The Faculty of True Discernment

 

True Discernment

 

1  Hi Everybody.  This is Leo Volont and this is a rewrite of a Blog I did back in 2018 which was a rewrite of a Blog I did in 2008 under the name “The Faculty of True Discernment”… yeah, apparently my Discernment gets better every couple of years.   So let’s get started.

 

 

When I first started with Kundalini Yoga, decades ago, my old Guru had told us that the Kundalini, particularly at the Ajna Chakra, would make us ‘smarter’.  Well, that made me wonder for two reasons.  The first was that such a pragmatic consideration was something of an outlier in the more etherealized and anti-elitist atmosphere of the broader Spiritual Community, and, secondly, well, nobody among the Guru’s entourage seemed particularly “smart”.

 

2  And apparently the Smartness wasn’t the kind that would automatically kick in.   Yeah, one time during a break in one of his informal talks, I took the opportunity to go outside and grab a smoke, and the Swami quietly barked at me that “Smoking wasn’t the most positive thing I could be doing and so quitting it would be making my Yoga work for me”.  Yeah, I understood what he was saying and immediately began quitting, and after 3 years I never smoked another cigarette again.   But there was the problem of him having to tell me, but if the Yoga had really been able to make me so much Smarter, well, the added Intelligence probably would have been able to speak for itself, right?   

 

3  But then something else happened.  I remembered it just the other day in one of my “An Informal Evening with Leo Volont” videos concerning “My Initiations”, that in the year after my Crown Chakra High Initiation I had that Dream where I was told that “the Principalities of the Sky vie for my Soul”, implying that I would have moral choices to make.  Well, that was a Huge Dream and now that I think about it, what would have made me so important to the “Principalities of the Sky” unless it was my walking around resplendent with Spiritual Energy all Lit Up and with me wearing a Crown Chakra on my Head: yeah, all that would be invisible to mere mortals but to Spirits, Angels and Demons, well, I’d really stand out from the Crowd.

 

4  But what about that Dream? – with Elijah in the Dark Cave of Prayer that turned into a Blue Sky with Flying Dragon wheeling all around in arial combat; well, I had been thinking all these years that it had been an Archetypical Dream, and if I had it, well then Everyone would have it too, and even if that IS true, well, each person’s moral choice would NOT be pre-determined.  You know, being in league with Evil might actually come with a huge Benefits Plan, where Riding the White Horse like me might give you a Saddle, but not much in the way of Saddle Bags. And Religion has been so very much discredited in this Age that many people today might find Evil to be the more appealing bargain, since they also seem so convinced that Religion is Evil too.  Yeah, to them it might not be much more of a moral choice than deciding to be a Lawyer instead of a Doctor.

 

5  But, most of the High Initiates I’ve known neither became Giants of the Darkness nor the Light. Apparently the Principalities of the Sky weren’t fighting over everybody.  So I think that the Guru simply miss-spoke about being Smart.  I think that Yoga is really only about Opening a Door to Spiritual Possibilities, but you’d have the same Will to Action as you had before, and only your own Will would ever be able to push you forward so that your Yoga could then make it easier for you to get anywhere.  At first Experience would give you Knowledge, and with Knowledge one could begin to Act Effectively and then finally Successfully, and that would bring Confidence, and Confidence looks a good deal like being Smart, doesn’t it?  So maybe the Guru said “Smart” as a kind of a shorthand to save himself a more complicated explanation for people who are mostly just looking for Simple Answers anyway.   

 

6  So, I guess most of his High Initiates just spent their entire Lifetimes lingering at the Open Door of Spiritual Opportunity that stood before them.  The Guru never did much to exhort them forward.  And the Swami had received a Modern Education and so I think he was really concerned with Justifying Spirituality before the Worldly Gods of Nihilistic Materialism, you know, he had probably been a Marxist back in College, and so I suppose those  Materialistic Assumptions had broken his sense of Moral Confidence, shattering any comprehensive Moral Vision he might have communicated to us.  But, well, to do the Old Man justice, he did tell us to ‘experiment’ and be creative, you know, basically telling us HE WANTED US to think for ourselves.   But most people who’re attracted to Gurus want to be told what to do, right?  A Guru should know that better than anybody else.  So he should have known to at least issue a Warning that all of his System could come to naught if all we did was stand still at the Open Door and wait for the results to come to us.

