S2 EP240 – Hidden Truths: Mastering the Art of Discernment

Transcription:

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. What would happen if you and everyone you meet were intent on how you could give to each other – how you could help each other and support each other in the highest good of all? Can you imagine what life would be like if everyone were like this? Imagine how fun and fulfilling life would be!

It is very sad that life doesn’t work that way. While you might be focused on giving to yourself and others, too many people are focused on what they can get, or on giving to get. This creates lopsided relationships where one person gives and the other takes, and neither ends up feeling happy.

There is such joy in giving to someone who joyfully receives with an open heart, and who joyfully gives with no agenda. When you are giving with an agenda attached, your good feeling is not about the deep joy of giving and sharing, but rather the momentary pleasure of getting what you think you need and want.

If everyone were focused on giving for the joy of it, rather than on taking or giving with an agenda attached, then we would not have to be discerning about who we give to. But since this is not the way it is, we do need to learn to discern – regarding our own intent and another’s intent. 

Are you generally honest about your own intent? Sometimes you know that you are connected with yourself and your guidance and you are so filled with love that you want to share it. When this is the case, you feel joy and delight in giving to others who are open to sharing and receiving. But this is not always the case, and it is vitally important for you to be honest with yourself regarding your intent. You might want to ask yourself these questions:

• Am I feeling full of love, or empty and needy right now?
• Am I focused on giving and sharing, or on getting something?
• If I’m focused on getting something, what am I trying to get? 
  • Love?
  • Attention?
  • Connection?
  • Approval?
  • Caring?
  • Understanding?
  • Compassion?
  • Acceptance?
  • Validation?
  • Sex?
  • Openness from the other person?
  • Time?
  • Money?
  • A material thing?

It’s not wrong to want any of these. The problem comes when you believe that getting these things from another is what you need to feel happy, fulfilled, worthy, and safe. When you believe that you need something external to feel joyful and fulfilled, then your giving can be a form of control to try to get what you think you need.

So learn to be honest with yourself about your intent. 

What about discerning another’s intent? Being a naturally giving person, I used to give and give to everyone. I still do, but in a different way since I started to trust my ability to discern another’s intent. I still give my compassion and acceptance to everyone, but I no longer give much time to others (other than my clients) when I experience them as being closed, empty, needy, or disconnected. I no longer expect that self-abandoning, judgmental, controlling people will become accepting, open and authentic, that takers will become givers, that aloof or withholding people will become friendly and forthcoming.

While I choose to keep my heart open to everyone, I no longer put myself in the position of being used by another, as I did in the past. Now, I trust the energy I’m picking up and when I don’t experience open, friendly, authentically caring energy, I move on. When you have learned to love yourself and others, and you start to trust your feelings and your guidance – especially your feeling of loneliness around another, and your own feelings matter to you – you will discover how easy it is to discern another’s intent.

With discernment, you can begin to find those people with whom you can share the joy of giving!

Sabrina asked this question at one of my events:

“How do I know if my partner is closed? Do I tune in to myself and assume whatever my inner attunement is telling me is true? Couldn’t my wounded self say my partner is closed when he’s truly not? If I feel lonely with him, is he closed or am I closed? My partner tells me he loves me deeply, but he is not emotive, and I do not feel it. I have been closed to him for years and he has rarely been emotive even in the beginning. The only real emotion I’ve seen from him is the time we ended the relationship. He sobbed like crazy. Later we went back together.”

What I said to Sabrina is, “You can’t know if your partner is open or closed if you are closed. The way we know whether someone is open or closed is by how we feel being with the other person when our heart is open. If you have been closed to him for years, then you will likely always feel lonely with him. You cannot connect with him when you are closed to him, nor can you feel his love when you are closed. Instead of focusing on whether he is open or closed, why not focus on exploring why you are closed with him? You might want to focus on exploring your own fears and false beliefs that are leading you to be closed to him, by asking yourself, ‘What am I avoiding or trying to control by being closed to him?’ 

