Role of mindfulness in the journey from confusion to clarity

“My job is boring; how do I find my passion or calling?” “What if AI takes over my job?” “How do I decide whether I spend the rest of my life with this person?” “Why am I staying away from my family in this city?” Questions like these come, stay for a while, get resolved, or sometimes lose their significance. Life moves on. Being confused is normal. However, sometimes it creates a cloud that refuses to go away. It can create repetitive thought patterns that consume excessive energy. What are the kinds of confusion we have? And how does mindfulness help in the journey from confusion to clarity? Let’s explore this in this article.

I feel that confusions that tend to linger are associated with these three questions: Who am I? What do my relationships mean to me? And, how to make a living? The first question relates to my social, religious, political, gender, and caste identity; the second relates to my relationships with people and the planet; and the third pertains to balancing time between work and non-work activities. 

Each of us is iterating through a sensing-solving loop mostly without our awareness. If I am confused about a relationship, I am running various scenarios in my mind, with my actions trying to improve the relationship.  Confusion persists, perhaps because despite my efforts, the nature of the relationship isn’t improving. Or, there is decision paralysis leading to inaction or lack of communication and listening. Similar thing could happen in career stagnation. You apply outside, no response, boss agitated, job drags on, etc. 

Mindfulness is based on the premise that the sensing-solving process loop spends disproportionately more time in solving than sensing. That usually means beliefs underlying the problem definitions remain steadfast. Mindfulness suggests that the first step is to learn to spend time in the sensing mode. What is going on at this moment, outside and inside? Build attentional freedom to watch the movement of thought. What problem is it trying to solve? Is it going around in circles? 

Sometimes clarity emerges suddenly when a belief held tightly over a long time gets relaxed. Why do I have to be working all the time? Can I take a break, travel to some new places, meet some old friends, learn new skills, and then see what I want to do next? Sometimes clarity emerges slowly, by making small changes to one’s life. I can go to an overnight observation camp or to a weekend hike or to a short silent retreat. And then realize that perhaps I can do this more often. I call this “scaling the internal bright spots”: do more of what is working already. 

Is mindfulness necessary for clarity to emerge? No. Clarity can emerge any time, suddenly, in most unlikely places, like during a meeting with the boss. Sometimes a boss’s remark can push one into the sensing mode. In the film, “The Devil Wears Prada,” boss Miranda (Meryl Streep) tells her personal assistant Andrea (Anne Hathaway), “I see a great deal of myself in you.” This comes as a shock to Andy, who believes her boss is evil, and then sees a shade of truth in what her boss is saying. That’s when leaving the toxic environment feels natural. 

Mindfulness nudges one to bring a balance between the sensing and the solving mode. For most of us, it usually means more sensing and less solving. With clarity, I learn to see the three characteristics clearly: impermanence (aniccha), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and no independent self (anatta). This clarity rebalances the significance I give to my beliefs and helps me connect with people and the planet with more openness.