on confusion
for most of my life thus far, i have believed that confused-ness was a state of the mind given to us at birth. that some people are just inherently more confused than others, and nothing can be done about that, that it is best to accept one's state of confusion as one's arm or leg, and live with it.
in our ignorance we think many crazy things :).
as i understand it (today), confusion is merely lack of clarity, and lack of clarity is fueled by a lack of self-awareness. after all, when the ground i stand on is shaky, i witness an earthquake every second. with inner instability, the outer is unstable also. and who knows the myriad convoluted ways in which the mind may compensate in its effort to stabilize this vision.
we are born, after all, with varied sets of strengths and weaknesses. but we're all on the path that takes us from lesser knowledge (ignorance, if you will) to greater. although some of us seem to be born with clarity, the rest of us may need to 'fight' for our 'rights', for the clarity that grows with increasing self-awareness is indeed our right. and to uphold that right is to allow our inner self to manifest its inherently stable nature.
thus is the benefit of spirituality, in that it provides us with a structure, a well-defined path to walk on, and sufficient freedom to explore. as time passes, the space between stimulus and response is lessened, and we find ourselves more adept in our thought, speech, and action. confusion slowly transforms into a thing of the past.
in our ignorance we think many crazy things :).
as i understand it (today), confusion is merely lack of clarity, and lack of clarity is fueled by a lack of self-awareness. after all, when the ground i stand on is shaky, i witness an earthquake every second. with inner instability, the outer is unstable also. and who knows the myriad convoluted ways in which the mind may compensate in its effort to stabilize this vision.
we are born, after all, with varied sets of strengths and weaknesses. but we're all on the path that takes us from lesser knowledge (ignorance, if you will) to greater. although some of us seem to be born with clarity, the rest of us may need to 'fight' for our 'rights', for the clarity that grows with increasing self-awareness is indeed our right. and to uphold that right is to allow our inner self to manifest its inherently stable nature.
thus is the benefit of spirituality, in that it provides us with a structure, a well-defined path to walk on, and sufficient freedom to explore. as time passes, the space between stimulus and response is lessened, and we find ourselves more adept in our thought, speech, and action. confusion slowly transforms into a thing of the past.
2 comments:
I love that you are writing about confusion. I am feeling particularly confused lately about what I want in my career. And I'm clear that my confusion stems from a lack of clarity about what I want, and some lack of self-awareness.
Do you really think that spirituality will lead us to becoming less confused? If so, I have a long way to go yet. ;) But nice to imagine that I may, some day, become less confused.
I thought about this a lot, and the easiest recourse for me is to dive into the Gita's theory of Nishkama Karma. With enough self-awareness and desire to align ourselves with the spiritual path, the path of righteousness, we do our bit and leave all thought of result to God. The more we attempt to do this, I find, the more we remove ourselves from worry, and it is more easily made clear to us which path we should take.
And enough distance/perspective always reduces confusion. For instance, I bet you that years down the line you'll think most confusion was entirely unnecessary. Right? :)
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