Sometimes genuine discernment is wrongly seen as a mental decision about what is good followed by an act of will to carry out that good. I would say, rather, that discernment is the awareness of centered or not-centered energy in the organism… This awareness comes from an accumulated awareness of who we fully and genuinely are. It is knowing where our center — and hence our life — resides, as well as where it does not… As life builds up more and more sense of our total selves, more and more inclusion of body, mind and emotion in our self-experience, it becomes less and less possible for us to choose against ourselves… Discernment well made — that is, experience well known — makes choice natural, even easy. Choice is that decision either to retain boundaries of judgment manifested by blocked body energies or to risk letting in everything we are… In doing so we abandon predictions of how life will turn out, judgments of what is good or bad, assessment of what does or doesn’t fit. We simply live from our center.
Benedictine Suzanne Zuercher, quoted in An Ignatian Spirituality Reader (154)
I came across this quote a couple of days back in the book mentioned above. I saw this book in the hands of several participants in the Ignatian Immersion Course last year and started reading it.
The Ignatian Immersion Course is very much like a Camino or a Cursillo: it begins once it is over. I seem to be living an on-going immersion in Ignatian Spirituality, thirsting and hungering for more. I find it a beautiful place to be and feel infinitely grateful for what I received then and have kept receiving ever since.
Photo: Camino de Santiago, Cruz de Ferro, May 2005
A Seat At The Table 
Love it!
Thank you 🙂
Claire, this has certainly been my experience with discernment – it just begins to flow more naturally. Also, I often think of the Ignatian Immersion Course and how I inquired about it for last year and decided not to attend. How amazing it would have been to have attended at the same time as you and Paul. I guess it was not meant to be. Blessings and thanks for sharing this reflection.
Yes, discernment sometimes is a sort of inner compass which shows the way 🙂
Well, the mere fact that you considered participating in the Immersion Course means that we had ‘Ignatian sisters’ of some sort 🙂 If it ever feels right for you, go. It’s just unbelievable, the Course, the teachers, and the other participants who come from all over the world. I met very inspiring men and women, lay and religious.