Freedom from Coveting Clarity

I, and everyone else I talk to, long for clarity. And for a long time I imagined that clarity might come through an astrology reading. I think it can come that way sometimes, which is cool, but actually not the point. The more I talked to people over the years, the more I saw: no one has clarity and everyone wants it. But the reality of what I am witnessing as I talk to people is: clarity is not present. So I shifted my expectations with myself and started sharing this more with clients: clarity is not present, maybe even most of the time! Like we might, in reality, live most of our lives, without clarity.

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We can lament that, or we can notice - clarity is not here. And it’s not here for almost everyone else, at least in some area of their life, most of the time. So is it required to live a life? Seems like it’s not.

When I shifted away from this expectation that I should have clarity, which was causing me suffering — not a car or a piece of jewelry, or even an accomplishment that I was coveting, but an imagined mind-state -- my life felt more peaceful. What if I don’t have to have it at all?! What if I just let go of thinking I need to get it? What a relief.

If it comes, like any other wave of any other emotion-mind-state, that is cool. Oh! A beautiful visitor. Clarity! And if it is not here, it doesn’t have to be a problem. Guests feel much more inclined to come here when I don’t pressure them to.

I’m speaking about this because usually clarity is something I crave when I am feeling doubt, which is the theme for this spring in these Existing Together newsletters. Doubt! I have a preference that it not come to visit. Yet it does. Plenty.

Some tendency toward doubt seems to be constitutional (air sign dominance and aspects to neptune, to name a few) but I think doubt is also frequently present for people who are in a stage of development where we’re back and forth between the everyday egoic mind and a more expansive generous state of being. Some days I want to online shop and watch tv, and some days I watch the birds in my garden and my kids laughing with a sense of vast fullness. The online shopping and tv days are not bad, in fact they are sacred in their own way, but the variety of motivations arising in a condensed period of time can and does typically produce an experience of doubt. What should a person do with their time? How can they be most helpful in the world? How can they be at peace? How do they know what matters? These are the kinds of decisions that feel elusive when my mind is flipflopping.

I don’t have to make it a problem, that is the incredible thing. The more I accept doubt, the freer it is to go. It’s a paradox as everything deeply true is. Doubt can stay as long as it needs to. Clarity can too. Either one, or both, I’m still going to be here, lovingly observing them. The only commitment needed is my presence. Or it might be more accurate to say, the only presence needed is my presence, I can drop even the idea of commitment.

The other thing lurking under the polarity between clarity and doubt is an assumption that it’s possible to make a mistake, to get it wrong. Doubt says, what if you make a mistake?! What if you did it wrong? What if it doesn’t work out? When there’s an underlying assumption that I need to get it right, doubt blooms like algae. When I remember mistakes aren’t really a thing, doubt has nothing to feed on.

This frees me up to experiment, and experimenting is how I learn.

So, to recap:

If clarity comes: cool! Amazing!

If doubt comes: cool! Amazing! You’re here to show me where I am confused about thinking I need to — or even can — get it “right.”

It’s an attitude of mind toward these states I’m practicing, and inviting you to practice it with me and see what happens!