Accessing the discernment of your soul

There’s a Hebrew word that means discipline, discernment, judgement, decision and strength. It’s spelt and pronounced either as Gevurah or Geburah.

On the Tree of Life, it’s part of what’s known as the “soul triad” which is made up from Tiferet (truth and beauty), Gevurah and Hesed (loving kindness and mercy). So our souls are made up from our own unique and particular perception of truth and of beauty, our ability to discern and be self-disciplined and our ability to love unconditionally.

Most people love Tiferet and Hesed and quietly ignore Gevurah. After all, spiritual people are loving and seek beauty in the world; we don’t want all that judgement and destructive stuff.

And Gevurah is destructive. It breaks down that which is unhealthy. It cuts out all the crap.

In fact, Gevurah is very unpopular. It’s a bit like the relative that nobody talks about and doesn’t want to invite to the family events.

But we ignore it at our peril.

You may have noticed that this is a very Gevuric article. In fact I’ve been writing a lot of Gevuric articles lately as a kind of balance for a lot of “loving fluff” that I see in the New Age world. Loving fluff is terrific as long as the fluffy people’s lives are working. But very often they aren’t — and they turn up on my doorstep to ask why. Mostly, it’s because they’ve long been taught or believed that being Gevuric isn’t nice.

It isn’t nice. It isn’t meant to be nice. But it’s essential.

Here are some of the things that can happen if you don’t apply Gevurah in your life:

• You never start that project that you know is your life’s work because you’re too busy doing other stuff.

• If you have started it, you never finish it (oh – how many totally rational and reasonable excuses do you have? Sorry, not buying any of them).

• You take more care of others than yourself and you end up exhausted and bewildered as to why the Universe isn’t taking care of you.

• You allow others to push you into acting against your integrity.

• You don’t even know what your integrity is. You’ve just taken some impressive words from one of your favourite authors that you can spout like “I’m following my bliss” when you’re not.

• You go to workshop after workshop in order to feel better — and never actually apply any of the principles that were taught. So you need to go to another workshop...

We’re all a bit scared of Gevurah, but you can do it! (and actually you already do in some areas of your life without knowing it) You’ve got the perfect ability to be discerning. And if you can match the three aspects of your soul you will be so much more powerful and effective in the world.

Here’s how good Gevurah works.

Imagine you’re out with a friend who is trying on wedding dresses.

She comes out of the dressing room in the one she prefers and asks the immortal question: “Does my bum look big in this?”

Oh boy, does her bum look big in that!

Tiferet — truth and perception of beauty: “Yes.”

Hesed — loving kindness: “No of course not!”

You won’t use Tiferet, of course. But hopefully, you won’t use Hesed either. It would be a total lack of integrity to use Hesed just to reassure her. And she’d not like the wedding photos either.

Gevurah comes in with a judgement on what is the best thing to say?

You’d probably say something like, “It’s a lovely dress; but why not try on some more just so you know it’s the perfect one for you.” For all you know, her bum is going to look big in all of them but you can’t give a clear decision without seeing more.

A bit of grumbling and four dresses (that she hadn’t liked on the rail) later, she comes out in one that just looks fabulous. You couldn’t tell her whether her bum looked big in it because this was just THE dress. And she knew it too. It was amazing. And she would never even have tried it on if you hadn’t swallowed your Hesed and used your Gevurah.

Phew.

See — it’s not really that hard. And it has huge benefits in life. If you like, you can always translate Gevurah as strength. What is the strong thing to do? And here’s a clue on how to apply it: wait! Don’t make instant decisions — that’s the ego. Take time out to consider. Sleep on it if possible. Allow your decision-making process to overcome your ego’s desire to sort it out now. If you do, even your posture will start being better — and your life will too.

© Maggy Whitehouse 2011
www.maggywhitehouse.com