 

7  But I had made choices and moved forward, through Experience, and then Knowledge and then Action and finally to a sense of Confidence, but, no, not just Swagger but a kind of Epistemological Confidence, you know, that my Knowledge transcended Opinion and became Truth.   Yeah, I found I could recognize the Truth and have a sense of certainty about It whenever I would hear It or see It.  Maybe I was also incrementally better at ‘thinking up’ the truth of things, but becoming a more Creative or a particularly inspired thinker was only a small part of it.   It was not so much a case of thinking faster or better but of thinking with more Certainty and Conviction.  I became More Sure of the Truth of things.  But I would need to encounter these Truths first.  I’d have to Find them before I could Know them.  The Path is a Path and one needs to keep Moving along it, and you can’t get anywhere by standing still.

 

8  I was lucky to be able to identify a certain point in time , a moment when the transition came about, when that brand of ‘smartness’, that sense of Confidence and Certainty in Truth kicked in.  It had been about 30 years after my High Initiations.  That’s half a lifetime, isn’t it?   Yes, Spirituality is not for the timid and the slow and ‘he who hesitates too long is lost’.  But, Yes,  this special moment had been punctuated by a Dream, my Dream of True Discernment.     

 

 9  The Dream Scene had been a sun lit grassy field with large rocks and fallen trees that offered a natural gathering place for hikers and nature lovers to sit down, rest and take in the ambient beauty. Well, in this particular Dream Scene, there was this woman who was playing a guitar and one would have to describe her as being ugly.  But her guitar playing, really, her finger picking style, was the most beautiful I’ve ever heard.  She made the guitar sound like a harp.  But, then came along these guys, who might have been nice enough if taken singly, but together they dropped on the Evolutionary Scale to being Primitive, that is, they acted like a pack of jerks.      As they approached they started in with ridiculing her for her looks… yes, they were speaking among themselves, but they knew she could hear them.  I was concerned that this would annoy her enough so that she would stop playing, and besides, it was difficult to hear her through all their noise, and so I yelled out to them, "Hey, guys! Everything else being equal, can't you hear that playing. We are in the presence of some real talent here, right?  So why don’t we all just shut up?" Then the lady, who had seemed oblivious to all of us up to this point, suddenly looked up, and looking me square in the eye said, "The faculty most worthy of cultivation is the faculty of True Discernment".           Then, well, BOOM, In an instant I was transported into a second dream; to the midst of a grove of trees lit up by the silver light of the Full Moon.  It was young growth forest with as many bushes on the forest floor as the trees around them,   The air was cool, and this felt like a nice place to be.  

 

10  In this dream I had been a disembodied presence floating up above the scene by about a dozen feet, simply watching.  What I witnessed down below was a beautiful Greek Goddess… I would guess, Diana, Goddess of the Hunt.  She was clad in a pearl-white translucent toga, made of not much more than a few yards of material, and belted at the waist.  She was barefoot and she also had a bow in her hand and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder.  It was breathtaking, and I knew this must have been some kind of special vision. 

 

11  But the tranquility of it all was shattered when along came this strong virile heroic looking man – too old to be young, but not old enough to be wise.   Well, He was delighted to happen upon such a pretty young Goddess and of course I supposed he was all perked up to make her acquaintance. He said in a boastful tone which may have had a degree or two of double entendre, "I’m on the hunt tonight and I feel sorry for the poor creatures that’ll happen my way, because I’m such a good shot they’ll surely not stand a CHANCE".

 

12  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, and maybe even myself, 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 off to the side so it could be seen that she obviously had no intention of aiming, and she released the shot.   SHHHWOOOOPP!  The arrow whistled off and lodged inside a bush.   She walked over and took hold of the arrow’s shaft and withdrew it from the shrub, and, amazingly, there impaled on the arrow’s tip was a limp dead game bird. Then she spoke, not to the Hunter, but directly to me, "Chance? Nothing happens by Chance".'  Then I awoke.

