Conditioned thinking is often marked by an underlying sense of anxiety, and is based on the perception of separation. Clear thinking and awakened awareness seem inaccessible while you are in a state of anxiety, which separates you from others and from your true nature. There are certain techniques that can help you to relax to alleviate anxiety, however, awakened awareness can dispel anxiety instantaneously.
It can happen through spiritual practice or grace. You can't do anything to receive grace however spiritual practice is always available, as long as you are prepared to bring your attention to it, by meditating, chanting, reading, contemplating, doing yoga, or simply associating with people who are interested in awakening, or who are awakened.
Anxiety is caused by conditioned thinking, which is persistent, and will always seek to solve problems in conditioned ways. Consequently anxiety often makes circumstances appear as problems. This is a subtle point because painful things can and do happen through no obvious fault of your own, nevertheless those same painful circumstances need not become ongoing problems.
The cycles of conditioned thoughts and responses must fall away, at least momentarily, in order to gain this insight. Circumstances are not happening to you, but you, in addition to the habituated perception of yourself, are an inseparable part of transient circumstances. In other words, the totality is you.
Your reaction to circumstances gives you the impression that you are separate, however those very thoughts, emotions, and feelings are completely and utterly dependent on that to which they react, and this difference, this apparent separation, is what gives you the sense of individual existence. Your attention being caught up in the situation and the thoughts and feelings about it can never fully resolve the problem, because eternal transformation has no finality. The mind always needs more information, at least until it is distracted by a new situation, at which time the pattern of seeking information and problem solving will repeat itself with essentially the same form, albeit with different details.
To notice this is a matter of subtle observation rather than complex analysis. In this context complexity is a distraction. As long as your attention is drawn into the details of a given situation then your attention is unavailable to explore who or what is really experiencing all this.
You assume that what you experience is what it really seems to be, because your experience confirms your deepest beliefs. Reality is not only a projection of yourself but an integral part of yourself. Your local self, namely your physical body and the awareness of your thoughts, has a limited sensibility that is numb to the rest of you. And the rest of you is whatever you believe is not you. The saying 'what goes around comes around' is more meaningful when you understand this. If you harm a part of your own body which is numb then you will eventually feel the effects when the numbness wears off, and your whole body is awakened to its senses.
When you have compassion for others, you have compassion for yourself. When you do no harm to others, you do no harm to yourself. When you love others, you love yourself. Spiritual awakening is the dissolution of separation and the end of anxiety.