Welcome to Wisdom NOTES: A short transcript summary capturing three insights from conversations on In Search of Wisdom. This edition comes from my interview with Dr. Brian Russell, the author of Centering Prayer.
The Discipline of Discernment
In this episode, my guest is Dr. Brian Russell, the author of Centering Prayer. Brian is a return guest to the show. I’m grateful he agreed to come back on to have a conversation on The Discipline of Discernment. Brian is a professor of biblical studies and a transformational coach for pastors and spiritually-minded professionals.
In the conversation, Brian and I discuss:
What is discernment
The obstacles to discerning wisely
How contemplative practices help us discern
Navigating Life’s questions
The wisdom of discernment and much more
Brian also has a podcast called The Deep Dive Spirituality Conversations podcast. You can learn more about Brian’s work at brianrussellphd.com.
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1. Fear, Guilt, and Shame
Wisdom Note #1: How do things like fear, guilt, and shame make discerning wisely more challenging?
Brian: You just named it, there's that sense of an internal paralysis, it's the, you might call it the inner resistance. Steven Pressfield talks about the resistance that you have to overcome even to write a book or get anything done. And so, and I think that is the guilt, the shame, and the fear amplified because the opposite of those three things would essentially be that would be number one fear, you mitigate fear with trust. That there's something bigger than yourself that's in play here. And again, that could be a religious statement don't necessarily have to be but that's a statement. The shame, you can mitigate that with just a sense of I am enough — that's the antidote. And this is where I think that really affects decisions. Because when you have a sense where you can live out of trust, I'm going to live open-handed, I can be willing to surrender.
The guilt, the shame, peace, that a sense of enoughness when you know you're enough, it's not about you anymore, and you can ditch the ego because our tendencies and I know this from my own life is you try to compensate for the sense that you're not enough. […]
