Growing in watchfulness and self-knowledge, the traveller upon the Way begins to acquire the power of discrimination or discernment (in Greek, diakrisis). This acts as a spiritual sense of taste. Just as the physical sense of taste, if healthy, tells a man at once whether food is mouldy or wholesome, so the spiritual taste, if developed through ascetic effort and prayer, enables a man to distinguish between the varying thoughts and impulses within him.
