What is the difference between judgment and discernment?
Fear and Love.
When fear gets our ear and we are hearing from our POV and then holding someone or some situation up to our human scrutiny or standards, then we judge to reinforce our own sense of safety, wellbeing or security.
What’s wrong with that, you might say? If I’m someone who is punctual and someone else is always late, why shouldn’t I hold them to my standards? My standards are right! They’re polite, considerate, and the norm!
Well, as someone who ran late her entire life until a few years ago, and felt the judgments of others — as well as myself — I can tell you, that judgment didn’t help me one bit. I KNEW that I should be on time. I KNEW that being late was crappy. People gave me all sorts of helpful advice — most of which sounded like judgment. The one that was the least helpful may even have been the most true: When you are late, you are disrespecting another person’s time.
Didn’t they think I KNEW that?!? That just made me feel worse about myself. And the worse I felt, the later I got.
I have friends who are struggling with various things — and I see what happens when others (including me) offer helpful suggestions about say, weight loss or health care or money. It just keeps them even more firmly entrenched right where they are. ESPECIALLY if they feel that the helpful friend might actually be right. Their friend’s oh-so-helpful “rightness” actually makes them feel more “wrong”. And that feeling of wrongness then syncs up with the feeling of wrongness already happening — the extra pounds, the health care choices, the debts incurred — and it become paralyzing.
It’s like pouring concrete in with a laxative and wondering why the person can’t poop!
My mother’s life lessons to me were excellent. Some of them have literally been lifesavers. Without what she taught me about creativity, ingenuity, innovation, inventiveness, discipline and mostly about spiritual practice, I wonder if I would be here today. But it took me a long time to see that, because so many of her lessons were fear based and judgmental. So I resisted them because, frankly, they made me feel bad a lot of the time. And as an adult, I had to work through a lot of crap about my mother to be able to feel the Truth and Love behind what she taught me.
My dad, however, taught through Love. And so I took in and easily remembered his lessons. I had little to no resistance to even the toughest ones. And even the few times when his own fear took over and something he said hurt or stung, he had the track record of Love behind him, and I was able to hear it with less resistance.
As I became an adult, I was often judgmental. And sometimes when I was — particularly about other people’s appearances — I could literally hear my mother’s voice coming out of my mouth! I even had a few friends say to me that they could see my mother in me. The thing is, my mother was usually right about anything to do with appearance. But it didn’t FEEL that way. It felt like judgment.
And so even now, when I look in the mirror and hate the wrinkled unattractive older woman looking back at me, it’s my mother’s judgmental voice I’m hearing and her eyes through which I see. And it still doesn’t feel good. Okay. It feels totally crappy!
When we feel unsafe, we build up systems of that make us feel safe and secure. We do this as nations. We do this as individuals. And then we place our sense of safety and security in those systems and judge anyone who does not adhere to those systems. We think that will make us feel safer and more secure. In fact, it just feeds the fear. And soon anyone who is not like us, who does not conform to our standards, makes us feel more afraid. And the effects of that? Well, we’re all living them.
So what is discernment? Discernment is listening to what our hearts say and then choosing how to respond from there. The basis of discernment is Love not fear — and from a place of Love we do not see someone or someplace or something else as the problem and our own systems as the solution. From the place of Love, we see ourselves as whole, as one, and then we listen for how to respond.
So, you might say, if you were held up at gunpoint, you’d try to come at the situation with Love? You’d try to discern the best solution and you wouldn’t judge someone as violent and evil and wrong?
Yes indeed. That’s exactly what I’m saying.
Now I’m not saying that my heart might not be beating out of its chest. I’m not saying that I might not feel fear. But what I am saying is that I would trust — because of all this daily and deliberate, conscious and committed heart-centered practice — that Love is the Answer. And then I would listen with all my heart and soul and mind to discern Love’s answer.
You see when we see our fellow humans through the eyes of Love, we can’t judge. Jesus said to the men who wanted to stone the adulterous woman to death, Ye who have not sinned, throw the first sone.
Well, not one stone was thrown.
We have all screwed up. We have all made horrible choices. We have all been less than perfect. Over and over and over again. So what is the point of pitting my entrenched idea of perfect against yours and seeing who wins? Neither of them is perfect.
But Love is.
When you throw a stone into water, the water ripples out in circles and those ripples go on and on and on. Every choices we make has the same effect.
Do we choose Love or do we choose fear? That choice keeps rippling.
After decades of being late, decades of hating myself, decades of disappointing people or pissing them off, I am no longer late. Overnight it stopped. And for months, when I met people who spent a lot of time with me they were often late. i would be sitting outside in the car or at the restaurant waiting for them. And when they saw me they would say: You’re here? Already And I would say, Well, didn’t we say 6PM. And they would say, Yes, but you’re always late. And I would say, Not any more!
What changed? I figured out why I was late! It’s a long story (which you can read about in my book, The Way of Being Lost). But in essence, the healing came through Love. And it was instantaneous.
To this day, when I find myself running late or procrastinating about something, I now know to look and see where I’ve left Love out of the equation. Because once I turn to Love, the work gets done and I am on time.
You see it wasn’t that I was right for being late. I wasn’t. It wasn’t that my behavior wasn’t irritating or disrespectful or sometimes flat-out rude. It was. But being judged didn’t change anything.
To discern is to recognize not only the heart-centered truth of a situation, but it is to led Love guide our actions and reactions.
Discernment is an essential heart-centered practice of wholeness. Right now it may be more essential than ever. So please: Give it a try. It’s a game changer! For you and for everyone you encounter.
Today’s video guides you in creating your own heart-centered practice of discernment!