Inner clarity is more like water than stone. We wish for clarity in our lives to be as if it were carved out stone, but that is a false kind of clarity. The kind of clarity that will give us real calm and peace has the form of water.
Water is shapeless, transparent, changeable in form—so what about its form can provide us with a solid sense of confidence?
Just like water is changeable—my life is changeable, the situations and people I find myself change, my ideas about life will inevitably change, and the highs and lows of my life flux to and fro. Yet I find inner clarity wherever I am, beyond life’s many apparent forms, when I see myself as water shifting and adapting to my circumstance. Knowing this fills me with confidence and calmness in life deep within myself. I become as water flowing through life in the present, unstuck and free.
What happens when we see our lives as if it were carved out of stone? What I find is I project my current consciousness unto the past—and live with the regret “I should have known then what I know now.” I project my current consciousness unto the future—and live with the delusion “I ought to be what I want for my life today.” My present continually suffers as the omnipresent gulf between what I have now and what I should be having now. There becomes only one way to live, carved out in stone in all its should’s, ought’s, have to’s, and must’s.
What happens when we make the switch to envisioning our lives as if it were water? Take a moment to imagine. I imagine that every moment becomes full, like how water fills up whatever place it finds itself in. I imagine I embrace what the future may bring to me as I trust I can readily and flexibly adapt as water does, and that I flow with enthusiasm into my own future while I flow away from the pass smoothly and without attachment.
When I catch myself carving life out like a stone—I find that even allowing a switch to envision my life as water for a minute causes a shift in me that calms me and gives me confidence.
Yet water is not necessarily a passive energy. It yields to its environment, and thus flows energetically and vibrantly with life. It winds and bends with the river, yet it can also be full of passion and vigor as it flows through it. It shapes the riverbed as much as the riverbed shapes it. Water is a balance of assertive and passive energies, and in fact it cannot flow with its passion and vigor if it does not have its adaptability and flexibility.
And water can be solid, when it needs to be according to its environment, like we do when we need definition in our own lives. Water expands as air, when it needs to be according to its environment, like we do when we need to expand our horizons. But it is not tied to any one state of being like stone is, but cycles through states in accordance to need rather than stubbornness.
It is due to its many apparent forms, water is the most constant thing there is— its adaptability and resilience make it thrive regardless of condition. It is the only substance that can exist as solid, liquid, and gas under all normal Earthly conditions.
False clarity exists in constant outward form, but inner clarity is beyond form, lying deep beyond the surface in the characteristics of adaptability and resilience that water has. Therefore, I seek to be as water.
