At the edge of the universe there was a spirit who contemplated the nature of the mind every day and every night.

He believed that the mind is the beauty of everything in it’s purest form

like the night without the darkness:

The mind is like a turbulent storm on a still and shimmering sea

something so perverse and so beautiful at the same time,

the mind is unlike anything else.

When he pondered the nature of the mind he would remove the shroud that normally falls over the world

and cloak it tightly around himself.

With it he could feel the weight of the world, and in turn he would relieve us from our worries.

The shroud helped him understand the nature of the mind and how emotion could influence it. 

He learned about love and he learned about pain.

These were things he had never felt as a spirit.

So he made a map that spoke of his enlightenment, as a reminder.

It was something to protect him against the weight of the shroud in case things got too heavy.

He hid it at the edge of the universe underneath a white willow tree

and went back to cloaking himself with the shroud.

But little by little, night by night, without realizing it, he began to feel the worries of the world even without the shroud

and he started to forget about the map he hid underneath the tree. 

He walked to the edge of the edge of the universe and he sat at the end of the dock.

He thought for a long time, unsure of who he was anymore, 

emotion clouding his mind, the shroud had taken over.

He looked out on the endless sea and for a long time there was nothing.

But then, there was a boat.

He boarded the vessel and filled it with paintings of the things he saw at the edge

and set sail for the horizon. 

As he drifted further from the edge of the universe

his memory of that plane of time faded away.

He assumed a physical form and joined the rest of us on earth.

He grew old, he fell in love, he fell out of love, and fell back in again.

His mind was completely cloaked in the shroud of the world.

And he never went back to look for his map of enlightenment. 

All he had to remember was that buried deep inside of the mind

are portals for places we’ve forgotten and places we’ve never been,

portals for past lives and lives we have yet to live

portals for loves we've loved and loves we’ve lost.

And with that, he could have become the universal traveller

without ever leaving the edge of the universe at all.

Know that you are greater than yourself.