When we go inside and process our limiting patterns and emotions, we get to both know and understand ourselves, which causes us to both know and understand the world and those around us. This is after all a fractal reality, which explains the Hermetic adage “as above, so below, as within, so without”; where we can know the higher by first knowing ourselves here on the lower, and we can know the outer by first going within. As we continue to bring our unconscious patterns of relating into the light of conscious awareness, we will easily notice the limiting patterns and fallacious reasoning of those around us, even if we are not around them often.
Therefore in spite of our distance, I can still know you, and I can still understand why you behave as you do, because I first knew and understood myself. This means that I do not need to know everything about your story and situation to be able to see what errors you are making, as they are blatantly obvious to me based on my own self-awareness. I can see through the lies you are telling yourself easily and effortlessly, because I told those same lies to myself at some point too; so I am not judging you, but I am discerning the fallacious patterns and logic that you are repeating in an unconscious manner.
Here’s the difference between judgment and discernment though: when we are being judgmental of others it is because we are attacking something in another that we are failing to recognize within ourselves. However, when we are being discerning, we are fair and impartial because we are conscious and aware of who we are, what we feel, why we feel it, and why we act as we do (self-knowledge and understanding). We judge that which we are unaware of within ourselves, and we discern to the degree in which we both know and understand ourselves; because of this, it is possible to be a hybrid of both judgment and discernment at the same time—but unfortunately, even a fractional amount of judgment will cause others to resist our highly discerning messages.
