Article:

Discernment of the Heart

The highest capacity of the heart is discernment, and wisdom is the result of the discernment of truth at the level of the heart. The highest capacity of the analytical mind is reason. Discernment is the capacity to ascertain spiritual value-that is to know the worth and meaning of things from a perspective transcendent to the limitations of logic, reason, and mind.

Though the word "heart" connotes emotion and feeling, traditionally it is a term used for that organ of perception or cognition within us that is superior to our mental processes. Sapiential knowing comes as a result of three great capacities in the heart: intuitive cognition, analogical imagination, and conscience. These three make the heart an organ of perception for the recognition of truth at a level beyond reason.
Intuitive cognition is the capacity of the heart to grasp truth not as a linear sequence (the way logical truth is known) but holistically all at once and in full integration.

Analogical imagination refers to the capacity for creative engagement with truth expressed through symbol and metaphor. Typically it involves paradox and the coincidence of opposites.

Conscience is the ability to discern the proper balances and relationships between things, and also to perceive right-relationship to the divine Reality.

Used together in an integrated way these three capacities give human beings the ability to discern truth from its transcendent source and to see temporal reality in a non-illusory way. Truth received in this manner must, however, be assimilated to normal conceptual and linguistic categories. This often renders it in paradoxical terms opaque to ordinary human consciousness.

Sapiential learning, therefore, includes not only clear perception in the heart, but the means by which such knowledge can be transmitted to the conventional world. The heart must first see, but it must also learn to speak its many modes.

Lynn C. Bauman