The mind is now a drunkard, stumbling forward with infrequent backward glances. Its transient panaceas turn to addictions. Pain is endured for the pleasure of relief. They define each other, like light and its halo of dark. The lesser pain is pleasure, the lesser blindness is light, the lesser effort is will, the lesser forgetfulness is recollection and the lesser estrangement the wonder of immanence.
Shadows become everything.
A glimpse of compassion seems the perfection of love, a glimpse of the self the perfection of insight, a glimpse of attainment the perfection of will. Possession passes for love, intelligence for insight, sensation for ecstasy, novelty for strangeness, force for will, and endurance for constancy. Cultures form, and settle. Habits merely, with self-proving arguments that mix cause with purpose, and keep the mind in a circle. Embedded in habit.