the reflection in water multiplied thoroughly and deciding which reflection represents the truth of where one stands. In knowing this, we look back at where we stand and examine who is standing and we see it is this us, this I, this me, but who is this I that exists if not singled out and marked by the judgment and makings of the world. How can a being move in this world without absorbing the illusions, and thusly how can a being move in this world without being a rotating painting of illusions gathered? Life to many is merely a sponge of collection of mirages, the water sucked from the view, when no view is there. One illusion upon the other illusion we stare. And still we wait as the illusions unfold for you to see such common place as where the illusion bends. For what if I were to take a color with no color, say ye black turned white and then turned invisible and paint over the canvas once colored, until the blending is nothing but space. And what if then you stared into the illusion and peered willingly and came out with a satisfied grin, simply proclaiming I have seen beyond illusion. I have seen space. But no, we would say to you, you have not seen the space behind illusion. You have simply seen the replacement to illusion, the gap filled in with a substitute in an attempt to satisfy your appetite of discovery. Peer again and I shall resubmit the color as evidence of space removed, and then what say ye? Do you say the illusion has returned? If illusion returned than nothingness cannot exist; for nothing can take the place of nothingness and nothing can fill the void inside a void. Until the nothingness is removed than something remains. As long as there is a space, something can be filled, something can be altered, something can be changed, something can arise. It is in the space beyond space one looks then, into the realm beyond inquiry, stretching the mind in solution, the band made taught and heavy. Wherein where the fault lies is in the canvas itself. Within the painting. All searching is based on the paint of illusion. All decisions granted in the realm of illusion. Illusion has taught, say professed, where to look, and in listening to illusion the seeker finds only illusion. Seek not the canvas of paints, seek the painter. Who is the one painting the illusion and who is the one with the paints. Is this not the collective we? For who is to say the illusion of one is not the collective illusion of all who look upon. Exceedingly we look one upon the other, our brushes moving to create what we see. Not what we wish to see, for that would imply ownership and dictatorship, and even the power of creation, but that which we have taught one another to see. Each illusion a teacher to the next. Each mask painted with the colors of the soul that is supposed to be. Can you not see the illusion arises first not with you, first not with one, but in the making of all? For together we are scribe and painter writing the story of the moment, not with our thought and thought alone, but with the perception of thought. It is not enough to say: think these thoughts and all will transpire as planned, because in this way there is a plan, and in this plan is illusion. In this illusion is a false hope that the one and not the collective know the thought that ought be formed. But what then if one thought is deemed better than another thought? Then do we not begin the battle again. Painting illusions this time with paint dismissed and thoughts induced? Your thought, your word, is no less, better or worse than another. You cannot decide what word is just and which unjust, which word enough and not enough, without creating more illusion. The world will continue to spin in illusion, as one continues to attach to illusion. No answers can be found when one is set upon another. No answer true when searching in illusion. The search is not in self or outside self. The search is beyond the painting and the canvas. The truth is the paint and painter. So whom may we assign as this worthy painter if not we, if not truth, even if this truth be illusion? Who is this truth bearer? The one granted the role of leader and justice. Is this not you? Is this not your neighbor? Is this not your enemy? We say you know this truth innately; it is in the unraveling of each to find the substance of whole in where the truth bides his time, hidden in the controversy and friction between. And this is where we stand on the bridge between illusion and nothing. Not on one side or the other. No in right or in wrong but in the center, in the journey when love is brought out of the flames of illusion and one ventures across the avenue in search of nothing. There we stand in the bridegway waiting. But with blinders you pass us by, as your goal is to cross the bridge and not stay in the place between. For you have been taught by illusion that the place in between is passage way only, serving to get from one point to the next. What you cease to understand is there is no point and there is no next, and as soon as one illusion is reached another is formed. What you cease to understand is that there is no stopping point, just as there is no starting point. You are already there twice over, and twice over again, doubling your path to prove a point until illusion dollies in her own illusion and splits open leaving you centered in predicament. And there you sit both witness and observer. One standing and staring at the other. The two ones meeting. And there you merrily judge your ways, lost in the in between, stepped out between illusion and nothing, staring down your own brother, your own self. For you are not this broken hollowed isolated one. You are we and we are you. But still you stand in the half-way point of in between uncertain where to go. When there be no place to go but here. Throw down your villainess ways, pave the roads with the intentions naught. Take out your heart and lay it down to be crushed and observed as splendid. Bleed your love out to the world, a cross bearer of your own-making, not for His glory or your glory, but for the glory of knowing illusion standing still. Find the stopping point of illusion and tear down the stopping point of where and when. Believe in the absence of intention and fulfillment of love. Bring down your illusion and bring down your guard. Say to your brother I am love and onto him beseech him your goodness. For you are more worthy than the tenth illusion suffered, the levels laid out in fashion unbridled and unbroken. You are more worthy than the battles that came again and again to show the way, when no way exists outside love. All be said in the name of love. And here my brother is where illusion and nothingness depart, in the arms of love carried out by the masses rebirthed in glory and built bountiful by the journey delayed.

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

–Albert Einstein