Every time I critique a wellness grifter—Deepak Chopra's AI chatbot, some Instagram influencer hawking unregulated supplements, whatever—I get the same pushback.
"People just need better discernment."
"Teach critical thinking instead of attacking individuals."
"Everyone has to learn not to blindly follow gurus."
Sounds reasonable, right? Empowering, even. Why waste energy calling out charlatans when the real solution is teaching people to think for themselves?
Except, I've heard this before.
Just not in wellness spaces.
The Wellness Version of Anti-Vax Logic
"Do your own research" about vaccines.
"Do your own research" about election fraud.
"Do your own research" about medical treatments.
"Trust your discernment" about spiritual teachers.
See it?
They all sound like championing independent thinking. But what the really have in common is undermining expertise. And they all leave people more vulnerable to manipulation, not less.
Here's the thing: I'm pretty smart. I can read peer-reviewed medical journals. I actually understand the science to some degree. And my partner's a scientist so I can always "phone a friend" and check in with him.
I still don't want to rely only on my own judgment for medical decisions. And here is why.
I just turned 52. My social media feed is filled with people insisting that perimenopause is destroying my body. That I must be on hormone replacement therapy. Creatine. This supplement. That protocol. Some of that advice might be good. Some might not apply to me. Most of it is designed to sell me something. And it is all effecting how I interpret what is happening in my body.
So before I went on HRT for my sleep disruptions (let me know if you want to hang out at 3am), I went to my doctor. Asked about it. He said I could if I wanted, but maybe we try other approaches first. There is no "one size fits all."
And you know what's funny? Despite the dire warnings I keep hearing, I have more muscle mass now, in my fifties, than I had in my twenties as a Division I athlete. So the panic about "you're losing muscle mass" doesn't fit my body. But I only figured that out because I work with professionals who help me separate facts from the noise.
If I (a professor who literally teaches critical thinking for a living) don't trust my own discernment alone about my perimenopausal body, why would we expect people to navigate the spiritual marketplace solo?
If I don’t trust my own discernment about perimenopause, why would you trust yours about Deepak Chopra?
We shouldn't. And insisting we should is setting people up to fail.
So what's actually going on when we say "trust your discernment?" What are we asking people to do, exactly?
This is where an old religious concept—one that might seem dusty and irrelevant—turns out to be surprisingly useful.
The Conscience Confusion: Capacity vs. Competence
Catholic moral theologians have spent centuries thinking about how moral judgment actually works. And even if you're not Catholic (I'm not anymore), even if you're religiously unaffiliated (like I am), the framework they developed cuts through the confusion.
Because here's what they figured out: conscience—the thing we mean when we say "listen to your conscience" or "trust your gut"—isn't one thing. It's three.¹
Conscience as capacity: The universal human ability to sense right and wrong. We're all born with it. This is the "gut" the "trust your gut" people are referring to.
Conscience as process: The ongoing work of training that capacity. Learning from traditions. Studying with people who have more experience. Obtaining skills. This is the part I think we most often forget about.
Conscience as judgment: The actual decision in a specific moment, informed by your innate capacity AND your training.
The 1993 Catholic encyclical Veritatis Splendor puts it plainly: "There exists a prior moral obligation, and a grave one at that, to seek the truth and to adhere to it once it is known."
Not just feel things about truth. Actively seek it.
The problem with "trust your discernment?" It collapses all three into just the first. Treats the capacity as sufficient. Like you don't need the process. Like judgment can be sound without training.
The problem with ‘trust your discernment’? It collapses capacity, process, and judgment into just the first one.
This would be like saying: "You have legs, therefore you can run a marathon. Just trust your body!"
Yeah, no. Between having legs and running 26.2 miles? Training. Process. Probably a coach who knows more than you about pacing and injury prevention. And likely a good Physical Therapist.
Why would spiritual discernment work differently?
The Paradox Nobody Talks About
Here's where it gets interesting.
My good friend and religious studies scholar Aaron Stalnaker spent years studying how people develop moral autonomy (the ability to make good judgments for yourself). He focuses on early Confucian ethics, but the implications reach everywhere.
His finding? You can't develop moral autonomy alone.²
You need teachers. Guides. You need to depend on people who know more than you.
Sounds like a contradiction. It's not.
Starting with John Stuart Mill, Western philosophy built this dangerous binary: either you're autonomous (needing no guidance) or you're being dominated. No middle ground. Needing help became weakness. Following a teacher became servitude.
Stalnaker calls this "the foreclosure of autonomy."³ By insisting people are automatically autonomous—that needing guidance equals dependence, that dependence equals dysfunction—we actually prevent people from developing real autonomy.
Think about violin.
Nobody says "just trust your gut" about learning the violin. We understand you need a teacher. Someone who knows more. Someone who can hear what you're doing wrong before you can. Someone who assigns you the tedious practice work until you develop your own ear.
The violin teacher has authority over you in that domain. But we don't call this domination. Don't say you're surrendering autonomy by submitting to instruction.
Why? Because the goal is your eventual mastery (or at least competency). The teacher's authority is temporary. Instrumental. Scaffolding you'll eventually remove.
Stalnaker’s research on Confucian texts reveals this pattern across practices—whether in ritual, music, or moral judgment. What he calls "willing submission" to teachers.⁴ Not permanent dependence. Not blind obedience. Not cult devotion. Willing submission for the sake of development.
