Join your host, Wil Fisher (AKA "I Am Sylvia Wil Gather Rainbow"), for playful and profound interviews with amazing LGBTQIA+ peeps working in the field of spirituality and personal growth. Wil is a life coach, spiritual healer, and drag queen who loves getting super wu and chatting with fascinating folx about all things spiritually queer and queerly spiritual. You'll love hearing guests' spiritual path stories and gain knowledge as they share discoveries, insights and wisdom. Plus, these interviews tend to be a lot of fun- so expect to have some of that as well...!
In this first solo episode of the season, Wil explores discernment- the skill of knowing what’s inner truth and what’s conditioned noise, so you can choose from your center. Using the metaphor of an “inner committee” (intuition, wisdom, higher guidance… plus anxiety, ego, craving, people-pleasing, and trauma responses), Wil breaks down how different inner voices sound, feel, and move in the body.
Wil also shares a personal story about a big decision made shortly after an ayahuasca ceremony — a moment when his discernment was vulnerable, his body signaled “no,” and that signal was reframed in a way that led to financial stress and credit card debt. The lesson: not every edge is expansion, and sometimes a “no” is your nervous system’s wisdom doing its job.
You’ll leave with practical questions, grounding tools, and a simple body-based practice you can use today — especially when you’re spinning, ruminating, or feeling urgency around a choice.
In this episode, we cover:
A clear definition of discernment: inner truth vs conditioned noise
A real-life example of discernment getting hijacked (and the cost of ignoring body wisdom)
The difference between intuition and anxiety (calm clarity vs urgency and catastrophe)
How ego can sound “high standards” but actually be fear of not-enoughness
People-pleasing signals (polite, self-erasing, peace-keeping at the cost of truth)
Trauma responses (fight/flight/freeze/fawn) and how protectors can be wise but outdated
Craving (sneaky, graspy, “just one more thing and then I’ll be okay” energy)
A queer-specific pattern: the proving/belonging hijack (desperation dressed as guidance)
Discernment cues to use:
Intuition feels calm, simple, grounded, and steady over time
Anxiety feels urgent, spiraling, and catastrophic
Ego focuses on image, status, comparison, and proving worth
People-pleasing prioritizes others’ comfort over your truth
Trauma response feels intense, controlling, or numbing/disassociative
Craving bargains and grasps for reassurance, signs, purchases, or certainty
Questions to support discernment:
Does this feel urgent? (Urgency often points to anxiety/craving/trauma response.)
Is this coming from love or fear? (And: is it current-day truth or old protection?)
Does this move me toward wholeness… or performance?
What happens if I wait 24 hours? (Intuition stays steady; anxiety escalates; craving bargains; ego postures; people-pleasing backpedals.)
Tiny practice to try today:
Hand on chest, hand on belly.
Take a slow breath (longer exhale than inhale).
Ask: “Which voice is speaking right now?”
Get curious — and invite the unhelpful committee members to step out of the boardroom.
Closing intention: Wil invites you into 2026 with more self-trust, more alignment, and more freedom — choosing what’s loving, true, and grounded rather than what’s loud, urgent, or performative.
If you want support cultivating discernment and self-trust in your next chapter, connect with Wil via the links below to explore coaching/offerings.
