Not only do we have intuition to help us to figure out the paths of our lives, but we also have discernment. Discernment is the capacity to use what is observed in behavior, the environment, subtle body language, the inflection and tones of voice, rhythm of speech, and eye contact, and it is used to decide on what is going on in a given dynamic. Discernment uses observation to inform the psyche about the truth.
Because discernment uses the tool of observation, it is less subtle than intuition, but it can be just as powerful. And of course they are doubly powerful when used in combination. Discernment requires that we pay attention to what is going on around us and inside of us simultaneously. This means that we will note what is going on in the external world and simultaneously note how what we have observed is making us feel. Do we feel peaceful, alive and responsive to what we have observed? Or do we feel cut off, disrespected, or wounded? It is only by using the external observation accompanied by internal observation that we can truly call it discernment. But discernment also requires that we not go into denial about what we see and what we hear, what we sense and what we feel.
Sally’s Discernment
Sally has a first date with Danny. He is so good looking that it takes her breath away. She can hardly believe that he has asked her out. So when they go on their first date, she is almost beside herself with hope that he will be as attracted to her as she is to him. She’s had a crush on him for years. They go out to dinner together and he is the perfect gentlemen. Holds doors for her, holds her chair until she is seated. But then, when the waitress comes to serve them, he begins to flirt with the waitress. Sally watches this happen. She listens to his words and pays attention to his body language. But at first she just thinks he’s being a little playful and that his flirtations with the waitress are a fun way of being playful with his date. He looks back at Sally every time he says something flirtatious with the waitress—as if he’s looking to her for approval of his playfulness.
But the dalliance continues throughout the night. Sally starts to notice that this is making her a little nauseated. Her body is now reacting. So she pays attention to that now. She notices that she is very anxious and disturbed on a fundamental level by his flirtations. She’s more than jealous; there is really something wrong here. She decides that instead of putting aside these observations, which she would very much like to do, she is going to pay attention to them. So she leans back in her chair and just really starts observing his body language, his voice tone, what his eyes are telling her, and what he says to her.
She begins to suspect, through her intuition, that he is interested in both the waitress and her. But could that really be true? What the heck is going on? So finally she just decides to ask him: “Why are you flirting with the waitress?” He says, “Well, three is always better than two, don’t you think?” She thinks that she knows what he means, but rather than guess, she decides to ask, “So, does that mean you are hoping for some kind of threesome tonight?” He says, “How would you feel about that?” She says, “I feel that if I’d known that’s what you wanted when you first asked me out, I’d never have gone out with you.” Sally now knows all she needs to know to make her decision. She’s not interested in a threesome; she tells him that and hails a cab home.
Sally has just saved herself a lot of trouble. She not only paid attention to what was going on, but she stopped herself from going into denial about it. She stopped herself from going into denial and paid attention to how she was feeling both emotionally and physically. These feelings informed her of how disturbed she was about what she saw unfolding before her eyes. She listened to her intuitive responses. Not only has Sally paid attention to the observations of her internal reactions and intuition, but she investigated these responses further by asking the right questions so that she could make her decision. This is discernment at its finest.
Discernment Doesn’t Play Nice
Sally could have decided to play nice. She could have decided that she really wanted this guy to like her, so that she should just ignore it, laugh it off, or otherwise refuse to see. She could have gone home with him and forced herself to play nice by performing sex acts she was extremely uncomfortable performing. She could have created a real mess for herself to have to later emotionally wade through.
If she had a good-guy identity, she probably would have done at least some of these things. The good guy can be misled by cons of all sorts. The good guy often does not use discernment. She is nice. She is good. She is uncertain of where she should stand because she’s always measuring what others want of her. Her uncertainty could even come into play when she is being asked to do something she might otherwise find to be immoral. When a good guy is thrown into a situation, which she considers or fears others would consider to be immoral, her guilt over being what she perceives to be unkind to the person comes up to judge her. She has two issues in play now, the perceived unkindness and the issue she thinks is immoral. She may eventually land on the side of saying no to what she considers to be an immoral act, but it may be a struggle for her to get there. And she could get herself into difficult situations while she’s trying to decide.
Discernment Is Not Moral Judgment
That said, discernment is not the same as moral judgment. Many people get the two mixed up. In particular, the good guy often refuses to use discernment because he thinks that he will be judging. But as we can see in the case above, Sally did not judge Danny’s behavior or his choice to be in a ménage à trois. She just decided what she wanted and what she didn’t want. She did tell him if he’d been up front from the beginning about what he wanted she never would have gone, but this is simply her truth. She feels duped, and it is within her rights to tell him that she wishes he’d been straight up with her. In fact, her honesty allows Danny the opportunity to grow a little bit, too. He may not take that opportunity, but it has been offered.
Sally could have been very judgmental, indeed. She might have called him a few choice names that summed up what she thought of his character. She might have accused him of sleazy, sneaky behavior. She might have accused him of trickery. But she did none of those things. She simply made up her mind about how she was going to spend her evening. She did that by observing what was going on both outside of her and inside her. Then she informed him that she no longer wished to play and she left.
Isn’t It Rude?
Isn’t it rude to just leave like that? That’s a good good-guy question. Good guys are generally very concerned about not being rude. And they commonly fear that using discernment will make them into rude people. It is never rude to take care of yourself. Let me say that again: It is NEVER rude to take care of yourself. That’s all that Sally has done.
If Sally had screamed at Danny or called him choice names, one might consider this to be rude. But the only thing she did was find her truth and stick to it. She’s been tricked on her very first date by someone for whom she’d previously had a lot of respect. Not only has she been tricked, but she’s been tricked in some ways that her physical body reacted to with nausea. This means that the trickery is, to Sally, toxic in some way. Sally doesn’t need to label it wrong, immoral, or sinful to know it is toxic for her. So what Sally comes away knowing is that she doesn’t like being duped and she does not want toxic influences in her life. Period. She has taken good care of herself.
Sally didn’t bargain with the reality of what she observed. She didn’t, for example, wait for Danny to change his thinking so that she would never have to make a hard decision. That would have been waiting for Danny to take care of her instead of using her personal power to take care of herself.
When we want someone else to take care of us, we want to go back to the womb. We don’t want to have to stand up for ourselves as Sally stood up for herself. We want someone else to fix this for us. We don’t want to tell our partners that we’d love roses on a Saturday for no reason at all. We want them to just know. We don’t want to tell her that when she listens with rapt attention to what we are saying, we feel very loved. We want her to just know. We don’t want to tell the boss that we desperately need a raise; we want him to just know. We want to go back to the womb. Discernment knows that the time of the womb is really over and if I’m not taking care of me, the job has been vacated.
Discernment is a form of personal power that when tapped can create a pathway for us to manifest the authentic Self. The good-guy identity, on the other hand, tells us not to use discernment, for it might rock the boat, it might hurt someone’s feelings, it might mean that someone might not like us. The good-guy identity would tell Sally that she’s bad for even thinking suspicious thoughts about Danny, much less acting on them. Guilt would ignore her body sensations and her emotions in favor of taking care of Danny. But guilt is a liar. And the good-guy identity will trick, fool, and lie to us. Discernment tells us the truth, and it is the truth that sets us free.