The Faculty of True Discernment

When I first started with Kundalini Yoga, decades ago, my old Guru had told us that it would make us ‘smarter’. I often wondered at that promise, since so many my fellow practitioners didn’t seem so extremely bright. I figured it was all relative, and that before they started Yoga they must have been REALLY stupid. But I was so young back then. I hardly suspected that the Yoga might take years before it would have its effect.

Did I eventually become “smarter”? Well, I suppose my old Guru had to find some word to express what he meant. He chose the word “smart”. But what happened in my case, or the way I would describe it was that I would recognize the truth, have a sense of certainty about it, when I heard it or saw it. Maybe I was incrementally better at ‘thinking up’ the truth of things, but being an original thinker was only a small part of it. It was not so much a case of thinking fast or thinking new but thinking sure, of being certain of things. Remember, one of the best ways of being smart is recognizing the truth when you hear it from others.

I was lucky to be able to identify a certain point in time , a moment when the transition came about, when the ‘smartness’ kicked in. This part of my life had been punctuated by a Dream, the Dream of True Discernment.

The Dream Scene was a well sun lit grassy field with large rocks and fallen trees that created a natural gathering place for hikers and nature lovers to sit down and rest. There was this woman who was sitting down and playing a guitar and she was... I have to say it ... an extremely ugly woman. But her guitar playing was the most beautiful I had ever heard. Then came along these men, really crude guys, who approached, and gathered around her to ridicule her merely for being so remarkably unappealing. I was concerned that this would annoy her enough so that she would stop playing, and I became irritated that their boisterous laughing itself was making it difficult to hear the beautiful music being played, and so I told the young men, "Listen! Everything else aside, can't you hear the quality of that music. We are in the presence of some real talent here. So Shut the ____ up!" Then the lady, who had seemed oblivious to all of us up to that point, suddenly looked up, and looking me square in the eye said, "The faculty most worthy of cultivation is the faculty of True Discernment".


In an instant I was transported to a moon-lit arbor. It was a young growth forest with as many bushes on the forest floor as the trees around them, which formed a low canopy. The air was cool, and this felt like a nice place to be. Much of the Moon light came through and gave a silvery glow to the furry little down-covered pods on the drooping branches of the willow trees. I was a disembodied presence, simply witnessing; I would not be an Actor in this Dream; I would just watch. What I witnessed was a beautiful Greek Goddess… I would guess, Diana, Goddess of the Hunt. She was clad in a pearl-white translucent toga, belted at her waist, and she was barefoot. With a bow in her hand and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder, she was serenely languid and in no hurry. It was breathtaking, and I knew this was a special vision. But the tranquility was shattered when along came this strong coarse bearded man – too old to be called young, but not old enough to be supposed wise. He was delighted to happen upon such a pretty woman and of course wanted to make her acquaintance. He said, boastfully, as if boasting could endear him to her, "I am on the hunt tonight and it is a great misfortune for the poor creatures, because I am such a good shot that they certainly don't stand a CHANCE".

Diana remained silent and seemed in no hurry to reply, but rather pulled a strangely unique arrow from her quiver. She held it out a moment so that the hunter could see that it was probably the most crocked arrow that could still be straight enough to be shot from a bow. She loaded it onto the string and pulled back in preparation of shooting... then turned her head to the side so it could be seen that she obviously had no intention of aiming, and she released the shot. SHHHOOOOPP, the arrow whistled off and lodged inside a bush I could see the arrow’s feathers sticking out. She walked over and took hold of the arrow’s shaft and withdrew it from the shrub, and, amazingly, there impaled on the arrow was a limp dead game bird. Then she spoke, not to the Hunter, but to me, "Chance? Nothing happens by Chance".' Then I awoke.

What does it mean? The first part of the Dream was prelude to the second part. If I had not seen behind the appearances in the First Dream, that is, if I had not recognized the Beauty behind the ugliness, I would not have been shown the Second Part of the Dream. The injunction "The faculty most worthy of cultivation is the Faculty of True Discernment", was to be my guiding mantra, that is, if I were to properly understand the next part of the dream, indeed, to understand my subsequent Life. The Night, the Trees, the Moon Light, the Anima Goddess – This was my inner life. The Bearded Hunter was my aggressive persona, my conceit, pride, perhaps even my intellect. The Huntress provided a lesson that teaches that a Greater Unity would always subsume and transcend any actions of the Hunter. Could this Unity be understood? No, not entirely. The Arrow was crooked and no deliberation guided its aim -- it was released into Fate. Yet there was Intention, there was Will. The Goddess meant to hit the Bird. Apart from Design and intelligent Pattern, pure Volition can resonate well enough to evoke its own Results. But the dynamics of Pure Volition are beyond ordinary cause and effect. Things happened because of Destiny and Will.

But what is left for True Discernment to discern, if we omit the rational? Well, there is a certain sense of Importance, as though it were a kind of wake the Destiny leaves in its path, or a kind of glow that one sees outlining Acts of Will. If we see Life and the World as arbitrary, a conglomeration of accidents, then we dismiss it. But to see it as a potent riddle with imbedded meaning, then that makes us look at it harder and deeper. And sometimes we can use Logic and Reason to see the Truth of Things, and sometimes we can see the Truth directly.

Allow me to conclude by saying that where normal physical light allows us to see normal physical reality, the Spiritual Light and the Yogic Energies help us to both see and feel our Spiritual Reality and to discern the Meaning in our Lives and in our World.