 

13  Anyway, what do these two juxtaposed dreams mean?  Well, not many dreams come with captions, but these dreams did, and, of course, that should provide us with a great deal of insight.   But we really need to contextualize the statements to be certain we’re drawing the right conclusions, shouldn’t we? 

 

So, yes, returning to the First Dream, well, what happened was that I made two appraisals:  the first was that the Musical Lady was off on the far end of the Ugly Scale, and the second was that her Music was as far off in the opposite direction, going off into Extreme Beauty.  Then the group of Young Men arrived, interrupting my enjoyment with their loud discussion about the girl’s ugliness, and so I yelled over to them using words that effectively almost conceded the point that I thought the Lady was ‘ugly’ too, but rather than dwelling on that, I urged them to change their focus towards what was Beautiful, her Playing, but I could have been more polite in my approach with them.    And that was the point where she turned to me and said "The faculty most worthy of cultivation is the faculty of True Discernment".   Well, was she congratulating me on my True Discernment, or was she taking me to task for some Stupidity?  Yeah, it took me years to contemplate the possibility that I might I have gotten something wrong?

 

 14  But in the cases of both her Appearance and her Music, well, we’re in the Domain of Aesthetics, and so, really, both ends of the Scale were in the same Indeterminable Field where any number of Reasons could endlessly be argued back and forth, proving nothing.   Yes, it could be said that I was shallow for even noticing her Ugliness, but only Transcendentalists throw out all Distinctions, and even if we can’t all be Beautiful, well, we should all at least acknowledge Beauty as one of the worthiest of Evolutionary Ideals, right?   Just look at Flowers, Butterflies, Tropical Fish, Tropical Birds and most Cats, and that will show us that Evolution finds Practicality wrapped up in Aesthetic Beauty.   Also, to focus on humanity for a moment, we see that in Societies where Arranged Marriages become the norm, where priorities are dictated by property and convenience, while Personal Appearances become secondary considerations: well, the Peoples turn ugly and their general health declines.   So when we see a Beautiful People that means we’re looking at Healthy People and it’s Evolution’s Way of  telling us that it’s getting things Right.

 

 15  Then, in regards to the Music, that while I recognized the beauty there, well, again it was a matter of taste, and I couldn’t expect a “pack of jerks” to feel it all that special, like expecting Cats to appreciate Mozart.  Also, taste in Music is acquired, and unless people are exposed to fine music from their childhood, they’ll never really ever get it.  Also, with the Popular Music Industry ever innovating to provide a cheaper, simpler Product to Mass Market to the broadest and dumbest Demographic, well, the result is a global degeneracy in Music Appreciation.  Literature is also on a steady decline.  And God only knows how people don’t appreciate the best YouTube Channels… not that I’m complaining…  

 

16  So, well, back to our subject, where we need to ask ourselves what can be True when speaking of Aesthetics which are really just a matter of taste.  Well, it finally occurred to me: that there was the Intention behind the Music, while her Appearance was Unintentional.  The Art was a Communication, an Expression, and apparently her Intention had found resonance in me.  I understood her.  I connected to her through her Music.   And maybe there was even some kind of a Dream World Teleological Intention behind her Ugliness.  You know, I thought even at the time that her Ugliness must have been placed in front of me like some kind of a hurdle, some kind of a Test, requiring me to Look Past her Outer Appearance before I could enjoy her Essence.  So, yeah, maybe I got that right too.  And so, well,  where was it that I may have gone wrong.

 

17  So, yes, I probably fell short with the Young Men.  Afterall, this was a dream, and from other dreams I’ve had, with Monsters far more intimidating than “those guys” were, well, the trick I found is simply to approach and give them the lightest touch, which then transforms them to Friendly Congenial Spirits.  Yeah, I found out about that ‘Trick’ by accident once, where I only put up my hand to ward off an attack, but that simple action proved to be far more effective than I ever imagined.  And it doesn’t take Faith or Confidence either, because in these approaches with my Hand held up, well, it’s typically shaking from Fright.   But, yes, apparently these Young Men weren’t terrifying enough for me to take them that seriously and so I let my temper get away from me.  I treated those silly fools more roughly than I would have treated Demons from Hell.  So, yeah, it may be that I had failed to Discern the Truth of the Situational Social Dynamics, you know, not playing the situation to my greatest advantage, and so that is probably where I should focus in my Cultivations.  