Learn more about Wil here: https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/
Book a Session with Wil: https://calendly.com/wilfish99/furture-visioning-session?month=2025-12
Weirdly beloved. We are gathered here today for some juicy conversations about all things spiritually queer and queerly spiritual. I'm Sylvia Will Gather Rainbow, a spiritual life coach, the treaty host with the most and a dragon queen. And I'll be chatting with the most amazing folks, or simply sharing some wisdom on my own. If you like what I'm serving, please remember to subscribe so we can keep hanging out. Alright, let's get super wooed together in the spiritual AF. Queer AF Cosmic Container. And Blastop! Hello, beloveds, and welcome back to another episode of Queerly Beloved. Today is the first solo episode of the newest season, and I'm excited to get into the topic of discernment. Ooh. So I'm gonna be talking about discernment, helping to define what that is. I'll share an example from my life of a time where my discernment got a little bit hijacked and the consequences of that. And then we'll look at how to tell the difference between your inner truth and all the conditioned noise that is not so helpful. So really distinguishing intuition and deep inner wisdom from anxiety and egoic thoughts and cravings and people pleasing and trauma responses. Finally, I'm gonna give you some practical questions and grounding tools so you can start cultivating discernment in your own decision making starting today, developing more self-trust and setting yourself up for greater success and greater alignment in 2026. So let's get into it, shall we? I want to start with the definition that I like to use, which is that discernment is knowing what is your inner truth versus what is just conditioned noise, so that you can choose from your center. Again, discernment is knowing what is your inner truth versus what is just conditioned noise so that you can choose from your center. It's the ability to tell the difference between guidance, real, true, higher guidance versus just a lot of static. And it's so important. I keep coming back to this as one of the most important skills to cultivate in your work because it helps you walk your highest path, it helps you find that highest path and stay on it. The truth is that life doesn't just hand us clean, obvious signals and directions, it gives us a whole inner committee, right? So if you think about this committee that's meeting at this boardroom in your mind, you've got intuition there and you've got wisdom there, and you've got higher guidance there, but you've also got anxiety and egoic thoughts and these craving thoughts. You've got your people-pleasing committee member, you've got your trauma response committee member, right? And listen, not all of them attend every meeting, but there are some times when we're making a decision where it feels like all of those committee members, those unhelpful committee members have shown up and they're all wearing the same outfit and they're all pretending to be the CEO, right? And so then it's our job to figure out which of these thoughts or these committee members are the intuition, are the higher guidance, are the deep inner knowing and wisdom coming from our highest self. And that can be a really challenging process because we can't just believe every thought that we have. So this happened shortly after a big ayahuasca ceremony where my heart was open. I I was just totally cracked wide open. I was in this big expanded state. And they tell you, or I've been told many times, to not make big decisions shortly after a big plant medicine journey or any kind of time where you are broken open. And it makes sense, right? You need time to integrate, you need time to ground, you might feel like you've got a good sense of what is true, but ultimately you're a bit vulnerable. And so it is very, very wise to take your time after these moments of expansion before you make big life decisions. And I knew that I'd heard that advice, and yet I happened to have this opportunity that came right after a ceremony, and I was sold into a very large investment with a mentor. So an investment of tens of thousands of dollars. And over time, I was able to see that in that exchange, in that sales process, I was manipulated. I believe it's my truth that I was very overcharged. And I was sold a story that hooked into my fears and my ego. And yes, of course, I got some value out of it, right? But ultimately, the decision created more negative impact than positive in my life. And it contributed to a lot of credit card debt and a lot of stress that came from that credit card debt. And here's the part that matters most for today's episode. So, in that moment, my body knew before my mind admitted it that there was something that was not right. Like I remember feeling tight and uncomfortable and even like some nausea. This constriction was happening. It was, it was my body saying, like, no, something's not right. And the thing is, is that the person who was selling me, he reframed that feeling. And he convinced me that this was a shadow part that wanted me to play small. And the truth is, is that sometimes we do have parts that get scared around expansion. That's real. But in this case, what I can see in retrospect is that it wasn't a shadow sabotaging me, that it was a protector that was doing its job. It was my inner wisdom saying that this is too much. This isn't a line. This is not the right exchange, right? This is, and it wasn't the right time. I didn't have the money in the bank to be investing this. And so this is one of the trickiest things about discernment is that sometimes we get taught, especially unfortunately, in some spiritual or self-development spaces, uh, to override our no. And this is something that I'm very conscious of when I talk to people about my services, especially because I've had that experience, and I am always seeking a yes from a regulated place. There may be some nerves, some fears about the expansion, but it's important