From Jul 25, 2008

A series of days in which my mind has been filled with the fog of worry and anxiety… a battle of my internal wits throwing out euphemisms and cliches and proverbs in an attempt to guide my thoughts… Thoughts become things… Physical reality or spiritual reality or mentality or psychology or…??

Every so often I find myself finding moments of clarity. You know the ones– those “snapshot moments” that will ultimately evolve into “snapshot memories” once enough time has passed to transform them. They will no longer BE Present but become BEEN Past… memories that hopefully I’ll retain with fondness.

Makes me think of my past moments of clarity… to become nostalgic for those things that Once Were, therefore inciting gratitude for What Was finally becoming What Is. And then from the other direction things that Will Be finally becoming What Is. It’s a circle. This experience is not linear, it is cyclic.

Along my recent quest for clarity, I suddenly found myself experiencing it.  I was driving home when drops of precipitation blessed my windshield. I rolled down my driver’s window– the one that has a hard time deciding if it should rise again upon request or sit there quietly contrary to my protests– so I could reach my hand to the sky, giving thanks for the lovely cool drops whipping against my hand as I drove in rush hour traffic. My music was loud– an eclectic mix of Devotchka, Depeche Mode and Dave Matthews.  Excitedly, I finally felt as though my question of reality had been answered, and it was THIS which was reality, nothing more. Nothing less.

The problem for me is that reality is fleeting. When you spend this much time in your head, it’s a challenging task to interpret what you think from what is. Truly, this falls directly in line with the “thoughts become things” metaphysical belief system. Thoughts become reality, reality become thoughts, there is nothing and there is everything, and all that really IS is an interpretation of what IS… terribly philosophical, but that’s part of who I am.

Lately, I’ve found myself in an almost constant state of seeking clarity.  And recently, I’ve found many others in that same plane of those who seek.  It’s not that I’ve lost my clear vision as much as it’s been cluttered with things that distract me.  Things that I allow myself to lose focus over.  Things that really, in the scheme of all that IS, just don’t matter.

One of the most important ideas to remember while on my quest for clarity is that there are situations that trigger either cloudiness or clarity. The question IS: do I indulge myself in the cloudiness or do I full throttle ahead into crystal clear thinking?  I suppose when you’re in the heat (emotion) of the moment, you frequently forget to think clearly.  It’s not just me, it’s a human characteristic.

Emotion does not equal clarity.  Emotion rarely equals anything more than a tint that saturates the lens through which we experience this life.   Emotion is what makes this life worth living, both good and bad.  It’s not a negative thing… just a tint.  In the same vein is stress– another tint, one that precedes emotion– and one that can precipitate strong (and often) negative emotion.  Stress often prevents us from seeing clearly, and it is often the fog that allows you to barely make out shapes of what IS on the other side of our lens through which we’re supposed to “see” experience…

I suppose what this leaves us with is the challenge to be more aware of how our stress and emotion fogs our vision.  Can awareness that this is what it is doing bring us more pleasure, more clarity?

It only makes sense that awareness of it is the first step.  Be aware that what you’re experiencing may be tagged with emotion or stress.  And then after becoming overtly aware, I suppose we can adjust our behaviors in a way that actually obtains the sort of reaction we desire.  Being able to separate ourselves from the tint is, I believe, an innate quality.  In a negative form (or should I say less-good-coping form?), we can dissociate.  In a positive form, we can regulate how we interpret our experience, and therefore manage the flow of experience within our lives.