 

18  Then there is the Second Dream with the Goddess Diana and the Hunter.  Really, fresh insights into that dream have left me ashamed of myself.  You see, I’m rarely ever just a Point of Consciousness in a Dream, so why in this Dream?  Well, now it seems obvious that it was me who had been intended to play the part of the Hunter, but the Higher Dream Mind anticipated that I wouldn’t have the Confident Swagger to Play the Part, you know,  to strut forward and hit on the Goddess with that Pick Up Line: "I’m on the hunt tonight and I feel sorry for the poor creatures that’ll happen my way, because I’m such a good shot that they’ll surely not stand a CHANCE". Yeah, smooth right?  But the Higher Dream Mind didn’t trust me with it.  And we know that it should have been me because we only have to look at the denouement of the Dream where she looks straight at me and gives Me the answer that rightfully should have been addressed to the Hunter, and that clearly means that I was, or should have been, the Hunter.    But, then, yes, at least, as it played out, I got a chance to see how the Higher Dream Mind interprets my Persona, like the Dream Mind casted Brad Pit to play my part:  Strong, Confident, even Attractive, but not so completely Wise, and, well, 3 out of 4’s doing pretty good, right?  

 

19  But, now, what did the Dream Action and the Goddess’s Statement mean?  Okay, she killed that bird without aiming, BUT she had the Will to kill it.  She is the Goddess Diana, and, as a Goddess, her Will is the dictation of Fate.  What she Intends is Destined to Be.   But the Hunter, well, he also appeared to be willful and he was confident in the certainty of outcomes, but it was largely swagger, wasn’t it?  It was confidence in his own skills, both with hunting and with, well, ‘socializing in the Evening’, let’s call it.  But only the Divine can ever count upon Absolute Certainty.   “Nothing Happens By Chance” is an assertion that can only come from a God, or be attributed to one.  But as Humans we require Will to Action even to just put “the ball into play” where Fate can find us as being a factor for consideration.  Without the exercise of Will the Gods will simply ignore us.

 

20 But, now, well, what do these two dreams mean together?  Okay, accepting the Word of the Goddess as axiomatic, that “Nothing Happens By Chance”, well, that should help us in “Cultivating the Faculty of True Discernment” because it should eliminate from our considerations that anything that Happens could possibly be random, coincidental, arbitrary or meaningless.  “Nothing Happens by Chance” means that everything has meaning, and if we don’t recognize the Meaning of Something then we aren’t paying sufficient attention.   The advise coming from the first dream, to cultivate Discernment, means simply to stay focused on paying attention.  Yes, Cultivation is just another way of saying Practice Practice Practice.    

 

21  So, yes, even equipped with all the accoutrements of Kundalini Yoga, apparently there has to be some intent and practice in order to ramp up one’s abilities in regards to True Discernment.  Well, what I’ve found to be a very good practice is to just talk to people, and not just talk to friends but to everybody: store clerks, cashiers, people in elevators, pedestrians on the street where you’re waiting for the same crossing light.  Just talk and often they’ll say something that will just LIGHT UP as TRUE, that is, that you not only understand their intent, but in a way feel a connection to them, clicking with another person in a kind of Shared Reality. 

 

22  But in talking perhaps the most important thing you have to do is listen.  Most people who are ‘in conversations’ are using up most of their brain power in thinking of what to say next.  Well, don’t think about what to say.  You’ll surely think of something, right?  Also, if you are fully engaged in listening, then what you’ll probably think to say, when it comes your turn to speak. will be something related to what the other person was just talking about, that is, you’ll be appropriately responsive.  People like that. And so they keep talking, and eventually you get the Truth out of them.  And when you hear it, and Know it, well, it is like finding a Treasure.

