Spiritual Reliance: Freedom from Mental Confusion

Listening is the first step.

Confusion is the result of our limited perspective attempting to process unlimited variables and unknowns through the computer of our brains.

For me, confusion is, not enough information, as in, not yet time, as in, wait and see, as in, do not yet proceed. Get quiet, very quiet. Ask a Higher Source from a greater vantage point, one that knows the heart and situations of the many on whom, from time to time, my next decision is dependent.

Not knowing is not the problem. Patience is.

Slow down. No, really, go the speed of the sun.

I remember years ago meeting a Tahoe local who slept on the beach. It was fall, he didn’t have much to do or own anything but he was happy.

”Zonia?”
”Yes?”
”Have you ever watched the leaves change colors?”

I looked at him, “Of course!” My mind twirled around images of all the seasons and remembered many a red and gold tree.

He smiled wide taking in a fellow nature lover. He pointed at a tree next to us, “I watched that one change yesterday.”

I paused, looked and laughed in appreciation. No, I thought then (but have since, yes) I have never watched a tree change color. I told him this with a new understanding of his question.

He smiled with a twinkly in his eye, “It was green in the morning but I noticed the edges turning yellow, so I stopped and watched it.”

That day that aspen was red and yellow.

”Really?! In one day?”

”In one day.”

Didn't seem true but since then, yes, in one day.

What do we give attention to in one day? One question? One situation?

The asking comes first. The listening takes time. The answer comes when we realize in our swirling minds, we are confused because we don’t have the answer.

What is the answer? Depends on the question.

How will you know when it comes? In the quiet a knowing will arise that you didn’t have before and it wasn’t in google which is driven by our minds, created by a mind. Databases only contain what is known and a mind can only seek what it can conceive.

It will come. The answer. But you have to listen and wait for it. How will you know? It will arise out of the quiet, the thing you didn’t think of before and it will feel like dawn’s first light, peace will descend in contented smiles and if it didn’t, at least the nonanswers will fall away into the quietude of observation.

Zen simplicity. Appreciation for what is. A knowing that everything has its seasons and cycles and the spaces between points us to where all the beauty is.