“The ability to perceive
or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.” ~ David Bohm
The third competency, discernment,
has its roots in a specific Buddhist tradition that involves mindfulness and is
oriented around four levels of awareness. It is essentially
a way of understanding how our perceptions of the events in life actually conspire and are structured to impact what it is that we’re trying to do. The four levels
of awareness are:
- Non-distinction
- Distinction
- Evaluation
- Judgment
The base level is judgment. When I'm looking at understanding the competency of
discernment, one way that I can look at life is through the filter, or the lens
of judgment. This entails seeing things and reacting to my world as if there is
either a right or a wrong, or a good and bad in play. It's pretty black and
white. As the word judgment would imply there is a values assessment that is made that comes back to right, wrong, good, or bad. Judgment is always used
as a way of validating an existing belief system. In the extreme this can be
paralyzing as well as exclusionary as there is a polarizing dynamic inherent in
judgment. Obviously judgment can be useful as a values clarification tool and
as a guidance mechanism for behavior. And, it's important to understand that
it’s a first level position.
The
second level is evaluation. Evaluation is a little different from judgment in
the sense that it's about orienting my world and life views so that I look for
value. It's not that I'm looking with the intent of determining whether
something is consistent with my beliefs and is therefore good, bad, right, or
wrong. Rather, I'm looking for the value in the event. The way I'm
defining value is; in what ways can what I'm viewing be utilized? I'm
looking for how it can be of value, how it can be useful and of service to
something that, ideally, I've identified as being meaningful for me to
participate in. The second question that accompanies evaluation is focused on
my intended response to an event. Is what I'm about to do generative? The question is about not
whether it’s good or bad, right or wrong but rather is it adding value or
taking value away from what it is that I'm trying to have happen – both for
myself and for others. There’s a quality to evaluation that is very
different from judgment, it's got a much wider spectrum to it that is far more
enabling.
Then
we move to the third level which is distinction. Distinction is the process of suspending both judgment and evaluation and just observing and
noticing life’s events and contents without assigning meaning to them. It's
literally an observational state that puts me in the position of actually being
a neutral observer. Being in such a neutral position so as to notice
distinctions without judgment or evaluation is a practice that expands my
overall awareness. The value in this is that an increase in awareness increases
my choice making capacity. I am now in a position that, from a resource and
capacity standpoint (there are more choices) and from a competency standpoint,
literally frees me up to potentially make different kinds of choices than I’ve
made before.
The
last level is non-distinction. I’ll link this back to the Buddhist conversation
around enlightenment. Non-distinction is where I'm approaching all things with
a sense of unity and oneness, I and it are not separate. So we don't generally
go into a lot of conversation about this with our clients as attaining this
level is often a lifetime’s (maybe more) pursuit. And, it is an extremely
exalted level of viewing the way the world is structured.
When working with our clients from a competency building standpoint our focus is on
the areas of evaluation and distinction. By developing the practice of
learning how to evaluate effectively and being able to move into an observational
orientation that allows for noticing distinctions that they haven't been previously aware
they are better positioned to have access to resources that weren't noticed
before. Starting over becomes a process of developing those underutilized
resources. This is about intentionality and mindfulness.