“Whether or not he is emotive doesn’t determine whether he is open or closed. He may be a very deeply feeling person – which is indicated by the fact that he sobbed like crazy when you ended the relationship, but not all deeply feeling people emote easily.

“When your intent is to learn, and your heart is open, and you are connected with your feelings and your higher self – then you will be able to feel when he is open or closed – even if he doesn’t emote. You will be able to feel the difference in energy when he – or others – are open or closed, only when YOU are open. It’s quite easy to feel the difference in frequency between an open or closed heart when we are open, but impossible when we are closed.

“When you are closed, you can’t tune into yourself, so whatever you determine will be coming from your wounded self. 

“When you are closed, you have no access to the truth, and the wounded self is more than willing to make things up – such as telling you that he is closed.”

“You might want to explore why you are more concerned with whether he is open or closed rather than whether you are open or closed. You say that he tells you he deeply loves you. How do you feel about him? Are you more concerned with whether he loves you than with whether you love him?

“Loving someone means that we see who they are in their essence and we deeply value who they really are. Have you considered that he may be a deeply feeling person who loves you very much but who is quiet about it? That’s why it’s important to tune into the energy rather than what someone says. Ironically, some people are capable of emoting without any real feeling behind it, so the emoting itself is not a good measure of someone’s feelings. When you are loving with yourself and sharing your love with him, then you may be able to accurately discern his heart.”

Another thing about discernment is that you don’t really know someone until you have conflict with them. People can appear open and caring – until there is conflict, and then you can see what they do. Do they get angry and stay angry for days? Do they withdraw and stay withdrawn for days? Do they say whatever you want to hear but then the same conflict keeps coming up? Or do they stay open to learning, or open to learning within hours or a day, so that the conflict can get resolved. And what do you do in conflict? If you abandon yourself in different ways and revert to your wounded self, trying to control and not be controlled, it will be very hard for you to discern what the truth is about the other person, because your wounded self might be triggering the other person’s wounded self.

People often ask me how they can know whether or not someone they are dating is really an open and caring person.

Lila said to me in a session about the person she was dating, “He seems open and caring, but how can I know? My last guy seemed really open until we started living together and then he was always angry. I don’t want that to happen again.” 

“Have you and your boyfriend had significant conflict yet?” I asked.

“No, we’ve only been dating for two months,” she answered.

“Two months is generally not long enough to know whether or not someone is open and caring. And you can’t really know until you have a conflict and you see how he responds. You need to know if he uses anger, withdrawal, resistance, arguing, explaining, defending, compliance and so on. And, if he does these protective things, how long does it last? Some people get immediately closed, but then in half an hour or so they open and are ready to learn and resolve. Others can stay closed for days, weeks or even longer. Of course, it’s ideal when someone is immediately able to stay open to learning in conflict, but most people haven’t done the inner work to be able to do this. However, if they open sooner rather than later, then things can be worked out. But if they want to sweep things under the rug and act like nothing happened, or stay distant until you apologize, or stay angry like your last guy, this isn’t good news.”

It takes quite a while before the deeper issues of fear of rejection and fear of engulfment surface in a relationship.

Most people have some level of one or both of these fears. They might not become apparent for the first six months or even for the first year – it depends on how close two people get and how important the relationship is to them. These fears don’t generally surface in more casual relationships, but once two people feel very connected with each other and committed to each other, these fears will almost always emerge.

What do you do when your fears of rejection or engulfment surface? You need to accept that if you tend to get protected and controlling, you will likely attract someone who will also get protected and controlling – although likely in a different way. If you tend to get angry, you might attract someone who withdraws or resists. If you tend to be compliant, you might attract someone who is demanding. It’s a two-way street. 

Regardless of what you each do when fear is triggered, the real issue is whether you and your partner will eventually open to learning. 

