viveka

discernment

Often we end up as walking billboards with other people’s energies attached to ours, and as a result waves of emotions and mental turmoil can come up. With the practice of discernment, we learn to see what is ours and what is not. The deeper we dive into honest discernment, we learn to separate truth from untruth, heart resonance from mental dialogue etc. Neti Neti is Advaita Vedanta’s way of sharing the teachings of discernment, by acknowledging our inner experiences as truth or not truth, by looking through the lenses of ‘not this, not this’.

Discernment is by far one of the most potent practices, in our experience, that can penetrate the sand castles of the mind. It forces us to be truly honest with ourselves and to go to the source of each experience, emotion/feeling, thought, relationship, you name it. It points us back to the source, again and again. Once there is a stable foundation of discernment, life feels more at ease as you are more accepting of what is, letting life move through you and somewhere deep inside knowing what is layers of conditioning, memories, old habits and so forth. Once we see the layers, every response becomes a choice - what you want to invest in is always a choice. But the practice of discernment makes that choice more obvious as you bring it consciously to the forefront.

Discernment is like a boat that can take you across the swamp of human experience, and when things get confusing it can bring more clarity. However, it requires going to the root of things, as it points deeper and deeper to source, moving us beyond the mundane. In a sense this work carries the medicine of Eagle or Hawk - taking a different perspective when looking at things in our lives. The practice becomes watching, staying as the witness, to see the narrative and story line of our lives and how it is reinforced. It requires deep honesty. It’s not easy work, but the only way is through.