What is Discernment?

Discernment is a tool. You don’t remember learning how to use discernment because you were born with it. You use it to distinguish light from dark, resonance from discord, balance from imbalance, that point where your knowledge and instincts intersect. You take all the information you have about a given topic, add to that everything you can learn from available sources, then filter it through your logical mind, doing your best to avoid bias or judgment. While you may not always be aware of this process, you use it on a daily basis to create every moment of your experience.

What we are suggesting here is that as you become fully conscious of this process of discernment, you can then use this awareness to more deeply appreciate your magnificence. We assure you that making choices based on your sacred essence will lead to more loving behavior.

Discernment is not only your birthright, it is an inextricable part of your Divinity. You were born with a finely tuned sense of natural knowing, or instinctual awareness, honed over millions of years of evolution. Instincts allowed you to suckle, to swallow, and to cry for help. Your instincts served you well then, or you wouldn’t be here now.

However, your natural knowing, what we call discernment, soon bumps up against your experiences of living in the world. One example would be, when you were an infant, feeling hungry at an inconvenient time for your caregiver to feed you. Under such circumstances, it wouldn’t take long to begin discounting your discernment and creating stories to explain, justify or rationalize this discontinuity.

Of course, the complete focus of your world at that point was to make sure your needs were met. It was all about you. You were the center of your universe. As you grew, you developed certain expectations, such as whether you would be fed when you were hungry, based on experience. These expectations became the stories you told yourself about how the world worked, and were often easier to accept than your discernment.

Relying on your stories instead of your consciousness became a habit, a de facto auto-pilot approach to life. For example, if you were hungry and no food was readily available, you probably soon discovered ways to distract yourself from your hunger. Instead of trusting your intuition, or discernment, you became a master at avoiding it altogether. In this light, drugs and alcohol can be seen as reliable ways to numb out.

These early experiences initiate your feeling of separation from your higher self. When you really look into a newborn’s eyes, you will see its soul shining with great clarity. This pure awareness is the nature of the higher self. Its light sparkles unquenchably from the body’s first breath to its last. Your higher self is unchanging, unceasing, immortal and drenched in unconditional love. It is your essence, who you really are.