Cultivating discrimination and intuition is essential in today’s world. These are challenging times that can be confusing and overwhelming. We have more access to information than at any other time in history, and yet, somehow, we feel less certain than ever before. Who can we trust when we are constantly flooded with news, opinions, and perspectives pulling our attention in so many directions?
We live in the Age of Information that feels more like the Age of Misinformation. Not only because those in power tend to use it to gaslight and manipulate the masses, but also because we’re bombarded by superficial AI-generated answers, algorithms following our every move (like a stalker), and so-called influencers striving to draw our attention at the speed of a scroll.
How can you tell what’s real, not some form of propaganda or tactic to sell you ideas, when everyone and everything is competing for your belief system? In truth, this is a deep spiritual question disguised as a modern information issue. You may trust the mind to navigate the world and learn how it works, but you must trust your intuition to break free from egoic entrapments and suffering. How do you discern between the two? (See How Do You Know if You’re Acting From Intuition or Fear?)
The World Is Ego and It’s Ruled by Ego
Your mind wasn’t meant to give you access to deep truths, only to the innumerable memories, beliefs, and desires that shape the human experience. These mental fluctuations clutter your perception and block Pure Awareness, which is your true essence. Your intellect or higher mind can judge, analyze, process, and learn from experience, but the lower mind, which is the aspect controlled by the ego (what I call the ego-mind), is very easily swayed with illusions, desires, and strong emotions that diminish your discrimination.
The psyche is the totality of the mind, including all the conscious and subconscious aspects that shape our experience of the dreamworld (see Your Life-Movie Is a Dream Within a Dream), while the ego is the illusion of separation that gives us a sense of individualized experience (this is my life, my desires, my mind). To clarify how it works, I used the following analogy in my book You Are Your Healer:
Think of your psyche as the factory where your experiences are produced. The ego is the supervisor managing the lower, psycho-emotional mind through your physical senses as well as your organs of perception and action. Without clear instruction from the higher, discriminating mind that is supposed to be in charge of the factory, the supervisor simply follows the loudest voice—that is, the most predominant desires and patterns in your subconscious. This is how the ego-mind overpowers the intellect to carry out thoughts, words, and actions from negative tendencies, which is the direction the ego naturally follows to obstruct the light of the Self.
This is how the world operates, because it is a projection of the ego that perpetuates the illusion of duality or separation. It has always worked this way, but modern technology amplifies it. AI gives the mind an infinite supply of confident-sounding answers dressed up as clarity. The ego, which, by its very nature, craves control and certainty, will eat almost anything that looks like it. Social media multiply the sociopolitical megaphones that create egoic divisions and power dynamics. To put it simply, the ego plays power games with itself, as we swing between our sense of self (my experience, my opinion, my beliefs) and our sense of otherness (the aspects I project as others in my mental movie) to maintain the delusion of duality.
Unfortunately, the conflicts and contradictions this division causes have intensified as we’re now closer to the end of a cosmic masculine cycle ruled by the ego. But this also means that we’re turning around toward a feminine cycle of community, cooperation, and higher consciousness (see Self-Ascension Into 5th Dimension). Within that cycle, we’re also at the beginning of the astrological Age of Aquarius, which, generally speaking, is very positive, but whose shadow is a rebelliousness that invites what we could call opinionitis (see What Is the Age of Aquarius All About?). So, we’re at the junction of opposite cosmic forces over which we have no control but that manifest through and as our human experience.
Perhaps you get more anxious the more you research or learn about the world, or you feel more lost the more ideas and opinions you gather. It’s not that you’re not smart enough or that there isn’t enough information to understand things; it’s that you’re looking for certainty where it cannot be found. As one of my teachers used to say, without a purified mind, all you can see is ego. In spiritual terms, the world isn’t real because it’s always changing. How can something be real when it’s there one moment, and then it shifts into something else?
Only what is permanent is real. Reality is the eternal space where phenomena appear and disappear, but the ego-mind creates the illusion that our reality is the phenomena that we get tangled up with. Ideas, news, technologies, dramas, gossip, opinions, conspiracies, and so on: they all come and go. They’re mental noise, and they’re bound to change, so why hold on to them so tightly and believe that they’re all there is?