Discovering this usually takes time. It’s easy for most people to be open at the beginning of a relationship when there isn’t much to lose, but it gets harder and harder the more important you become to each other.

Also, there are people who are very good at appearing open. For example, many narcissistic people have learned exactly what to say to appear open. Almost anyone can get pulled in by a seemingly open and charming narcissist. We all want to feel seen and heard, and narcissists are often masters at looking like they see you and hear you. They can be very compelling – until the relationship deepens and their fears of being unmasked and of not being in control of their narcissistic supply are activated. Often, this doesn’t happen until there is a conflict situation.

This is why I generally suggest that people take their time getting to know each other. 

Someone who appears brilliant, sensitive, and charming can be deeply needy, angry, demanding, unreliable and completely lacking in empathy. Only time will tell if you are dealing with a genuinely caring person or with someone who has learned to act caring to get what they want.

Lila and I discussed all of this. “Take your time Lila. If you stay open and present, your feelings and guidance will let you know what the truth is about this man. You will also learn important things about yourself. Don’t disregard any of your feelings. Attend to all of them.”

Discernment has much to do with trusting your feelings. If something feels off, trust that. Even if everything looks good, if something doesn’t feel good or right, trust it.

It’s important to understand that there is a big difference between discernment and judgment. Judgment comes from the wounded self deciding if the person is right or wrong, good or bad. Judgment is a form of control, and since it comes from the wounded self, it’s a form of self-abandonment. When you are judging, you are in your head, not in your heart and soul, and your head is not very good at discernment.

Discernment comes from the loving adult connected with the feelings of your inner child and with the information from your higher guidance. It’s not about judging the other person. Rather it’s about opening to learning so that you can discern who is open and loving and who isn’t.

My clients often confuse judgment with discernment. One of my clients asked me, “Please could you explain how judging or criticizing others is self-abandoning? Don’t we need to make some judgments in order to discern whether a person would make a good match?”

This person is stating their confusion between judgments and discernment. The loving adult doesn’t judge. The loving adult tunes into your feelings regarding the energy of the person, and into your higher guidance for the truth regarding another person. It’s intuitive rather than cognitive. Judgments are cognitive. You are in your head making decisions that are based on the false beliefs of your wounded self, rather than connected with your inner and higher source of truth. The wounded self judges people as a way to protect yourself and feel one up to them, because when we are in our wounded self, we may feel one down.  

Discernment has nothing to do with judging others as right or wrong, good or bad. It has to do with what’s right or wrong or good or bad for you. This knowing cannot come from your wounded self.  

In discernment, you are listening to your inner child – your feelings, trusting them and choosing your actions accordingly. In judgment, your attention is directed outwards on the other person and there is a blaming quality to your attention. The wounded self may use judgment to justify your reactions to another person. The loving adult is about tuning into your feelings and guidance and wanting to learn what is in your highest good. We all need to discern, but judging people gets in the way of discernment, as you can’t discern from your head, only from your heart.

When we judge, we are evaluating the person regarding standards that our wounded self has decided upon. These are programmed beliefs regarding who is okay and who isn’t, who is good and who is bad, who is right and who is wrong. When we discern, we are accessing information regarding whether this person is open or closed, loving or unloving, right for us or wrong for us, and are ‘feeling’ in our heart whether or not a relationship with this person is in our highest good.

Unfortunately, because most people operate much of the time in their wounded self, they judge a good match for them by externals, chemistry or infatuation, rather than by their heart. But it’s the heart that knows.

When you consciously move out of your head and into your heart, you move out of judgment and into discernment. Only from your heart can you discern who is right or wrong for you, because only your heart is connected with your feelings and your guidance.

Obviously, if you are dating, you want to be able to discern who has a loving heart and who is narcissistic or sociopathic.

