Good morning everyone. I am writing this at 5:30 AM on a blustery cold January morning. The sun is not up yet so I cannot see outside but I can hear the howling of the wind and the banging of the tree branches against the window behind me. I just finished a wonderful meditation and happily the topic of the day emerged from the stillness. Today we are going to talk about Clarity. So, a good definition of clarity for our purposes is “the state or quality of being clear.”

To begin we are going to do a short visualization. If you are listening to this, you might want to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to help you relax.

Imagine you are on vacation. You rented a small cabin in the mountains on a beautiful lake dotted with lily pads and surrounded by giant trees fully dressed in their summer greenery. So far, you have only seen pictures and you are anxious and excited to be able to see this magical place in person. In the morning you walk out onto the deck that overlooks the lake. It is early morning, and you notice there is a dense fog all around you. It hangs thick and soupy over the lake so you cannot see anything. You know the lake is close because you can hear the water lapping against the shore and a boat bumping against the dock as a slight breeze shifts it to and fro. You squint your eyes trying to bring the scene into focus, but the fog is just too thick. You suddenly become uncomfortable with the obscurity and murkiness all around you.

“What if there are bears out here?” you ask yourself. “I would never see them. There could be snakes right down there around my feet too.”

You start becoming agitated and fear starts rising. Then you have a moment of rationality and decide you are perfectly safe here and eventually you will be able to see, so you might as well enjoy the moment. You grab a warm blanket and settle into an Adirondack chair that is on the deck. You close your eyes and listen more closely to sounds all around you. The water lapping lulls you into a deep peacefulness. You can hear birds singing all around you. Your nostrils flare as you fill your lungs with the fresh mountain air. You are completely caught up in the moment and find yourself drifting in a glorious space somewhere between sleep and awake where thoughts have ceased, and your mind is free.

After some time, you gently open your eyes. The sun is now higher on the horizon and it has burned away the fog. You can finally see everything clearly, the vivid colors of the water, the trees, the boats along the shore and the majestic mountains off in the distance.

Ok, you may open your eyes now if you had closed them. In our daily lives don’t we sometimes feel as if we are walking in a fog? We just cannot see things clearly and are not sure what direction our lives should take. Especially when we have difficult decisions to make, like should I leave my job and start my own business. Is this relationship right for me or not? Should I tell so and so how I feel about what they did that hurt me or leave it alone? We obviously cannot see the outcome clearly, so we start ruminating and making up stories in our heads.

“If I leave my job and start my own business, the whole venture might fail if that happens, I will have no income and I will lose my home. My life will be a mess.” “If I leave the relationship, I may never find anyone else, but if I stay, I might spend years unhappy and regretting it, and then it would be too late to find anyone else. I know I will be alone forever” “If I tell so and so how I feel, they might get angry and end the relationship. I will never have lasting friendships.”

Eventually, you get yourself so confused by all the random nonsensical thoughts that you cannot see anything clearly. You are in an emotional and mental fog. So, who exactly is in your head endlessly chattering and driving you crazy? It certainly cannot be your wise, enlightened and peaceful soul. No, it is not! It is the frightened ego part of us that always operates from a place of fear. It avoids the present moment at all costs because the present moment is the magical space where we can access wisdom and inspiration, that we can use to make rational and sensible decisions and choices. If we are busy lamenting over or regretting the past or worrying about the future, we are feeding the ego and keeping it healthy and voracious. If we stay mindful in the present, we find the clarity and vision we are seeking, and the ego goes to sleep like a hibernating bear during the cold winter months. Ego driven fear is like an impenetrable vice. Once it tightens firmly around our thoughts, the more our monkey mind jumps from one chaotic thought to another and the less clarity we have.

So, what is the answer? Still our thoughts for a moment. Clear our head. Come back from the dark scary cavern of the monkey mind and into the clear mountain air if the present moment. There are lots of ways you can do this. One, of course, is meditation, perhaps, like the one we did earlier but there is no wrong way to meditate. We just need to enter the silence, the stillness and the gap between our thoughts where Divine insights and inspiration have a clear pathway to our heart and mind. We can also go for a long mindful walk or run paying attention to all the sights and sounds all around us, so we do not find ourselves caught back up in the web of our confused, arbitrary thoughts. We can also grab our paintbrush and work on the painting that has been waiting for us to put the finishing touches on the canvas. Pick up our dusty guitar and strum our fingers along the strings and get lost in the melodies. Anything, that takes us away from the fear and mindless thinking can open the doorway to clarity of thought and inner peace.