Clarity – everyone knows the word. But what is clarity actually? Clarity here is not understood as a purely cognitive process, as a state of mind. Clarity here is a metaphor for a state in which one truly sees what is – one's own life, one's own situation, one's own being. Wholeness. This state can be achieved in very different ways, with very different means and focuses.
The Path of Clarity addresses the mind, the intellect, in a special way. But comprehensive clarity is not possible through the intellect alone. The movement of the body, perception with all senses, and the calming of all activity are also part of the Path of Clarity.
Clarity cannot be handed over or transferred. Clarity can only be achieved personally by each individual. However, there are methods to support this process from the outside. For one can also learn how to walk the Path of Clarity. But the path itself must be created by oneself, each for themselves.
It is like any path: one does not reach the goal with the first step. But even the first step can lead one a little way out of the fog. Sometimes one may not even truly perceive this oneself. But when one has actually stepped out of the fog, when more and more clarity surrounds one, penetrates one, then one can also see which steps actually already led in this direction.
The Training of the Mind
Everyone knows this: in one moment one has (seemingly) complete clarity about a certain problem. One knows exactly how it is, what one has to do, who bears responsibility for what. In short, one is absolutely certain. And just a few moments later, this clarity is wiped away again. Another thought, an irritating question – and the clarity is gone.
How reliable then is it actually with the mind and the clarity one can attain with it?
Cinderella had the task of separating the good and bad lentils from each other. Now, if one looks into a bowl of lentils, one can certainly see which are the good and which are the bad lentils. And for a brief moment, one has clarity about it. But if one just looks away, only to look back into the bowl of lentils, then the search and sorting with the eyes begins anew. However, if the lentils are placed in different bowls, then they can no longer mix without intervention – then clarity prevails.
With thoughts, it's not that simple. The mind has no bowls. How does one sort the blame, the doubts, the hurts?
The problem is simply that we usually do not have such vessels in our mind in which we can sort the thought lenses. They mostly remain in the same thought bowl – and, even if we have just wonderfully sorted them, are completely mixed up again at the slightest jolt. And this is what it looks like, this jolt: „Yes, I understand, I somehow did that wrong. But that was only because...“. No matter what kind of justification comes after the „but“ – the lenses are already mixed up again. And so it happens that we always face the same problem again, that our mind always revolves around the same questions again, that we always doubt our decisions, that we hesitate to act, that we always feel like failures again.
We can train our mind. We can learn to create bowls within it – and to recognize those moments when everything gets jumbled again. Conscious work with the mind is an essential part of clarity work. Especially for people who are often caught in thought loops, who tend to ruminate, who want to logically understand the world – for these people, a truly productive engagement with the mind is highly desirable. On this basis, clarity is then significantly easier to achieve.
But caution is advised. If the careful work with the mind is not integrated into a whole, then many insights of the mind remain without actual connection to the living.
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