The goal was always the student’s eventual independence. You practice under guidance until you've internalized the principles. Until you see what your teacher sees. Until good judgment becomes second nature.
But you can't skip apprenticeship.
The Confucian tradition grasped that learning requires relationship. You can’t become wise reading books alone (though books help). You need someone who can see you. Know where you're stuck. Challenge your bad habits of thinking and feeling and perceiving.
Yes, this makes you vulnerable. All relationships do.
But the alternative—developing discernment in isolation, with only your untrained gut and an algorithm-fed social media feed as guides—that's not safety. That’s just different type of vulnerability.
The Deepest Irony
Here's what kills me about the "trust your discernment" crowd.
The people shouting it loudest? Often trust their own discernment so completely they think they don't need teachers. They've figured it out. Cracked the code. Achieved sufficient spiritual development that guidance would be redundant.
That's not wisdom. That's what happens when you’re so early in your practice you don't know what you don’t know yet.
The actual wise people I know, the ones with decades of practice, the scholars of religion, the contemplatives who've been at this for fifty years—they all still have teachers. Spiritual directors. Mentors. Communities that challenge them.
They've developed enough discernment to know their discernment has limits.
Meanwhile, the 28-year-old selling you a course on activating your divine feminine energy and manifesting you best life? She's very confident in her gut.
Discernment Is a Muscle
In my research for Beyond Wellness, I looked at how moral discernment actually functions. It's not just cognitive. It's not just weighing pros and cons, thinking through options. It's embodied. Charles Hirschkind, an Islamic ethics scholar, calls it "moral physiology:" training your whole person to perceive rightly, feel appropriately, act wisely.
A life skill. Developed over time.
Not something you're born with fully formed. Not something you perfect once and then you're done.
If you follow me on Instagram you know I like to strength train. So here is an on brand metaphor. Discernment is a muscle. Muscles need training. You don't train alone.
Discernment is a muscle. Muscles need training. You don’t train alone.
You need someone who sees your form is off. Who designs exercises strengthening your weak points. Who pushes you further than you'd push yourself. Who says "you're ready for more weight" or "slow down, you'll hurt yourself."
Good teachers help you build that muscle, then step back and let you use it. They make "trust your discernment" possible.
Which brings us to the obvious question: How do you find those teachers? And how do you tell them apart from the gurus and grifters and people who'll use your vulnerability against you?
Part 2 drops Thursday: Teachers vs. Charlatans and False Prophets: How to Tell the Difference. Be sure to subscribe so you get it delivered to your inbox!
If you enjoyed this post, please like, comment, or share it. Doing so helps others find the newsletter! (I've opened up comments to everyone, so let's continue exploring these themes together there).
FOOTNOTES:
Catholic moral theologians like Dennis Billy, James Keating, Timothy O’Connell, Germain Grisez, and even Thomas Aquinas conceptualize conscience as a threefold capacity, process, and judgement. See my book Creative Conformity for more on how conscience operates, particularly when conceptualized with Latina liberation theology.
Aaron Stalnaker, Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority (Oxford University Press, 2019).
Stalnaker, 32-40.
Stalnaker, 156-174.
Stalnaker, 271-274.
In my tradition, Tibetan Buddhism, it is classically stated one should observe a teacher for 12 years before accepting them as one’s guru.. Most people do not follow this advice, but rely on accolades from other respected teachers.
There is a fairly large amount of literature in Tibetan Buddhism on the qualities of a suitable guru, and also of a suitable disciple. It’s not just a one way street. There is a very specific matrix of qualifications for both teacher and student. Many people are not qualified to be teachers, many are also not qualified to be students. But here in the West, everyone thinks they have a right to purchase any spiritual commodity they choose. It’s a function of the logic of marketing spirituality. There are a far more unqualified teachers of every spiritual stream in the market than there are qualified teachers.
There is also the issue in Tibetan Buddhism that in order to receive inner tantric teachings, entering into a formal relationship with a guru is required. Also, in my tradition all gurus are students. They represent a lineage held to go back to the Buddha.
Of course one can practice nontantric teachings that are available in Tibetan Buddhism without taking on a formal relationship with a teacher. There is no obligation to become a Vajrayana practitioner in Tibetan Buddhism. If one does not enter Vajrayana practice, one does not have a guru at all. One may have a teacher, of course, but there is no mutual obligation as in a guru/disciple relationship.
My general advice to people who have the calling to be teachers is a) wait till you are 50+, b) wait until your own primary teacher has passed on, and c) make sure you can read the primary language of the Buddhist tradition you are representing—Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese, etc.
The problem I see with many westerners is that they seek a career path. Religion in general is the most important part of many people’s lives, and one that requires the least credentials for hanging a shingle. Therefore many unqualified people decide, after practicing for less than a decade, they wish to teach. The other issue is credentialing. Just as earning a 200 hour or 500 hour yoga certificate does not qualify someone to be a spiritual friend, likewise, getting a MBSR cert, etc., does not qualify one as a spiritual friend. But because we have religious freedom in Western Democracies, no one can tell anyone they cannot be a religious teacher. Therefore, caveat emptor.
Buddhist teachers should not be life coaches, nor psychologists, doctors, etc., for their students.
Another beauty!! You’ve nailed the longing I have had over the course of the last two decades for what I now call lineage and tradition but is really about the scaffolding of support, the mirroring and guidance of community, and the ground of wisdom. Thank you! Sending this one to a variety of people in my community!