The word “confusion” is prone to ambiguity on account of its having to serve as the nominal form of both the active and passive voices of the verb “to confuse” and therefore doing double duty as both a noun of action and a noun of state: “the act of confusing/confounding [one thing with another]” and “the state of being confused”. Thus:
Active nominal
Smith: Watch out, there’s a snake!
Jones: It’s not a snake; it’s a rope. The dim light is the source of your confusion [of a rope for a snake].
Passive nominal
Smith: I’m agitated, perturbed and scarcely know what to think.
Jones: Studying modern physics is the source of your confusion.
And so when we consider the phrase “Here is the source of your confusion...” shorn of any particular context, two quite different construals should offer themselves for consideration:
1. This is the cause of the [objective and publicly demonstrable] fact that you have mistaken one thing for another.
2. This is the cause of [what I suppose to be] your confused state of mind.
When used in the first sense the phrase is an assertion about an observable state of affairs. It makes no claim about the other person’s state of mind.
I think, L.N., that if you go back and re-read the earlier thread that prompted this thread, you will find that Sam Vara was in fact using “confusion” in its first sense, corresponding to definition 9.9 in the Oxford Dictionary:
Then the cause of the ensuing contretemps was your assumption that Sam Vara meant “confusion” in the sense of definition 3.3 ...Confusion 9.9 wrote:The confounding or mistaking of one for another; failure to distinguish. Const. of (things), of one with another, between (things).
... coupled with an obstinate persistence in this error even after multiple clarifications and corrections had been patiently presented to you.Confusion 3.3 wrote:Mental perturbation or agitation such as prevents the full command of the faculties; embarrassment, perplexity, fluttered condition.