How to Get a Clear Mind

Sometimes the biggest questions you can ask yourself-- “Who am I?” “What is my purpose?” “Where can I find fulfillment?” – come down to three very simple and immediate questions: “What shall I do to today?” “Why?” and “How?” Actually, the third of those questions takes care of itself. As any actor worth his/her salt will tell you – What you focus on doing and Why you choose to do it dictate How you will go about it.

Grand visions aren't hard to think up, but carrying them out is the problem. Having an emotion-backed resolve is pretty important, especially on those days when the fire in your belly gets low. Everyone's days are filled with wet blankets and distractions. Duties and the demands of otherness pile up steadily. The bigger issues start to blur when your to-do list is overflowing. So in realising our inspirations, how can we bring projection and pragmatism closer together?

The world's wisdom traditions tell us to look inside ourselves (yes, we have more than one) for the real obstacles that block the way to fulfillment. Outer demands will always fill the time given to them, and pitching willy-nilly into the swirling activity of daily life, without at least a rough idea of where you want to be by the end of each day, inevitably makes existence seem stressed and chaotic. What you can do instead is to examine your reality "in here," which is, I maintain, the only place you have real influence over where clarity can be found.  But you may have to clear away a lot of accumulated garbage to find where you left it last.

What most people find when they look inside are the following ingredients in their mental makeup:

Confusion--this manifests as not setting clear priorities because the path ahead doesn't look clear and decisive. It is evidenced by a landscape of dashed hopes, unresolved intentions, failed fantasies, and a pile of debilitating conclusions like “I can't do this”, “Don't set your self up for a fall”, “I don't deserve...”, and “I'm a screw-up.” There are plenty of others – the human condition comes with a smorgasbord of de-powering stinkin' thinkin' for you to choose from, peddled and pushed at you by others who've already given in to disillusionment and are only too keen to pull you alongside for company and comfort.

Distraction--this manifests as a hundred small things that pull your attention this way and that. We were deliberately born into a wonderland of tempting possibilities. And if our parents neglected to teach us how to select interesting projects and follow each one through to some relevant kind of result, we're going to stay stuck in a childish pursuit of the next shiny bauble, the next “big thing”. If you ever want to be taken seriously as a human being, you have to add maturity to your child-ness, eventually.

Disorganisation--this manifests as a lack of orderly thinking that leads to productive results. Again, self-discipline has to be learned. If you were spoiled, then you'll have to learn it yourself. That's not as tragic as it sounds. Even those of us who grew up under a cover of discipline had to, when we finally broke out, learn the difference between “discipline” an “self-discipline”. There's a universe of a difference between those two!

Let's look at Confusion , Distraction, and Disorganisation specifically. They are the managerial part of mental and emotional life, which is a basic necessity, unless you really want to live the rest of your life as a victim. In which case, good luck. There's nothing wrong with being a victim and you certainly won't be lost for others to play games with, but please remember this one Ruthless Rule of Reality – “A Victim's life will not work.” (Just thought I'd mention it).

There's an infinite spectrum of problems. Just when you think you've seen them all, some bastard keeps inventing new ones. And the spectrum changes from person to person, depending on the type of temperament you were born with and the personality you've constructed upon it. At either end of the spectrum you'll find the polar opposites of - a) the tightly controlled, highly disciplined thinker; and – b) the vapid dreamer. There are countless variations on how we use our minds, our heart and our spirit. But if your goal is clarity, set aside the thoughts and sensations that fill your mind every day. Focus instead, and first, on the goal of finding clarity.  If you don't know how to, get yourself with someone who has clarity, and learn.

Confusion is solved by getting honest about what your values really are, and getting your priorities of them clear and straight, and knowing under what circumstances you will re-order their hierarchy, even if only temporarily. To do this successfully you have to be ruthless about ignoring what you'd like them to be, what you think they might be, and what you wish they were, and look very critically at the evidence of your behaviour – what you actually do, and what you leave behind you for others to live with.

Distraction is solved by getting better at focusing your attention. There's only one way to do that – exercise directing you attention with intention – on purpose. Since we know from quantum physics that nothing exists until you give your attention to it, and that your attention energises whatever you give it to, I cannot over-emphasise the importance of where you focus your awareness. As I learned from a painful accident I had while learning to ride a bike -- keep your eye on where you want to go, not where you DON'T want to end up; and another I learned while train-hopping through Europe – travel light.

Disorganisation is solved by throwing out non-essentials and tending to the important things first and foremost. There's only one way to do that – practise it. Don't wait for spring or new-year to do a stocktake; make them a daily eaxercise, and ruthlessly throw out anything or any one that has passed its use-by date. It may feel hard at first, but you'll soon be rewarded by the awareness of lightening-ness in your being.

