The Spiritual Dimension of Discernment (Part 2)

2/16/21

Dear friend,

We've been talking about discernment lately—how we notice our invitations and discern them—and last week we touched on the spiritual dimension of discernment.

Last week was part 1, which included a couple short exercises you can do to start learning your spiritual language, or how you and your deepest self and/or the Holy communicate with one another. (You can read the entry here if you missed it.)

Today I'd like to build on the two lists you were invited to create in those exercises by helping you notice how they can help you with your discernment.

The first list invited you to name any profound or foundational spiritual experiences in your life—the moments you can point to and say, "That was a spiritual experience for me."

How can this exercise help you with your discernment? The invitation with this list is to notice what you believed or experienced in those moments. You might notice things like:

• "I felt held."
  
  

• "I felt protected."
  
  

• "I believed I wasn't alone."
  
  

• "I believed and felt myself loved."
  
  

• "I felt myself in complete union with everything."

These are profound spiritual truths, my friend, and I am curious what profound truths your specific experiences taught you about what's true.

How can this particular exercise help you with your discernment? What you name as the spiritual truths you accessed in those moments can serve as touchstones for you when you are in a place of discernment.

Let's say you're discerning an invitation. Something has been presented to you and you're discerning whether it's something for you or not. (Side note: We are going to do a whole series on noticing invitations after this series on discernment that lays the groundwork for it, so if you're wanting to go deeper into the process of noticing and discerning invitations, stay tuned!)

As you hold the question of that invitation, turning it around in your hands and looking at it from its various sides, you can ask yourself, "How am I feeling interiorly as I hold this invitation?"

Are you feeling pushed? Shamed? Embarrassed? Alone?

Are you feeling invited, curious, held, cared for, loved?

In other words, your foundational spiritual experiences and the profound truths they allowed you to access about what's real and true can serve as touchstones for you to process the quality of the invitations that cross your path in the future, discerning if they're for you or not.

Okay, now let's consider the second list from last week and how it, too, can aid you in your discernment.

The second list was about the everyday experiences that help you feel connected to your own spirit and/or Spirit. What helps you access that true place inside you that is deeply you? What helps you connect with the entity you name as God or your Higher Power?

When you know what these everyday things are for you, they can become your go-to places when you find yourself in a space of discernment. They can become the gateways for you to access that inner knowing, that yes or no, that wisdom you seek in those moments.

I'll give you an example based on one of my go-to places.

One of my go-to places is praying with images. This is something I first experienced when I was 21 years, and it has been part of my spiritual language with God ever since. I receive an image in prayer, usually a scene in which I am seeing Christ and me together, and I journey with it in prayer over long periods of time.

When I'm needing to discern something, I know I can visit the image in prayer to help with my discernment. I'll literally close my eyes and visit the scene in my imagination. I'll bring the thing I'm discerning into that scene with myself and Christ.

And then I'll watch and wait. What happens in the scene?

I'm most often watching Christ in the scene to see how he is responding to me. Does he smile? Does he give me a long look, telling me something I need to hear? Does he ask a question? Does he draw my attention to a piece I hadn't noticed before? Does he offer me his peace? If so, what do I notice the peace about?

Your go-to places will be your own. They may be nothing like what I've just described to you about mine, and that is totally okay. Again, this is about learning your spiritual language, or lexicon, based on what you've already learned helps you connect to your spirit and/or Spirit. What are those things, and how can you invite them into your experiences of discernment going forward?

I hope this series is proving helpful so far! Next week we'll examine another aspect of discernment, which is the role that data, or data gathering, plays in it too.

Yours in ongoing discernment,
Christianne