Price Of Internal Clarity

What is having internal clarity, i.e. clarity of thought with regard to yourself?

Clarity. I define it as taking a step back and looking at your life on each major vertical of it (friendships and relationships, career, financial goals, etc.) and having a clear idea of what you want, your goal, and asking yourself:

• how far you are to that goal
• if you are moving towards the right direction.
  Or, being clear with yourself that on certain verticals you don't know what you want and you are okay with it. Or, you are okay with just knowing you are moving in the right direction. After all, in many aspects of like the journey is the goal.

Internal. I once wrote Meta Cognition Framework which nicely divides our thoughts into internal and external. Clarity of mind about oneself is clearly an internal thought.

Gaining clarity about external subjects can often be found through action: You research the subject, or ask around. It is intuitive in that there is something you don't know, and you find the answer by doing something. Taking some action.

Internal clarity is different, and while I believe some amount of action (e.g. journaling and research) is useful, it is not at all sufficient. Internal clarity, especially for the busy modern individual, requires inaction. It requires doing nothing, and letting the busy day-to-day mind calm down, only for you to then observe what has always been there, but buried under many layers of obfuscation.

Internal clarity often boils down to emotional questions to which we look for an answer. But it is not a math problem to be solved, but rather the answer is already written on a big bold plate ready to be understood, except it is invisible behind a thick layer of (mental) fog, and the only way to push that fog away is time and inaction.

This is why I am an advocate of the Vipassana meditation retreat, and I think anyone resonating with the above^[1] mindset should consider doing at least a 10 day course. 10 days is a small price to pay in return for finally seeing what is going on in your head.