1 Corinthians 2: 14, Spiritual Discernment

1 Corinthians 2: 14-3:15, Spiritual Discernment

14, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

Having eyes to see and ears to hear....Great spiritual masters remind us that
we must have abilities beyond the physical senses that allow us to discern spiritual truths. Our ego consciousness, by way of its limitation, can think we know all that is. We get trapped by our ego’s view or experiences. We dismiss what we don’t understand or literally see and touch. We have inner promptings and moments of clarity that we “reason away”. Every time we do this, we thwart the movement of the Divine Spirit Within.

The Self/God Within speaks to us through our body and through numinous experiences (i.e., “the still small voice of God”, the Voice of Silence). Our subtle body sensations and intuitions are the Spirit moving in us. We can have moments of knowing that are real even though not rationally explainable where we feel the Self’s presence and moving. These are often lost when other people pooh-pooh them,; or, we dismiss them because they are not in sync with our sense of what is.

Our desire to fit in, to belong with a group or community, predisposes us to give up our experience when it is different than others. We hold onto to collective established ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. We live and make choices according to what the outside world and authorities say is right. The collective consciousness becomes our guide. We ignore our larger consciousness, the Self/God Within, when we pay attention to and follow the outside world’s opinions. Whether these opinions come through our family, church, school, media, science, medicine, government, etc., they separate us from the Spirit of God when they do not support the “still, small voice of God Within.”

Developing and strengthening a conscious (known) line of communication between our sense of self/ego and the Self/God WIthin is how we begin to know and intentionally access our spiritual senses. We have to develop the muscle of discernment to know the Inner Divine Spirit from the adopted spirit of the world. In doing so, we have to withstand the input of others that call us foolish or that shame us. We have to risk trusting our self/Self over trusting others.

Where are you struggling to listen to the Inner Divine Spirit? What blocks you from hearing and acting on what you know from the still, small voice of God Within? Take a few minutes to center yourself by following your breath. Invite all the lost parts of you to take their rightful place within your body and mind. Feel the strength of your self in conscious connection to the Self/God WIthin. Let this inform you in how to move through the day.


Consciousness, in the esoteric spiritual tradition, extends beyond ego consciousness to include subconsciousness or body consciousness/felt knowing and transcendent/archetypal consciousness.*
*Analytical psychology refers to these aspects of consciousness as the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious.