“A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction
is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please,
or worse, to avoid trouble…”
– Mahatma Gandhi
Discernment is one of those words that has its own innate intelligence and power. At its root, it means to separate and distinguish….but this definition barely scratches the surface of what it means to discern.
It was Pamela Wilson who first taught me the real meaning of discernment and she did so, not by defining it or speaking about it, but by gifting me with a visceral feeling of it. It is a feeling and a knowing that comes from the depths of the stomach and carries the strength of forty elephants.
Let’s hear what a few of the “experts” have to say on discernment:
Discern means to detect with the senses.
Discern can be easily learnt by associating it with word concern, as the second half of both the words .i.e. cern is the same, hence giving both the words same sound to some extent. Further, if you have a concern to discern someone’s motives for someone else’s good then you have learnt the word with quite an ease.
Discernment is not the same as decision making. Reaching a decision can be straightforward: we consider our goals and options; maybe we list the pros and cons of each possible choice; and then we choose the action that meets our goal most effectively. Discernment, on the other hand, is about listening and responding to that place within us where our deepest desires align with God’s desire. As discerning people, we sift through our impulses, motives, and options to discover which ones lead us closer to divine love and compassion for ourselves and other people and which ones lead us further away.
- Richard Rohr
Judgement says “this is good, that is bad”, “I am right, they are wrong”, “I am awakened, they are not”, and so on, ad infinitum. It separates and divides, and it is the origin of all conflict and violence.
Discernment simply knows what hurts and what doesn’t, and moves intelligently and spontaneously to resolve things without resorting to violence or name-calling, and without the need to be told what is right and what is wrong.
Where does discernment end and judgement begin? That is the fascinating exploration for all of us.
- Jeff Foster
Discerning Right Action
Everyone has a dark acre between their days and the Source, not dark as in evil or forbidding, but dark in the way that the canopy of a forest filters out light. Crossing this acre is knowing who you are.
Another way to speak of this crossing is what the Hindus call parting the veil of illusion. In hinduism, Maya is the goddess of illusion. The word maya means illusion. It is believed that anything added to reality, to the truth of things as they are, is illusion. This veiling power of illusion creates the ignorance of the individual self that thinks it is separate from the rest of life.
We can look at the world through the veils of illusion, with all its possessiveness and isolation, as the prevailing story of conflict across time. And we can look at the interrelated unity of all life that waits beneath our illusions as the perennial, transforming story of spirit and love.
If we think of illusion as a persistent fog, what do we do when we encounter fog?
The first thing is to stand still till we can get our bearings. We try then to discern if the fog is temporary or something we have to live with. If permanent, do we live with it or live somewhere else?
The pilgrimage of living with things as they are, changing what is, or starting over is at the heart of humility and a Beginner’s Mind. When the fog of illusion is localized, the practice of serenity outwaits the clouds , while the practice of love and compassion burns off the fog. But when the fog is a cloud in our eye, or mind, or heart, then we must remake how we see, how we think, and how we feel. We must be born anew through a process of self-transformation. This has never been something that can be taught. We can only believe in an unclouded life and keep each other company along the foggy way.
- Mark Nepo
Parting the Veils
So many clouds
between me and you.
So much smoke
between me and the answer
of what I’m to do.
Decisions to make.
Opinions to sort.
Actions to take.
Wanting clarity, wanting ease.
Yet, the harder I try
the heavier the fog.
And then I laugh, once again
at my attempts to “right” my way to the other side
at my unwillingness to simply stand in the fog
and let it permeate all my senses
without judgement, without an agenda.
I finally surrender
and see the illusion for what it is
and from a very different Source than before
I am able, in this moment,
to discern right action.
- Patti Wardlaw
The Smoky Mirror
Three thousand years ago, there was a human just like you and me who lived near a city surrounded by mountains. The human was studying to become a medicine man, to learn the knowledge of his ancestors, but he didn’t completely agree with everything he was learning. In his heart, he felt there must be something more.
One day, as he slept in a cave, he dreamed that he saw his own body sleeping. He came out of the cave on the night of a new moon. The sky was clear, and he could see millions of stars. Then something happened inside of him that transformed his life forever. He looked at his hands, he felt his body, and he heard his own voice say, “I am made of light; I am made of stars.”
He looked at the stars again, and he realized that it’s not the stars that create light, but rather light that creates the stars. “Everything is made of light,” he said, “and the space in-between isn’t empty.” And he knew that everything that exists is one living being, and that light is the messenger of life, because it is alive and contains all information.
Then he realized that although he was made of stars, he was not those stars. “I am in-between the stars,” he thought. So he called the stars the tonal and the light between the stars the nagual, and he knew that what created the harmony and space between the two is Life or Intent. Without life, the tonal and the nagual could not exist. Life is the force of the absolute, the supreme, the Creator who creates everything.
This is what he discovered: Everything in existence is a manifestation of the one living being we call God. Everything is God. And he came to the conclusion that human perception is merely light perceiving light. He also saw that matter is a mirror – everything is a mirror that reflects light and creates images of that light – and the world of illusion, the Dream, is just like smoke which doesn’t allow us to see what we really are. “The real us is pure love, pure light, “ he said.
This realization changed his life. Once he knew what he really was, he looked around at other humans and the rest of nature, and he was amazed at what he saw. He saw himself in everything – in every human, in every animal, in every tree, in the water, in the rain, in the clouds, in the earth. And he saw that Life mixed the tonal and the nagual in different ways to create billions of manifestations of Life.
In those few moments he comprehended everything. He was very excited, and his heart was filled with peace. He could hardly wait to tell his people what he had discovered. But there were no words to explain it. He tried to tell the others, but they could not understand. They could see that he had changed, that something beautiful was radiating from his eyes and his voice. They noticed that he no longer had judgement about anything or anyone. He was no longer like anyone else.
He could understand everyone very well, but no one could understand him. They believed that he was an incarnation of God, and he smiled when he heard this and he said, “It is true. I am God. But you are also God. We are the same, you and I. We are images of light. We are God.” But still the people didn’t understand him.
He had discovered that he was a mirror for the rest of the people, a mirror in which he could see himself. “Everyone is a mirror, “ he said. He saw himself in everyone, but nobody saw him as themself.
And he realized that everyone was dreaming, but without awareness, without knowing what they really are. They couldn’t see him as themselves because there was a wall of fog or smoke between the mirrors. And that wall of fog was made by the interpretation of images of light – the Dream of humans.
Then he knew that he would soon forget all that he had learned. He wanted to remember all the visions that he had had, so he decided to call himself the Smoky Mirror so that he would always know that matter is a mirror and the smoke in-between is what keeps us from knowing what we are. He said, “I am the Smokey Mirror, because I am looking at myself in all of you, but we don’t recognize each other because of the smoke in-between us. That smoke is the Dream, the mirror is you, the dreamer.”
- Don Miguel Ruiz, “The Four Agreements”