Remember that we are talking about your inner life, so achieving clarity isn't the same as clearing out your house and straightening out every room. You can have a very busy and complex life going on and also be clear about it. The solution to lack of clear-seeing doesn't lie in attacking the problem directly. Try that and mind will resist you. It will not take what you call “Trash” and delete it: what suddenly becomes trash to you will still be “treasure” to the mind. Mind will hide it from you, and use it later to get back at you, either by sabotaging you just when you think you've made progress, or by bringing it back in the form of mental or physical dis-ease. Your mind is indispensable to you, but never be fooled into thinking it's your best friend. If there's a showdown between you and your mind, your mind will dispense with you, if it can – I really want you to be clear about that.

So, getting back to re-organising – If you became the kind of positive-thinking, mind-control efficiency expert that became so popular in the '90's, you could probably sort your thinking out in a more orderly, focused way. But the effort would be a strain, and the results are likely to be only temporary. Your mind is very good at saying “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Three bags full sir” to your face, but it's other face will whisper “I'll get you for this”. Believe me, you do not want your mind for an enemy. You promoted it as Ego to the CEO's chair, a job it cannot do, but a position it will no give up lightly. And you need your mind to look after the communications and intelligence centre, you really do. Far better is to keep your mind onside, busy doing what you want it to do, and find a way to let,encourage, train and empower it to become orderly, focused, and clear on its own. 

We've all been taught, one way or another, that the mind will run amok if it isn't watched and controlled. Like a child it is easily distracted; an undisciplined mind will run around in all directions. But few people have actually tested whether the mind's nature is so chaotic. What we call “chaotic” may be a very creative, non-linear way to sort out ideas, thoughts and perceptions that may have arrived on your doorstep randomly. An example of mind doing its irrational thing quite well is to watch it when we are “dreaming”. So many of our dreams, upon awakening, don't make much “sense” at all. But mind does know what it's doing. It works. And people who, for one set of circumstances or another, are deprived of the chance to let the mind dream, will become very ill indeed.

There is something else altogether going on here, and there are nearly as many theories about what that might be as there are dream therapists. We take for granted, looking at our own confusion, that it would be a struggle to turn inner chaos into something more orderly. But I've done enough time in the wilderness, recording and studying my dreams, that dreaming is one of the mind's ways of doing the sorting for us – on the night-shift while the rest of us is asleep.

Perhaps if I drop the term “disorganised”, since some of that is, as we've just seen, quite functional. If I use instead the terms “disturbed” or “perturbed” – “unsettled”. This is where the world's wisdom traditions offer a valuable secret. They teach that the deeply unsettled mind comes about through one thing only –- identifying with something or some way of being that we are NOT, thereby losing sight of who we really ARE, and at which level of integrity we are in relation to that.

Neither you nor I can be a puppet of outside demands and pressures unless we see ourself as secondary, while the world "out there" is primary. After all, reason tells us, how can you eat, put a roof over your head, raise a family, and so on without plunging into the hard realities of daily existence? Well, I suggest that we can – by getting involved with the hurly-burly of the world “out there”, but not identifying with it. By engaging with the challenges, but not making or taking them personally we free-up ourselves. There is great freedom, agility and power in this one simple secret – Don't take it personally.

It also helps to know at what level of Need your current challenges are coming at you, and to meet each of them at that level, according to the rules of that level. Are your challenges biological/physiological, basic safety or survival, or are they social, or related to poor self-esteem or are they matters for a deficiency of self actualisation?

• Biological and Physiological needs include air, nourishing food and drink, shelter, warmth, sex and sleep.
• Safety needs include protection from the elements, security. stability, order, law, and freedom from fear.
• Social needs include friendship, intimacy, affection and love from family, friends, groups, romantic relationships.
• Esteem needs include experiences of achievement, a sense of mastery, awareness of independence and choices, a sense of place in the order of things, prestige, self-respect and respect from others.
• Self-Actualisation needs include experiences of realising personal potential, experiences of self-fulfilment, the experience of personal growth, and a few peak experiences to put a cherry or two on top.

Maslow himself summarised his theory – 'It is quite true that man lives by bread alone — when there is no bread. But what happens to man’s desires when there is plenty of bread and when his belly is chronically filled?At once other (and “higher”) needs emerge and these, rather than physiological hungers, dominate the organism. And when these in turn are satisfied, again new (and still “higher”) needs emerge and so on. This is what we mean by saying that the basic human needs are organised into a hierarchy of relative prepotency' (Maslow, 1943, p. 375).

