Are We Confused About Confusion Itself?

Mankind is forever asking: “Am I doing the right thing?” Even in dreams he seeks and analyses, ever trying to ascertain the right course of action. She lies sleepless ruminating about what is meaningful and what is meaningless: in the past, in the present and in the future. He wonders whether the past and future are real or whether the past really was as he remembers it, or if tomorrow will fulfil his hopes or prove his fears right.

She is never fully convinced of anything, her mind ever seeking. Even in content moments this elusive peace does not last for long. Onto the next thought, the next craving, the next moment and sensed perception of feeling. What felt right last year may now be reflected on as foolish. What one was so sure of before has lost its certainty or has even been lost from conscious memory.

His mind never stops searching for something solid: Am I clever or silly? Do people really like me? Do I really like them? Will my life turn out as I want? Did I live my life in the right way? How long will I live… and what happens when I die? Will I be missed, will I be remembered, will I go to heaven, reincarnate or will it all just become dark? Does any of this life matter, do I even matter?

Her wondering can be summed up as: Who am I really? How did I get here, what should I do in this place and where will I end up? 

She is confused because she is not what she thinks she is. And, despite being told otherwise, deep down she knows she is not who she has been taught to think she is. This is the cycle and cause of his confusion.

It is not the world that is confusing, and you are not actually confused. You are actually seeing truth. You call it confusion because you expect reality to be different from what it is. You expect the distorting human perception to become clear. Though, by dropping the conditioned mind you naturally come into the state of knowing, you come into harmony with the experience of knowing that clarity is indeed permeating the swirling world of unpredictable phenomena. That clarity is your observing consciousness.

Why the confusion? You have an instinctive and inescapable knowledge that your true essence is pure, unchanging ultimate consciousness. That is your subtlest and most powerful sense of “I”. But you are told to believe you are this timebound person in this beautiful dying world. Because you believe that, you will, with your innate but subconscious surety of being complete and eternal, go hunting out there in the world, for the one thing that will make you experience this fully. You are looking for the thing that makes you experience this completeness that you already feel inside, but that you deny because it is beyond the grasp of the mind. This thing you think you have to go looking for has innumerable forms, it could be a job, a sandwich, a partner, a house, a dog, a pair of new shoes, a community, or to break away from community. But you can’t find any one thing that gives you a lasting experience of fullness and completeness. In fact, you will never find it out there.

But everyone told you to go looking for it. Right? And you do feel that it is possible to experience this oneness, this love, this sense of achievement or value.

You consciously want it. You unconsciously are it.

Confused, you say: then let’s move to another place, let’s change our diet—maybe fasting will clear my body so that my mind will quiet, and I can hear better my soul, let’s get a bigger TV, no let’s stop watching Netflix, let’s get divorced, no sorry I did not mean that, please forgive my confusion. I can’t live without you, though I need so very much to be able to be alone without explaining without questioning, without any human responsiveness, sometimes…just sometimes, but oh so confused, how could I ask that of anyone. Let’s join a gym, I mean a church, a cult, how about a swinger’s club. Let’s really commit ourselves. Just do it! Phew, I need a break. Oh my god, none of this gives me what I was looking for. Do Something! I can’t stand this baffling sense of being whole and also being fragmented, cut of, incomplete. It is so confusing! I can’t stand it!

Take a breath… take a deep breath. Stop.

Our confusion is just a result of unrealistic expectations based on ignorance of what we truly are.

Our doubt about what is true and real, our doubt about our thoughts and actions are a sign that they are not to be trusted or taken as inherently real. What to do then?

Turn instead towards our true nature of pure being. Put your trust there and then observe the phenomenon of our world without the inner sense of incompleteness and insatiable hunger for worldly fulfilment.

You may see that this confusion, this disappointment about the world is not really a problem. It is an indication of your real nature which is beyond confusion. It is a pointer to the doubtless state. You don’t like the confusion simply because it contradicts the truth of who you are. You don’t like the confusion because it is not real; there is no sure knowledge to have about this unstable world. Actually, expecting that you should attain indisputable facts, unquestionable truths and measurable knowledge within the world of changing phenomena, that these truths will finally quench your thirst for peace, freedom and bliss, is the very cause of our suffering. And still, you expect the world to make sense, to give you what you want, and you always think you need more because you don’t know who you truly are. Understand that you are already the thing that makes sense, you are the wholeness, the love, the clarity, the undying life.

All this is beyond the grasp of the tiny world mind, nonetheless it is there in you. It is you.

You are that which you long for, it is so close that there is no split, no crack between you and it. You have never been this perishing individual that consciousness, for a moment’s playfulness, has perched in lightly.

You are already free.

Kaare Troelsen- Vijay Shyam

April 2021