We all have likes, and some of these are strong, compelling, almost non-negotiable. We have favorite foods, colors, sports teams, things to do when we are not directly engaged with our responsibilities… The combination of our individual preferences make up a profile of our characteristic style. They are so familiar, so comfortable, and yet, they are not who we truly are.

One of the major barriers to making free and loving choices is what Ignatius of Loyola called disordered attachments – those people, things, activities, substances that we value more than our relationship with God. Whatever deviates our mind and/or our heart and/or our life-path away from what we know is right and good, away from God’s call, away from God’s loving desires for us and for others; these are disordered attachments. When it comes time for us to make an important decision, we are pre-conditioned by our attachments to choose according to whatever we are attached to. This can severely impair our discernment of God’s Will for us.

Ignatius has a simple antidote for disordered attachments – indifference (or detachment). To choose well, we need to be indifferent, detached. Ignatius was a passionate Basque. He was not talking about developing apathy as some backward kind of virtue. Indifference doesn’t mean that we don’t care. As fully alive human beings, we need to be in touch with, and have access to, all our feelings, no matter how fierce or deep. But when we choose, we need to be free from the domination of our feelings.

Once again, a huge help to dealing well with disordered attachments is awareness. We need to know ourselves inside and out. What claims us? What tugs at our heart? What siren’s song sings more loudly and more seductively to us, drowning out the voice of God? What, in our life, is more important to us than doing what is loving and just? Whatever pulls us away from God and God’s ways is a disordered attachment. It means more to us than is healthy and good for us. Knowing the answer to these questions allows us to choose more freely.

Because we do care, very much, we try to discover how our caring, or our passion, clouds our vision and moves us in one direction or another. Does it help or hinder our listening to/for God’s direction for our life? We may want something with all our heart. We may be totally convinced that what we want to do has to be the right way, the only way. We are attached. We need to back off and try to see our life and the choice in front of us from God’s perspective.

The gift of freedom we have been given offers us the opportunity to participate in God’s ongoing work of creation and to continue the mission of Jesus: to call all people, by our lives, to fundamentally change their way of seeing and acting; to believe in, and to build up God’s Kingdom now, where we are. Our freedom is awesome and, at the same time, so restricted. Our choices have vital significance, and are starkly limited – to the point where some people claim that because there is so much constantly shaping and conditioning us, we have no freedom at all. We can choose to focus on the awesome and do what we can, or get lost in the littleness of the impact of our decisions and choices, and court frustration and despair. 

Discernment requires that we have the fullest measure of interior freedom as is humanly possible. In order to recognize and choose according to God’s loving preferences and desires, we need to remove distractions (physical, sensory, mental, emotional, as well as spiritual). Distractions are whatever pulls us away from being freely present in this moment.

There are conditions that make it next to impossible to make a free and loving decision: ignorance, attachments, passions, deep wounding, intense pain, brainwashing, addictions, physical or psychological threats, being reduced to basic survival, social and familial conditioning… Brainwashing can either be a psychological weapon wielded by an expert, or the creation of a dependency on a powerful or charismatic personality who serves as one’s auxiliary mind, conscience and will – a substitute god, or a divine parent. 

Most of us, thank God, are not dealing with such heavy duty constraints. For us, the impediments to our freedom are usually simple, common and pervasive. I tend to lump them together as fear, ego, and expectations. If we are in fear, and to the extent we are afraid, we are not free to make good decisions. If we, because of some illusion of self-preservation, have set ourselves as the sole reference for orienting our life, ego rules – and ego is less concerned with freedom than with preserving its imaginary control over reality. Expectations are like a smiling giant with a cudgel, leaning down to us and suggesting what has to be right and good for us, and inviting us: “Now choose.” How free is that?

