Fear of Clarity (a repost inspired by Don Kern)

We are always the path, the trees, the sky, the beginning and end of each journey.

Art Chickering wrote that college students change--that they "become independent; but it is the independence of a hog on ice. He is on slippery new territory and without familiar footholds; he responds with wild thrashing or bewildered and anxious immobility...There is conspicuous lack of coordination and little observable progress in any direction. Autonomy, the independence of maturity, is quite different. It is secure and stable; coping behaviors are well coordinated to personal and social ends. This kind of maturity requires both emotional and instrumental independence, and recognition of one's interdependencies."

Abram Maslow, the remarkable humanistic psychologist also wrote about the fear of clarity: "If you plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities. Not only are we ambivalent about our own highest possibilities, we are also in a perpetual and I think universal--perhaps even necessary--conflict and ambivalence over these same highest possibilities in other people, and in human nature in general."

Enlightenment requires us to create space between the gravity of the illusory physical world and the opportunity to transcend into the infinity of each moment. We might strive to conceptualize ourselves as both cloud and sky. The cloud representing our innate ability to be all and the sky representing the infinity of our centeredness. Can any cloud completely disappear? Dissipate? Whether heavy with precipitation or virtually invisible in its light mist, the clouds are there...just as the sun rises each morning whether we can see it or not.

Clarity, however, can be intimidating. Fear or insecurity of our interdependence in the world, the contrast between our personal perceptions of abilities and the tasks handed to us, or the stark reality of our lives can each encourage us to maintain a life of status quo, mediocrity, and passivity.

The Buddha was said to have said, "An undeveloped mind leads to great harm." How will you develop your mind today? What awareness will you allow? What interdependence will you embrace? What lesson will you allow yourself to embrace?