What is Clarity?

How does one arrive to clarity?  How does one arrive to a clear state?

As I type, I noticed I write arrive, as if it is a place to be, a place other than here.

Clarity.

In a recent post/sharing, I wrote:

I used to think that if I was more mindful, if I thought more, if I talked more, if I analyzed more then I would understand, I would undo this knot.

I know now that asking questions, intellectualizing, thinking, trying to make meaning, attempting to make sense, replaying interactions, stories, narratives- all of this searching requires effort. All of this seeking, all of this yearning requires energy.

Simultaneously I know that achieving clarity, for me, most of the time, requires effort. Accessing clarity, requires effort on my behalf.

I type these last four sentences, knowing there are contradictions. Conflicting ideas, noncongruent thoughts someone may pose, yet they are all true. To me, they are true. It is not a one or another, it is a yes and. A simultaneous knowning. Multiple knowings, simultaneously.  

In this place of knowing, there is also confusion. In the confusion, the intellect steps in and seeks to understand, to make sense, to justify, to explain.

There are so many words and phrases to convey moments of clarity. Insight, it dawned on me, the light bulb went off, I saw the light, illuminated, enlightenment, it became crystal clear, an ah ha moment… I have also used, “it is a knowing.”

“It is an experience beyond logic,” Jeanette shared with me.  We often talk about locating words to describe what we know, what we feel, what we have experienced. She continued, when we attempt to “articulate, to find words to share and experience, [the] brain tries to find words that match.” 

The words can also rise up to meet you. Instead of searching for the words, trying to locate the words, the words meet you, they find their way to you.

Jeanette shared in her own words, “a memory becomes a knowing. Consciousness meets the memory of knowing. The body experiences understandings, if the consciousness meets knowing. If the ego meets it, it is information, not knowing.”

Here I am, sitting, knowing that “knowings” arrive for me, they arrive to me, they arrive through me. How do you know? one might ask, I just know. This knowing, has to be backed, it has to be supported, there has to be a level of trust with and in this knowing. For once the words, the thought, the idea is questioned, then it either poof, goes away or it becomes only information, information that I then begin to intellectualize, analyze.

I know you have had these knowings. Folks often say, “I felt it in my gut,” or “I felt it in my bones.” This knowing arrives without any forethought, without any planning.

This for me is the voice inside, the voice that is not my ego. It is the voice, the inner voice, the knowing voice. The voice I have heard and not trusted. The voice I have heard and ignored. The voice that was always here, speaking. The voice I did not always access. The voice that I still, sometimes do not follow through on.

It is voice that communicates through practice and my own experience trusting, listening to, hearing the call and responding to it by taking action, by taking a step.  Sometimes the voice is loud, sometimes it is soft. It is always persistent, it is always patient. Always here, always speaking, always communicating.

I know the voice is real.  It is a knowing, no longer information I have read about, information someone told me about. It is an embodied knowing. A knowing I can verify.  A knowing I trust. A knowing I know I can choose to honor, to acknowledge.

How do you know?

How do you access your inner voice, the voice within? 

How do you access the voice that speaks to you, that speaks with you?

How do you listen to the voice, the voice that offers?

How do you receive the voice?

In what forms does the voice speak to you?

In what ways does your inner guide communicate with you.

Listen in, heed the call, step, step, step.

In gratitude and grace,

Sara

The photographs in this post were taken on a journey with my sangha to Vasishtha’s Cave alongside Ma Ganga during the Warriors of Wisdom training in February 2020.