How often have you had the experience of connecting with someone – a friend or a potential partner – who turns out to be an uncaring person? At first you think this is a really good person, and then down the line you discover that the person is self-centered, angry, uncaring, and lacks compassion and empathy. You wonder how you could be so wrong, and what can you do differently next time?

There are two kinds of people who are incapable of empathy and compassion – narcissists and sociopaths, and the difference is that sociopaths are people who lack any sense of conscience. According to Martha Stout in “The Sociopath Next Door,” four percent of the population – one in 25 people – are born with the part of their brain missing – as shown by MRI’s – that is able to love and have a conscience, which means that they can do anything – lie, steal, kill – without any guilt or shame at all, and they are extremely adept at manipulation

Research indicates that narcissism often starts very early, as young as two years old. Both narcissists and sociopaths can learn to act caring, and some of them have such a good act that even aware people can be pulled in by them. As I said earlier, they are often brilliant at telling you exactly what you’ve always wanted to hear. They are often charismatic and engaging – at the beginning. They might come on very strong, sweeping you off your feet with their attention to you.

The other reason caring people can be pulled in by narcissists and sociopaths is that caring people have empathy, and both narcissists and sociopaths can be experts at appearing to be hurt and needing help – physically, emotionally, or financially. If you are a caring and empathic person, you may be quite vulnerable to both the charm and the neediness of the narcissist and sociopath.  

If you are an empathic person who easily feels others’ feelings, you might find yourself drawn to people who you feel you can help. Your compassionate heart naturally wants to help, not only out of caring, but also because if they appear to be hurting or upset, their feelings are painful to you. The problem is that this person might not care at all about your feelings.

This is why it’s so important to become discerning about who actually has a loving, caring, and compassionate heart

One of the skills you need to develop is to be able to have as much compassion for your own feelings as you have for others. Often, very caring people leave themselves out, caring about others far more than they care about themselves. This leaves them vulnerable to becoming the caretaker for a person who just wants someone else to take care of them, and then gets angry when they don’t do it “right.” If you develop compassion for yourself through the practice of Inner Bonding, you will start to discern much more quickly when someone is not really caring about you and to whom your feelings don’t matter. If you are focused only on another’s feelings, you won’t notice what you feel, and it is your own feelings that give you the ability to discern between a person who caring and emotionally empathic, not just cognitively empathic, and someone who isn’t.You need to understand and fully accept that no matter how caring you are to others, you have no control over how caring others are with you. You can’t make someone be caring, and the more you take care of another’s feelings and wellbeing while ignoring your own, the less caring the other person might be. The other person may become a mirror for your lack of caring about yourself. It often happens that your feelings and needs won’t matter to another when they don’t matter to you

Be careful of someone who ‘seems too good to be true,’ as they often are. If you’ve had the experience of having a friend, employee, or partner who seemed to be incredibly caring and then suddenly disappeared, don’t be hard on yourself. Some people are such good actors as to appear truly caring, and you feel shocked and heartbroken when they suddenly disappear. When this happens, be compassionate toward yourself rather than judgmental for being pulled in and explore any vulnerability to people who seem to be incredibly caring.

The more you learn to take full responsibility for making your own feelings matter through your Inner Bonding practice, the more you will be tuned in to someone’s caring or lack of caring. The more you learn to trust your own feelings and perceptions, the quicker you will discern narcissism and sociopathy. The more you accept your lack of control over getting others to be caring, the quicker you will let go of people who are intent on getting caring but not concerned with giving it.

It may not take long to discern the loving heart once you have compassion for yourself, trust your feelings and perceptions, and accept your lack of control over others. People betray their intention to either give love or to get it, or to give in order to get, with everything they say and do. With practice, you can learn to discern the loving heart very early in a relationship. If you want to stop recreating the same negative relationships over and over, then develop your power of discernment through your consistent Inner Bonding practice.

I invite you to join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership. 

And, I invite you to join me for my 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my newest book, “Lonely No More: The Astonishing Power of Inner Bonding” and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.