Imagine all humans plotted across a spectrum of information sources that feed into their decisions. On the left end of the spectrum, are humans driven by internal information sources i.e. gut. On the right end are humans driven by external information sources i.e. data. The left end is susceptible to confirmation bias and an underdeveloped gut. The right end is susceptible to misery that arises from not listening to one’s gut. A colloquial way of describing this is deciding with your brain vs heart.

Somewhere in between lies aligned decision making.

Both sets of information sources — internal and external are noisy in nature. Conflicted decision making happens due to misalignment between these sources of information.

One can and should work on improving noise cancellation. Internal information gathering can be improved via building a stronger connection with one’s gut. As you get closer to your gut, your mental mapping of nature of external situations and emotions that they trigger improves and you are better able to predict how you’ll react. External information gathering can be aided by active listening, asking good questions, saying yes to new experiences, tracking subconscious biases. Each of these strategies seem to complement and strengthen each other. In my experience, meditation has aided stronger relationship with my gut, active listening, quality of my questions and tracking of subconscious biases. Saying yes to new experiences is born out of an innate curiosity and a desire to make optimum use of time. I don’t know where the innate curiosity comes from. I know that the desire to make optimum use of time is heightened due to a feeling of having lost my 20s to suboptimal experiences combined with a tendency to check out in anything that doesn’t capture my attention. Back from the introspective detour onto the ideas.

There’s this idea of universal wisdom, Truth, universal consciousness that’s commonly found in spiritual literature. For my non-spiritual friends, the hypothesis seems to be that meditation allows us to connect to the universal consciousness and act in a manner that the universe wants us to.

What follows is something I wonder. Assume every statement prefixed with a ‘perhaps’.

When you have successfully removed all noise from the internal and external sources of information, the core signal in both sources will be the same. That core signal is what is referred to as universal wisdom. That will lead to mental ease and fully aligned decisions. Phrases like ‘when the time is right, you will know it’ allude to this alignment that each of us experiences every now and then. Poor timing arises out of misalignment. Struggle is born out of misalignment. The aligned state is the flow state. Imagine a life immersed in flow state. Oh, the possibilities!

(ideas on alignment inspired by a conversation with Rebecca, terminology inspired by my Electrical Engineering education)