Discernment
“There
is something in everyone of you that waits and listens for the sound
of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever
have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your
days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”
Howard
Thurman
Yesterday's session with
Barbara Brown Taylor was about discernment, which is the ability to
judge well, to have sharp perception, especially in the area of
morality. Included in discernment is the ability to tell right from
wrong, the ability to present yourself honestly, regardless of the
situation, the ability to tell the truth as you see it even when what
you say will cause you to lose something dear. All of these abilities
come from having a strong moral compass, and not only having one, but
following its guidance. Not all of us are willing to be discerning,
usually because we have an agenda that supersedes the dictates of our
conscience. And all of us have landed in situations in which our
hearts (not to mention our guts) screamed at us to make one decision,
while our head busily mulled the consequences of doing so.
The disconnect between
head and heart is something with which we always have to deal.
The choice lies smack in the middle of almost every decision we take.
The ego (head) wants what it wants, and is quite inventive in getting
what it wants. In fact, it is extra-good at justifying getting what
it wants even when its moral core (heart) knows that would be wrong.
The heart weighs and balances the ego's self-serving desires. While
we can override the heart's instructions, we cannot shake the
consequences—at least most of us can't—of offending our own moral
code. We feel guilt. If we do it enough, if it becomes a life-style,
we become paranoid about being caught out. And then we begin
constructing a whole existence that protects and denies whatever the
falsehood was to begin with. The end result in all of this is that we
lose track of our truth—we wake up one day a shell of a person and
wonder how we got so far off track.
This is not a judgment on
my part—I do it too. Every human does it (except maybe the Dalai
Lama, and there's only one of him). Some of us do it for a living!
I'm told it pays well. But if we want to change the way our world
works, if we want to change the direction we're headed, we have to
stop allowing our egos to guide us. Our culture wants us to cling to
the ego-driven part of us, the one that wants what it wants and is
willing to do almost anything to get it. It keeps us shopping and
consuming more and more. It keeps us dividing ourselves into to
waring parties and hating one another. The heart knows that we are
all the same, and that trying to get ahead of everyone else is simply
an endless hamster wheel of greed. Deep within each of us is a
serene, knowing, wise one. We have the choice in every decision we
make of listening to our wise one, or of continuing to allow someone
else to pull our strings. What is genuine in you? I wonder whether
you will follow it today. I wonder whether I will, too. Perhaps we
can support discernment in one another.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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