Since, I believe, we all are struggling with these challenges to making good, loving choices and decisions, how can we ever choose freely and well? The biggest factor is awareness – awareness of the influences that tend to restrict and inhibit our freedom to choose. If we know and can name these persuasive voices, they have less power over us. The secret is to know and name as many of these familiar “advisors”  as possible and to see how they are bending our will. This is choosing with our eyes open. We can say, “Yes.” We can say, “No.”

We can have more wishes and desires for our life than we have abilities, energy, or years on this earth.  Which ones could be from God, and which are my own preferences or fantasies?  If I have no musical ability, no matter how much I enjoy listening to Chopin, it is most unlikely that God, who made me, is asking me to become a concert pianist.  If I feel ill or faint when I see blood, God is probably not inviting me to become a surgeon.

Then there’s the fact that God isn’t into giving us multiple choice tests.  Discernment is always binary – as much as we prefer to keep all options open (just in case…) – a choice between two mutually exclusive good paths. Am I called to serve God and others, using my gift for numbers, as a teacher of mathematics or as a financial counselor?  Am I called to serve God and others, using my gifts of compassion and in the area of science, as a researcher seeking cures, or as a hospice nurse?  

But if we have discerned that our vocation is marriage, we are not asked to discern if we are called to marry John or Matthew.  Here the binary discernment is: Am I called to marry John, or not. And the same goes for Matthew, or not.

Discernment is rooted in our concrete reality: who we are as we are, with our gifts, our limitations and the circumstances that shape our life as it is today. It is never theoretical, nor does it deal with “what ifs” or “maybes.” Discernment seeks the better of two, real choices, not the best or the ideal choice.

We’re called to be loving. Nice, but not very helpful in the concrete circumstances that make up our lives. Our days are filled with countless decisions and choices. Discernment is about learning how to choose well.

Most of our decisions do not have life-shaping consequences: which socks to put on; do I prepare my cup of coffee before or after I make toast; which book do I choose to read first…  Our preferences don’t require discernment.

Someone rear-ends the car I am driving; I am diagnosed with an aggressive and unpredictable cancer; someone I care about sends me a card for no particular reason…  Things happen to us that we have little or no control over, These are not discerned.

Do I lie rather than admit that I ate that last piece of cake – that I knew someone else had already claimed?  Do I steal a cell phone that someone left on the park bench? Do I lash out in anger or do I hold my tongue? Is what I am choosing to do, or how I am choosing to live, ruining my life, destroying my relationships, stealing peace and joy from me? No need to discern between right and wrong, bad and good. God desires that we always choose what is right and good, no matter how difficult it may be for us. God wants fullness of life for us.

What does that leave? Discernment is for major decisions, life-direction (vocation), choices that significantly impact our life and the lives of others. God desires to be involved, a partner, when we face these types of alternatives – alternatives that arise out of the circumstances of our lives like a fork in the road. How do we decide which way to turn? Discernment.

Along with prayer and community, discernment is one of the most important and most demanding of the spiritual disciplines. Discernment is all about coming to know what God wants for us, as individuals, and as communities. This isn’t some arrogant human effort. We can discern God’s Will because God empowers us to.

God has given the concrete model of Jesus’ life as well as the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of love, to be with us and to guide us. Clearly Jesus invested many hours in prayer, in coming to an intimate, deeply personal, familiarity of Abba and Abba’s preferences. Prayer and discernment go hand-in-hand. 

As Jesus lived and taught, we are all called to live our lives with a single focus – to become holy. God wants us to be holy. Holiness requires our wholehearted dedication, within the specific circumstances of each of our lives – not in some idealized, detached perfection. And what are we to be so completely dedicated to? Loving!

As disciples of Jesus, he commands us to love one another – as he has loved us – with his whole being – to the end. This is God’s Will, always and in every situation. To come to this depth of loving, we need to put aside any and all manifestations of ego: self-referencing, self-centeredness, self-assurance. Loving demands that we are free enough from our selves to be present, attentive, and available to others as they are; free enough to enter into the need and pain of the other. to care and to give, more and more fully, of what we have been given.