DISCERNMENT: A SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The human history is littered with decisions that have a positive outcome, but reality leaves us with decisions that affect earth negatively. Over time, elaborate theories were constructed on decision making by exploring and observing human behaviour externally. As the mind was not accessible and the brain but a dark space, thinking was based on untestable assumptions on what was truly the route of what was going on inside the thinking and doing patterns. Since the ancient Greek fathers, human rationality has been the main theme in decision making. As deliberate and logical creatures, man possessed the capability to use intellect to make sense of the world and to ensure survival and prosperity. This recollection of attainment, however, also includes a sense that has no substance yet accounts for many enigmatic insights and unexplained leaps in material existence. This sense is intangible, extends beyond the five senses and leaves a deep void into explaining decision making and human behaviour. Within the human experience an unexplainable, yet intriguing, “higher” source of inspiration was identified. Discernment as source of decision making became prevalent but with the challenge of consciously accessing it as a source of decision making. This study seeks to broaden the understanding of discernment and grounds it within the realm of spirit; what it is, where it stems from and, how it manifests and can be embraced more to enrich the current depleted human experience. Herein, however, rests the challenge. Science in its quest for a rational or cognitive explanation of reality and experience; a contributing factor to the diminished human experience, contests the concept of discernment as it cannot be explained materialistically and yet the experience of it can also not go unnoticed. As such, discernment falls outside both that which can be known and the unknown into the realm of the mysterious; the feature that contributes to the negation of its existence. Additionally, while there is an abundance of research on spirit and equally for discernment many of these studies are steeped in obscure practices and perplexing beliefs, the impact thereof being a complex obstacle to the study of the existence of spirit and discernment. Moreover, only a few studies have focused on drawing these two concepts together.