that the decision isn't made from that fear, that it's made from this place of intuition, of good discernment, of this inner knowing. And yeah, fear might be part of it, but the fear isn't the main thing that is actually driving the decision, right? And that's what was happening for me. In a way, I was afraid that if I said no to this offer, that I would be feeding this shadow side, right? And so I was made to not trust myself in that moment. Um, or let's put it a different way, I decided not to trust myself in that moment. And again, I'm not here to villainize anyone. I take responsibility for that poor decision making, but I do want to name this pattern that not every edge is expansion. Sometimes the edge is your nervous system saying we're not safe, and that deserves respect. So I use this experience now as a way to remember that I have the ability to trust myself and that I can't allow my discernment to get hijacked. So this brings us to some practical tools that I've started to learn to distinguish, differentiate my inner signals, right? So that that kind of thing hopefully isn't going to happen to me again. But who knows? Again, I'm a work in progress. So the idea here is that the different signals, right? Going back to the committee members at the meeting, trying to make the decision, they feel differently and they speak differently and they move differently in the body. So I want to talk about what those signals are and how to figure out what is what. So for me, intuition it comes out really calm. It's like simple and clean, it's efficient, it's grounded, it's clear. And intuition, just to be clear, is our inner truth, our higher guidance. It's it's the wisdom that is coming from our highest self. And so it's simple, right? Sometimes it's literally just like one word, like yes, no, right? It doesn't feel frantic, it's not trying to rush you. It often gets repeated gently over time. It's like this like steady, quiet tap on the shoulder. Your intuition is directional, it's just giving you simple direction, it's not drama, right? It's so it's less story, it's less uh explanation, and it's more clarity. So it could sound like wait or call her or not this or yes, do that, right? That's the gold of intuition, that's what we're looking for. So now I'm gonna talk about all the other committee members who might be there who might be trying to convince you that their thoughts, their decision-making suggestions are the ones to follow. So we'll start with the anxiety. Anxiety tends to be urgent and kind of like catastrophic. It's drama, girl. It is drama. It spirals, it's like worst case scenario. The body feels tight, uh, the chest and stomach and throat, and the the timing is like, oh, I have to do it now, I have to do it now, otherwise, my whole life's gonna be fucked up, right? And anxiety says, if you don't do it right now, yeah, something terrible is gonna happen. You're gonna be, you're gonna make the wrong choice, you're gonna regret this forever, everything's gonna be bad, right? So that's what to listen for with anxiety. Next, I want to talk about egoic thoughts. So the ego signals, well, those are all about image, they're about status, they're about proving yourself and your worth, they're comparative, right? Like comparing yourself to others. In those egoic signals, the body feels kind of edgy and hungry, like it needs validation, thirsty, right? And it says things like uh do this to look successful, to look good and not look bad, right? And if you if you do that, you're gonna look stupid, or um, you have to do this in order to win, right? That's what the ego sounds like. It doesn't always sound arrogant, right? Sometimes we get confused, we think ego and we think arrogance, but it doesn't always sound arrogant. Uh it's more about it having this fear of not being enough, right? So it can sound like high standards, but it's really more about the the fear underneath it. So next we'll get into people pleasing. So the people pleasing committee member is usually really polite, uh self-erasing, really, like making yourself really small, um, focused on others rather than self. Uh, it can also feel tight and embracing, it can feel like shrinking kind of. Um, it's really like prioritizing other people's comfort rather than your truth. And so it ends up having us deny our truth in order to keep the peace, in order to make sure everyone else is okay. So it says things like, I'm fine, I don't want to be a burden, I'll just go along with it. Right? That's what people pleasing is like. Trauma response. All right, so trauma responses are really protective and really intense. And again, sometimes we want our protectors to come out. Sometimes that is the most aligned truth. That is the discernment in good action. But what I'm talking about here is trauma response. So it is fight, flight, freeze, fawn. This is being triggered. This is when something happens that reminds us on an unconscious level, often, sometimes conscious level, of something else that's happened in our life that isn't fully healed and cleared. And so it has us go into these trauma responses. So sometimes that might look like freeze. That's my default uh trauma response where you've got brain fog, you kind of numb out, you disassociate, or it might look like, yeah, fighting, like getting angry. It could be um this feeling of uh hyper alertness, uh, where you're just like afraid to die, basically. Uh, and so the trauma response might say things like, I have to control everything. If you don't manage this perfectly, you're gonna get hurt. It's this like fear of death part of ourselves. All right, the next one I want to look at is craving. And this will be the last one we look at, actually. So craving is sneaky because it can pretend to be intuition. It has kind of a forward-leaning energy, this like grasping energy. And it says, like, just one thing, then I'll be okay, or just one text or reassurance, just one more sign, just one more purchase. It's like this like graspy energy trying to find its way into being enough, being