A confused mind cannot find clarity
A confused mind seeking clarity will only further confuse itself, because a confused mind can't find clarity. It's confused; what can it do? Any search on its part will only lead to further confusion. I think we don't realize that. When it's confused, one has to stop, stop pursuing any activity. And the very stopping is the beginning of the new, which is the most positive action, positive in a different sense altogether. All this implies that there must be profound self-knowing: to know the whole structure of one's thinking-feeling, the motives, the fears, the anxieties, the guilt, the despair. To know the whole content of one's mind, one has to be aware, aware in the sense of observing, not with resistance or with condemnation, not with approval or disapproval, not with pleasure or nonpleasure, just observing. That observation is the negation of the psychological structure of a society which says, 'You must, you must not.' Therefore, self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, and also, self-knowledge is the beginning and the ending of sorrow. Self-knowing is not to be bought in a book, or by going to a psychologist and being examined analytically. Self-knowledge is actually understanding what is in oneself: the pains, the anxieties, seeing them without any distortion. Out of this awareness clarity comes into being.
Krishnamurti_ Collected Works, Vol. XVII,21,Choiceless Awareness
