Jesus sought to provide hope in the face of life's struggles.

Buddha sought to teach people how to inoculate themselves from suffering.

Taoists seek to lose themselves in the natural flow of nature and life.

I sat in the dark last night. I didn't want to go to bed, and I didn't want to look at the illusions of decorated my house with. Funny, but my house poses its own illusions. I just sat, with my cat, and marveled and wondered how he constantly seems to find a state of rest.

Sitting in the dark, it was peaceful and a chance for quiet reflection. I have a relatively easy life. The slow dying of my dreams, I don't know whether that is good or bad. Of course, I wonder if good or bad is anything other than perspective conditioned by selfishness and cultural opinion. Anyways, my dreams are dying, or so it seems. And it seems that in many ways I am killing my dreams through neglect; that I am causing myself suffering because I am clinging to my dreams.

One question: why am I clinging to my dreams. I want to do this, I want to do that - but I don't do this and I don't do that to the degree that I can. In fact, I am woefully underachieving even in what is within my grasp. Which causes me to consider that maybe I am dreaming someone else's dreams? Or rather, that I am lazy and expect things to come without effort, without discipline. And maybe, if my dreams are really what I want, I would be accomplishing them. Or maybe, maybe, maybe.

Thoughts in circles, patterns recreating themselves, slowly resolving and reforming. Dreams, goals - they don't really matter. One breath at a time, moment by moment. And the cycle continues. Words follow words. Sounds with little meaning; sound illusion. Reflection, as a shadow.

Aimlessness is only negative when I cling to my illusions. Of course, if all is not simply illusion than I suppose I am really wasting my life. Life is moment by moment and what happens, passes, and what is now is now. Tomorrow is nothing but an idea held in the now. It appears that now is in a linear connection to the next now, but I think that there is only just now. Time appears to me to be another illusion. A working hypothesis that is effective for perpetuating illusions. It does seem that some illusions are essential for life. And that of course can lend itself to the argument that life is not filled with illusions - that there is something real, tangible, and real, intangible. But something.

And so the cycle of ideas continues, circling like a plane that never lands.