Discernment and Personal Safety

Spirit has given me the word, discernment, to write about today. Discernment is an important word that is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “The ability to judge people and things well.” The casual word they offer for discernment is “savvy”, another equally delicious word for your vocabulary consumption. And for your discernment, wellbeing, and safety, I am going to be a bit more direct in this blog. Spirituality can also be about speaking truth to power, so buckle up and read on.

So why is discernment today’s blog topic. In a world gone off the rails as ours is right now, we need to learn all we can about how to discern the truth of anything and everything we see and hear on our devices and on TV. We need to be savvy about who we listen to be sure that they are telling us the honest truth about what is happening in the world around us. We need verifiable truth for our personal and collective safety and for making good decisions about and for our lives. So how do we go about knowing who to trust in a world gone mad? For starters, is the person talking to us just making shit up and throwing it against the wall to see if it sticks or are they backing up what they say with verifiable facts that everyone and anyone can prove to be true. Now this will require more than just discernment from us. It requires us to do the research to see which line, BS or Truth, what that person is saying falls across. If you expect to be able to armchair cowboy or cowgirl these next four years, and not be involved, you may as well be a mushroom because they are going to keep you in the dark and feed you BS ad infinitum. Intellectual laziness can and will drop you right into a world of misery and make your life increasingly unsafe in times like these. It is, of course, completely your choice, but if you want to live free and be safe, I highly recommend that you start doing your own homework. Gone are the days when we could just vote in our political party officials and expect things to run smoothly and safely. News stations now have corporations that have vested, financial interests in what their talking heads are saying and the “news” that they are reporting. And our politicians, well, they should all be required to wear patches, like NASCAR drivers, for where they get their financial backing for their reelections. We now need to look for folks that state the facts and back them up with videos of what the politicians we elect are actually doing and how they are voting after we have put them into office. And to the good, many of us actually are looking around for fact-based reporting in print and video formats. If this is your situation, then this blog is preaching to the choir. If it is not, keep on reading!!!

So, what is the litmus test, the smell test, of discernment? How do we judge fact from fiction? Now this is where you are going to have to get involved in doing your won researching into finding information from credible sources about what you want and need to know. If an agency is affiliated with special interest groups, it’s not going to pass the sniff test. That is unless they back up their statements with factual, verifiable information from several, independent sources and real-time videos – not some AI, politically motivated, or bot tampered nonsense. Anyone who claims to know the truth, needs to be able to provide several, neutral sources that back their statements up and share them with the general public. What I mean by neutral is someone or some organization that does not have a vested interest in the outcome of what that information ultimately creates in our world. In other words, there can’t be something extra they want from it for themselves in the long run – like a better job, money, power, or even their personal safety. These sources can’t be bought, and they do not respond to threats – except to expose them. So, do look for sources that have integrity and will speak the truth, even if it is to their disadvantage to do so. For instance, if a person has a sincere and solid track record of telling the hard truths regardless of how it makes them look to their allies, that could potentially be someone worth listening to. And then find two more folks you trust for the same reasons and then compare what the three of these sources are saying. Yes, absolutely yes, it takes time and effort to do this, but better to be armed with the truth so you can protect your own best interests based on facts not fiction. It’s how you stay safe in a very complicated world right now and that is what drives me to write this for all of you who read my blogs: your basic needs and your safety.

Now I could list who I have found that I trust, but that would be doing your homework for you, and I will not do that for a couple of reasons. We all got lazy and now we are in this mess. Many of us believed the lies we were fed instead of doing our own verifiable research. My doing it for you, repeats a bad pattern and I won’t do that. Also, you will find people who speak to you in ways that mine may not. We are all individuals and how we hear and process information can be dramatically different from each other. I would also suggest that you make sure that the folks and sources that you are currently using all pass the smell test of truth. FACT check them with three independent sources, and make sure they aren’t getting something other than what their jobs normally pay them for their work. Politicians, for instance, all have backers. Check out who donates to their campaigns – that’s a big time “tell” about their character. And while you are at it, check how they VOTED. Their votes are in Federal and State records that were available for any citizen to read, last I checked. With the current government, I can’t say for sure I am sad to say, but there are independent websites that do keep track!!!! Do a web search and find websites you can trust for providing you with these facts. I will, however, share that I use Duck Duck Go as my search engine now, as it does not allow my data to be tracked. You might like to try it and see if you like it… there are also VPNs that don’t allow your data to be tracked as well.

I realize that these last few blogs are not as gentle as my previous ones. It just that we are going through some rough times and a spiritual wakeup call is what will help you a whole lot better keeping your all safe than not addressing our current reality. And our collective wellbeing matters very much to me. I will intersperse less mundane and more highly spiritual ones for you in the future. I promise!

I am sending out my love to you all, a hug and a “hang in there”. It’s definitely going to be rocky for a bit. And right now, we all have to get active this time and not remain passive or we will live to regret it and so will our grandkids. Time to get a move on and help to right the Ship of State in whatever ways work for each of us. This blog is one of the efforts that I can make. Which ones are yours?

Namaste,

Jean