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Discernment is not a human attribute, like one more thing that a person has or boasts; if that were all, we would hardly respect it. Discernment not only exists but, if you will, pre-exists. Pre-exists the discerning human for sure. A human can only attain it as something that was already there before it was attained -- a measure that knows the way to measure what in reality is -- what is -- but "what is" itself includes discernment.
It is not a ring you put on because, if you do discern (not many do) then the truth is that discernment is wearing you, not the other way around.
You can't boast you have it. It isn't yours.
It can't just be described and measured like the height and width of a house. It built the house and built the measure that measures the house. The act of measure is its own. It is not a thing to be manipulated and mistreated. The only way to describe it is to have it -- that is to wear it, to attain it, to let it well up in you. It is like clothes that you have borrowed, like a style that you have assumed.
Discernment isn't yours. And it is hardly impersonal. "For that we would be unclothed but clothed upon."
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Do it don't just talk about it do it don't just talk about it do it don't just talk about it one two three four.
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There is a paradox of involvement here as well as a refusal on discernment's part to be talked about as though the talker stood airily above it and examined it from the outside. There can be no tourists of discernment. The paradox is like the one about making a vow. You say to yourself that it is wrong to keep making vows that are not kept, that such behavior wrongs the Lord of all vows, who is also the Lord of *you*. So you say: I will stop vowing and simply try to live the best I can, day by day. A worthy goal, but this "rejection of the vow" is in the final analysis also a vow. So you simply cannot be uninvolved and need to stop trying.
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