“It’s very, very good to be a hanged man vis-a-vis a spiritual discernment, because the head is going to be the last to catch on.” Cynthia Bourgeault

The Nature of Spiritual Discernment

“An exploration of Plato’s Four Cardinal Virtues: wisdom (prudence, discernment), courage, temperance and justice”

“Discernment can only really come from the heart. What the mind calls discernment is really judgment in most cases. And it’s very, very hard to get judgment teased free from conditioning and identification.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Living Presence, 21:00 Chapter-7-Voluntary-Attention.

“All judgement not founded in love will be inaccurate. All negative perception is skewed.” Cynthia Bourgeault, The Vocabulary of Wisdom.

“True discernment happens in the Imaginal realm.” Cynthia Bourgeault, The Vocabulary of Wisdom.

The Challenge of Discernment

“Most of the work in what you might call advanced level spiritual discernment are for me around the question of real will and surrender and how they fit together because it spirals apart and together and apart and together through our whole finite journey.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2014 Jacob Boehme, 1:40:00 3d.Thurspm.TeachingGWS14.

“Align with the highest possible outcome when wrestling with judgement. Align with wholeness and love. Better than ‘choosing.'” Cynthia Bourgeault, The Vocabulary of Wisdom.

“The real imperative is to keep within, turn within, and learn to trust that which is at your heart of hearts.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Kanuga Nov 2015, 14:20 Day 3.5 Afternoon Teaching.

The Upside-Down Perspective of True Discernment

“The domain of freedom—the spiritual life—is found placed between two gravitational fields with two different centers. The Gospel designates them as ‘heaven’ and ‘this world’, or as the ‘kingdom of God’ and the ‘kingdom of the prince of this world’. And it designates those whose will follows or is submitted to the gravitation of ‘this world’ as ‘children of this world’, and those whose will follows the gravitation of ‘heaven’ as the ‘children (or the sons) of light’.

“The man who lives in the grip of gravitation of ‘this world’ at the expense of the gravitation of ‘heaven’ is the ‘carnal man’; he who lives in equilibrium between the two gravitational fields is the ‘psychic man’; and, lastly, the one who lives under the sway of the gravitation of ‘heaven’ is the ‘spiritual man’. It is this latter who constitutes the subject of the twelfth Arcanum of the Tarot, for it is an upside-down man that the twelfth Card represents. The Hanged Man represents the condition of one in the life of whom gravitation from above has replaced that from below.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p306.

“The other characteristic trait of the spiritual man is that he is upside down. This means to say, firstly, that the ‘solid ground’ under his feet is found above, whilst the ground below is only the concern and perception of the head. Secondly, it means to say that his will is connected with heaven and is found in immediate contact (not by the intermediary of thought and feeling) with the spiritual world. This is in such a way that his will ‘knows’ things that the head—his thinking—still does not know, and so that it is the future, the celestial designs for the future, which work in and through his will rather than experience and memory of the past. He is therefore literally the ‘man of the future’, the final cause being the element activating his will. He is the ‘man of desire’, i.e. the man whose will is set high, above the powers of the head—above thought, imagination and memory.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p316.

“Typically, our moving center will get the leaning faster than our head. It’s very, very good to be a hanged man vis-a-vis a spiritual discernment, because the head is going to be the last to catch on.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Imaginal Wisdom School 8-2020, 40:40 0819 IWS Wednesday PM Teaching.

Discernment in Service to the Whole

“The way the transmission between the realms happens, is on the shoulders of those in realms beyond, who still, with their bodhisattva hearts, turn to this planet, to be part of the actual chain of protection. You can call them the saints in the classic Christian way of languaging them. Very real. They don’t go away, they don’t turn their backs, they don’t get on with heavenly things. There’s a whole bandwidth, because from that side is the actual face of the help extended. And on this side, it’s joined by those who have the discernment, and the courage, and the presence to reach out their hands, and join in the work.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2020 Oct Gurdjieff-Teilhard II, 15:00 020-Conscious Circle of Humanity.

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Logion 3
Yeshua says...
If your spiritual guides say to you,
"Look, the Divine Realm is in the sky,"
well then the birds will get there ahead of you.
If they say, "It is in the sea,"
then the fish will precede you.
No, divine Reality exists
inside and all around you.
Only when you have come to know your true Self
will you be fully known—realizing at last that you are
a child of the Living One.
If, however, you never come to know who you truly are,
you are a poverty-stricken being,
and it is your "self" which lies impoverished.

Logion 50
Yeshua says...
Suppose you are asked,
"Where have you come from?"
say, "We have come from the Light at its source,
from the place where it came forth
and was manifest as Image and Icon.
If you are asked, "Are you that Light?"
say, "We are its children,
and chosen by the Source, the Living Father."
If you are questioned,
"But what is the sign of the Source within you?"
say, "It is movement and it is rest."

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Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985

Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.