In the light of all this, look at what's in your face now. If you're going through a major trauma like grief, divorce, loss of a job or geographical relocation, you'll probably find yourself being bounced around by a complex set of mini-challenges to different levels of need. You can find yourself feeling overwhelmed by the scale and the number of them. Yes?

Take some time out to tease out the knot of problems and sort each separate strand onto a shelf-level that feels appropriate. Don't get hung up on whether you get this sorting process “right” – trust your judgment. There can be no “wrong” choices here. What's more important is that you make a conscious choice. Decide at which level each need demands to be met. Then prioritise according to the hierarchy I've just given you. Again, there are no right or wrong choices in which position you place things on your hierarchy – hierarchies change anyway – continually; it's the act of making a choice that helps you see more clearly what once seemed an impenetrable knot. And in the seeing there is movement.

You'll soon realise for yourself that you have to settle lower-level, basic needs like food, shelter and safety before you start working on your social skills, self esteem and attending to getting the most out of life. Only when each level of needs has been deliberately and demonstrably satisfied can you effectively move on to higher vibrational-frequency levels. In the meantime, don't worry about the peak level of self-actualisation because as you consciously and intent-fully deal with the lower levels, higher aspirations will automatically start to fall into place, too, all by themselves.

There's a cosmic joke that you already are what you're looking for; you just haven't seen it yet. But working your way up each rung of the ladder of more basic needs will help you real-ise those ultimate questions -- Who am I? What's my purpose etc? You'll probably find you really are, and have been all along, a conscious agent who is free to choose at any time which level of being to operate from that may be most appropriate to the moment. What has happened up to this point is that, in the absence of your making conscious choices, your ego has determined default choices for you in your absence. That's why you've been getting the same results, over and over again.

While you're doing this groundwork, do take time out each day – even if only for 10 minutes – to reflect quietly on the wider picture of what you're doing, how far you've come, and where you'd like to get to. I do this every night on retiring, giving my subconscious all night then to work out the details. By committing to a practice of meditation, you take your mind to a level where daytime clarity will become natural and effortless.

Perhaps the analogy of a river will help to show what happens.  On the surface a river can be fast-flowing and whipped up into waves and eddies. As you descend into it, however, the river's flow becomes slow and steady, and at the very bottom, the water may be so calm that it hardly moves at all. In the same way, there's a level of emotional and mental consciousness that knows only peace, calmness, and clarity. But unlike a river bottom, it's not sluggish. There is an exquisite balance between relaxation and alertness. 

A settled, alert mind, in fact, is the most capable of meeting the day's demands because it is guided from within. Self-awareness permeates every aspect of your being, and when you pay attention to it you know where and who you are in any given moment and, grounded in that knowing, you are clear about where you're going. Suddenly it turns out that the day contains enough time for you to experience gratitude and feel fulfillment, which is a timeless way of being, undisturbed by demands, duties, and distractions.  

A meditative way of being also leads to changes in your daily life that can be summarised as things you naturally do and things you just don't do any more.....

YOU DO

• Make your surroundings orderly and uncluttered.
• Take a close look at stresses that need to be addressed.
• Identify and engage with influences that work for you.
• Find a friend or confidante who shares you vision of clarity and fulfillment.
• Take a moment to Centre yourself several times a day, and additionally whenever you feel distracted or unsettled.
• Go outside to soak in the calm and inspiration of Nature.
• Follow a regular daily routine, without being enslaved to it.
• Get eight hours of good sleep every night.
• Eat and exercise healthily.
• Hold Balance and Possibility as sacred.
• Surround yourself with playmates and life-lovers. 

YOU DON'T

• Remain in situations that turn disordered and stressful.
• Push your work time to the limit of exhaustion, mental or physical.
• Get tied down by other people's opinions and attitudes.
• Let stress go unaddressed.
• Act while under the pump.
• Let a good night's sleep slip by more than once or twice a week.
• Immerse yourself in bad news and the world's chaotic unrest.
• Ignore your body's signals – be aware of when it wants rest, nourishment, down time, and a chance to reset itself through meditation and quiet time alone.
• Forget to provide yourself with pure food, water, and air, restful and comfortable shelter. 

What these lists suggest is that as your inner world becomes more orderly and clear, your actions in the outer world follow suit. If they don't, look inside again – you've missed something. Both sides of every equation are important. Life is a Balancing Game. Just remember that without inner clarity, all the external neatness and organisation won't serve as a substitute; it will merely be a temporary cover-up. Inner fulfillment is the goal of life, and spreading fulfillment around is it s purpose.

It has always been thus.