Friday, February 8, 2013

Friday! Third Best day of the week!

Wanted to write a little excerpt to piggy back off of what you wrote t bizzle.

What is Clarity? According to the definition of the word, Clarity is "clearness or lucidity as to perception or understanding; freedom from indistinctness or ambiguity.
2. the state or quality of being clear  or transparent to the eye; pellucidity: the clarity of pure water
 
IF you look a the last 5 words of the defintion it reads; the claity of pure water.  There is cold, pure,water flowing thru the streams of Cananda into the Rocky Mountains of the west that you could drink to your delight without ever feeling like you would catch a bug.  This water has pure clairty becuase there are no obstructions to cloud the water.
 
Obstructions of life come in many shapes and forms. Ask yourself, when do you feel like you are the most clear, when nothing could de-rail you. If I had to make a list of 7 things that help with my clairty this is what they would be.
  • Getting 20-30 minutes of excercise. Without, clouds my thinking.
  • Absense of Alcohol & other inhibators. Without I am more clear.
  • Meditating, shutting off the world. With, I am more clear.
  • Reading, non-fiction as well as fiction. With I am more clear.
  • Sleep, >7 hours. Without, clouds my thinking.
  • Time to be by myself. With I am more clear.
  • Energy, doing what makes me good. With I am more clear.
  • Eating well. With I have more energy.
What are some things that make you have a clear mind T Berg?
     
     
 
 

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Clarity From Self-Knowledge


Finding clarity within ourselves is the key to understanding the confusion and misery that exists in ourselves, and so in the world. Without clarity change and reform merely lead to more confusion. Clarity is the result of intense self-awareness and right thinking. Right thinking comes with self-knowledge. Without understanding yourself, what you think is not true. You and the world do not exists as separate with your own set of problems. You and the world are one; your problem is the world problem.

Inwardly we are all very much the same; we are driven by greed, fear, ambition and so on. Our beliefs, aspirations and hopes all have a common basis. We are one humanity, divided by the artificial boundaries of economics and politics. If you hurt another you are damaging yourself. You are the center of the whole, you cannot understand reality if you don’t understand yourself. To experience this unity you have to be open, you have to become aware of the division between knowledge and feeling.

Self-knowledge is extremely laborious and challenging. You must approach self-knowledge with an open mind and free of the presumptions of your conditioning. Right-thinking does not arise out of comparison yet in studying ourselves we are estimating and comparing. This is what prevents the understanding of ourselves. Our judgment comes from our desire to become something different, to conform, or to protect ourselves. This resistance prevents us from understanding.

You cannot understand the complex entity that you are if you are comparing it with where you were yesterday or where you should be tomorrow. Once you have perceived the uselessness of comparison there is a great freedom. When you are no longer striving to become something there is freedom to understand what you are.

If you do not compare and judge and you allow yourself to let go of your self-approximation you become liberated from duality; the problem and the conflict with the opposites fall away. Contained within this freedom from opposites is the answer to all of your confusion and conflicting problems.

To go beyond the problem of opposites we must go beyond the dualistic pattern of the I and the not I, the owner and the owned. This has to be realized though deep awareness of the dualistic hindrances.