safe, finally being loved. So that's kind of the energy of craving. And we also don't want to be following those signals as well. A queer specific hijack I want to share for the sake of a lot of the listeners, the community of listeners to this particular podcast is the proving and belonging hijack. So many of us queer folks grew up in environments where we felt explicitly or more subtly that we had to earn our belonging. We had to prove that we were worthy, prove that we're lovable, prove that we're not too much and that we deserve space. And when that's in the background, the ego and the craving can team up in a convincing way. They can sound like guidance, but they're actually they're basically like desperation dressed in in wise clothing. So that can become thoughts like if I achieve enough, they'll respect me. If I get chosen, I'll be safe. If I buy the program, take the opportunity and say yes, then I'll finally feel secure. Right. So discernment is the moment we pause and ask, is this truly aligned? Or is this just the old pattern, this old proving pattern trying to find relief? Because proving ourselves as worthy, it's not a good compass. It is not helpful. And it will keep you busy, uh, but it's not necessarily gonna get you on your highest path towards freedom. So now I want to get into some simple questions you can ask that may help you in your discernment process. So one thing you can ask is simply, is this feeling urgent? Right? So intuition typically doesn't feel urgent, it feels firm, it doesn't feel frantic. Urgency usually points to anxiety or craving or trauma response. You can also ask, is this coming from love? Or is it coming from fear? All right, and let me clarify again, protection, which might feel fearful, isn't bad. Protectors are wise, but protection isn't always current day accurate, right? Sometimes protection is based on past experience or it's protecting this little child version of you that can actually handle the thing. So discernment is letting the protector speak without letting it drive. So being able to hear it out, but know that it's not always going to give you the most accurate information. So is it coming from love or is it misguided protection? Another question is does this move me toward wholeness or performance? Right? Does this decision, this choice, move me towards alignment and integrity and self-respect, or is it more about managing my image and getting approval? Uh, another question you can ask or an action you can take is what happens if I wait 24 hours? Right, and just giving some of these big life decisions a day, right? Because intuition tends to hold steady, right? So having that spaciousness, having that time, you can come back and see if the intuition, the wisdom, the inner, the guidance is holding steady. Anxiety, it tends to escalate, craving will bargain, people pleasing might backpedal, ego might posture, whereas intuition again will just stay steady and just give you that clear direction. And here's an important nuance. Sometimes intuition, I've said this before, but I want to say it again, it will lead you towards something that scares you. And again, you can feel fear and still be aligned. So the key is you're not choosing from the fear, you're choosing from your center with fear, kind of more in the like the passenger seat. Another big piece to this is that discernment is best in operation when the body is regulated, when the nervous system is regulated. And so when we are wanting to cultivate discernment, when we're wanting to make decisions, it's important for us to regulate our nervous systems. And there's easy ways to do that: to slow down, to breathe, to exhale longer than you inhale, to get out in nature, to feel your feet on the earth, to look around and just register that you are safe, to allow your body to find stillness and your mind to find quiet, and allow some of that noise to just go away. And ask, what is true underneath all that noise? When the noise is gone, what remains? What is true? So I want to offer you a tiny practice you can try today. So the next time you're spinning about a decision, you're ruminating, I want you to put your hand on your chest, a hand on your belly. I want you to take a slow breath and ask which voice is speaking right now. And just get curious. Get curious and see what that process is like to connect with the inner truth, with the higher guidance, with the intuition, and get all those other committee members to leave that boardroom. So, beloved, I hope that some of these thoughts and ideas support you. I hope they guide you into deeper discernment and deeper self-trust because discernment, it's learning which inner voice is speaking and choosing from your inner truth rather than the conditioning. And when you're able to do that, you're able to live a much more expanded life. You're able to step onto your highest path and keep on it. And you've got this, you've got what you need to do. That if you need any support, you can reach me through the show notes, my contacts there. We can have a chat, we can chat about using discernment and cultivating more of it in 2026. It's been a wild ride, 2025, and you're still here. You have made it through this year. I mean, it's not totally over, but it's soon to be over. But you deserve to be acknowledged for living during this chaotic time and standing for what you stand for, despite all the things pushing back against us. So let's step into a really beautiful and powerful 2026 and let's keep using discernment to choose what's aligned, what's loving, what's true, and find that path that brings us more peace, more joy, more miracles, more blessings, more freedom, all the good stuff. I wish all of that for you. So much love to you. Thank you for listening. Oh my goddess beloveds, what a joy it was to be with you today. Let's hang out again soon, okay? And if you can think of a friend who would benefit from hearing this, please share it with them. Sending so much love and light to you today and every day. Until next time, peace.
