Episode Transcript
My name is Ken Hanuman and I've been practicing RA yoga meditation for over 40 years. In these episodes, I will share the experiences and insights I've gained from meditation and how I've integrated them into my everyday life and all my relationships. Welcome to the Spiritual Relationship Podcast. What is the power of Discernment? What role does it play in meditation? Hello everyone. Welcome to the Spiritual Relationship Podcast. My name is Ken Hanuman, and I'm your host. As you can see from the previous episodes. We are progressing from understanding the soul. What is the soul, the nature of the soul. Then we went on to describe the mind, intellect, and sanskars. What is, you know, the habits and personality traits because we have a lot of habitual way of thinking and um, a lot of our behavior, we are not. You know, like we, we don't really understand how our behavior is affecting other people and it's affecting our relationship. So we need this power of discernment. When you're looking at your thoughts and your feelings and your emotions, your reactions, the you, there has to be the ability to discern that which is beneficial and that which is not. Then many people you see, they get angry, they get upset, they're in fear, and they start making mistakes or cause sorrow and create, damage to maybe some very important relationship in their life that they wish they didn't make that mistake. So the power of discernment, it can only develop in a state of introspection. You have to be go in, get into that place where your mind is not overthinking or you're not upset, you know, you're in a state of peace and you're getting into this reflective state where you are able to. Calmly. Look at your thoughts, your feelings. Look at the memory. Look at maybe if you're gonna review something that happened that you wish didn't happen, like say you got angry, you got upset, you feel insulted. You feel hurt, you feel sad, lonely. You would like to figure out how to overcome that. You would wanna get back to a state of happiness or a state of peace. As we discussed before, our state of mind is decided by our thoughts, our reactions, our attitude. You know, the important thing about about learning to develop the power of discernment is to be neutral, not judgmental, to be humble and to be in a state of peace. So I feel I made a few notes, so I'm gonna read. So what do we need to discern above all else? We need to discern ourselves, like I just mentioned about the thought, feelings, and reactions in reality, deception comes from within since we only see what we want to believe. If we cannot discern the way in which we affect others, then our relationship cannot improve. So you need to, you need that ability to analyze how, your words, your actions, maybe even your intentions, you know, how it's affecting your behavior in other people. If we cannot discern how our misunderstandings and habitual ways of behaving cloud divine, then instead of discerning, we will fall back into the trap of discriminating and judging. Often we do not see the self, and as a result. We continue the cycle of conflict, animosity, and unhappiness in to ourselves and to those around us. What we cannot see, we cannot change. You have to first be able to define something. Let's say you think you know that this is something that is wrong, you accept that. Then you make a decision that you will change it. So that process of discernment is necessary because if you don't change, things get worse. And this is the thing about habits, the more you do the same thing and more, you repeat the same thing, it gets stronger and stronger. It's not the same, not, you know, it continue. It gets stronger. Like anger gets stronger, hate gets stronger. Maybe even self-criticism gets strong, or feeling of feeling that you're not worthy. These are things if you keep telling yourself this, after a while it becomes entrenched and it really does influence the way you interact with other people. So with this, you need this shift in consciousness. This is what people sometime refer to as opening the third eye, meaning this ability to look at things differently. Third eye actually means you're seeing things through the lens or the eye of spiritual knowledge. When you define yourself as a soul with the original nature of peace and purity and love, compassion, with humility, you are able to see that which is different. So you'll be able to differentiate easily anger or hate or peacelessness. You're able to also review how your, your sensitivity, let's say for instance, to embarrassment and insults and, and so on, you know, so these are things that are, that you become more aware of. You be, you can see it, and when you see something, you can change it. What is important, like I mentioned before, is to be reflective. Have this ability to be introspective. Then to be able to reflect. Some of the difficulty people have with focus is that their mind is so busy that even when they sit and try to think through a problem, the mind just quickly jump to something else. It just pulls you to thinking of something else. You're not able to focus. And to find solutions you need to be able to look at the problem and, and maybe. Do a root cause analysis, like analyze the whole thing. Why was I triggered in this way to say this is something mean, or, and then how can I change that? So rather than getting angry with yourself, rather getting upset and self-critical or maybe blaming and. Judging, pointing a finger to others, you are actually able to spend that energy on finding the solution. The other thing to, to remember is that silence when, and it's the same thing. Silence actually means a quiet state of mind. So silence increases the quality and the level of our ability to discern. Allowing us to use our time, thoughts, and qualities effectively, and thus to benefit all. In the silence of inner quietness. The intellect makes everything clear and then we just know how to act for the best. Too much analysis and mental processing pollutes the clarity of discernment and overload of details make us miss the essence. So it's important to take your time when you're doing this. Just be, just persist. Keep working at something. All habits die hard. They don't go away all because you want them to go away. Because it take, took you a while to, to be good at even being bad. Meaning like, you know, people get in into rage, right? And anger. Next thing you know, they're in a fight or in their homes, husband and wife, the way how they talk to each other. This violent violence and you don't, that's not a good thing, right? It's not good for the kids, it's not good for each other's relationship. There's really no happiness or respect or trust. So it's important that we strive to, uh, develop this power of discernment. So we need meditation to calm ourself down, to have solitude, to be in solitude, to be introspective. Maybe if you need more knowledge or you need someone's advice, seek someone that you trust and who has some experience. And if you keep at it over a period of time, you'll see that realization comes in, meaning you move from contemplation or reflection to where insights or realizations, uh, come up solutions, possibilities, choices are now available, and then you can now put that into practice. So I hope you can, you can think more about that. That discernment is you have to, discernment first starts with you to review your own thoughts and your feelings and your actions and your attitudes, and pick the things that are causing harm in your relationships that are, that is, it's preventing you from progressing, from being able to get along, from being able to, to handle situations on the outside in a way that is beneficial to you. So with that, I will close today's episode. If you're interested in online, free online classes, or if you would like to practice, uh, meditation at home and you need commentaries, the free commentaries available, go to the description below and you'll see the links. In the next few episodes, we'll talk about the other spiritual powers. So with that, remember your nature is peace. Protect it. Thank you for listening and goodbye. When you walk into a room, life gets little, you. You.