 

23  Oh, now I should mention that another dream came along which would affect my view of the World and help me in my Pathway towards attaining to the Faculty of True Discernment.  In this Dream I was walking on a narrow board that lay across a Chasm so deep that looking down I could see only Darkness. Suddenly the board was pulled away and I found myself falling.  Well, before hitting bottom a Dream Guru appeared, pulling me out of the Dream to tell me “Remember this, that Perfection consists in Randominity, so Be Not One Thing, and Be Not the Other”.  

 

24  Okay, so what’s that mean?  Well, the two sides of the Chasm are the “One thing” and then “the Other”.   Then the Unknown Darkness below is the Infinity of Random Possibilities that lie outside our well defined but confining conceptual structures.  And maybe the Randominity is only Dark because it only becomes visible after we manifest something out of it, making Randominity a kind of Blank Slate that we can draw freely upon. 

 

 25  But, yes, in translating this Dream into Life Advice, I took it to mean that I shouldn’t be predisposed to any particular belief system, which would induce a kind of a Tunnel Vision.   So, yeah, apparently one has to be able to see Patterns in the Complexity, or we’d just lose the World in the Fog of an Undifferentiated Oneness, but at the same time we’d need to refrain from over-generalizing about what are essentially just instances of imaginative guess work.  And most of our Civilized Institutions were structured as material responses to particular problematic situations and so we could expect that they’d no longer be a perfect fit for our Present Day Conditions.

 

26  Next we need to discuss the inevitable discoveries of unpleasant Truths.  Yes, the Truth is always good to know, but its not always good news.  People often live paralyzed by Denial of the Unpleasant.  But if you are sleeping at night and even think you might smell smoke, well, you have to IMMEDIATELY think Fire and jump out of bed.    And here’s another example: On my first stint of World Travels, just starting out, I met a World Traveler in the Far East and he gave me some particular advice which we can use to come to a generalized opinion.  Now, the thing you need to understand about World Travelers is that they often don’t know the Languages and they don’t know the Cultures, and so all their Information needs to come largely from raw instinct, feelings and intuitions.   So his advice was, “well, if you ever sense the energy in a Bar Room or Club turning sour, Man, well, walk out fast and just leave your drink behind, Man, walk away from it.   Yeah, man, People get killed because they want to finish their beers first.”   Yeah, what that advice means, when we generalize it, is that we need to limit the time we waste in Denial, and that once we feel the threat of an immanent danger, we can’t distract ourselves with the wishful thinking fantasy that it might turn out alright.   Yeah, that reminds me that I once read a study that Pessimists react better to emergencies because they always expect the worst and so they walk around prepared for it.  So, yeah, when things get rough the last person you want with you is a happy person who believes in Positive Thinking. They go into shock too easy.   

 

27  But, again, we need to avoid extremes, and in contextualizing our realizations of Unpleasant Truths, we’d need to acknowledge that Nothing is Perfect, especially in regards to any kind of a Social Group, Organization, Corporation, Cult or Religion.  Even becoming a Couple in a Relationship is to form an Imperfect Organization.  In regards to these Connections we can rationally suppose that we should stay balanced in the idea that we should be prepared to leave as soon as it’s clear that leaving would result in less trouble than staying.  And “trouble” can come in may guises.  Even being demoralized for reasons we can’t fully explain to ourselves is “trouble”.  But we need to remember that there might be trouble on the other side of that Exit Door too, and the ancient proverb tells us to prefer “the Devil we know to the Devil we don’t”.

 

 28  You see,  Human Beings are Social Animals and our instincts compel us to Belong.  There is Safety in Numbers, and we can rarely walk out of any Social Relationship without effectively “burning all our bridges behind us”, and more options are always better than fewer.  And Societies would be impossible to maintain if we as Human Beings hadn’t evolved to have some degree of tolerance and forbearance built into us, and, therefore, we can assume that we can summon up from our deep store of internal resources the elasticity that can allow us to put up with Situations that are far less than Perfect.

 

29  But there are limits to forbearance and we can be worn down by patience.  So let this be the final note in this Blog:  the suggestion that perhaps the most important use we could ever make of our highly Cultivated Faculty of True Discernment is knowing when it’s time to quit.          

 

 

Well, that’s it!  Thank you everybody.