Clarity and Discrimination Arise From Spiritual Practices
I am not saying you should bury your head in the sand or pretend that what’s happening isn’t happening. These are extraordinary times of great transformation, and you will be driven to do what you’re meant to do. But you gain greater wisdom by detaching from and disbelieving the constant bombardment of the ego-mind, and instead cultivating discrimination through meditative practices (See Why It Is Urgent to Deepen Your Spiritual Practices Now).
Underneath all the noise—every algorithm, every headline, every AI sycophantic explanation, every opinion, every thought, and every distraction—there is something in you that will never mislead you. It is untouched by the fluctuations of the mind. It is steady, clear, and stable, but it is also very quiet until you nurture and amplify it. Redirecting the mind inward is your power, and that’s why the ego is always trying to steal it by pulling your attention outward.
You’ve felt it before. That quiet gut feeling when something is off, even though it sounds right. That inner clarity that arrives not because you gathered enough evidence, but because you finally stopped and just listened. That is your discriminative, intuitive wisdom, or the inner knowing that leads to the truth. The world will continue to unfold through its painful karmic dynamics, and the mind will keep bringing up memories, ideas, and information. But your job is not to simply consume it all; it is to come back to the part of you that can meet any piece of information and simply know whether it’s true for you or not.
This discernment is not a skill you build. It’s what remains when you clear the noise. You don’t develop it by learning more stuff; you develop it by quieting the mind enough to hear what’s already there. A calm, purified mind allows you to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not; between a fact and fear dressed as a fact; between truth and belief. By contrast, an anxious, overwhelmed mind will grab at anything that promises relief. This is why the flood of information doesn’t make people wiser.
Your Inner Voice Is Your True Compass
You don’t need to reject information or technology to develop discrimination. Life itself teaches you through experience, and it expands with practices that require concentration. Reading good books is one of them. A mind that thinks and reflects is more reliable than a mind that simply repeats without questioning what it hears, like a child. And of course, meditative practices that make the mind clearer and able to process information with discrimination. More than anything, understand how the mind really works so you won’t be deceived. The world is a reflection of your own subconscious memories, tendencies, and beliefs, ruled by the idea of separation and division. Its nature is that of a self-centered fight.
As you observe and trust yourself, you can let the mind inform you, but you don’t have to let it decide for you. Use sources of information, research, and outside opinions as tools, the way you’d use a map. You can use AI when you need ideas for a project, but always verify what it says and check other sources as well as what rings true to you. AI has no consciousness or conscience; it is programmed to be sycophantic, not necessarily truthful (it has already manipulated people who’ve given it too much emotional power).
Never mistake the map for the territory of your own knowing. A map can only show you the terrain. It cannot tell you which way you are meant to go; that’s the direction your inner voice takes you when you cultivate clarity and discrimination. Whenever a headline, an opinion, or a piece of advice come your way, pause before you take it as truth. The ego is reactive, so it pushes you to take things much more personally than they are, triggering fear and other negative emotions; again, what is at play is the egoic me and mine that produces division and conflict.
When you ask, “Who can I trust?” the question is really about whether you trust yourself enough to come back to stillness before you decide what’s real and what’s good for you. In a world filled with more voices than you could ever listen to, the most radical act of discernment is turning the volume down on all of them, at least long enough to hear your inner voice. That one is always there, not to convince you of anything, but to guide you to your true destiny: spiritual freedom. So, contact me today to learn how to reclaim the discriminative wisdom of your true, eternal Self, to live an empowered life in alignment with your soul!
P.S. If you’re not ready to work with me as your spiritual mentor to delve deeply within, you can learn about the workings of the ego-mind to transform your perception and experience by implementing the Swan Method I share in You Are Your Healer: The Ultimate Guide to Heal Your Past, Transform Your Life & Awaken to Your True Self!
© 2026 Yol Swan. All rights reserved.