Discernment Before Belief

In my last post, I wrote about knowing without proof; about the way recognition often arrives before explanation, and how we’re taught to distrust that experience. But there’s an equally important question that follows: if we allow for that kind of knowing, how do we keep it grounded?

That’s where discernment comes in.

We often talk about intuition as if it’s something you either have or you don’t.
A gift. A talent. A mysterious inner voice that some people can access and other can’t.

I don’t think that’s true.

What I’ve come to understand, both through writing and through paying closer attention, is that intuition without discernment isn’t wisdom at all. It’s noise. And discernment is the part we were never taught how to cultivate.

Discernment is not belief.
It’s not faith.
And it’s certainly not trusting every feeling that passes through us.

Discernment is the ability to tell the difference.

The difference btween insight and projection.
Between pattern and coincidence.
Between something that resonates because it’s true, and something that simply confirms what we want to believe.

For most of human history, discernment was learned the same way any other skill was learned: through repetition, observation, and correction. Knowledge didn’t arrive as abstract theory. It arrived through lived experience; through what worked, what endured, what proved reliable over time.

You learned by watching. By noticing outcomes. By paying attention to subtle shifts. Wisdom wasn’t separated from daily life; it was embedded in it.

At some point, we replaced that model with one that privileged explanation over perception. We began to value certainty more than coherence, authority more than lived experience. Discernment - slow, embodied, and context-dependent - became difficult to measure, and therefore easy to dismiss.

But stories never stopped operating this way.

A good story doesn’t ask you to believe it blindly. It trains you to notice. To sense when something is out of alignment. To recognize when a detail carries more weight than it first appears to. Over time, you learn to trust your attention; not because you’re told to, but because it proves accurate.

This is why intuition isn’t a gift. It’s a literacy. And like any literacy, it improves with practice.

When I was writing The Harbinger, I wasn’t interested in creating a story that told readers what to think. I wanted to create one that asked them to pay attention. To feel when something mattered before it was explained. To recognize patterns without being rushed toward interpretation.

That requires…discernment. From the writer, and from the reader.

And it’s something we can recover.

Not by abandoning reason, but by remembering that reason was never meant to stand alone. Discernment bridges thought and perception. It allows intuition to be tested, refined, and trusted; not because it feels good, but because it holds.

Before belief, there was discernment.
Before doctrine, there was attention.

And perhaps before certainty, there was wisdom that knew how to wait.